| The Battle of Jebsheim, France - from a French point-of-view. Page 11 |
| AT THE CORNER OF ARTZENHEIM STREET: THE BUSSER GROCERY STORE AT #76 GRAND RUE, MRS. ROSE GANTZ I was 25 at the time. The cellar of our house had walls that were 60 centimeters thick, and so had been converted by the authorities into an air raid shelter for school children. But since the children were no longer going to school, we fixed the cellar so that we could live in it and be safe in times of danger. The doors and windows of the house were barricaded with mattresses, planks, and objects of all kinds. Little by little neighbors and friends sought refuge at our house so that we soon had fourteen people living in our cellar: My family (3), and Emile Ludwigs (4), J. J. Baltzingers (4) and the Klacks (3). A man from Jebsheim who had been forced to join the Wehrmacht, was also hiding in the cellar, behind a cask. My mother prepared the meals. If things were calm enough, my sister would go a few houses up the street to bake bread. Today, the house she went to is the Ernest Oberlin house. It was the location of the toilet in the back of the courtyard that worried us most because it was inaccessible during fighting and we had to make do with buckets. And then on 27 January, if my memory is correct, in front of our house, on the border of Grand Rue, there was an enormous German tank parked in our courtyard awaiting repairs. An anti-tank barricade (Panzersperre) closed the street off a few meters farther to the south. Suddenly a shell (or a bomb) hit the big tank and knocked in the front of our house, which faced the street side. The wooden floor was not very solid and a cloud of dust and debris invaded the cellar. We were covered with dust, but fortunately no on was injured. We quickly plugged the holes with kapok, vegetable fibers and mattresses because it was cold outside and because other explosions might injure us. One day, two German soldiers came into the cellar. They wanted to put on civilian clothes and hide, but other Germans came in behind them and dissuaded them: "This place is not safe!" Then they all went out. A few instants later, my sister coming back from baking the bread, told us that one of the Germans was lying dead in the street. She had also seen soldiers covered in white sheets going up the street, hugging the wall. However, what really intrigued us, is that except for those two Germans, no other soldier, Allied or German, came into the house even though we kept hearing rifle bursts from the courtyard and the nearby Artzenheim Street. Later I believe that I discovered the answer to this mystery. The only opening that went to the exterior to the house was the window of a little room off the courtyard. The window was in pieces. In that room, we had placed a funereal wreath in memory of a schoolmate who had been forced to join the Wehrmacht. We had just received news of his death. We had placed this wreath, without really thinking about it, on a kneading trough used to make bread. Looking in this room from the courtyard, this arrangement resembled a coffin covered with a wreath and it is quite possible that the soldiers from both sides, busy killing each other in the courtyard, the workshop and the street, felt obliged to respect this place. This may also explain why all the reserve stock of our grocery store, piled up in the courtyard, remained intact, allowing us to serve our customers barely two weeks after the conclusion of the fighting. ON THE FARM AT GRAND RUE # 40, MR EDGAR BENTZ, 58 YEARS OLD In our courtyard, the Germans set up an ack-ack, and another in the courtyard opposite, at Mr. Henri Hug's. On 23 January, the day after a bomb fell on East Street (la rue de l"Est), the Allied heavy artillery fired on our property. Then the Germans removed the two ack-acks, painted them white and disappeared with them. We moved into the cellar with the Adam family. There were seven of us in all. Some Germans soldiers with a cannon that was being pulled by a mule, came into the yard. Their servants came to us looking for milk and asked us not to make a fire in order not to be spotted by allied artillery- they would drink the milk raw. They confessed to us that they had only 80 shells left and that after those it would all be over. And, indeed, they fired several shots, but the next morning they too had disappeared. In the neighboring house, #42 (today Leon Schweitzer's), lived the Merius family, refugees from Illhaeusern. Everyday I took them milk, going through the garden that runs along Grand Rue. In order to look very "civilian" I always put on an old black overcoat that belonged to my grandfather and a cap. On the morning of 28 January, if my memory is correct, when I brought the milk, I saw the two Merius girls speaking English with American soldiers, and there were still Germans in our house!. Back home I didn't breathe a word of what I had seen at the neighbors. Risking a glance out of an attic window, I saw in the Grand rue, by the church, two tanks pointing their guns towards the upper village. I came back down quickly, because the slightest movement of the curtains might bring a spray of machine gun fire our way. A short time later, our house is besieged by Americans who come in through the windows on the north side and by a small nook between the house and adjoining buildings. They take aim at us, line us up against the wall, and ask us if there are still any enemy soldiers at our house. I have to make an inspection of all the floors in the house, lamp in hand, followed by a soldier with a machine gun. Of course the house is empty. But just then, in a back corner of the courtyard, the hens began to cackle in a little shed. The soldiers become nervous and look at me. I assure them that there is no risk and go towards the shed, with the soldiers following me, ready to throw grenade--but in the little hut there are no Germans. The Americans lower the machine guns and I feel more at ease. Then came the quartering of the Allied troops, for several days, because the upper village has not yet been liberated. Now it's the German shells, coming from the southeast, that sprinkle our farm. Later, we counted thirteen shells of all calibers that had hit our buildings and seventeen in the garden. When a shell knocked out a wall of the cellar where we were staying, it became impossible to stay there. I took my sled, we piled on the suitcases of the Adam's family and the only things of strict necessity and started out on foot towards the lower village. In front of the church, the temporary shed being used by the baker Obrecht was still burning. In Ostheim Street, people screamed at us;"Where are you going? It's over! It's over!". But we had just experienced the opposite and we continued to walk towards the mill. At the bunker, going out of the village, some French soldiers took us on their truck and evacuated us to Ribeauville. The Adams family remained there, whereas we went to live with some relatives in Riquewihr. |
