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Yuri
"The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
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Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
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Paddy Keating
Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
Doug Nash wrote:
Coming back to the question of errors in the narrative, as I said previously, even relatively youthful veterans can forget or misremember details. However, the author of The Forgotten Soldier wrote the manuscript that led to the book when he was in his thirties and one could really only attribute the level of fogginess in Mouminoux/Sajer's account to brain damage. Anyway, as Lt-Col Nash points out, this has all been discussed previously at great length.
From Lieutenant-Colonel (Rtd) Nash's essay, with some of Lt-Col Nash's statements highlighted.
The Forgotten Soldier has long been included in many professional development reading lists compiled by the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps
It might be a bit embarrassing for American military and naval officer and staff academies to find that one of their text books is a duffer. It would be even more awkward, in a country like the United States, were the author to turn out to have been a Waffen-SS man. Imagine the headlines in certain newspapers! It would certainly eclipse the furore over Reagan's visit to Bitburg.
And if it is fiction why would Sajer offer it up as fact?
The major selling point of the book was that it was supposedly a personal memoir from a German veteran's viewpoint at a time when such memoirs were still rare or firmly in the domain of 'specialist' publishing. It was also much harder to be exposed as a bluffer in those days.
The world is full of "Walts", men who recount, as truth, military experiences that are either exaggerated or fictional. I am not suggesting that Mouminoux is a Walt. However, I do find the sheer weight of errors in the narrative troubling, especially as he was only forty or so when the book was published.
At this point it is clear that the pronounced weight of the evidence indicates that the book is factual.
There is no "evidence" at all, which is why the book is controversial.
Guy Sajer was a 16-year-old French youth living in Wissembourg Alsace who volunteered in July 1942 to serve in the German Army
Born on 13/1/1927, Mouminoux would have been fifteen when he volunteered to be a Stuka pilot.
After his initial training he was sent to the Russian front where because of his youth he first served in a transportation unit. In April 1943 he volunteered for service in the infantry as a member of the prestigious Grossdeutschland Division
If I recall rightly, Mouminoux stated that he was sent from the Stuka training establishment to an infantry unit in Russia. And then he ended up in a transport unit because of his youth. The Wehrmacht wasn't that desperate in 1942 and a kid of fifteen who had succeeded in conning his way past the recruiters and was then outed would have been discharged and told to come back when he was old enough. It just doesn't hang together.
Nor does the account of moving from the Luftwaffe to the Heer. Some redundant Luftwaffe personnel from flying units - flight and ground crew - were transferred to the Heer late in 1944 as fuel shortages really began to bite. They were generally assigned to supply units because of their lack of infantry training. But in 1942 or 1943? It doesn't ring true to anyone with any understanding of how the Wehrmacht and its various branches functioned.
Much has been made by those who wish to protect TFS as an unassailable military college textbook of the change of heart of Major a.D und RKT Helmuth Später, the GD Veterans Association historian and author of five books on the division, who had long doubted the veracity of TFS or, rather, its author. However, let's examine what Lt-Col Nash himself has to say on the subject of Major Später's recantation.
The fact is that Major Später does not seem to have made an unequivocal statement changing his mind about "Sajer". He seems merely to have said that he would read the book again after receiving several letters from "Sajer". Perhaps Major Später just wanted to be left alone by all these people trying to get him to change his mind. Elderly people sometimes say whatever they think someone wants to hear just to be left in peace.
It would appear that American military colleges have been promoting a work of what we now call faction as a factual textbook. Lt-Col Nash rubbishes Lt-Col Edward L Kennedy Jr - just as he seems to treat react scornfully if they are at odds with his contentions - but Lt-Col Kennedy makes a very salient point in his essay:
Picture the scene: some gnarled old Senior NCO is sitting at a recruiting table in 1942 in a part of Großdeutschland - the neo-empire, not the unit - where, even though the NS government has decreed the natives all to be Germans, there are still plenty of locals who resent the Germans as much as the French. Some beardless youth wanders up and says he wants to be a Stuka pilot. The SNCO asks him for his ID.
Unless Guy Mouminoux had a set of fake ID, proving that he was at least seventeen, that he had done his RAD service and that he was eligible for service in the Wehrmacht, this being some time before recruiting standards were relaxed, it would have been: "OK son, good lad, run along home now and come back and see us in a couple of years".
OK, let's say that Teutonic administrative discipline is out the window that day because the recruiters have all been at the Riesling and our Boy Wonder slips through, what do you think the reaction to: "This is the cover name I wish to use during my service to the Führer" would have been?
A look at any Wehrpaß, Soldbuch or other documents, to refer to my previous point, from any French volunteer or any other nationality will confirm this claim of serving under a cover name to utter codswallop. As Sir Walter Scott put it: Oh what tangled webs we weave/When first we practice to deceive/And when we've practiced for awhile/How we do improve our style!
Coming back to Lt-Col Nash, he has written:
Now, the claim is made that young "Sajer" wished to pass as a German hence his adoption of his mother's name. Perhaps he did want to pass as a German but (a) he himself has suggested that he served under a cover name and (b) this does not get us past the fact that the Wehrmacht would have recruited him under the name on his ID papers if, indeed, they had allowed a fifteen year old to sneak through in 1942, thereby, moreover, aiding and abetting him in the evasion of his RAD service.
Moreover, his defenders have often attributed his many errors of memory and terminology to his very poor command of German. Not much chance of passing for a German once the instructors started yelling orders! His name is Mouminoux. His ID papers would have been in that name as it was his family name, his father and mother being lawfully married. There were plenty of German citizens and volkdeutscher with names of foreign origin in Nazi Germany and its armed forces, including French names.
How does Lt-Col Nash explain the use by "Sajer" of Dimitri and Dimitri Lahache when signing many of his comic strips and illustrations in the 1950s and 1960s? He may receive his royalty checks under his nom de plume. Many authors do, in order to protect their privacy. I do. However, France is a very bureaucratic country and there are really only two ways in which he could process cheques made out to "Guy Sajer".
Either he changed his name officially at some point from Mouminoux to Sajer, in which case this would be a matter of record and traceable by research, albeit probably painstaking. Or he set up a trading entity - like a limited or sole trader company - under Guy Sajer, thereby enabling the bank to open an account under that name. It's all to do with tax, you see. If you think Uncle Sam's taxmen are tough, you haven't met the French! LOL!
I know that he has signed artwork as Guy Sajer but I think that this is since 1967 and the publication of a book that brought him a certain notoriety, thereby rendering "Guy Sajer" more 'bankable' than his other pseudonyms. There is no "Sajer" in any of the Departments to the east of Paris within a 100km radius. However, there are two Mouminoux and one "Guy Mouminou", registered in a small village almost exactly 50 km east of where I am sitting as I write this.
Lt-Col Nash continues:
Perhaps "Guy Sajer" did serve with the GD. However, having done so much research myself into the period and interviewed and spoken with so many Germans who lived through those times, I find the military career recounted in The Forgotten Soldier rather hard to credit without major reservations. I would be more prepared to believe, as I said, that Guy Mouminoux did serve in the German armed forces in WW2 but not quote as he recounts it.
There again, the whole thing might be made up. Stranger things have happened. Remember Sven Hassel, convincingly exposed as a Danish Nazi whose stories were based on hanging out with Danish Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS veterans after the war. Sajer's book might consist of better prose than Hassel's books, entertaining though they are, but that does not justify taking it at face value without any evidence whatsoever proving that the author ever wore a German military uniform before May 1945. There are writers who can write very convincingly in the first person about fighting in wars but who have never done so and would, indeed, never seek to claim so. A skilled writer can be very believable. That's part of the job.
I would give him the benefit of the doubt in that he probably saw combat in WW2 in German uniform but I think he may have had his reasons for not telling it quite as it was.
PK
Ouch! Alright, I'm only a former corporal but my daddy blew a bundle on my education so I feel qualified enough to stand up to Lt-Col Nash's withering scorn without withering. LOL! I suppose I have an advantage, given my background as both a journalist and a writer, with an analytical attitude sometimes seen as sophist by adversaries in debate. However, I see no need to get personal about this. Point of order: I don't think anyone has suggested that "Sajer" might have served with the Das Reich before although I am perfectly happy to be corrected on this point. It occurred to me almost twenty years ago after I reread the book for the first time since the 1970s, when I thought it was great and much better than Sven Hassel or Leo Kessler.Recommend that you start a new thread, as the intent of this one was to bring out the latest reports on the status of The Forgotten Soldier movie project, not to re-engage on the book.
