Forgotten Soldier

[Noel Petroni]

I have read 'Forgotten Soldier' by Guy Sajer and must say that I liked it a lot. However I would like to know (from those who have read the book) if the German Army was really as Guy Sajer describes it.

It seemed to me that soldiers were treated like prisoners. An example is of an officer who reported from the front and explained that his entire regiment was wiped out, was stripped from his rank and considered to have abandoned his men. Even returning back from battle without the rifle was considered a crime.

As I said, I like the book and would be disappointed to understand that Guy Sajer's accounts are somewhat unauthentic.

Regards

[charlie don't surf]

sorry, but isn't that book fictional?

regards

[Tom Houlihan]

The most generous verdict I've heard on that story is that Sajer is an amalgam of some number of men. I'd be willing to bet that most if not all of that happened to someone, somewhere on the Ostfront. All of it happening to one man? Probably not, but several? I think I'd accept that.
Joscha???

[joscha]

Guy Sajer never existed, and he never was where he said he was. He was from some Alsatian village, was drafted into the German Army, and must have spent time with the the swine of Dirlewanger, the so-called 36th WSS division..

I read this book some 30 years ago in German and could not help laughing, it was so full of that well-known ultimate product of male-bovine digestive processes. His "Memel burns"stuff never happened the way he "describes" it. There are a million other examples where he goes way off the rails.

Sorry, friend, but you fell for a phony. :( Joscha

[Noel Petroni]

Guy Sajer never existed, and he never was where he said he was. He was from some Alsatian village, was drafted into the German Army, and must have spent time with the the swine of Dirlewanger, the so-called 36th WSS division..

I read this book some 30 years ago in German and could not help laughing, it was so full of that well-known ultimate product of male-bovine digestive processes. His "Memel burns"stuff never happened the way he "describes" it. There are a million other examples where he goes way off the rails.

Sorry, friend, but you fell for a phony. Joscha

Thanks Joscha, and the rest.

Well, that was time wasted till I finished the book!!
Maybe I was better off seeing Hogan's Heros!!

I did get a bit suspicious at times..........guess I fell for it!!!

Is there anybody out there (Pink Floyd) who can suggest me a good book on the same lines as Forgotten Soldier but 100% better???

Thanks in advance
Regards
Noel

[Snorre]

Hi Noel,

Be aware that there are a lot of debate going on regarding Guy Sajer's book. Many believe that the book is based on personal experiences with some add-ons in between.

However, it is a good and interesting book, I think. You haven't wasted any more time on this book, that you would if you read the noved "Cross of Iron", for instance

Rgrds,

Snorre

[charlie don't surf]

Hans von Luck, wrote a good book which has become sort of a bible for some army officers here in sweden.

regards

[Michael Dorosh]

There are some good articles on the Sajer book at my Grossdeutschland site - see below in my signature for the link. You be the judge!

Doug Nash will be along any moment to tell you how good the book was!

[Fridolin]

Hi Noel,
If you want a good trio of 'personal experience' books in English from the German side, at soldier-officer's level, these are my recommendations:

Hans von Luck (1989) Panzer Commander. Dell Books. ISBN 0-440-20802-5

S. Knappe (1992) Soldat. Reflections of a German Solcier, 1936-1949. Dell Books. ISBN 0-440-21526-9.

G.H. Bidermann (2000) In Deadly combat. A German Soldier's memoir of the Eastern Front. Univ. Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-1122-3

All available via Amazon in relatively unexpensive paperback editions.
Best Regards

[Tom Houlihan]

Allow me to add my $0.025:

SEVEN DAYS IN JANUARY: With the 6th SS-Mountain Division in Operation Nordwind, by Wolf T Zoepf

INTO THE MOUNTAINS DARK: A WWII Odyssey from Harvard Crimson to Infantry Blue, by Frank Gurley

THE FINAL CRISIS: Combat in Northern Alsace, January 1945, by Richard Engler

FIVE YEARS, FOUR FRONTS: The War Years of Georg Grossjohann, Major, German Army (Retired), by Georg Grossjohann

BLACK EDELWEISS: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-SS, by Johann Voss

The only one I haven't had a chance to fully read is Engler, due to circumstances beyond my control. The others are good reads, quite interesting.

