The Forgotten Soldier (2024)

The best War Memoir I've ever read! Heart breaking, brutal, real, lyrical, depressing, insightful, and in some ways familiar - I simply loved this book. Guy Sajer tells his story as a young half french, half german boy joining the Wermacht in 1942. His story spans his journey from Germany to Poland for training in the transportation Corps and then to the east in the winter of '42 to resupply the German Army at the Don river. Later he joins the Gross Deutschland division as an infantryman in order to qualify for some leave and participates in many of the big battles of the eastern front. He was a soldier in the German army 67 years ago but, some of his descriptions of life as a soldier in a combat zone ring true to my own experiences. His storytelling is lyrical and heartbreakingly real. He's honest about his inadaquacies as a soldier - he doesn't recast his war experiences to make himself out to be a hero - and he doesn't shy away from describing his early fanatacism about the ideals of the third Reich and then his later disillusionment (based at least partly on his realization that being "french" - his dad was french and he was raised in france - he wouldn't ever really fit in with his german komeraden). His vivid descriptions of the Russian landscape, combat against the Bolsheviks, the bombings of cities in Germany and their aftermath, are amazing.

This is a beautiful, painful, brutal book that anyone looking for a firsthand account of the horrors of combat and war should read. I've heard this referred to as a classic and I now know why.

A beautiful page-turner, a masterfully written, heart-breaking, brutal, lyrical and memorable personal memoirs of a half-German, half-French young man involved in the WWII Ostfront.
Posted to the elite Panzergrenadier Division Großdeutschland, the protagonist is a first-hand witness to the brutality, heroism and viciousness experienced and carried out by both sides.
Possibly the best WWII autobiographical book I have ever read about the Ostfront, this is a book that will stay with me for a long time. This is an amazing, intensely poignant book that leaves a mark in the soul of the reader, and I found it just impossible to put down: the catastrophic battle in the Memel bridgehead, the overwhelming immensity of the Russian tundra and steppe, the rigors of the climate, the camaraderie between the soldiers, the few moments of humanity interspersed with the brutality and unrelenting ferocity of war, and the finality of the pure fight for survival magnified by primeval fear, are all made unforgettable by the author.
Very few books have managed to highlight so compellingly the human catastrophe, the life-changing brutality and the sense of hopelessness represented by war. It should be compulsory reading for all warmongers and mindless ultra-nationalists, old and new, who bawl “make (insert country here) great again”.
A fully deserved 5-star. A must-read.

PS: as an historical note, it is important to highlight that World War II losses of the Soviet Union were over 27 million, and over 80 percent of all German military casualties occurred on the Eastern Front. In Stalingrad, the average life expectancy of a Soviet soldier was 24 hours. It was Russia that broke the back of the formidable German Army, and this should not be forgotten.

Writers like Sajer, will never allow the future generations to forget, the miseries of world war soldiers.

World war two was fought by soldiers but described by soldiers cum writers; Sajer belongs to this rare breed; he accomplished this rare job by writing, under stressful circumstances and arranging the information, for future readers.

Sajer did a fine job in describing, the situation and psychology of a foot soldier, respect and value of enemy, Morality of a losing infantry, Hate for partisans, Agony of dying comrades, Worries of families, Benevolence of seniors, Difficulty of weather, Hardship of immobility, Frustration of illness and much more.

This is a very fine book for those, who want to read about the agonies and pain of German soldiers. This book gives altogether a different aspect of world war. This helps in understanding a crucial fact of war that .... the true enemy of, a man in war is .... the war itself!!

I've been reading a lot of fiction (plus one memoir) about WW2 and from the German perspective. I think the pandemic gave me a taste for reading about the last time civilisation came close to destruction (as well as seeing the near total destruction of two countries in Europe). Might sound strange, but it contributed to a healthier perspective about the pandemic and its consequences. At least it doesn't even come close to being this awful ...

The Forgotten Soldier, Guy Sajer's true account of the horrors of the Eastern Front, is one of the most powerful and ghastly stories I have read. Incredibly, he is still alive and 93. I've had the book on my shelves, unread since 2003. But, so it goes with books ...

In short, a 16 year old French kid with a German mother, is seduced by the uniforms and pizzazz of an occupying army and signs up to the Wehrmacht. He is assigned a job as a truck driver behind the front in the East . . . and there, hell awaits.

