46:20: And so we came to a sector of the front and there was,.. August the 20th, 1944 was an tremendously serious day for me, it was one of the toughest experiences I had in the war. Indeed, the Russian army had drawn together incredibly many troops and - most importantly - many tanks there. The so-called ‘T 34’, they were very fast, manoeuvrable tanks. On the 19th of August, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, no, it was on the 19th of August in the afternoon that this - I was set up in the first line to observe the tanks next to a guy who observed the artillery, with him I, well, shared this fox-hole and he said: „We have to expect a large-scale attack by the Russians in the next days.“ (47:16) By night, one could constantly hear the tanks moving and he said, he said to me, he was an experienced soldier at the front, he was a ‘Oberleutnant’ [Upper-lieutenant]: „Tomorrow it’s going to start.“ And the morning came, there was open, undulating ground, August, the harvest was partly already put up on such big harvest stacks, the corn. At four o’clock in the afternoon, the Russian army suddenly attacked our positions with very many of these „Stalinorgeln“ - ‘multiple rocket launchers’. A wild chaos broke out and in the middle of this chaos, there came over the hill, I would guess, about 100 Russians tanks, came over these hills. But not straight in our direction, otherwise I wouldn’t sit here and tell you about this event, but to the side of us, at the flank, in the direction of a village. 48:14: However, in the village, ‘the tigers and panthers’ of the SS stood already hidden in the houses. And they fought furiously, that is they knocked out. There, in no time, 20, 30 of these Russian tanks burned, and this ‘Oberleutnant’ had his own artillery, that is our own artillery on us, on, well, fire on our positions. Because they had already advanced quite far, and that was hell. One cannot imagine, that someone gets out of that alive. 48:50: I fired a few shots then with my gun, and of a sudden my gun fails. Obviously, an angel intervened then, as I am convinced that there were later attacks on my line as well. It was only the point, a wedge, a wedge of the attack and I reported by radio with the head of my company and he said: „Retreat.“ And I could withdraw from the most frontal line. A gun that doesn’t work is no good, and as it turned out, the barrel at the back had become loose in the breechblock and that is why the bolt couldn’t hit the bullet anymore. I then guided a tank in such a ditch and one could already see the Russian infantry. As I had a look out of the ditch I was shot under the left shoulder, yes, under the shoulder bone I got a bullet lodged into the body. I fell and my driver stood above me, because the Russian planes, the battle planes attacked from low-level and also threw bombs and so I had some protection.