Where to start? This book has affected me greatly. I did expect to be shocked, and did expect to read an account of some appalling experiences of a soldier fighting in the heart of an horrendously bloody and grisly conflict. But nothing could really prepare the reader for the overwhelming relentlessness of it all. This is a reading experience that should not be at all taken lightly.Guy Sajer was a very young Alsatian (barely seventeen I think), of mixed Franco-German parentage, who finds himself in training with the German army during the autumn of 1942. The memoir does not make it clear if he is conscripted or volunteers. The zenith of the Nazi Reich has already passed - unbeknownst to its combatants and civilian populations. After his training in the Fatherland, Sajer is attached to a transport logistics unit supporting the combat troops at the Eastern Front. All too soon he is witness to the horrors of the fighting that follows the fallout from the Wehrmacht's defeat at Stalingrad and the first retreat from the Don. Writing several years after the event, Sajer pulls no punches with his descriptions of the deprivations of combat, and the depravity. Early in his account though, he makes it clear how inadequate his words will always be in expressing the "cumulative nightmare...an uncommunicable terror":"It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later. It's a mistake, for instance, to use the word 'frightful' to describe a few broken-up companions mixed into the ground: but it's a mistake which might be forgiven.I should perhaps end my account here, because my powers are inadequate for what I have to tell."(This on page 90 of a 560 page book.)As the war progresses, and following a brief respite of sorts during leave in Berlin (where he witnesses a terrifying daytime Allied air raid), Sajer and his comrades are 'volunteered' into the elite Grosse Deutschland division as infantry. Back at the front, he is thrown right into the abyss again, in time for the chaotic blood-soaked retreat from Ukraine. At times in this memoir Sajer comes out with some truly shocking comments - "Throughout the war, one of the biggest mistakes was to treat German soldiers even worse than prisoners, instead of allowing us to rape and steal - crimes which we were condemned for in the end anyway." - for example. And this from a Frenchman not indoctrinated with Nazi bile prior to the conquest of France in 1940. A second period of leave - later in the memoir - is cancelled before he can even reach his destination, the whole train transport being reversed - back depressingly to the front. Anyone who has served as a conscript will recognise the achingly despondent sense that there is when home leave has to end, but to not even get there in the first place? - only to be sent back into the hell you had just escaped from... There is a constant sense of fear that pervades everywhere."I know in my bones what our watchword 'Courage' means - from days and nights of resigned desperation, and from the insurmountable fear which one continues to accept, even though one's brain has ceased to function normally."There is no mention at all of the ongoing Holocaust against the civilians of Europe, and no mention of Jews, and barely any of the racial Hitlerism at all. (There is though one very sinister glimpse of that horror, and what had thus far been 'dealt with' by the authorities, on the first page, (September '42) when en route to the front from basic training, via Poland, Sajer and co. pass through the Warsaw ghetto:"Our detatchment goes sightseeing in the city, including the famous ghetto - or rather, what's left of it. We return to the station in small groups. We are all smiling. The Poles smile back, especially the girls."There is a surreal moral code of sorts that exists in his mind - the 'rules' of combat according to the Wehrmacht. When it comes to encounters with the Partisans, he is certain - "Also, partisans were not eligible for the consideration due to a man in uniform. The laws of war condemned them to death automatically, without trial." This coming after a description of how some Red Army POWs were killed mercilessly in a way too graphic to describe here. The disastrous retreat continues as it becomes clear that all is lost. "Faced with the Russian hurricane, we ran whenever we could...We no longer fought for Hitler, or for National Socialism, or for the Third Reich - or even for our fiancées or mothers or families trapped in bomb-ravaged towns. We fought from simple fear, which was our motivating power. The idea of death, even when we accepted it, made us howl with powerless rage."Even when writing many years later Sajer seems to pour most of his anger out still on the Partisans. He doesn't ever seem to accept that Germany had invaded the continent, and that people without an army fighting for them, had the right to fight back - by whichever means available. The moral argument he attempts against the 'underhand' techniques of the guerillas is completely flawed. Nevertheless, his memoir, even if factually inaccurate in places as some have suggested, is an important document of witness. I struggled with the utter nightmare of it all, but am glad that I read The Forgotten Soldier. I'm sure I won't forget it.
