@normmacdonald That is kind of you. I remember being very young, maybe six, and him telling me that he had once been shot and I didn't believe him until he showed his scar on his right flank. It was puckered and I could poke my fingers right in it.
@normmacdonald He was a German speaking Sudentenlander. He once saw Hitler in an open-top motorcade go through his home town after Czechoslovakia was invaded. A few years later, when he was a soldier, he once saw Rommel outside of a burning hotel.
@normmacdonald He was conscripted, still in his teens, into the Wehrmacht and sent to Russia, almost certainly the worst place on Earth to be at that time, perhaps any time ever.
@normmacdonald He had grown up on a farm and from a young age was a crack shot.
@normmacdonald He told me that the Germans had the worst boots for winter and the best thing was to shoot a Russian and take his boots. Being the best shooter in his troop meant he was a provider of boots. This made him well liked.
@normmacdonald He marched through Estonia, heading for Narwa and Leningrad. His division decided to cross part of the frozen Lake Peipus to save time. The ice was very thick and could take it if they were careful.
@normmacdonald But the Russians knew what they were doing and sent planes to drop scrap and old railway tracks onto the ice. He was lucky and was off the lake before the planes came. He saw perhaps 30 men go under the ice. Can you image dying like that?
@normmacdonald They took siege of one particular village where they encountered particularly resilient opposition. There was a bell-tower with a Russian sniper in. The sniper held them off for nearly 2 days. The Germans did not want to waste their artillery and so bided their time.
@normmacdonald My grandpa and a few of his troop eventually take the tower and find two dead Russian shooters inside. One of them was a woman. A bullet had gone through her chin. As I say, my grandpa was a crack shot.
@normmacdonald They march on, make some progress, but they never reach Leningrad. He didn't have much memory of being wounded. He remembered seeing his own blood in the snow and thinking he was done for. He remembers being forced to drink alcohol and that's about it.
@normmacdonald If you get wounded by shrapnel, provided the kidney is not struck, the retro-peritoneum is the place to get hit. The psoas muscle.
@normmacdonald He was so lucky to get wounded the way he did. Bad enough to get him out of Russia, but not bad enough to cripple or kill him. That is the kind of wound that soldiers fighting in Russia prayed for.
@normmacdonald He was sent back to convalesce. He was out for 10 months or so. Then he was sent to the Western Front. This was after D-day and it was all but over. He never saw his mother again.
@normmacdonald Quite soon he surrendered to the Americans. He told me that first thing that the Americans did was to kick him up the arse, which, in the scheme of things, he thought was rather fair.
@normmacdonald He was sent to a PoW camp in England. Eventually he entered a marriage of convenience to avoid going back home (which by then is the wrong side of the Iron Curtain).
@normmacdonald All this by the age of 21. I used to think his story was extraordinary. But it isn't. There were hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of young men with stories like his. Some lived, many died.
@normmacdonald I am not a sentimental man, but when I think about my grandfather I feel very sad that this happened to him. Thinking about the dead is the only thing we can do for them.
@normmacdonald I have his Iron Cross. I guess it was given to him after being wounded. It is an odd thing really. German symbols from that time are pretty jarring to look at, but is also a symbol of his suffering too.
@normmacdonald Anyhow. Thank you to anybody who took the time to read this. I do feel pretty sad that there are so few of those old boys from the War left.