For those who want to rehash this rather stale and shop-worn discussion on the book itself, please see previous threads in this forum for rather exhaustive treatments of the subject, both pro and con.
Everything that both Paddy and Yuri have just written has been written many times before so there's really not much more to add.
Cheers,
Doug Nash
Coming back to the question of errors in the narrative, as I said previously, even relatively youthful veterans can forget or misremember details. However, the author of The Forgotten Soldier wrote the manuscript that led to the book when he was in his thirties and one could really only attribute the level of fogginess in Mouminoux/Sajer's account to brain damage. Anyway, as Lt-Col Nash points out, this has all been discussed previously at great length.
From Lieutenant-Colonel (Rtd) Nash's essay, with some of Lt-Col Nash's statements highlighted.
This issue is worthy of discussion because The Forgotten Soldier has long been included in many professional development reading lists compiled by the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps. Frequently cited by military leaders and historians as an excellent example of a twentieth-century footsoldier's perspective of combat in its most elemental state The Forgotten Soldier has educated two generations of military readers in the reality of combat especially its human dimension--how combat affects the individual physically psychologically and mentally.3 Is The Forgotten Soldier fact or fiction? And if it is fiction why would Sajer offer it up as fact? This article argues that Guy Sajer's account of his personal experiences is true. The Forgotten Soldier is an excellent first-person account which allows the reader to experience vicariously the reality of combat and to draw lessons still applicable today. Not only do the contents of the book itself testify to its authenticity but as we shall see they should convince anyone that the book is not fiction. Unfortunately this claim cannot be made unequivocally as Kennedy's arguments demonstrate. Another careful examination of The Forgotten Soldier itself is required as well as inquiries about its author. At this point it is clear that the pronounced weight of the evidence indicates that the book is factual.
As readers of his book know Guy Sajer was a 16-year-old French youth living in Wissembourg Alsace who volunteered in July 1942 to serve in the German Army. Motivated by a sense of adventure as well as admiration for the German soldiers who had conquered France in 1940 he initially sought to become a Stuka dive bomber crew member but failed and was sent to the army instead. After his initial training he was sent to the Russian front where because of his youth he first served in a transportation unit. In April 1943 he volunteered for service in the infantry as a member of the prestigious Grossdeutschland Division at the time one of Germany's most powerful mechanized infantry divisions. Sajer's life over the next two years can only be described as an especially intense experience. His account of these years gives his book its most enduring value. His description of the horror elation fear hope and sense of sacrifice he felt and encountered during the Eastern Front campaigns mark the book as a land-mark in autobiographical military history. To sense what the average German soldier experienced on the Russian battlefield Sajer's is one of the best works extant. His book concludes in 1945 as his unit surrendered and he was treated as a "doubtful case" by his Allied captors who were unsure whether to classify him as a German or as a French collaborator. Given the option of rehabilitating himself by joining the French Army after the war Sajer chose to bury his memories. No one was sympathetic to a former German "collaborator" in postwar France. He was and remains a "forgotten soldier" in the country of his birth.
The Forgotten Soldier has long been included in many professional development reading lists compiled by the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps
It might be a bit embarrassing for American military and naval officer and staff academies to find that one of their text books is a duffer. It would be even more awkward, in a country like the United States, were the author to turn out to have been a Waffen-SS man. Imagine the headlines in certain newspapers! It would certainly eclipse the furore over Reagan's visit to Bitburg.
And if it is fiction why would Sajer offer it up as fact?
The major selling point of the book was that it was supposedly a personal memoir from a German veteran's viewpoint at a time when such memoirs were still rare or firmly in the domain of 'specialist' publishing. It was also much harder to be exposed as a bluffer in those days.
The world is full of "Walts", men who recount, as truth, military experiences that are either exaggerated or fictional. I am not suggesting that Mouminoux is a Walt. However, I do find the sheer weight of errors in the narrative troubling, especially as he was only forty or so when the book was published.
At this point it is clear that the pronounced weight of the evidence indicates that the book is factual.
There is no "evidence" at all, which is why the book is controversial.
Guy Sajer was a 16-year-old French youth living in Wissembourg Alsace who volunteered in July 1942 to serve in the German Army
Born on 13/1/1927, Mouminoux would have been fifteen when he volunteered to be a Stuka pilot.
After his initial training he was sent to the Russian front where because of his youth he first served in a transportation unit. In April 1943 he volunteered for service in the infantry as a member of the prestigious Grossdeutschland Division
If I recall rightly, Mouminoux stated that he was sent from the Stuka training establishment to an infantry unit in Russia. And then he ended up in a transport unit because of his youth. The Wehrmacht wasn't that desperate in 1942 and a kid of fifteen who had succeeded in conning his way past the recruiters and was then outed would have been discharged and told to come back when he was old enough. It just doesn't hang together.
Nor does the account of moving from the Luftwaffe to the Heer. Some redundant Luftwaffe personnel from flying units - flight and ground crew - were transferred to the Heer late in 1944 as fuel shortages really began to bite. They were generally assigned to supply units because of their lack of infantry training. But in 1942 or 1943? It doesn't ring true to anyone with any understanding of how the Wehrmacht and its various branches functioned.
Much has been made by those who wish to protect TFS as an unassailable military college textbook of the change of heart of Major a.D und RKT Helmuth Später, the GD Veterans Association historian and author of five books on the division, who had long doubted the veracity of TFS or, rather, its author. However, let's examine what Lt-Col Nash himself has to say on the subject of Major Später's recantation.
OK. Some men mellow with advancing years. As Major Später apparently "admitted" in his letter to Mouminoux's admirable and tireless defender, Lt-Col Nash, the author of TFS "could" have been in the GD Division. The fact remains, nevertheless, that no veteran of the Großdeutschland Division has come forward in the forty-two years since the publication of TFS to confirm that Mouminoux/Sajer was a member of any GD unit. Nor has any Luftwaffe veteran ever been located who could vouch for Mouminoux/Sajer.Kennedy's own key witness, former Grossdeutschland Division historian and reconnaissance squadron commander Major (Ret.) Helmuth Spaeter, who claimed that The Forgotten Soldier was fictional, has now changed his thinking. After reading several letters from Sajer, Spaeter admitted in a letter to me that he now believes that Sajer could have been a member of that famous division after all. Spaeter wrote about his new-found admiration for Guy Sajer and planned to reread his own German copy of the book, titled Denn diese Tage Quall war gross: Erinnerung eines vergessenen Soldaten (These Days Were Full of Great Suffering--Memories of a Forgotten Soldier, (Munich: Verlag Fritz Molden, 1969) in order to examine it from a more unbiased point of view.
The fact is that Major Später does not seem to have made an unequivocal statement changing his mind about "Sajer". He seems merely to have said that he would read the book again after receiving several letters from "Sajer". Perhaps Major Später just wanted to be left alone by all these people trying to get him to change his mind. Elderly people sometimes say whatever they think someone wants to hear just to be left in peace.
It would appear that American military colleges have been promoting a work of what we now call faction as a factual textbook. Lt-Col Nash rubbishes Lt-Col Edward L Kennedy Jr - just as he seems to treat react scornfully if they are at odds with his contentions - but Lt-Col Kennedy makes a very salient point in his essay:
Expanding on this theme, the Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS recruiters who signed young Mouminoux up whenever they signed him up would have insisted upon identity papers. His father's name was Mouminoux. His mother's name was Sajer, which sounds more German. Be that as it may, "Sajer" himself claims that he served under a pseudonym. The French Foreign Legion allowed people to choose a pseudonym - and still does - but the Wehrmacht, including the Waffen-SS, offered no such facility to volunteers or conscripts. Members of, for instance, the LVF or the Charlemagne tended to change their names after the war! LOL!Nash writes that Schafmeister-Berckholtz now recalls the famous "Sajer" -the same "Sajer" who uses the nom de plume "Guy Sajer" to protect his anonymity. Schafmeister-Berckholtz says to Nash, "At the mention of the name Sajer, my ears pricked up, because we did have a Sajer in the 5th Company, 1st Grenadier Battalion." Wait a minute. Doesn't "Sajer" himself say that the name "Guy Sajer" was not his name but only a cover? I think attorneys consider this "coaching" the witness. In other words, Schafmeister-Berckholtz now remembers the famous "Sajer" as a member of his unit when he is prompted with the name.
