Erich Lepkowski

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Erich Lepkowski (* 17th September 1919 in Giesen , East Prussia ; † 31 May 1975 in Braunschweig ) was a German officer of the Air Force during the Second World War , most recently as First Lieutenant . After the war he continued to serve in the paratrooper troops and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. Among other things, he set a world record for free-fall skydiving at night from great heights.

Life

Parental home and youth

Lepkowski grew up on the farm of his parents Auguste and Johann in Giesen, East Prussia, and from 1926 on a larger farm in nearby Nussdorf . From 1928 to 1936 he attended the Nussdorf elementary school, but after school he always had to help his parents on the farm. In 1936 and 1937 he was called up for the Reich Labor Service in Asbach (Westerwald) and in 1938 and 1939 he worked as a rural educator in Luckau , Brandenburg .

Erich Lepkowski had a five years older brother, Hans, who died on July 1, 1941 as a sergeant major.

Second World War

Lepkowski was, at 20, shortly after the outbreak of World War II in October 1939 for air signal corps pulled the Air Force, and he reported soon after the paratroops .

In 1940 he was trained as a paratrooper at the air base in Wittstock an der Dosse and was transferred to the 2nd Paratrooper Regiment. In 1941 he took part as a private in the airborne operations in April on the Corinth Canal and in Operation Merkur , where he was wounded in the lower leg. This was followed by use on the Eastern Front , including in the swamps on the Volkhov , where he was wounded by a shrapnel over his right eye during a scouting operation.

This was followed from 1943 onwards in Africa and Italy. The promotion to lieutenant took place in October 1943 at the instigation of General Kurt Student . On December 25, 1943, he received the German Cross in Gold. In 1944 he came again to the Eastern Front, where he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with effect from August 8, 1944, in “appreciation of his heroic service in the southern section of the Eastern Front” .

Shortly afterwards he and his regiment were transferred to France to defend Operation Overlord and, during the Battle of Brittany , to defend the fortress of Brest. When an escaped member of the parachute force reported that he had escaped from the captivity of French partisans of the Forces françaises de l'intérieur (FFI), from the village of Brasparts , 50 km from the German lines, where there are still 130 other German paratroopers , should be mistreated and executed, Lepkowski was commissioned by the general of the parachute troops and commandant of the fortress Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke with the liberation. Lepkowski exhibited volunteers his 5th company 40 man to free the prisoners as shock troops together.

Lepkowski used captured trucks of the Allies and three captured tanks of the US Army , which were provided with American symbols, flags and French liberation slogans. The volunteers were dressed in half-camouflage of the French Resistance , including Wehrmacht uniforms. All drivers had to have a good knowledge of French. Forged US orders to hand over the German prisoners to the alleged Allied soldiers were produced.

In the early hours of August 16, Lepkowski's force advanced with 18 trucks and three tanks, while several paratroopers made diversionary attacks. The troops got through several checkpoints of the US Army and the FFI to Brasparts undetected. Here Lepkowski's men dropped their disguises in the vehicles and released their weapons. After a rifle shot was unintentionally released, the German soldiers jumped from the truck and took the school building in which the German prisoners were held. These succeeded in overpowering their guards and taking them with them as prisoners of war. Immediately the Germans withdrew with their French prisoners in the booty vehicles and broke through the lines of the relatively lightly armed FFI with their heavy weapons. With increasing proximity to the front line, the resistance of the FFI grew stronger, but could not stop the Germans. The US units were still involved in skirmishes with the other German paratroopers, so that Lepkowski's troops with all 130 (or 144) German prisoners freed and with 15 French soldiers captured (or 21 FFI and 2 civilians) reached the Brest fortress. During the fighting, 3 Resistance fighters died in Brasparts, 6 in Tréhou and 16 in Irvillac . Lepkowski made sure that the Resistance fighters as regular prisoners of war did not, and as volunteers were treated. In total, the soldiers covered about 120 km during the operation. At the instigation of General Ramcke, all participants in the liberation campaign received the Iron Cross, first or second class. The oak leaves requested by Ramcke for Lepkowski were no longer awarded. However, after this success, Lepkowski was promoted to lieutenant by General Ramcke.