During the epochal slaughter and horror of the German retreat after Stalingrad, he's soon press-ganged into Großdeutschland Division and made to fight at the front; in an endless series of hellish battles and futile counter attacks, at times with children and old men. The evacuation of Prussia by sea froze me to the marrow. Jesus wept. If a book can give you shell shock, this'll come close. The inhumanity of it all. I felt glad to be alive and to have been born in 1969.

I've always been a firm believer that the abyss of history should be stared into. Regularly. Or, we never learn.

Amazing, shocking, and unforgettable.
This is the best book about WWII that you can find.
Forget the U.S. involvement, or the British, or the French.
Hell, I'm Canadian, but I always knew the real battle was in the East against the huge tank divisions of Germany and those of Russia.
And yet... here is the infantryman's perspective.
And not even a German, but a French man.
Or boy, since Sajer was 17 when he was drafted in.
And what did he see?
Everything!
The Eastern front in all it's horrible form.
This is a read you won't be able to put down, not for the gore, but for the human reflection.
Really! I recommend this to anyone who wants to know how bad it can get and how privileged we are (in 2012) and I dare you to put this book down.
Even to the last chapter I was spellbound. No literary efforts: just the bold cold truth.
Beautiful.
And may Gad be thanked that I never had to go to war like this young man did!

There is no such thing as a “just war.” The concept of “just war” is something theologians like Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or academics argue. When it comes to real war and actual fighting theologians and academics are as “useless as tits on a boar hog.” Killing others and being killed is humankind at its most primitive. Fighting a war is deadly serious. Discipline, courage and a will to win are critical to success in war. Finding the guts to kill or be killed and to endure almost unbelievable hardship in unbelievable circumstances are too often absolutes for those who must fight.

“The Forgotten War” by Guy Sajer is perhaps the best book I have ever read about what it is like to be a “grunt” on the front lines. In this case, a man who is 16 when he finds himself in the German Army and shortly thereafter on the Eastern or “Russian Front.”

Sajer’s story recounts life on that Front. In a word it was brutal. Sajer saw many of his fellow soldiers killed in ways that I will not repeat except to say that there is enough real recounting of how people died to last me several lifetimes. I’m saying that as a 27 year Air Force vet who served two tours in Southeast Asia one of which was in Vietnam. My cousin “fought backwards” out of Chosin Reservoir with the Marines. My dad lost his best friend on Guadalcanal. My uncle, dad’s older brother, is buried in the Meuse Argonne. He was killed either by machine gun fire or artillery because his unit was not where they were supposed to be.

The Eastern front was a killing ground, The Germans lost roughly 1.1 million killed, another million captured or MIA and almost 3.5 million wounded. Outside of the Taiping Rebellion and Cultural Revolution in China, I am unaware of casualties this numerous in a single front. Russian losses were greater. I’ve seen mass graves of Russian soldiers in Warsaw and Berlin and Polish military cemeteries in Warsaw. They overwhelmed me. Sajer tells me how they died.

I note that there are a very small number of people who quibble with Sajer’s account suggesting that he didn’t always know where he was, what caliber weapons he was using and that he referred to a unit patch being on the wrong sleeve. They use these minutiae to suggest that his account is fictional or that he wasn’t really there. Ah, will just say that even with my 27 years in the Air Force and I cannot tell you today which side my unit patch went on. These attacks on Sajer are pure unadulterated crap. Interestingly, some are attributed to a US Army Lt Col who was at one of the Army’s “school houses” (specifically, the Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas). I’ll take Sajer’s word over that academic LtCol’s in half a heartbeat. Only a school house REMF (ah, rear echelon M____ F____)would worry about that. A real soldier, a special ops guy takes the school house REMF to task at the link below. As that Spec Ops guy notes:

“Why should soldiers read books such as Sajer's? Simply, to read about what battle is like, what to expect and to find out just how bad it can get. Sure, there are many other more comprehensive books about the Russian Front than Sajer's in terms of troop movements, strategy and such. But, if a reader wants to know what it was like to be a Russian Front soldier, to be afraid, to fight alongside a band of brothers, then Sajer's is still one of the finest accounts and deserves to remain on professional military reading lists.” Lieutenant Colonel Douglas E. Nash

http://members.shaw.ca/grossdeutschla...

