The Forgotten Soldier by Guy SajerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Born of a German mother to a French father, Sajer was swept up in National Socialist fervor and enlisted to defend the Reich on the Eastern Front. Truck driver in a convoy arriving in Ukraine as Stalingrad fell, Sajer arrived in time to join in a multi-national retreat akin to Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia. Vacuumed up into the Großdeutschland Division, an elite combat unit of the German Army, Sajer retreated and fought until the Reich, his division, and his identity evaporated leaving him to recover in a France unknown to him. This is a fascinating memoir of Eastern Front privation and a detailed, reflective analysis of events by a front-line soldier grappling with the Red Army and his own reasons for fighting and living. Beside battle recaps, material on obtaining and using leave time, encounters with partisans, and fellow fighters not seeing Sajer as truly German make this one of the most revealing and insightful German WW II soldier autobiographies I have read.
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