Picture the scene: some gnarled old Senior NCO is sitting at a recruiting table in 1942 in a part of Großdeutschland - the neo-empire, not the unit - where, even though the NS government has decreed the natives all to be Germans, there are still plenty of locals who resent the Germans as much as the French. Some beardless youth wanders up and says he wants to be a Stuka pilot. The SNCO asks him for his ID.
Unless Guy Mouminoux had a set of fake ID, proving that he was at least seventeen, that he had done his RAD service and that he was eligible for service in the Wehrmacht, this being some time before recruiting standards were relaxed, it would have been: "OK son, good lad, run along home now and come back and see us in a couple of years".
OK, let's say that Teutonic administrative discipline is out the window that day because the recruiters have all been at the Riesling and our Boy Wonder slips through, what do you think the reaction to: "This is the cover name I wish to use during my service to the Führer" would have been?
A look at any Wehrpaß, Soldbuch or other documents, to refer to my previous point, from any French volunteer or any other nationality will confirm this claim of serving under a cover name to utter codswallop. As Sir Walter Scott put it: Oh what tangled webs we weave/When first we practice to deceive/And when we've practiced for awhile/How we do improve our style!
Coming back to Lt-Col Nash, he has written:
If Mouminoux enlisted as Guy Sajer, then he was certainly, as opposed to probably, using the name earlier than 1952. However, when one uses a different name to that of one's father, if one's parents happen to be lawfully married, and one publishes a book under that different name, it is most certainly a nom de plume, even if it happens to be the name of one's mother's family.Guy Sajer is not a nom de plume -never has been. His last name was originally Monminoux, but because he wanted to pass as a German, he enlisted under his mother's maiden name -Sajer. He has been using the name of Guy Sajer at least since 1952, probably earlier. He signs his artwork Guy Sajer and receives his mail (and probably his royalty checks) as Guy Sajer.
Now, the claim is made that young "Sajer" wished to pass as a German hence his adoption of his mother's name. Perhaps he did want to pass as a German but (a) he himself has suggested that he served under a cover name and (b) this does not get us past the fact that the Wehrmacht would have recruited him under the name on his ID papers if, indeed, they had allowed a fifteen year old to sneak through in 1942, thereby, moreover, aiding and abetting him in the evasion of his RAD service.
Moreover, his defenders have often attributed his many errors of memory and terminology to his very poor command of German. Not much chance of passing for a German once the instructors started yelling orders! His name is Mouminoux. His ID papers would have been in that name as it was his family name, his father and mother being lawfully married. There were plenty of German citizens and volkdeutscher with names of foreign origin in Nazi Germany and its armed forces, including French names.
How does Lt-Col Nash explain the use by "Sajer" of Dimitri and Dimitri Lahache when signing many of his comic strips and illustrations in the 1950s and 1960s? He may receive his royalty checks under his nom de plume. Many authors do, in order to protect their privacy. I do. However, France is a very bureaucratic country and there are really only two ways in which he could process cheques made out to "Guy Sajer".
Either he changed his name officially at some point from Mouminoux to Sajer, in which case this would be a matter of record and traceable by research, albeit probably painstaking. Or he set up a trading entity - like a limited or sole trader company - under Guy Sajer, thereby enabling the bank to open an account under that name. It's all to do with tax, you see. If you think Uncle Sam's taxmen are tough, you haven't met the French! LOL!
I know that he has signed artwork as Guy Sajer but I think that this is since 1967 and the publication of a book that brought him a certain notoriety, thereby rendering "Guy Sajer" more 'bankable' than his other pseudonyms. There is no "Sajer" in any of the Departments to the east of Paris within a 100km radius. However, there are two Mouminoux and one "Guy Mouminou", registered in a small village almost exactly 50 km east of where I am sitting as I write this.
Lt-Col Nash continues:
All one can say at this stage is that it is a well-written account of what combat of the kind experienced on the Eastern Front is like, in that it is better-penned than the tosh by Sven Hassel. I am not saying that "Guy Sajer" is not a combat veteran or even that he is a "walt". I am merely wondering, given the facts before us, if the experiences recounted in TFS could be based on the fighting on the Western Front in 1944 and 1945, which was just as hellish at times as that on the Eastern Front once the Soviets rallied.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.
Perhaps "Guy Sajer" did serve with the GD. However, having done so much research myself into the period and interviewed and spoken with so many Germans who lived through those times, I find the military career recounted in The Forgotten Soldier rather hard to credit without major reservations. I would be more prepared to believe, as I said, that Guy Mouminoux did serve in the German armed forces in WW2 but not quote as he recounts it.
There again, the whole thing might be made up. Stranger things have happened. Remember Sven Hassel, convincingly exposed as a Danish Nazi whose stories were based on hanging out with Danish Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS veterans after the war. Sajer's book might consist of better prose than Hassel's books, entertaining though they are, but that does not justify taking it at face value without any evidence whatsoever proving that the author ever wore a German military uniform before May 1945. There are writers who can write very convincingly in the first person about fighting in wars but who have never done so and would, indeed, never seek to claim so. A skilled writer can be very believable. That's part of the job.
I would give him the benefit of the doubt in that he probably saw combat in WW2 in German uniform but I think he may have had his reasons for not telling it quite as it was.
PK
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phylo_roadking
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Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
Just as a side-note - whether it is factual or not doesn't have overly much to do with it being "required reading"...after all, Tom Wolfe became "required reading" for the Astronaut Corps after "The Right Stuff"!!!The Forgotten Soldier has long been included in many professional development reading lists compiled by the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps
It might be a bit embarrassing for American military and naval officer and staff academies to find that one of their text books is a duffer. It would be even more awkward, in a country like the United States, were the author to turn out to have been a Waffen-SS man. Imagine the headlines in certain newspapers! It would certainly eclipse the furore over Reagan's visit to Bitburg.
But The Bonfire Of The Vanities, A Man In Full, I Am Charlotte Simmons or The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test can't have seemed very relevant!!!How people think can make a book required reading rather than what the author did...
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
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Paddy Keating
Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
Absolutely! I was just thinking of the likely reaction of various professional agitators were they to find out that any NATO armed force might be availing itself of the memoirs of a former member of the diabolical Waffen-SS as part of the educational programme in its training or staff colleges. I think The Forgotten Soldier is a masterful piece of writing, even if I remain a bit skeptical about some of the details of its author's military career.
PK
PK
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Paddy Keating
Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
Before I get on with "proper work", I bashed this out over my coffee and toast. Those of you who are interested in the man himself might like to see just how accomplished and versatile an artist he is: http://lambiek.net/artists/m/mouminoux_guy.htm Mouminoux's work will also be familiar to British members who read Battle Picture Library comics as boys. This website states that he first used the pseudonym Dimitri Lahache in the 1970s, which may be the case although I was under the impression that he used it before then. However, I imagine that the author of this resumé has probably done his homework!
A recent snapshot of Guy Mouminoux (Brussells BD Tour)
Mouminoux gave an interview recently, illustrated by the above photograph, in which he discussed The Forgotten Soldier and Verhoeven's project. I will translate the part in question into English when I have a spare moment. It is interesting in that he describes himself very much as having been forced into the German Army against his will, which is rather at odds with earlier attitudes as he described them.
Coming back to Doug Nash's point about pseudonyms:
Mouminoux always signed off as "Mouminoux" or "Guy Mouminoux" from 1951 to 1975, when he used "Lahache" or "Dimitri Lahache" for twenty-five pieces of work done between 1975 and 1982. He used "Dimitri" for a number of works from 1977 to 1989. I have heard of some drawings done as gifts for friends or acquaintances and signed Guy Sajer but Mouminoux does not appear to have used "Guy Sajer" professionally for any purpose other than The Forgotten Soldier. It didn't do him much good as he was quickly identified by France's ever-vigilant leftists, labelled "un facho" and dropped by some of his publishers. He also published an autobiographical comic strip book, Un merveilleux métier de chien, in 1999, which he signed as Dimitri.
Guy Mouminoux alias Dimtri in the 1980s
I've been chatting with a couple of friends here who have met Mouminoux a few times. Mouminoux told one of them that he named "Hauptmann Weisredau" after the place where the officer in question was killed in action. If anyone can find any reference to such a place, I am sure we would all be interested in knowing about it. If the officer in question was, as stated, killed by a landmine near the Romanian border, why would the location have such a Germanic name? Had he been killed in East Prussia or the Memel District, it would be credible. But Romania was bordered by the Ukraine, eastern Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Bulgaria. There may have been a place called Weisredau from Austro-Hungarian days, populated by volkdeutscher, but my friend searched diligently for references to it both then and during the brief Nazi tenure and came up with nothing.
