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| Karl Gerstenmeier Compiled by Jan Hyrman from email messages exchanged with the Gerstenmeier family It was early 2005 when I received one of the most unexpected and extraordinary messages connected with the contents of my website. Referring to my newest article at the time, the wartime history of the port of Dunkirk, I was contacted by Arnim Gerstenmeier of Texas, U.S.A., regarding his father's memoirs which he had been putting together for some time. |
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| What is so special is the fact that Karl Gerstenmeier, Arnim's father, was a German officer. A view from the other side was at the time missing on my website, even if I was able to find out some information about the defences of the port of Dunkirk in 1944-45 and the units stationed there. Karl Gerstenmeier joined the German army as a career soldier in 1926. He rose through the enlisted ranks and in 1936 transferred to the administrative ranks as an Oberfeldwebel. He became a paymaster following a three-month course, serving with the XI and later the XXX corps in France, the Balkans and Russia. He served on the Westwall in 1939, France 1940, East Prussia and Lehrtruppen (Romania) in 1940, saw combat during the Greek Campaign, Barbarossa and the Crimea (von Manstein) - with XXX Army Corps (Fretter-Pico), Leningrad, Rzhev Salient, Army Group Don/South near Voroshilovgrad with Manstein's group - Donetsk campaign against the Soviet breakthrough. All Arnim's uncles served in the army as well - one was a tanker who fell in Russia. The other two survived. |
| Oberzahlmeister Karl Gerstenmeier at the XXX Korps HQ at Wadern |
| Karl Gerstenmeier transferred back to Hannover in August, 1943 and in August 1944 was assigned to 49th Infantry Division but they were smashed by the time he got to them (west of Paris). He got as close as Beauvais on August 28, 1944 but all hell broke loose on the 29th when the Allied offensive kicked in. He and everybody who could get out of the area headed north and west towards St. Omer and then Dunkirk. He joined the staff there and spent the rest of the war bottled up in France. He was wounded during the retreat but survived. As a member of the Kampfgruppe Scharnhorst, he earned an Eisener Kreuz Second Class during one of the engagements near Dunkirk in April, 1945. It is not hard to guess that the second half of the war meant less and less fun for the German troops. Karl Gerstenmeier kept a diary throughout the war, based on which Arnim writes his memoirs, but photos were becoming scarcer towards the end of the war. Arnim's aunt worked in the Admiral Doenitz' office in Berlin so his father was able to get information that way even in the Dunkirk pocket as there were regular reports transmitted between Dunkirk and Berlin. This became useful especially when Arnim was born. It was Vizeadmiral Frisius who received the news and told Karl about Arnim late in 1944. Following the surrender of the Dunkirk garrison in May 1945, Karl Gerstenmeier was sent to a French P.O.W. camp, where he remained until June 1948, when he first met his son at Limburg, Germany. Karl Gerstenmeier died in 1977. |
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| Karl Gerstenmeier as the staff paymaster of the XXX Korps posing at the Danube crossing in March 1941. |
| Karl Gerstenmeier posing on the quay of the Sevastopol harbour in July 1942. |