"We felt like lost souls, who had forgotten that men are made for something else, that time exists, and hope, and sentiments other than anguish; that friendship can be more than ephemeral, that love can sometimes occur, that the earth can be productive, and used for something other than burying the dead.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

In 2016, I awarded Bruce Catton's A Stillness of Appomattox my first and only, personal Golden Holy Grail Award for perfection. Three years later, this book, The Forgotten Soldier is receiving my second. If you haven't marked this book on your "to-read" lists, I urge you to do so. It's a stunning powerhouse -- a hyper-realistic, unrelenting account of an Alsatian/German soldier's personal hell in the face of the unremitting awfulness of the Eastern front in World War II. It's written in clear, impactful but poetically reflective prose. It's everything I look for in a book and exhibits every reason why I read in the first place. It convinces me that every so-called leader with the power to send young people to war should either be forced to read it first, or have demonstrated personal experience in severe combat.

Guy Sajer was only 16 when he entered the German army, eventually making it into the most elite regiment. The sheer suffering he witnesses and endures and shares with us is almost too much to bear over the course of the book. So much so, that one often has to put it down after a few pages to compose oneself and emotionally re-center.

I knew there was controversy around this book, therefore I decided to dive into the book first before researching any of that. I wanted the book to make its case first. Because stolen valor is such a major issue in the circle of war experts and enthusiasts, not to mention basic expectations of historical accuracy, highly critical war readers have nitpicked the book's inconsistencies to the point of challenging Sajer's veracity. One of Sajer's staunchest critics eventually conceded and admitted his story was likely the truth. Others have not been so willing to relent. Nobody though, it seems, challenges the basic realities of warfare the Sajer drives home here in vivid detail. Ranks, protocols, locations, and all that ... I leave that to the experts. All I care about is the essential truth of the thing, the reflection and introspection of the speaker. In this, Sajer is breathless and impeccable.

To pull quotes out of this would be impossible for me. Every page is rich with a terrible beauty. You want it to end, but, conversely, want the exquisite experience of reading the heart-aching, expressive prose to go on.

It's one of the greatest books I've ever read -- possibly the greatest -- along with being the best war book I've experienced. And rather than say more, I'm going to go somewhere and thank the Fates, the Gods, and whomever, that I, and hopefully everyone else, haven't and will never have to experience what this man did.

kr, eg '19

I enjoyed this book even though I had read some criticism. Sure there may be some areas that the author has muddled, but has also been implied he may have a bit to hide. With all that in mind this is still a read about a brutal time for a young man. For those that are considering reading this be warned though, it is long and the "action" is non stop.

Guy Sajer's account of life on the Eastern Front in World War II is a must read. If "All Quiet on the Western Front" left any mark upon you at all, this book will floor you. You will fully understand the brutality of war, the brutality of the Soviets and the Nazis. You will fully understand the brutal nature of "total war" and fierce nature of mankind who stoked and fed the machinations of World War.

He's just a dumb kid in the beginning. He's an old man at the end.

You'll never put up with jingoistic nonsense ever again.

Brutal, honest, and traumatizing. This account of the German perspective of the war shows the horrors these young men faced. I feel both the Allied Forces and the Germans acted out of convictions of duty, courage, and the preservation of life. This story will stick with me for years to come and will act as a reminder of the carnage and death that can only come from war.

Through the eyes of Guy Sajer, I have rediscovered the putrid horror of war and the interminable depth of the human soul. Such a juxtaposition concerns me. In the flowing filth of destruction, can one glimpse the shimmer of the human quality? So many people allude to war as the pinnacle of evil within human nature. Undoubtedly, the mystifying magnitude of our destructive tendencies overwhelms our vision and guides us into stereotypical cognition of ideological evil and discontent. However, does this focus distract us from the humanity of it all?

People fight wars. Hitler and Stalin and Roosevelt and Churchill had their agendas. But make no mistake, soldiers on all sides fought for one thing - their lives. Ideology burns like frail tissue paper under the fire of machine guns and anti-tank weaponry. On the field, men fight men. The war between Nationalist Socialism and democratic capitalism stayed in warm strategy rooms in the capitals. Set men against each other, and allow nature to take its course.