According to various sources, the former Leutnant Schafmeister-BerckhoItz of I./Panzer-Grenadier-Rgt "Großdeutschland" recalled a soldier by the name of Sajer in the 5. Kompanie. Lt-Col Nash refers to this, quoting Schafmeister-Berckholtz.
On 29.7.2008, Lt-Col Nash wrote: "Also, I have a copy of a photograph of the 5th Kompanie and Schafmeister (who I visited back in 1998) pointed out to me which man was Sajer." So, on the one hand, on his website, Lt-Col Nash quotes Herr Schafmeister-Berckholtz in a 1997 article as stating that he did not know Sajer yet here on Feldgrau, Lt-Col Nash describes Herr Schafmeister-Berckholtz being able to point Sajer out in a photograph of the 5. Kompanie/Panzer-Grenadier-Rgt "Großdeutschland" when he visited him in 1998. I am not casting aspersions on Lt-Col Nash's honesty or anything like that but surely he must see that this does not constitute proof that Guy Mouminoux alias Sajer served under Leutnant Schafmeister-Berckholtz in the Großdeutschland"Division?
I have posted two photographs of Guy Mouminoux, who is quite a distinctive-looking man, in later life. Perhaps Lt-Col Nash could oblige us by posting this photo he has of 5./Panzer-Grenadier-Rgt "Großdeutschland", indicating the soldier identified as Sajer by his former Company Commander so that we could see if there is any resemblance. After all, the wartime photograph must be sufficiently clear to have enabled Herr Schafmeister-Berckholtz to pick out "Sajer".
PK
A recent snapshot of Guy Mouminoux (Brussells BD Tour)
Mouminoux gave an interview recently, illustrated by the above photograph, in which he discussed The Forgotten Soldier and Verhoeven's project. I will translate the part in question into English when I have a spare moment. It is interesting in that he describes himself very much as having been forced into the German Army against his will, which is rather at odds with earlier attitudes as he described them.
Coming back to Doug Nash's point about pseudonyms:
Guy Sajer is not a nom de plume -never has been. His last name was originally Monminoux, but because he wanted to pass as a German, he enlisted under his mother's maiden name -Sajer. He has been using the name of Guy Sajer at least since 1952, probably earlier. He signs his artwork Guy Sajer and receives his mail (and probably his royalty checks) as Guy Sajer.
Mouminoux always signed off as "Mouminoux" or "Guy Mouminoux" from 1951 to 1975, when he used "Lahache" or "Dimitri Lahache" for twenty-five pieces of work done between 1975 and 1982. He used "Dimitri" for a number of works from 1977 to 1989. I have heard of some drawings done as gifts for friends or acquaintances and signed Guy Sajer but Mouminoux does not appear to have used "Guy Sajer" professionally for any purpose other than The Forgotten Soldier. It didn't do him much good as he was quickly identified by France's ever-vigilant leftists, labelled "un facho" and dropped by some of his publishers. He also published an autobiographical comic strip book, Un merveilleux métier de chien, in 1999, which he signed as Dimitri.
Guy Mouminoux alias Dimtri in the 1980s
I've been chatting with a couple of friends here who have met Mouminoux a few times. Mouminoux told one of them that he named "Hauptmann Weisredau" after the place where the officer in question was killed in action. If anyone can find any reference to such a place, I am sure we would all be interested in knowing about it. If the officer in question was, as stated, killed by a landmine near the Romanian border, why would the location have such a Germanic name? Had he been killed in East Prussia or the Memel District, it would be credible. But Romania was bordered by the Ukraine, eastern Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Bulgaria. There may have been a place called Weisredau from Austro-Hungarian days, populated by volkdeutscher, but my friend searched diligently for references to it both then and during the brief Nazi tenure and came up with nothing.
According to various sources, the former Leutnant Schafmeister-BerckhoItz of I./Panzer-Grenadier-Rgt "Großdeutschland" recalled a soldier by the name of Sajer in the 5. Kompanie. Lt-Col Nash refers to this, quoting Schafmeister-Berckholtz.
Lt-Col Nash's principal adversary, Lt-Col Kennedy, remarked:Sajer claims more convincingly that on the eve of the Kursk offensive he was assigned as a replacement to the 5th Company of one of the division's infantry regiments which certainly did exist.10 Kennedy fails to mention this in his analysis. Sajer's statement dovetails with the testimony of a former member of the Grossdeutschland Hans Joachim Schafmeister-Berckholtz. Schafmeister-BerckhoItz who served as a Leutnant (lieutenant)with 5th Company 1st Battalion Panzergrenadier-Regiment Grossdeutschland from 1940~44 stated in a letter to the author that he had only recently heard of Sajer's book and had been given a copy to read. However he wrote that "At the mention of the name Sajer my ears pricked up because we did have a Sajer in the 5th Company 1st Grenadier Battalion". Although Schafmeister-BerckhoItz added that he did not know this particular Sajer his statement of which company the man was assigned to does coincide with Sajer's account. At the very least there seems to have been one Grenadier named Sajer in the Grossdeutschland.11
It's interesting that Herr Schafmeister-Berckholtz served with "5th Company 1st Battalion Panzer-Grenadier-Regiment Grossdeutschland from 1940-44 because the 5th Company was part of the regiment's 2nd Battalion until September 1943. The regiment was reorganised in September 1943 and its first three battalions were given five companies, the fifth of which was the heavy or support company. Herr Schafmeister-Berckholtz was the Kompaniechef of 5./Panzer-Grenadier-Rgt "Großdeutschland" and he might have recalled a man named Sajer but then he adds that he did not know this particular Sajer. The problem with Lt-Col Nash's use of Herr Schafmeister-Berckholtz's statement is that the statement is fundamentally flawed. The former GD officer's statement is really just foggy-minded hearsay. It wouldn't stand up in court, so to speak.Nash's correspondence with Grossdeutschland veteran Hans-Joachim Schafmeister-Berckholtz is a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees. Interestingly, Schafmeister-Berckholtz has a phenomenal memory. Nash writes that Schafmeister-Berckholtz now recalls the famous "Sajer" -the same "Sajer" who uses the nom de plume "Guy Sajer" to protect his anonymity. Schafmeister-Berckholtz says to Nash, "At the mention of the name Sajer, my ears pricked up, because we did have a Sajer in the 5th Company, 1st Grenadier Battalion." Wait a minute. Doesn't "Sajer" himself say that the name "Guy Sajer" was not his name but only a cover? I think attorneys consider this "coaching" the witness. In other words, Schafmeister-Berckholtz now remembers the famous "Sajer" as a member of his unit when he is prompted with the name.
On 29.7.2008, Lt-Col Nash wrote: "Also, I have a copy of a photograph of the 5th Kompanie and Schafmeister (who I visited back in 1998) pointed out to me which man was Sajer." So, on the one hand, on his website, Lt-Col Nash quotes Herr Schafmeister-Berckholtz in a 1997 article as stating that he did not know Sajer yet here on Feldgrau, Lt-Col Nash describes Herr Schafmeister-Berckholtz being able to point Sajer out in a photograph of the 5. Kompanie/Panzer-Grenadier-Rgt "Großdeutschland" when he visited him in 1998. I am not casting aspersions on Lt-Col Nash's honesty or anything like that but surely he must see that this does not constitute proof that Guy Mouminoux alias Sajer served under Leutnant Schafmeister-Berckholtz in the Großdeutschland"Division?
I have posted two photographs of Guy Mouminoux, who is quite a distinctive-looking man, in later life. Perhaps Lt-Col Nash could oblige us by posting this photo he has of 5./Panzer-Grenadier-Rgt "Großdeutschland", indicating the soldier identified as Sajer by his former Company Commander so that we could see if there is any resemblance. After all, the wartime photograph must be sufficiently clear to have enabled Herr Schafmeister-Berckholtz to pick out "Sajer".
PK
Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
I cannot really add anything to this thread which I carefully try to read and form my own conclusion.
up as a POW of the Russians and later escaped.
Oskar has a remarkable memory. He keeps telling me "Annelie, you should learn better German or buy a tape recorder
for we won't have much longer."
I have a friend Oskar whom was trained in the Luftwaffe and was moved to the Heer in Russia where he endedNor does the account of moving from the Luftwaffe to the Heer.
up as a POW of the Russians and later escaped.
Oskar has a remarkable memory. He keeps telling me "Annelie, you should learn better German or buy a tape recorder
for we won't have much longer."
