At the end of the third
week we got assigned to the B II work detail. Wake up time was 5
A.M., assembly at 6 A.M., followed by a four kilometer walk to the
weapons plant. It was a facility of enormous proportions, most of it
built underground. I got to know Fürstelle B II only, the part
of the plant we were assigned to. It had a nice locker room with
showers and there was a canteen too. Day and night shifts alternated
each week.
At first we were just
lurching around, for we had never seen a munitions plant before, much
less worked in one. Our job was to assemble aerial bombs, hand
grenades as well as the famous FA2 rocket bombs. Novels could be
written about the time we spent in this facility; the agony we went
through; how often we fainted or collapsed because of exhaustion. Not
only were we forced to work extremely hard, we also had to handle
highly poisonous materials. The regular factory workers were so kind
to us that if we could've managed to, we'd have stayed in the plant
around the clock.