Ultimately, Sajer tells of a soldier's epic psychological journey. Beginning with a fearful innocence facing interminable threats, it culminates into the carnal void of his existence. Sajer beautifully renders his story with the wisdom of his age and through the eyes of a young man faced with inhumane devastation. He offers insights into the human condition which, unfortunately, may not have surfaced outside of wartime circumstances. As the dread swelled, the man endured.

What bliss to see a man survive the depths of hell on earth!

What pride to know what the human soul can survive!

Or, perhaps, Sajer remains on those battlefields, lying face down; his nose half submerged in a block of ice which has settled in the gasp of his open mouth. Perhaps the man who now walks among us entombs a deathly void in his bosom and only hears the agonized squealing of a newborn child entering a life of suffering. The psychological impact and emotional drought of war will not leave him and no federal counseling will heal him. He has become war. And in his sojourn, we, too, feel war; our own personal decay with him at Memel and on the Dneiper, the beauty of delusion regarding a lost love, a visceral sense of isolation at home because the man who called it home was left mummified in the snow.

I read Sajer's story 20 years ago and I was deeply impressed by it. He was among those Alsatians who joined the Wehrmacht following the incorporation of Alsace (one of France's eastern regions) into the Third Reich following France's defeat in June 1940. Sajer himself is of French and German parentage.

Since the time I read this book, questions have been raised as to its authenticity. Be that as it may, Sajer's descriptions of serving both with an anti-partisan and later with an elite infantry unit on the Eastern Front are compelling.

In answer to his critics, Sajer has said that "You ask me questions of chronology situations dates and unimportant details. Historians and archivists have harassed me for a long time with their rude questions. All of this is unimportant. Other authors and high-ranking officers could respond to your questions better than I. I never had the intention to write a historical reference book; rather I wrote about my innermost emotional experiences as they relate to the events that happened to me in the context of the Second World War."

For my part, I enjoyed this book and now regard it as a great work of military literature.

Guy Sajer was a sixteen year old boy in 1942 who was brought up in France by a French father and a German mother. After being drafted into the German army transport division he was sent to the Russian Front. He later volunteered to join a crack combat division called the Grosse Deutschland. This book describes his personal account of the two years he spent fighting on the Russian Front. He takes us on a journey through two brutal Russian winters, being bombarded by artillery, taking part in battles where his division was outnumbered sometime by thirty to one. He also describes clashes with partisans that are everywhere behind German lines. This is no glamorization of war. Sajer does a fantastic job of getting across the bonds between him and his comrades. He also gets across the terror of war and the feelings of utter exhaustion of troops that are being forced to continue to fight with diminishing resources beyond what most of us could be expected to endure. This is not a book that goes into great details about historic facts. It is a book about a young boy growing into manhood through a time of total war and how it affected him.

Stalingrad is lost and the German Army is no longer the formidable force which swept through Europe at the start of the war. In retreat, they are chased and hunted by the much larger Red Army.

Sajer is a seventeen year old German soldier struggling to survive the onslaught from the Russian Army. Facing starvation,daily fear of enemy bombardment, disease, exhaustion,and the unforgiving Russian winter, Sajer's experiences are retold with chilling detail and brutal honesty.

'Too many people learn about the war with no inconvenience...sitting in a comfortable armchair, with their feet beside the fire...One should really read such accounts under compulsion, in discomfort...in worst circumstances, when everything is going badly.'

The Forgotten Soldier is not a comfortable read. There is no glory in war and the human cost is beyond comprehension. It brings to life the madness of war, its sheer senselessness and the legacy of those who lived through it.

The Forgotten Soldier is a must read.

Where to start? This book has affected me greatly. I did expect to be shocked, and did expect to read an account of some appalling experiences of a soldier fighting in the heart of an horrendously bloody and grisly conflict. But nothing could really prepare the reader for the overwhelming relentlessness of it all. This is a reading experience that should not be at all taken lightly.

Guy Sajer was a very young Alsatian (barely seventeen I think), of mixed Franco-German parentage, who finds himself in training with the German army during the autumn of 1942. The memoir does not make it clear if he is conscripted or volunteers. The zenith of the Nazi Reich has already passed - unbeknownst to its combatants and civilian populations. After his training in the Fatherland, Sajer is attached to a transport logistics unit supporting the combat troops at the Eastern Front. All too soon he is witness to the horrors of the fighting that follows the fallout from the Wehrmacht's defeat at Stalingrad and the first retreat from the Don.