Annelie
________________________
________________________
Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
Hitler's instruction on creation in structure of Luftwaffe of infantry divisions (LwFDs) has been published in September, 1942. These formations operated at the front during more than a year as unit OKL, LwFDs did not submit OKH. Transfer of these formations from OKL in OKH has occurred only in November, 1943. Therefore if autumn of 1942 Sajer was in a unit belonging OKL to it for transition in OKH, Waffen-SS or still somewhere it was necessary to overcome serious bureaucratic obstacles. He about it by all means would write.Annelie wrote:I cannot really add anything to this thread which I carefully try to read and form my own conclusion.I have a friend Oskar whom was trained in the Luftwaffe and was moved to the Heer in Russia where he endedNor does the account of moving from the Luftwaffe to the Heer.
up as a POW of the Russians and later escaped.
Oskar has a remarkable memory. He keeps telling me "Annelie, you should learn better German or buy a tape recorder
for we won't have much longer."
Probably as if Your friend Oskar the anti-aircraft gunner and its air-defence Abteilung was a part of formation belonging OKH (ID or PzD) that it could be directed for training to air-defence school belonging OKL, and then will come back in own unit. However for this purpose it was necessary to be the anti-aircraft gunner. As is known, Sajer was not the anti-aircraft gunner.
Having read the Sajer's book once again, I have understood, that for a refutation of discrepancies available in it is required to write article big volume than this book . That is it is not meaningful. It is pure water a fiction. In a consequence of the aforesaid I have decided not to spend for this time.
Yuri
Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
from what I understand that is not the case and I don't even know if he was an anti-aircraft gunner, I know that he was trainedYour friend Oskar the anti-aircraft gunner and its air-defence Abteilung was a part of formation belonging OKH (ID or PzD) that it could be directed for training to air-defence school belonging OKL, and then will come back in own unit.
as an pilot at some phase. I shall ask more this week, but this time I will take paper and pencil to write down instead on
relying on my memory.
I do know that I gave him the address of the Wast and he has now a copy of his war records to his great surprise.
It included things he did not know. He has said he will give me a copy for myself.......so we shall see.
Annelie
________________________
________________________
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Paddy Keating
Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
Personnel were certainly moved between branches of the Wehrmacht, as these documents show. However, this was late in the war and was fairly unusual. Heinrich Karrasch began the war as a Luftwaffe mechanic with Lehrgeschwader 1, being transferred late in 1944 to a Heer marsch-kompanie in Bielefeld. He received a Heer soldbuch. Karrasch was then illegally recruited by the Kompaniechef of Stab/SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 and his team, who were scouring the Heer and Luftwaffe barracks across northern Germany for recruits to bring the new SS-FJ battalion up to full strength. Local Heer and Luftwaffe commanders reacted furiously but their complaints got them nowhere. The SS-FJ officer in question had friends in high places, as a look through his SS Personnel File shows, otherwise he might have been disciplined or even court-martialled. However, the transfer from Luftwaffe to Heer was official and legal, even though the Luftwaffe had plenty of 'openings' for redundant ground crew and other bods in, for instance, their own Fallschirmjäger-Armee, which was partly reformed late in 1944 after the debacle in France.
As you can see, the Heer 'reclaimed' Karrasch afterwards. The officer completing the Kennkarte document for Heinrich Karrasch carefully omitted the "SS" designation in front of the two Waffen-SS units cited on the lefthand page and, perhaps at Karrasch's insistence, added a note making it clear that Karrasch had served with the SS-Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon. SS-Panzergrenadier Ersatz und Ausbildungs Btl 35 was the nominal depot unit of the SS-Fallschirmjäger and SS-Jagdverbände units.
Some sub-units of SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Rgt 7 retreating through the Zehden bridgehead were placed in Kampfgruppe Solar, formed by Otto Skorzeny for the defence of the bridgehead and commanded by Siegfried Milius, commander of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 but placed in command of KG Solar, with one of his officers in temporary command of SS-FJ-Btl 600. After the breakout from Zehden and the crossing to the west bank of the Oder, Karrasch evidently found himself with surviving elements of SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Rgt 7, and some officer or NCO was kind enough to annotate his paybook, otherwise the military police might have arrested him as a deserter.
A late war story of a legitimate Luftwaffe-Heer transfer of personnel, followed by an illegal transfer involving a well-connected Waffen-SS officer with a rather disdainful attitude to military red tape. It still doesn't explain Guy Mouminoux's extraordinary story of turning up at Stuka school as a fifteen year old recruit, failing the course and then moving to the Großdeutschland as if it were the easiest and most natural thing in the world.
Doug Nash's failure to respond to my questions and remarks is duly noted. I'd still like to see this wartime photo he says he has of the 5. Kompanie with the soldier named Sajer, as picked out by the former company commander, and I would also like to see some of the commercial work produced by Guy Mouminoux under, according to Doug, the name Guy Sajer. It would be be great to be able to confirm that Guy Mouminoux did indeed serve with the GD Division on the Eastern Front rather than, say, the Das Reich Division at Oradour-sur-Glane, Tulle and in the Normandy battles. Not that this would be any reason to see Mouminoux in a lesser light. It would just be nice to have some proof that TFS was not a partial or even a total fabrication.
PK
PK
Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
Though I'm not a journalist and therefore limited to expressing myself in plain english (I was a soldier for 32 years, after all), I must say that Mr. Keating's thesis is interesting, but pure hogwash nonetheless (Websters: nonsense; balderdash; bunk) - that is to say, unconvincing. The SS theory has been proposed several times in the past, beginning with a far more pursuasive line of argument by Mr. John Gawne back in 1996 when we initiated the Guy Sajer follies.
I think the explanation for Sajer's (aka Mouminoux's) story is far more simpler - rather than spinning fanciful theories out of thin air, why don't the various and sundry followers of this controversy get back to the story instead of explaining what they think Sajer MIGHT have been or COULD have been. Using the style of argument proposed by Mr. Occam (paraphrased by stating the simplest explanation is the most likely), let's just assume Sajer was telling the truth as best he could remember it. After all, that's what autobiographies are.
Now, without going into the details (it's getting late and I have a day job so I have to catch some sleep), I'd like to review some of the things that we know - you might say I'm "rehashing" this discussion (which does not mean "Plagiarize" - according to Webster's American dictionary, where it means instead "to present or use again in another form without substantial change or improvement," is the following:
Guy Sajer was born in Paris as Guy Mouminoux on January 13, 1926 (some sources claim 1927, but this has been refuted by Sajer himself), and grew up in the town on Wissembourg in Alsace-Lorraine, less than 20 miles from the German border. The area was “reincorporated” into the Third Reich following the fall of France in June 1940, as that area had been an integral part of Germany between 1870 and 1918. He was not, however, a malgre nous, since his father was French. I was lectured to about this very subject by a French member of this forum about 4 years ago about how this little detail made all the difference. Had his father been of German ancestry, he would have been slapped in a POW camp for a few years after the war and treated like the rest of the malgre nous were. Sajer, however, being French, AND a 100% volunteer, could have suffered an even worse fate, since he was clearly a traitor to France - but, thanks to the kindness of a French officer in the POW camp processing office, he was let go with a warning after agreeing to join the French armed forces (he joined the Navy and served less than a year, being discharged due to health reasons). He could just as easily have been shot, like many no doubt were.
Anyway, Sajer, ever enthusiastic, volunteered to go into the RAD in the Spring of 1942 at the age of 16, working at an Arbeitslager across the Rhine near Kehl (I say enthusiastic, because he a) didn't have to even do RAD service, as a French citizen and b) the mandatory age for RAD service in 1942 was 18 years old.
After enduring several months of boring manual labor building dykes and drainage ditches along the Rhine River, Sajer longed to go where the action was, which in the summer of 1942 meant the Eastern Front, where the decisive Stalingrad campaign was then beginning to unfold. As soon as he completed labor service, he volunteered for the Wehrmacht, received basic training in Poland, and was then posted to a transportation unit on the Eastern Front in December 1942 (some claim that Sajer was assigned first to the National Socialist Driver’s Corps or NSKK, though that remains conjecture). The minimum age for enlisting was lowered to 16 years in 1942, though at first these young volunteers were not permitted to go into combat branches. Sajer probably enlisted using his mother's German maiden name (Sajer), but I cant' prove it. Requests to the Bundesarchiv Aussenstelle Korneli-Muenster, the Deutsche Dienststelle, the Berlin Document Center, and the DRK Suchdients showed that none of these centers had anything on a Sajer or a Mouminoux.
