Description
The pay book belonged to customs inspector Richard Gehrke, who was born in 1904, and was issued on January 26, 1943 by the Grenadier Replacement Battalion 110.
Interestingly, it bears the number 1. At this time Gehrke was a first lieutenant in the reserve. The Gren.Ers.Btl. represented the replacement for the 79th Infantry Division, which was on the Eastern Front at the time, so that Gehrke’s presumably first deployment to the front took him to the 886 Grenadier Regiment of this very division.
During his deployment on the Eastern Front, he contracted typhoid fever in September 1943, which kept him busy for a good two months, led him to various hospitals and finally to the Truscawiecz army convalescent home (presumably located in Poland). However, the infection seems to have healed without any consequences and Gehrke returned to his troops, because on February 4, 1944 he was awarded the EK2 by the 79th ID. He also changed units within the division at an unspecified point in time and was deployed to Grenadier Regiment 212 for a while (coming from Grenadier Replacement Battalion 212). At the end of April 1944, Gehrke was admitted to a hospital with an injury that he must have sustained in an accident (code 34).
On July 1, 1944, Gehrke was promoted to captain in the reserve, and here an inconsistency occurs: The promotion was carried out by the unit with the field post number 23353 (if I deciphered the number correctly), which is assigned to the field replacement battalion 246. However, this unit does not appear on page 4 as a replacement unit, especially since the 246th ID no longer existed at that point. However, I can’t imagine that this could be a coincidence or wrong. Perhaps he was briefly intended for the division’s re-formation as the 246th VGD?
Be that as it may, his stay with the 149th Staff and Grenadier Regiment of the 49th Infantry Division is assured. This division was a ground-based, non-mobile unit in the Boulogne area and did NOT take part in the fighting there after the landing in Normandy.
Instead, it withdrew to the area west of Paris and had initial enemy contact in the defense of the Seine crossings. The bulk of the division was captured in the Mons pocket. Gehrke was not one of them; he appears to have been one of only around 1,500 men to escape the cauldron.
With regular enemy contact, the division withdrew further towards Reich territory via Belgium and Holland and crossed the border at Aachen. At the end of September, on the eve of the 2nd Battle of Aachen, the division was reorganized and fresh troops were added to it. On October 1st it had a combat strength of around 5,100 men (9,400 total) and was fighting on the northern edge of Aachen (Alsdorf, Merkstein, Palenberg, Kohlscheid for those who know their way around) against the American 29th US Infantry -Division. Gehrkte probably experienced these fights first hand.
At Aachen the division was again almost completely wiped out. It lost so much of its fighting strength that it virtually ceased to exist and on October 23rd the pitiful remnants were incorporated into the 246th VGD, which had also been badly beaten near Aachen, on the arbitrary orders of Field Marshal Models. Gehrke’s unit, the Grenadier Regiment 149, was probably incorporated into the Grenadier Regiment 689. Once again, as in Mons, Gehrke must have been one of the few in his unit who survived the Aachen disaster and were not taken prisoner, because on November 19th the 246th VGD awarded him the EK1. At this point the 246th VGD was standing. in the defensive battle east of Aachen an der Rur.
The EK1 is the last official entry, but the prisoner of war number written in bold on page 1 proves that Gehrke also survived the later fighting and was taken prisoner either in the North or Schnee Eifel (the division was for a short time in the Monschau area next to the 272nd VGD was deployed, but was later relocated to the area west of Stadtkyll to strengthen the former Ardennes Front).