[Noel Petroni]

Hey, thanks guys!

Guess what? I went to my bookcase and found out that I have Panzer Commander by Hans Von Luck! I'll start reading this!!

I also have Frontsoldaten by Stephen G. Fritz. Is anyone familier with this book???

I'll let you know what I think as soon as I visit your site, Michael...thanks!!

I've also been eyeing Black Edelweiss for some time...I think I'll go for this one as well.

Thanks all for the information!!

Noel

[Fridolin]

There are people here who think Frontsoldaten is a very failed 'academic' attempt at capturing the atmosphere surrounding the ordinary front-line Landser. I partially agree. It uses a lot of already known and published material such as Memoirs and personal letters, but does not manage to build a gripping narrative. He uses and takes Guy Sajer at face value, which is a problem. But also Poppel, Knappe and others, which although hardly new is good material. Also, he uses Bartov's book very much, and you have to take that carefully.
Nothing really new in it, and quite expensive. However, overall IMHO it is not a bad book.

[Vaterland]

All of you bring up very valid arguments. I have done research into the back ground of Guy Sajer. I have found many reports saying he is real, and that he lives in Paris now, and reports saying that he never exsisted. Now, I will play the devils advocate. What if he really did do all that he said he did? None of us would know, becasue we weren't there. Most of you are basing your arquments around what others have wrote, most of whom were never there to begin with. If you read from something written by someone else who was there, the agrument can be raised that people view things differently than others. Remember, Guy Sajer, was never older than 19 when these events take place, and to someone that young things might be alittle overwhelming and he might embellish things alittle But, that does not mean he wasn't there. I have not found anything to convince me that he did exsist or he didn't exsist. I will continue to look into it. Thanks.

Adam Seamans

[John Fluker]

From
http://www-cgsc.army.mil/milrev/English ... etters.htm
A letter to the editor from Military Review magazine, March/April 1997 issue:

The Forgotten Soldier Revisited

I recently established contact with Guy Sajer, the author of the well-known autobiography The Forgotten Soldier, a military literature classic that describes the author's experiences fighting for Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. With regard to a previous letter to the editor by Lieutenant Colonel Edwin L. Kennedy, published in your March-April 1996 issue--"Military Professionals do not Use Fiction as Fact"--I would like to set the record straight.

After 18 months of research, I was able to locate Sajer. He lives in a rural village approximately 50 miles east of Paris under his nom de plume. Although not his real last name (Guy is his real first name), Sajer is his mother's maiden name. She was born in Gotha, Germany. He enlisted in the German Wehrmacht in 1942 under a German name to avoid the ridicule he would have received had he used his real French last name. To verify his book's authenticity, I asked Sajer a series of questions that had been raised by Kennedy in a Spring 1992 Army History article titled "The Forgotten Soldier: Fiction or Fact?"

Sajer quickly responded to my query. Although he admitted that minor details such as uniform insignia, weapons nomenclatures and other such things were not important to him, he stands by what he wrote 30 years ago. He insists that he did not set out to write the definitive history of World War II, only what he had personally experienced while fighting in the elite Grossdeutschland division on the Russian Front. He admitted that he could have erred in describing locations and chronology, but that he wrote things as he remembered them. In his letter to me, he stated that "In the darkness of a night in Russia, you could have told me that we were in China, and I would have believed you." Further details on Sajer's wartime and postwar experiences are described in an upcoming article I wrote for Army History, scheduled for publication in their Fall 1997 issue.

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.

Hopefully, Sajer's efforts to clear his name will reestablish the prominence his book has earned on many a soldier's bookshelf. Readers can rest assured that when they pick up a copy of The Forgotten Soldier, they will be reading one of the best and most realistic books ever written from an infantryman's perspective, regardless of which side he fought for in World War II.

Lieutenant Colonel Douglas E. Nash, USA, US Special Operations Command, MacDill AFB, Florida

[Michael Dorosh]

John - that entire letter is reproduced at my site in the link given above. There are several other letters in the series that you have omitted, you may want to read the entire discussion.