This is a very important point - if Sajer/Mouminoux HAD joined the SS, the Berlin Document Center probably would have had something on him, just like it did for Herr Grass. But it didn't - but...the fact that Korneli-Muenster and the WaST had nothing is not surprising - according to the Aussenstelle, they have records on only 12% of Wehrmacht personnel (excluding Waffen-SS) because most of the Wehrmacht's personnel records were lost, destroyed or stolen. So that leaves us with precious little information...except for Sajer's word, of course.
Now, the legendary Panzerbaer and I have dueled, fought, grappled, and wrestled with this subject many times over the years - usually we fight to a draw, shake hands, and walk away, biding our time for the next fight. Rarely do we ever get personal, and I consider him a friend for that. He is constant in his belief, and I in mine. It's our own individual opinions, and we keep invective out of it. He helps me out from time to time, and I hope I help him when I can as well. He may well weigh in on this, you never know. He's probably laughing now.
But back to the story - we can at least go back and look at what Sajer wrote, ignoring the little details about 77s, cuff titles and so on and just focus on the story itself - if you look at the battles he claims to have been in when he joined the GD in May 1943, and trace the battles the division fought using its history, Sajer's travels and the division's travels almost perfectly coincide. Granted, Sajer's timeline may be off here and there - but he didn't have a digital watch, carry a calendar, or get the daily newspaper or watch CNN - and trust me, after you've been out on campaign for a while (as I have - in 4 conflicts as a soldier) even with all those things, it's quite easy to lose track of time. Kursk, the retreat to the Dnieper, Rumania, East Prussia, Memel, Frisches Haff, and withdrawal to Denmark & last battle at Lauenburg - Sajer wrote about all of these, and the GD was there too. Das Reich was not. Sure, Das Reich was at Kursk, but if Sajer was SS, he probably would have written about the places he saw while on the march with that division, and he didn't.
So what is easier to believe? A manufactured version, or the one that the man himself gives the reader? You decide.
As for the GD, at least one veteran I know, the most esteemed former Feldwebel Hans-Joachim Schafmeister-Berckholz claims to have known a wierd fellow named Sajer who served in his 5th Kompanie of PzGrenRgt GD during the summer of '43 and sent me the picture which I used and have reproduced here. Plus, here's another earlier shot of Sajer.
Like I said at the beginning, this story has been hashed and rehashed many times and in many places (like Axis History Forum.com as well as others) and by many people. I have made these arguments on the book's behalf many times over the last 14 years. I've won a few people over, and there were a few I was unable to convince. Hey, it's a free country (as we say in the US) and I can write and believe what I want. And readers to this website can read whatever they want and believe whatever they want without recrimination. We are here to expand our knowledge of the WWII German Armed Forces, after all, not to attack each other. So in that spirit, I offer my post.
Cheers,
Doug Nash
Paratrooper, dog-catcher, author, armchair corporal, blah blah blah
I think the explanation for Sajer's (aka Mouminoux's) story is far more simpler - rather than spinning fanciful theories out of thin air, why don't the various and sundry followers of this controversy get back to the story instead of explaining what they think Sajer MIGHT have been or COULD have been. Using the style of argument proposed by Mr. Occam (paraphrased by stating the simplest explanation is the most likely), let's just assume Sajer was telling the truth as best he could remember it. After all, that's what autobiographies are.
Now, without going into the details (it's getting late and I have a day job so I have to catch some sleep), I'd like to review some of the things that we know - you might say I'm "rehashing" this discussion (which does not mean "Plagiarize" - according to Webster's American dictionary, where it means instead "to present or use again in another form without substantial change or improvement," is the following:
Guy Sajer was born in Paris as Guy Mouminoux on January 13, 1926 (some sources claim 1927, but this has been refuted by Sajer himself), and grew up in the town on Wissembourg in Alsace-Lorraine, less than 20 miles from the German border. The area was “reincorporated” into the Third Reich following the fall of France in June 1940, as that area had been an integral part of Germany between 1870 and 1918. He was not, however, a malgre nous, since his father was French. I was lectured to about this very subject by a French member of this forum about 4 years ago about how this little detail made all the difference. Had his father been of German ancestry, he would have been slapped in a POW camp for a few years after the war and treated like the rest of the malgre nous were. Sajer, however, being French, AND a 100% volunteer, could have suffered an even worse fate, since he was clearly a traitor to France - but, thanks to the kindness of a French officer in the POW camp processing office, he was let go with a warning after agreeing to join the French armed forces (he joined the Navy and served less than a year, being discharged due to health reasons). He could just as easily have been shot, like many no doubt were.
Anyway, Sajer, ever enthusiastic, volunteered to go into the RAD in the Spring of 1942 at the age of 16, working at an Arbeitslager across the Rhine near Kehl (I say enthusiastic, because he a) didn't have to even do RAD service, as a French citizen and b) the mandatory age for RAD service in 1942 was 18 years old.
After enduring several months of boring manual labor building dykes and drainage ditches along the Rhine River, Sajer longed to go where the action was, which in the summer of 1942 meant the Eastern Front, where the decisive Stalingrad campaign was then beginning to unfold. As soon as he completed labor service, he volunteered for the Wehrmacht, received basic training in Poland, and was then posted to a transportation unit on the Eastern Front in December 1942 (some claim that Sajer was assigned first to the National Socialist Driver’s Corps or NSKK, though that remains conjecture). The minimum age for enlisting was lowered to 16 years in 1942, though at first these young volunteers were not permitted to go into combat branches. Sajer probably enlisted using his mother's German maiden name (Sajer), but I cant' prove it. Requests to the Bundesarchiv Aussenstelle Korneli-Muenster, the Deutsche Dienststelle, the Berlin Document Center, and the DRK Suchdients showed that none of these centers had anything on a Sajer or a Mouminoux.
This is a very important point - if Sajer/Mouminoux HAD joined the SS, the Berlin Document Center probably would have had something on him, just like it did for Herr Grass. But it didn't - but...the fact that Korneli-Muenster and the WaST had nothing is not surprising - according to the Aussenstelle, they have records on only 12% of Wehrmacht personnel (excluding Waffen-SS) because most of the Wehrmacht's personnel records were lost, destroyed or stolen. So that leaves us with precious little information...except for Sajer's word, of course.
Now, the legendary Panzerbaer and I have dueled, fought, grappled, and wrestled with this subject many times over the years - usually we fight to a draw, shake hands, and walk away, biding our time for the next fight. Rarely do we ever get personal, and I consider him a friend for that. He is constant in his belief, and I in mine. It's our own individual opinions, and we keep invective out of it. He helps me out from time to time, and I hope I help him when I can as well. He may well weigh in on this, you never know. He's probably laughing now.
But back to the story - we can at least go back and look at what Sajer wrote, ignoring the little details about 77s, cuff titles and so on and just focus on the story itself - if you look at the battles he claims to have been in when he joined the GD in May 1943, and trace the battles the division fought using its history, Sajer's travels and the division's travels almost perfectly coincide. Granted, Sajer's timeline may be off here and there - but he didn't have a digital watch, carry a calendar, or get the daily newspaper or watch CNN - and trust me, after you've been out on campaign for a while (as I have - in 4 conflicts as a soldier) even with all those things, it's quite easy to lose track of time. Kursk, the retreat to the Dnieper, Rumania, East Prussia, Memel, Frisches Haff, and withdrawal to Denmark & last battle at Lauenburg - Sajer wrote about all of these, and the GD was there too. Das Reich was not. Sure, Das Reich was at Kursk, but if Sajer was SS, he probably would have written about the places he saw while on the march with that division, and he didn't.
So what is easier to believe? A manufactured version, or the one that the man himself gives the reader? You decide.
As for the GD, at least one veteran I know, the most esteemed former Feldwebel Hans-Joachim Schafmeister-Berckholz claims to have known a wierd fellow named Sajer who served in his 5th Kompanie of PzGrenRgt GD during the summer of '43 and sent me the picture which I used and have reproduced here. Plus, here's another earlier shot of Sajer.
Like I said at the beginning, this story has been hashed and rehashed many times and in many places (like Axis History Forum.com as well as others) and by many people. I have made these arguments on the book's behalf many times over the last 14 years. I've won a few people over, and there were a few I was unable to convince. Hey, it's a free country (as we say in the US) and I can write and believe what I want. And readers to this website can read whatever they want and believe whatever they want without recrimination. We are here to expand our knowledge of the WWII German Armed Forces, after all, not to attack each other. So in that spirit, I offer my post.