Writing several years after the event, Sajer pulls no punches with his descriptions of the deprivations of combat, and the depravity. Early in his account though, he makes it clear how inadequate his words will always be in expressing the "cumulative nightmare...an uncommunicable terror":

"It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later. It's a mistake, for instance, to use the word 'frightful' to describe a few broken-up companions mixed into the ground: but it's a mistake which might be forgiven.
I should perhaps end my account here, because my powers are inadequate for what I have to tell."

(This on page 90 of a 560 page book.)

As the war progresses, and following a brief respite of sorts during leave in Berlin (where he witnesses a terrifying daytime Allied air raid), Sajer and his comrades are 'volunteered' into the elite Grosse Deutschland division as infantry. Back at the front, he is thrown right into the abyss again, in time for the chaotic blood-soaked retreat from Ukraine. At times in this memoir Sajer comes out with some truly shocking comments - "Throughout the war, one of the biggest mistakes was to treat German soldiers even worse than prisoners, instead of allowing us to rape and steal - crimes which we were condemned for in the end anyway." - for example. And this from a Frenchman not indoctrinated with Nazi bile prior to the conquest of France in 1940. A second period of leave - later in the memoir - is cancelled before he can even reach his destination, the whole train transport being reversed - back depressingly to the front. Anyone who has served as a conscript will recognise the achingly despondent sense that there is when home leave has to end, but to not even get there in the first place? - only to be sent back into the hell you had just escaped from...

There is a constant sense of fear that pervades everywhere.

"I know in my bones what our watchword 'Courage' means - from days and nights of resigned desperation, and from the insurmountable fear which one continues to accept, even though one's brain has ceased to function normally."

There is no mention at all of the ongoing Holocaust against the civilians of Europe, and no mention of Jews, and barely any of the racial Hitlerism at all. (There is though one very sinister glimpse of that horror, and what had thus far been 'dealt with' by the authorities, on the first page, (September '42) when en route to the front from basic training, via Poland, Sajer and co. pass through the Warsaw ghetto:"Our detatchment goes sightseeing in the city, including the famous ghetto - or rather, what's left of it. We return to the station in small groups. We are all smiling. The Poles smile back, especially the girls."

There is a surreal moral code of sorts that exists in his mind - the 'rules' of combat according to the Wehrmacht. When it comes to encounters with the Partisans, he is certain - "Also, partisans were not eligible for the consideration due to a man in uniform. The laws of war condemned them to death automatically, without trial." This coming after a description of how some Red Army POWs were killed mercilessly in a way too graphic to describe here.

The disastrous retreat continues as it becomes clear that all is lost.

"Faced with the Russian hurricane, we ran whenever we could...We no longer fought for Hitler, or for National Socialism, or for the Third Reich - or even for our fiancées or mothers or families trapped in bomb-ravaged towns. We fought from simple fear, which was our motivating power. The idea of death, even when we accepted it, made us howl with powerless rage."

Even when writing many years later Sajer seems to pour most of his anger out still on the Partisans. He doesn't ever seem to accept that Germany had invaded the continent, and that people without an army fighting for them, had the right to fight back - by whichever means available. The moral argument he attempts against the 'underhand' techniques of the guerillas is completely flawed. Nevertheless, his memoir, even if factually inaccurate in places as some have suggested, is an important document of witness. I struggled with the utter nightmare of it all, but am glad that I read The Forgotten Soldier. I'm sure I won't forget it.

Blew my mind!! A must read, not for the faint hearted. If you want to know what real struggle is? Then read this 👍true story and excellent memoir.

The Forgotten Soldier was first published in 1965, and concerns events that happened over 20 years previously, when the author was a teenager living in France who was drafted into the German army. The memoir has since become the subject of much criticism by historians who question much of the historical detail, especially with regards to troop movements and dates. Supporters of the work argue that historical facts of strategic troop movements can be found elsewhere, and that the strength of this particular work is in the emotion and the visceral experience, and I'll have to agree. The Commandant of the US Marine Corps must also agree, since this was on his official reading list in 2013.

This isn't exactly an easy read, but it hit me so much harder than I'd expected. Sajer maybe doesn't have the writing chops of Cather or Steinbeck, and even apologizes a few times for his "inability" to do his topic justice in prose--and I have in fact been tempted to take a shot of scotch each time I encountered the simile "like an automaton" (maybe it sounds less weird in the original French?)--but then I'll stumble into some little gem of poetic self-awareness that wows me. I think he's at his best when he doesn't appear to be trying.

