FEDOR VON BOCK.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 63, Issue 89, 25 January 1943, Page 6

FEDOR VON BOCK.

PRUSSIAN JACKBOOT. When 1 was asked wnefTier I had met, Fedor von Bock, Commander-in-Chief of the German Assault Corps in the Stalingrad sectors I had to answer: “One docs not meet von one has to endure him.” In peacetime this German Reichswehr general had already made a singular reputation for himself by his treatment: of both officers and men under hisj command, declared an officer who served on his staff, writing in the “Sunday' Dispatch.” After a long run in the Reichswehr Ministry and the staff of the First Reichswehr district (Berlin), von Bock in 1924 was given a field command as commander of the 2nd Battalion of the Fourth Regiment of Infantry. The new battalion commander assembled his troops on the barrack square and delivered to them one of his famous speeches about “glorious dying in the field,” adding a hint that he would know how to take practical steps “to increase the efficiency of the battalion.” v ,

The “practical steps” were rather unusual ones. They turned out to be the methods of a man who even then in 1924 could be described as a, military, self-contained one-man Gestapo organisation. At that time it was unusual for any officer to don mufti and then to sneak behind the manoeuvre grounds to watch his captains drilling and exercising their companies.

“In Disguise!”

Von Bock equipped himself with fishing gear—although he knows nothing about that sport—sat beside a river bank at 4 'O’clock in the morning, threw out his line, and when, half an hour later the first platoons were arriving to start their river crossing, they could scarcely notice a little uglylooking “civvy” sitting on the banks of the river, hat pulled well over the eyes. As soon as the companies returned to their barracks they were greeted by their battalion commander, who first gave them a dressing-down, then assembled his subordinate officers and almost; always showed a grave lack of tact by telling off liis captains in front of their lieutenants.

One officer after another asked for transfer, and received it. Young officers detailed to the 4th Infantry prayed that they would not be under von Bock ? s cohimand.

Two years later, however, these methods had so far won the approval of the divisional commanders that von Bock was made regimental commander and colonel over the heads of many staff officers. As regimental commander, von Bock even went to the length of buying a private car, besides his official army limousine, to be able to appear unannounced behind the troops on* marches, and then to toll the battalion commanders what he thought of them and their troops. ' . Perhaps all this anticipated the spirit of the new era, because this slavedriving did get this ambitious man within a short while, into higher command.

The crack Ist Cavalry Division was his reward. Here, surrounded by. a number of General Staff officers of his division, after some official manoeuvres, he developed the habit of prolonging the tedious and fatiguing exercises by going over the whole programme again, so as to make quite certain that everybody had “benefited sufficiently.” There were many arguments in the officers’ corps of the old Ist Prussian Cavalry Division as to which was worse:' (1) The extended manoeuvres . and the ceaseless driving of the commandei, or

(2) His high-sounding addresses which he invariably gave to the tired troops after such excessive fatigues.

Rudeness on Social Occasions.

These speeches were apparently a kind of cloak bv which lie sought to excuse' his immoderate personal demands. He spoke to them about the “honour of being soldiers and not civilians,” about “the glorious culmination of a real maids life: the death in the field as a fighting soldier.” Von Bock’s rise became steeper, but he never lost his habits. When he was corps commander and later army group commanding general, everybody under him was made to feel he could not be satisfied. He continued to drive his men almost to breaking point. On such social occasions as von Bock had to observe lie was cut 4 to the point of rudeness. .

Opera performances are, according to von Bock, nonsense. He nearly got himself into trouble when he attended a State performance given by Emmy Sonnemann the night before she became the official Mrs Generalfieldmarslia 1 Hermann Goering.

During that performance the future Emmy Goering played the part of Queen Louie of Prussia, who, after 1807, had to lead with Napoleon for the restoration of defeated Prussia.

Emmy weighs round about 14 stone, and von Bock remarked loudly from his box in the State Theatre: “Doesn’t she look like the battalian cook of th 2nd battalion of the 4th? I think he was two hundredweight.” 1 remember one day when we were on manoeuvres in Pomerania, a district where peasants are reputed to live on potatoes. I was present when von Bock rebuked my superior officer for some inefficiency and declared, ignoring the fact that there was a junior officer within hearing: “Some people have either water or straw in their heads. Yours seems to be made out of potatoes.” • As the leader of the Army of Oceu pa.tion for Czechoslovakia von Bock entered Friedland in the Sudetan district, at the head of his divisions.

A boy of about 10 accompanied him. dressed in s<vilor J «s suit-, sitting upright in his father’s big Mercedes. Asked by one journalist who that was. von Bock replied.- “This, is niy son who takes this opportunity to see at an early age the, beauty and exhilaration of soldiering.”