Cheers,
Doug Nash
Paratrooper, dog-catcher, author, armchair corporal, blah blah blah
- Attachments
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- Sajer with 5th Kompanie June 1943.JPG (201.01 KiB) Viewed 13802 times
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- Sajer as POW.jpg (41.08 KiB) Viewed 13819 times
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- Guy Sajer3.JPG (40.02 KiB) Viewed 13803 times
Abbott: This sure is a beautiful forest.
Costello: Too bad you can't see it for all those trees!
Costello: Too bad you can't see it for all those trees!
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Paddy Keating
Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
Thanks for the reply, Colonel Nash. I will come back to you on it. In the meantime, regarding the photographs, it's all in the ears. I would say that only one of those photographs shows Guy Mouminoux alias Sajer, and that's allowing for the growth of ear tissue during a lifetime. As for your references to getting personal, I can assure you that I am not treating this exchange as "personal". There is nothing "personal" in my calling you out on some of your statements, published here and in print media. Either you can back your statements up or you can't. What we think of one another is utterly irrelevant.
PK
PK
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Jan-Hendrik
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Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
Wow! Is this novel really woth 20 pages of discussion? 
Many times I had hoped that a non-fictional book will cause so much interest, appart from Westemeier's dare to touch shining hero Peiper...
![:[]](./images/smilies/icon_study.gif "Study")
Jan-Hendrik
Many times I had hoped that a non-fictional book will cause so much interest, appart from Westemeier's dare to touch shining hero Peiper...
Jan-Hendrik
Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
Why is this any simpler than assuming he made things up?Doug Nash wrote:... Using the style of argument proposed by Mr. Occam (paraphrased by stating the simplest explanation is the most likely), let's just assume Sajer was telling the truth as best he could remember it.
Exactly what one would expect if one or more histories were counsulted before or during the writing of a biography or a historical novel....we can at least go back and look at what Sajer wrote, ....- if you look at the battles he claims to have been in when he joined the GD in May 1943, and trace the battles the division fought using its history, Sajer's travels and the division's travels almost perfectly coincide. ...
You also seam to be ignoring some of the more damaging questions and problems with the account.
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Paddy Keating
Re: "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer
Let's cut to the quick.
In 2009, you write:
Compounding this is a recent interview in French with a Belgian journalist in which Mouminoux says, unequivocally, that he was forced into German service. He refers to "youth camps" in Strasbourg and Kehl and describes the RAD as inglorious. Hardly the enthusiastic volunteer to which you refer. Then again, Mouminoux previously portrayed himself as a highly enthusiastic Germanophile and wrote of volunteering for the Luftwaffe at the age of fifteen (or sixteen, if one accepts 1926 as the year of birth), failing Stuka school before serving in the Rollbahn and then ending up in the GD. Mouminoux's Stuka stories and your defence of them, my dear Colonel, merit further scrutiny. Back in 1997, when discussing the question of the author's Stuka training stories, you wrote:
In the summer of 1942, Rudel's squadron, Sturzkampfgeschwader 2, was briefed based at Graz from May to June before being moved back to the Eastern front. Rudel was not yet "the Michael Jordan of Stuka dive bombers", as you put it, although he was a respected combat pilot and Ritterkreuztrager. From March to October 1942, Rudel was OC of the squadron's Ergänzungsgruppe, or training group, which was based at Graz-Thalerhof. This is a matter of record. By January 1942, Rudel had flown 400 sorties and was awarded the Ritterkreuz. His posting to the unit's training squadron, away from combat flying for a while, was perfectly normal.
On what do you base your suggestion that Ergänzungsgruppe/Sturzkampfgeschwader 2 had a sub-unit at Chemnitz, which is some 500 km from Graz? That Rudel, as "the Michael Jordan" of the Sturzkampfgeschwader, was considered the god of dive-bombing by the OKL? Rudel had scored brownie points, it is true, by sinking a Soviet battleship at anchor in September 1941 and earning the '400' hanger to his flight clasp but the man who had had a rather shaky start to his flying career still had some way to go before gaining celebrity status. He was relatively unknown in 1942. I love the way you deal with inconvenient facts! Instead of accepting that "Sajer" might never have been near Chemnitz, or that he invented the Stuka story, you give Rudel a Stuka school there! Too funny!
You make a point of Rudel's statement in his book that "crews are sent to me for further training from the Stuka schools after which they proceed to the front." This was perfectly logical. Recruits who had successfully passed out from one of the two Sturzkampffliegerschulen were posted to one of the Sturzkampfgeschwader. They would have arrived at the squadron's 'in-house' training unit for further training and evaluation before being posted to an active Gruppe.
In the summer of 1942, it is logical to presume that the flyers arriving at Rudel's training group at Graz-Thalerhof would have passed through Sturzkampffliegerschule 1. In the summer of 1942, Sturzkampffliegerschule 1 was in Wertheim, which is about 280 km from Chemnitz. Sturzkampffliegerschule 2 was in Foggia, which is even further away from Chemnitz. Mind you, Sturzkampffliegerschule 2 was at Graz-Thalerhof until January 1942 but Oberleutnant und RKT Rudel did not arrive there as CO of the Ergänzungsgruppe of Sturzkampfgeschwader 2 until March so, close...but no banana.
If "Sajer" underwent Stuka training in the summer of 1942 as he has claimed, it would be reasonable to presume that this was at Sturzkampffliegerschule 1 at Wertheim, which is about 280km from Chemnitz. In order to end up in "the 26th section of the squadron commanded by Rudel", by which he might have meant Rudel's training group at Graz-Thalerhof, he would have had to pass out successfully. So he would have been a trained pilot or crewmember. The crewmember in a Ju87 was normally a trained Airgunner-Radio Operator. Sajer would have had to complete basis training as a Flieger before selection for further, specialist training.
A Gruppe normally had a Stab and three Staffeln. Typically, in a flying unit, a Staffel would have sixteen aircraft, divided into four Schwarme, each of which would be sub-divided into two Rotten. With a training gruppe, this might be slightly different, depending on aircraft and equipment availability. What I am getting at is that I do not see where a "26th section" fits into the picture.
Oh, of course, you will say that "Sajer" cannot be expected to remember trifling details but it ought to be remembered that he was in his thirties when he wrote the bulk of his manuscript and one cannot help wondering why, if he couldn't remember details, he simply made them up. I also cannot help wondering why you persist in this Flat Earther-style defence of "Sajer" and his various claims when the man himself is undermining his own account these days in interviews with journalists, for whom you clearly have great contempt.
You might feel that journalists fail to express themselves in plain English, my dear Colonel Nash, and that would be your prerogative but I am expressing my objections to your published statements both in plain Queen's English, backed up by hard, unadorned facts. I have now caught you out over several statements you have made in magazines and on the internet that have turned out to be pure, unadulterated hogwash of the variety you accused me of generating.
As for "Sajer", not only does his opus contain numerous errors in detail, it contains some pretty major ones as well. In fact, the whole Stuka story is eyewash. So how can any reasonable reader, knowing this, be expected to take everything else he has written on faith, without any documentary evidence of any kind to back it up. On top of that, Mouminoux has recently done a complete volte face regarding his attitudes at the time to Hitler, Nazism and Germany in general. Far from being the enthusiastic collaborator, he now portrays himself has a very unwilling recruit.
And how does Mouminoux regard people who ask him awkward questions or ask him where proof of his wartime military career might be found? He dismisses them as "rude" and "intrusive". In a sense, he reminds me of you, Colonel Nash. When you find yourself debagged over some of your statements, made in support of this man whom you defend with a near-religious fervour, you attack your critic rather than defending your statements. The only conclusion to be drawn is that you are unable to defend the statements in question because there is no solid basis for them, is there?