We're thrown in with Sajer and his companions when they first arrive on the Eastern front, and there isn't really a chance to get to know the characters befor things start to happen to them--I suspect this is why it took me a while to get emotionally involved (but when I did...dang). Since he starts out in a transportation batallion as a truck driver, Sajer's introduction to war is surprisingly gradual, and he is emotionally shattered by the first (comparatively small) wartime effects he sees. He's utterly convinced that he's a coward, but his teenage naivite rubs off quickly. He doesn't exactly grow numb to his surroundings, but sort of alternates between cynicism--especially around even younger untested, brainwashed & eager teenaged boys--and determination to empty his head of anything that is not in his immediate surroundings or in the immediate present. At some point he seems to realize that the only thing he's really fighting for is self-preservation. It's like watching a kid shrivel emotionally and die intellectually, if that makes sense. The battle scenes do go on a little long, though, and it's the kind of book that requires significant mental breathers.

The part that really got me, though, is when Sajer meets his father (a Frenchman, who fought on the French side in the Great War) during a brief leave to Berlin. The father's awkward sadness with what his son has become is just devastating. On the other hand, he doesn't stray too far away from humor, either. There's a great scene involving his scrawny & underfed teenaged self, a handful of eggs, and a strapping farmer's wife...yeah, just go read it.

I was curious about what happened to Guy Sajer after the war--and it turns out that, interestingly, he became a very prolific cartoonist. There's a lengthy entry on him on the "Lambiek Comicopedia" (http://www.lambiek.net/artists/m/moum...) and it looks like he did everything from cute kids cartoons to some pretty racy-looking pulp, mostly under the pennames Dimitri Lahache and Mouminoux. Looking through some of the images, there is a lot of material reflecting his war experiences, such as:

Though certainly not all of it:

Anyway, fascinating stuff.

I read this book while enduring Officer Candidate School.

If you want to read a story about what war is really like, then read this book. The author lived it and he does a very good job of reliving it for you through his writing.

It's not the normal story about WWII that you see here in the US. Mr. Sajer is in the German army and spends a good deal of time on the eastern front.

The descriptions are vivid, the fear is palpable.

Mr. Sajer basically says in the book that you cannot appreciate just how miserable or terrifying things were. He said that you should read this book out in the mud, the cold, and the snow, so you could get just a small taste of what he went through. I read this book over 20 years ago and his words still stick with me. How often can you say that about a book?

Out of the 50-ish war books I’ve read, this is top three!

The desperation and constant battering of missions that never end is relatable (in a lesser scale of course), while trying to sustain anything close to an individual personality in land of pure horrid.

Guy Sajer’s story and motives have been strongly debated, but this book should probably be read by anyone curious of how the human mind develops into a simple tool for the mighty (much like another Nazi tale in the Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell).

The detailed descriptions of Ukraine were another personal highlight of interest.

A powerful book!

"...pain is international."

These words are the central thrust of a book that asks you to pity the German soldier on the Eastern Front of World War II. It is not easy for many, considering the crimes committed, and for the well informed Sajer does not make it much easier. He believes in the anti-communist part of the cause, which is more understandable. Yet he is morally deaf to the carnage wrought by the Nazis. He even at one point has a good thing to say about Adolf Hitler.

Yet, pain is international, and the raw experience of war at its worst is what saves The Forgotten Soldier. Sajer holds nothing back. You get gurgling throat wounds, explosive diarrhea in a moving truck, men ground down by tanks, soldiers buried alive by artillery, and sudden death from partisans waiting in the wings. War is capricious and the pain takes on a measure both universal and specific. Sajer knows if they lose they will be villains. More importantly, you see why these men keep fighting. They fear the Russians. They want to defend each other. They want to save civilians, at least in 1945.

The universality of pain and loss and destruction is tricky. One does not want to forget the horrors of the Nazis, but in recognizing the horror of the experience for men caught up in it, there is a hope for forgiveness and reconciliation. Both are in short supply in 2017, but without them we are just beasts doomed to rip our throats out. More importantly, we lie to ourselves when we make the Nazis into superhuman villains. They were people with ideals, capable of courage and victims of their own demons. It is less about empathy and more about the beast that lurks within our hearts, our ideals, and our society. No one is immune.

