The 7th company, together with the 6th company and the heavy 8th company, were stationed in the town of Sisak and placed on alert for the division. Now a more exciting chapter of our stay in the Balkans began. <\/p>\n
If a supply convoy was to be escorted through a dangerous district, or if it was a punitive expedition against the partisans in the mountains, or if it concerned patrol duty in partisan territory\u2014orders would immediately arrive from the division and we would move out.
The tasks were numerous and varied; our area of operations stretched from Agram in the north to Konstantiza in the south, from Glina in the west and far out onto the plains in the east. <\/p>\n
In large trucks and in small fast reconnaissance vehicles we crossed and controlled the districts\u2014we thereby gained a fairly good impression of the population\u2019s varied living conditions and of the country\u2019s natural beauty.
We sped across vast open plains, where slow, gliding rivers drew their shimmering silver ribbons through the fertile landscape. We climbed steep mountain ridges and drove through poor villages\u2014like a magnificent panorama, Croatia passed before our eyes.
Our encounters with the partisans were numerous and full of exciting episodes\u2014more or less bloody. In the following, some of these experiences will be described. <\/p>\n
Sisak is a town of about 20,000 inhabitants and does not differ significantly from other Balkan towns of the same size.
The town lies on the wide plain where the Sava and Kupa rivers join their course on their way to the broad stream of Mother Danube.
The reserve force, together with units from the regiment\u2019s supply troops, was billeted in a barracks on the southern outskirts of Sisak\u2014some gloomy, dirty buildings without any conveniences whatsoever. <\/p>\n
The company commander, Hauptsturmf\u00fchrer H\u00e4mel, had been ordered to a four-week Sto\u00dftrupp school, and in his place Lieutenant B\u2026 was promoted to company commander.<\/p>\n
The reserve force\u2019s first tasks consisted of several large-scale reconnaissance expeditions to the villages on the plain east of Sisak\u2014the periphery of the partisans\u2019 area of activity in those parts.
The situation of the population in these villages was far from enviable. If it was proven that they collaborated under cover with the partisans, they were immediately dealt with harshly. A punitive expedition from the Croatian police or from the Wehrmacht would visit the town and burn the houses down over the heads of the inhabitants. The residents were interned; cattle, pigs, and poultry were confiscated and taken as spoils.
The partisans were no better\u2014rather worse. They robbed and plundered at will wherever they went, especially in those towns suspected of sympathising with the Croatian puppet government, Paulovitchz. <\/p>\n
Some of the villages tried to wear their coat on both shoulders\u2014at one moment they supported the partisans, and at another their sympathies lay with the government troops, all depending on the immediate situation.
The poor people must have felt like a louse between two nails\u2014no matter how they behaved, they risked being crushed between the ruthless politics of the opposing sides. <\/p>\n
We came to villages where the entire male population, except for boys and old men, seemed to have vanished.
In such cases there was no doubt that the inhabitants were affiliated with the partisan forces, even though those who remained received us with open arms and with wine and spirits. They always had a thousand explanations and excuses ready to account for the disappearance of the men, and many tricks were used when it came to avoiding house searches.
It was very common for some of the women to lie down in bed and claim that typhus had broken out, or that other contagious diseases were present in the village. However, this was never taken into account\u2014firstly because it was always a lie, and secondly because we were vaccinated against all conceivable epidemics.
We entered one place where an elderly woman was lying on her deathbed. Moaning in pain and pale in the face, she lay waiting for the last rites, while relatives and friends, weeping and pleading, asked us to leave and not disturb the sacred act. <\/p>\n
It all looked very credible, and we decided to leave the house without carrying out a search. At the last moment, the group leader thought of a mysterious trapdoor he had come across in the kitchen.
The trapdoor turned out to lead down into an underground cellar, and since he did not believe that a search down there could disturb what was going on upstairs, a couple of men were ordered down to thoroughly inspect the room.
At the very back of the cellar they found a body, hidden under a pile of straw. The body had been horribly mutilated\u2014the head had been crushed with a blunt object, one leg was broken, and there were several stab wounds on the body.
The murdered man was dressed in the usual ragged coat of the Croatian peasants, with scraps of clothing tied around his feet and lower legs, but he was not in possession of any papers that could provide information about who he was or where he came from.
We assumed it was one of the government\u2019s policemen who had met his fate there\u2014perhaps it was also a personal act of revenge that formed the background for the brutal crime.
An interrogation of the inhabitants revealed nothing; everyone professed complete ignorance of the appearance of the body in the cellar and all denied any knowledge of the murder or of the deceased whatsoever. The explanations sounded more than unlikely, but no matter how much the interpreter pressed them, it was impossible to obtain any further information.
The battalion commander did not believe we had time to deal further with the case, and to make a long story short, he decided that the house should be burned to the ground, even at the risk of punishing the innocent along with the guilty. <\/p>\n
The straw in the cellar was set on fire; the flames quickly spread to the dry wooden structure, and soon the house was in full blaze.<\/p>\n
The grieving relatives hurriedly left the building as soon as they heard the crackling of the flames, but without paying the slightest attention to the sick person.
\u201cThey\u2019ve run off without taking the old woman,\u201d someone shouted. <\/p>\n
A couple of us ran up the stairs to bring help, but it was quite unnecessary. The object of our concern suddenly came rushing out, as if shot from a cannon, and disappeared among the outbuildings of the farm\u2014a rather strange behaviour for a dying woman.<\/p>\n
It did happen that unfortunate elements within the regiment behaved provocatively and defiantly, but however strongly we disapproved of and distanced ourselves from such conduct, it could not prevent regrettable incidents from occurring.
For house searches of a problematic nature mostly amounted to a cheerful chat and a glass of wine or a schnapps. As a rule, we did not take these tasks very seriously, and among the Danish units in the regiment there was growing antipathy toward being used for that kind of work.
It was true that we were fighting communists, but the conditions were very different from the assumptions under which we had enlisted. <\/p>\n
It was rare that the expeditions produced positive results, for the partisans were always warned in time and had withdrawn into the mountains or into the vast forests, where any pursuit was hopeless.
On one occasion we did manage to locate the local partisan headquarters, a cluster of wooden houses on the edge of a forest. The partisans were, of course, long gone, so we limited ourselves to burning down their base and confiscating poultry and pigs.
In front of the forest lay the endless plain, with its scattered bushes and numerous wells; it resembled the Hungarian Puszta.
The pigs grazed in small herds across the plain. They were quick on their feet and difficult to catch\u2014therefore we shot them.
The reconnaissance vehicles raced across the plain in pursuit of the squealing herds of pigs until a well-aimed bullet ended the chase.
For many days we lived so heavily on pork that in the end our stomachs became upset and no one wanted to eat bacon anymore.
It did happen that we were fired upon by snipers who had taken up ambush positions, but even the most thorough search of the terrain produced no results. We rarely suffered losses on these occasions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2792,"template":"","personer":[115],"class_list":["post-2796","litteratur_og_kilder","type-litteratur_og_kilder","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","personer-marius-soerensen"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/litteratur_og_kilder\/2796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/litteratur_og_kilder"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/litteratur_og_kilder"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"personer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/personer?post=2796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}