PK
In 2009, you write:
In 1997, you wrote:Anyway, Sajer, ever enthusiastic, volunteered to go into the RAD in the Spring of 1942 at the age of 16, working at an Arbeitslager across the Rhine near Kehl (I say enthusiastic, because he a) didn't have to even do RAD service, as a French citizen and b) the mandatory age for RAD service in 1942 was 18 years old. After enduring several months of boring manual labor building dykes and drainage ditches along the Rhine River, Sajer longed to go where the action was, which in the summer of 1942 meant the Eastern Front, where the decisive Stalingrad campaign was then beginning to unfold. As soon as he completed labor service, he volunteered for the Wehrmacht, received basic training in Poland, and was then posted to a transportation unit on the Eastern Front in December 1942
Are you not even mildly uncomfortable with the fact that these two accounts of Mouminoux's passage into German servce are at odds with one another? In his book, Mouminoux/Sajer places himself in Chemnitz in the summer of 1942, in the training depot for Hans-Ulrich Rudel's Stuka squadron, which is a long way from digging ditches as an underaged RAD man in Kehl.As readers of his book know Guy Sajer was a 16-year-old French youth living in Wissembourg Alsace who volunteered in July 1942 to serve in the German Army. Motivated by a sense of adventure as well as admiration for the German soldiers who had conquered France in 1940 he initially sought to become a Stuka dive bomber crew member but failed and was sent to the army instead. After his initial training he was sent to the Russian front where because of his youth he first served in a transportation unit.
Compounding this is a recent interview in French with a Belgian journalist in which Mouminoux says, unequivocally, that he was forced into German service. He refers to "youth camps" in Strasbourg and Kehl and describes the RAD as inglorious. Hardly the enthusiastic volunteer to which you refer. Then again, Mouminoux previously portrayed himself as a highly enthusiastic Germanophile and wrote of volunteering for the Luftwaffe at the age of fifteen (or sixteen, if one accepts 1926 as the year of birth), failing Stuka school before serving in the Rollbahn and then ending up in the GD. Mouminoux's Stuka stories and your defence of them, my dear Colonel, merit further scrutiny. Back in 1997, when discussing the question of the author's Stuka training stories, you wrote:
Let's look at the facts, shall we? You refer to the "103rd Stuka Training Squadron near the town of Bilina (Biblis) in the modern-day Czech Republic about forty miles (sixty-five kilometers) from Chemnitz". There was a Schlachtgeschwader 103 at Biblis in 1944. The unit did have some Ju87s but was not formed until October 1943, with the Stab/Sturzkampfgeschwader 1 as cadre. This is a complete red herring. It has nothing to do with Rudel or his squadron. And citing Tessin as the source either indicates that Tessin got his facts wrong or that you misunderstood or misquoted him. There was a Sturzkampfgeschwader 102, but this was formed at Orly Airport, near Paris, in 1943 so, again, close but no banana, my dear Colonel.The Luftwaffe training unit. Kennedy doubts Sajer's claim that he was briefly assigned to Colonel Hans Rudel's Stuka training unit because during the summer of 1942 Rudel's unit (according to Rudel himself) was located near Graz in southern Austria quite a distance from Chemnitz where Sajer claimed to be. Simply because Sajer was not in Graz does not rule out the fact that he could have been with Rudel's training unit. To an impressionable 16-year-old anything having to do with Stukas probably would have made Sajer associate it with Rudel a well-known hero at the time. Rudel was to Stuka dive bombers what Michael Jordan is to basketball. According to Rudel in his book Stuka Pilot "crews are sent to me for further training from the Stuka schools after which they proceed to the front."7 Sajer states that he was assigned to the 26th section of the squadron commanded by Rudel failed to pass the Luftwaffe tests for Stuka crewman and was sent to the infantry. The fact that Sajer was in Chemnitz does not rule out his claim. Rudel's unit may well have had a training and evaluation element at or near Chemnitz. Georg Tessin's Verbaende und Truppen der deutsche Wehrmacht und Waffen SS the standard reference work on German Army and Air Force field and training organizations locates the 103rd Stuka training squadron near the town of Bilina (Biblis) in the modern-day Czech Republic about forty miles (sixty-five kilometers) from Chemnitz.8 Incidentally Tessin's study makes no mention of a unit based in Graz Austria at the time. Could it be that the once-famous and never-forgotten Rudel also let small details escape him?
In the summer of 1942, Rudel's squadron, Sturzkampfgeschwader 2, was briefed based at Graz from May to June before being moved back to the Eastern front. Rudel was not yet "the Michael Jordan of Stuka dive bombers", as you put it, although he was a respected combat pilot and Ritterkreuztrager. From March to October 1942, Rudel was OC of the squadron's Ergänzungsgruppe, or training group, which was based at Graz-Thalerhof. This is a matter of record. By January 1942, Rudel had flown 400 sorties and was awarded the Ritterkreuz. His posting to the unit's training squadron, away from combat flying for a while, was perfectly normal.
On what do you base your suggestion that Ergänzungsgruppe/Sturzkampfgeschwader 2 had a sub-unit at Chemnitz, which is some 500 km from Graz? That Rudel, as "the Michael Jordan" of the Sturzkampfgeschwader, was considered the god of dive-bombing by the OKL? Rudel had scored brownie points, it is true, by sinking a Soviet battleship at anchor in September 1941 and earning the '400' hanger to his flight clasp but the man who had had a rather shaky start to his flying career still had some way to go before gaining celebrity status. He was relatively unknown in 1942. I love the way you deal with inconvenient facts! Instead of accepting that "Sajer" might never have been near Chemnitz, or that he invented the Stuka story, you give Rudel a Stuka school there! Too funny!
You make a point of Rudel's statement in his book that "crews are sent to me for further training from the Stuka schools after which they proceed to the front." This was perfectly logical. Recruits who had successfully passed out from one of the two Sturzkampffliegerschulen were posted to one of the Sturzkampfgeschwader. They would have arrived at the squadron's 'in-house' training unit for further training and evaluation before being posted to an active Gruppe.
In the summer of 1942, it is logical to presume that the flyers arriving at Rudel's training group at Graz-Thalerhof would have passed through Sturzkampffliegerschule 1. In the summer of 1942, Sturzkampffliegerschule 1 was in Wertheim, which is about 280 km from Chemnitz. Sturzkampffliegerschule 2 was in Foggia, which is even further away from Chemnitz. Mind you, Sturzkampffliegerschule 2 was at Graz-Thalerhof until January 1942 but Oberleutnant und RKT Rudel did not arrive there as CO of the Ergänzungsgruppe of Sturzkampfgeschwader 2 until March so, close...but no banana.
If "Sajer" underwent Stuka training in the summer of 1942 as he has claimed, it would be reasonable to presume that this was at Sturzkampffliegerschule 1 at Wertheim, which is about 280km from Chemnitz. In order to end up in "the 26th section of the squadron commanded by Rudel", by which he might have meant Rudel's training group at Graz-Thalerhof, he would have had to pass out successfully. So he would have been a trained pilot or crewmember. The crewmember in a Ju87 was normally a trained Airgunner-Radio Operator. Sajer would have had to complete basis training as a Flieger before selection for further, specialist training.
A Gruppe normally had a Stab and three Staffeln. Typically, in a flying unit, a Staffel would have sixteen aircraft, divided into four Schwarme, each of which would be sub-divided into two Rotten. With a training gruppe, this might be slightly different, depending on aircraft and equipment availability. What I am getting at is that I do not see where a "26th section" fits into the picture.
Oh, of course, you will say that "Sajer" cannot be expected to remember trifling details but it ought to be remembered that he was in his thirties when he wrote the bulk of his manuscript and one cannot help wondering why, if he couldn't remember details, he simply made them up. I also cannot help wondering why you persist in this Flat Earther-style defence of "Sajer" and his various claims when the man himself is undermining his own account these days in interviews with journalists, for whom you clearly have great contempt.
You might feel that journalists fail to express themselves in plain English, my dear Colonel Nash, and that would be your prerogative but I am expressing my objections to your published statements both in plain Queen's English, backed up by hard, unadorned facts. I have now caught you out over several statements you have made in magazines and on the internet that have turned out to be pure, unadulterated hogwash of the variety you accused me of generating.
As for "Sajer", not only does his opus contain numerous errors in detail, it contains some pretty major ones as well. In fact, the whole Stuka story is eyewash. So how can any reasonable reader, knowing this, be expected to take everything else he has written on faith, without any documentary evidence of any kind to back it up. On top of that, Mouminoux has recently done a complete volte face regarding his attitudes at the time to Hitler, Nazism and Germany in general. Far from being the enthusiastic collaborator, he now portrays himself has a very unwilling recruit.
And how does Mouminoux regard people who ask him awkward questions or ask him where proof of his wartime military career might be found? He dismisses them as "rude" and "intrusive". In a sense, he reminds me of you, Colonel Nash. When you find yourself debagged over some of your statements, made in support of this man whom you defend with a near-religious fervour, you attack your critic rather than defending your statements. The only conclusion to be drawn is that you are unable to defend the statements in question because there is no solid basis for them, is there?
PK