There is no such thing as a “just war.” The concept of “just war” is something theologians like Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or academics argue. When it comes to real war and actual fighting theologians and academics are as “useless as tits on a boar hog.” Killing others and being killed is humankind at its most primitive. Fighting a war is deadly serious. Discipline, courage and a will to win are critical to success in war. Finding the guts to kill or be killed and to endure almost unbelievable hardship in unbelievable circumstances are too often absolutes for those who must fight.“The Forgotten War” by Guy Sajer is perhaps the best book I have ever read about what it is like to be a “grunt” on the front lines. In this case, a man who is 16 when he finds himself in the German Army and shortly thereafter on the Eastern or “Russian Front.” Sajer’s story recounts life on that Front. In a word it was brutal. Sajer saw many of his fellow soldiers killed in ways that I will not repeat except to say that there is enough real recounting of how people died to last me several lifetimes. I’m saying that as a 27 year Air Force vet who served two tours in Southeast Asia one of which was in Vietnam. My cousin “fought backwards” out of Chosin Reservoir with the Marines. My dad lost his best friend on Guadalcanal. My uncle, dad’s older brother, is buried in the Meuse Argonne. He was killed either by machine gun fire or artillery because his unit was not where they were supposed to be.The Eastern front was a killing ground, The Germans lost roughly 1.1 million killed, another million captured or MIA and almost 3.5 million wounded. Outside of the Taiping Rebellion and Cultural Revolution in China, I am unaware of casualties this numerous in a single front. Russian losses were greater. I’ve seen mass graves of Russian soldiers in Warsaw and Berlin and Polish military cemeteries in Warsaw. They overwhelmed me. Sajer tells me how they died.I note that there are a very small number of people who quibble with Sajer’s account suggesting that he didn’t always know where he was, what caliber weapons he was using and that he referred to a unit patch being on the wrong sleeve. They use these minutiae to suggest that his account is fictional or that he wasn’t really there. Ah, will just say that even with my 27 years in the Air Force and I cannot tell you today which side my unit patch went on. These attacks on Sajer are pure unadulterated crap. Interestingly, some are attributed to a US Army Lt Col who was at one of the Army’s “school houses” (specifically, the Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas). I’ll take Sajer’s word over that academic LtCol’s in half a heartbeat. Only a school house REMF (ah, rear echelon M____ F____)would worry about that. A real soldier, a special ops guy takes the school house REMF to task at the link below. As that Spec Ops guy notes:“Why should soldiers read books such as Sajer's? Simply, to read about what battle is like, what to expect and to find out just how bad it can get. Sure, there are many other more comprehensive books about the Russian Front than Sajer's in terms of troop movements, strategy and such. But, if a reader wants to know what it was like to be a Russian Front soldier, to be afraid, to fight alongside a band of brothers, then Sajer's is still one of the finest accounts and deserves to remain on professional military reading lists.” Lieutenant Colonel Douglas E. Nashhttp://members.shaw.ca/grossdeutschla...
What do You think about The Forgotten Soldier (2001)?
This is a very powerful book; it's not for the squeamish. The author was a teenager who enlisted in the German army in 1942, and following basic training, was sent to the Eastern front as a truck driver. In 1943 he volunteered to become an infantryman in the elite Gross Deutchland division in exchange for a one week leave in Germany. He went to Berlin but found life there little different from the war zone in the Ukraine: daily bombing (from the American Air Corps) and little food.Sajer returned to the Eastern Front and his life became a constant struggle to survive the elements,the lack of food and supplies, and the relentless advances of the Red Army. His unit was lucky to retreat; often they were surrounded and had to fight their way out of encirclement. The background of the story is most interesting. For one thing the author isn't German, but rather French. The book was originally written in French in 1967. It's considered a classic war book and THE such book about the German army on the Eastern Front. There are inconsistancies and it was later declared fiction by the official historian of the Gross Deutchland division. But thereupon, some of the author's buddies and others from the division came forward and confirmed much of what he wrote. The historian later withdrew his criticism.
—james
Guy Sajer was a sixteen year old boy in 1942 who was brought up in France by a French father and a German mother. After being drafted into the German army transport division he was sent to the Russian Front. He later volunteered to join a crack combat division called the Grosse Deutschland. This book describes his personal account of the two years he spent fighting on the Russian Front. He takes us on a journey through two brutal Russian winters, being bombarded by artillery, taking part in battles where his division was outnumbered sometime by thirty to one. He also describes clashes with partisans that are everywhere behind German lines. This is no glamorization of war. Sajer does a fantastic job of getting across the bonds between him and his comrades. He also gets across the terror of war and the feelings of utter exhaustion of troops that are being forced to continue to fight with diminishing resources beyond what most of us could be expected to endure. This is not a book that goes into great details about historic facts. It is a book about a young boy growing into manhood through a time of total war and how it affected him.
—Robin Webster
Writers like Sajer, will never allow the future generations to forget, the miseries of world war soldiers.World war two was fought by soldiers but described by soldiers cum writers; Sajer belong to this rare breed; he accomplished this rare job by writing, under stressful circumstances and arranging the information, for future readers.Sajer did a fine job in describing, the situation and psychology of a foot soldier, respect and value of enemy, Morality of a losing infantry, Hate for partisans, Agony of dying comrades, Worries of families, Benevolence of seniors, Difficulty of weather, Hardship of immobility, Frustration of illness and much more.This is a very fine book for those, who want to read about the agonies and pain of German soldiers. This book gives altogether a different aspect of world war. This helps in understanding a crucial fact of war .... the true enemy of, a man in war is .... the war itself.
—Amit
