Erich Göstl

Erich Göstl was a member of the Waffen SS who was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

Göstl was born in Vienna on the 17 April 1925 in World War II he was a member of the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf [...] during the Normandy Campaign he was in the 6th Company, 1st Panzer Grenadier Regiment which was deployed near the french town of Tily.

Göstl was a machine gunner defending his position against an English and in the fighting was shot in one eye. Undaunted he continued to fire, and was later wounded in the other eye. Even now, completely blinded, he continued to return fire from his machine gun post, alone and shooting at what he heard as he was unable to see, until the enemy attack was repelled.

His regimental commander, Standartenfuhrer Albert Frey described the action;

It was during the combat for the invasion front in France that Erich Göstl showed this extraordinary act of bravery. Because of the enemy's enormous supremacy in manpower and material, and our own material shortages the only thing we brought against the attack was our high morale. Combat for our troops was extremely hard during that time. Expectations of the individual soldier for fitness, fighting power and bravery were enormous. Only with this situation in the background I can describe Erich Göstl act of bravery with the honor it deserves. The enemy started the attack with heavy air bombardment, with many heavy four-engine bombers and ground attack aircraft, which lasted for a long time. Every artillery and defense strongpoint including known foxholes on our side were heavy bombarded and attacked with machine gun fire. Our own defensive firing was already halted by the attack after a short time. Now with no defense against this inferno every one of us, left alone with God, could only pray and hope he would survive the bombardment. After the air attack the enemy started with an artillery bombardment of all calibers, with such an enormous intensity, which lasted an incredibly long time. The well-controlled artillery fire now hit everything spared by the air raid. So when the enemy tanks and infantry still covered by their own artillery and ground attack planes started their attack to overrun our positions, these positions were covered with bomb craters and had been several times ploughed over. Nearly every foxhole in our defensive line had casualties because of this hellfire. Our own anti-tank defense was nearly complete out of order and our artillery was totally combat unfit. In this hopeless situation it was left to the few individual Panzer Grenadiers and some heavy weapons crews to stop the heavy enemy attack with everything what they had left. It was in this situation that Grenadier Erich Göstl did this extremely act of bravery comparably with some battle scenes of earlier heroic wars.

Erich Göstl was made a prisoner of war and released in April 1946, and went on to earn a Law Degree from the University of Vienna.