In the last days of the fighting for Brest he was seriously wounded on September 13, 1944, where he lost an eye. At first he was thought to be dead and placed on a pile of corpses with fallen Wehrmacht soldiers, but the chief medical officer Marquard found signs of life in Lepkowski and had him taken to the hospital, where he was unconscious for five days. On September 16, half a liter of bloody body fluid was pumped from his lungs. The fortress commander General Ramcke visited him on September 19th. On September 20th, the Brest fortress surrendered. Lepkowski spent many months as a prisoner of war in a US Army hospital in the United States without recovering. About a year after he was wounded, an American surgeon decided to open the chest, where he found a small shrapnel in the left atrium of the heart and removed it. Only now did Lepkowski's condition quickly improve for the better. In September 1945 Lepkowski was released from captivity as a severely disabled person with a sixty percent disability.

Post-war period and own family

After the Second World War, Lepkowski moved to Burg on Fehmarn , where he married his wife Rosmarie on January 25, 1946, whom he had met in 1940 in Wittstock an der Dosse. The marriage resulted in two sons and a daughter. Lepkowski built up a small craft business in which he manufactured lamps and wooden plates, among other things. Since the market on the island of Fehmarn did not offer sufficient livelihoods, Lepkowski soon moved with his family to Gifhorn in Lower Saxony , where he kept himself afloat in a leased barrack with the manufacture of stamp handles, package toggles, newspaper holders and plastic wheels for toys. He achieved greater success with a space-saving shoe rack he had developed himself and which he had patented.

In addition, Lepkowski worked in the East Prussian Landsmannschaft , in whose Gifhorn group he was elected first chairman. One of the evenings he organized was Agnes Miegel for a literature reading.

armed forces

Since 1960 Lepkowski served as a first lieutenant in the Bundeswehr . At first he was denied parachuting because of his war injuries and the resulting unfit for jumping. On October 23, 1962, however, he received official permission because he had already jumped 120 times privately. Two days later he set a group record with the paratrooper battalion 313 in Wildeshausen by jumping from a height of 7200 m.

In 1964, at the age of 45, Lepkowski set a world record in the night parachute jump by jumping from over 8,000 meters above the Ahlhorn airfield . When jumping, the temperature was -35 ° C. Lepkowski let himself fall freely 7500 m, where he reached a free fall speed of 50 m / s. The blue light of a vehicle served him as a target point, while he fell through an ice cloud, so that his goggles iced over and he fell 4000 m with no view. After 150 seconds of free fall, he opened the parachute at a height of around 500 m.

In total, Lepkowski performed almost 500 parachute jumps during his service with the Bundeswehr. On December 31, 1974, he retired as a lieutenant colonel. He died on May 31, 1975 at the age of 55.

reception

Erich Lepkowski's world record in night parachute jump in 1964 made headlines around the world. After Felix Baumgartner's record jump from a height of 39,000 meters, the Aller newspaper on October 15, 2012 remembered the former record jumps of the paratrooper Lepkowski, who was described as a daredevil.

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brasparts is incorrectly spelled "Brasprats" in various texts, including Steven J. Zaloga: Brittany 1944: Hitler's Final Defenses in France. Bloomsbury, London 2018, p. 36, in the same work but correctly as Brasparts on p. 37.
  2. ^ A b according to Franz Kurowski , 2011: First Lieutenant Erich Lepkowski - As a paratrooper on all fronts.
  3. ↑ a b c according to Roger Jézéquel, 1954, in Brasparts, 16 août 1944. Retrieved on August 11, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Lepkowski, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lieutenant colonel, paratrooper and record holder in night parachuting
DATE OF BIRTH September 17, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Giesen ( East Prussia )
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1975
Place of death Braunschweig