Lastly, what of the prose? It is erratic, at its best in describing battlefield horrors instead of the mundane. Sajer has his share of asides and oddities. The book's dedication is made on page 69. It is not so much an accurate memoir of as a series of horrifying impressions. It makes it a bit unusual for the genre, but more than most I felt I was walking near an emaciated German soldier who was gradually transformed from a boy to a beast to a walking corpse. The ending was moving.

This is a very powerful book; it's not for the squeamish. The author was a teenager who enlisted in the German army in 1942, and following basic training, was sent to the Eastern front as a truck driver. In 1943 he volunteered to become an infantryman in the elite Gross Deutchland division in exchange for a one week leave in Germany. He went to Berlin but found life there little different from the war zone in the Ukraine: daily bombing (from the American Air Corps) and little food.

Sajer returned to the Eastern Front and his life became a constant struggle to survive the elements,the lack of food and supplies, and the relentless advances of the Red Army. His unit was lucky to retreat; often they were surrounded and had to fight their way out of encirclement.

The background of the story is most interesting. For one thing the author isn't German, but rather French. The book was originally written in French in 1967. It's considered a classic war book and THE such book about the German army on the Eastern Front. There are inconsistancies and it was later declared fiction by the official historian of the Gross Deutchland division. But thereupon, some of the author's buddies and others from the division came forward and confirmed much of what he wrote. The historian later withdrew his criticism.

I'm not sure how this book has escaped me for as long as it has. I've read 100s of war memoirs from WWII to Vietnam but none more striking and vivid as The Forgotten Soldier. This book lays aside political views and gives an unbridled account of a common foot solider fighting to stay alive over the course of 3 years and thousands of miles. The story begins with an exuberant, young (only 17), half German/half French soldier who's just completing his basic training in Poland. This young soldier recounts his tragic experiences while at first supplying embattled troops in eastern Russia and later as an infantryman in the elite Gross Deutschland combat unit.

The story seemed to reach its apex quite quickly and literally remained there for the duration of the book - meaning there were absolutely no lulls between one tragic experience to the next. For me, this was not a book to take lightly and quickly read. I chose to slowly digest each story (the author painstakingly recounted numerous events) and give each paragraph the attention it deserved. The memoir was well written, strikingly blunt, and descriptive. It's powerful and not for the squeamish. The nightmares of war were vividly described and deeply felt throughout the pages. This is a book not easily forgotten.

It's good, not great. Needed an editor: much too long. Endlessly repetitive yet often psychologically dissociative. And far to many references to "I think the town was named 'such-and-such'"--could have made more of an effort to uncover the German or current Russian names. But, nonetheless, an impressive recounting of the horrors of the Russian front from an infantry perspective.

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The most interesting aspect of the book (spoiler alert!) is the toward the end--he fought his way to Kiel, where he was taken prisoner by the British. In the epilogue, because the author's Father was French, he was released immediately, on condition that he enlist in the French Army. Where he wound up taking part in the 1946 victory parade in Paris. No wonder the author is dissociative!

One of the most powerful War memoirs ever written, this is something that I don't think I will ever forget. The battles in Prussia and Kharvok/Dpnier and the attack on the collective farm are highlights for me, most certainly not for the faint of heart. This book has everything from day to day operations, to family and home front, personal and group psychology, beautiful landscape descriptions, brutal combat. We should be glad that men like Sajer have chronicled such events and not bottled them up, an incredibly emotional story. This is as close as anyone can get to being on the Eastern Front. I feel older after reading this... You will too but it is totally worth it.

The author's experience was so grueling, and his telling of it so eloquent, that I felt drained when I finished reading this; to pick one detail that sums it up, he ends the book (this isn't a spoiler, since you know he had to survive to write it) by describing how when he finally got home after the war and walked up to his family's home, his mother didn't recognize the worn-out old man greeting her as the boy who had left home for the army a few years earlier.

I first read this book when I bought it in the early 1980s, and before reading it again recently I remembered it was a powerful and moving story; now that I am older and have children and grandchildren, however, I felt the power and pathos more keenly than the first time.

The author, Guy Sajer, was born in Alsace, which, if you are not aware, is a part of eastern France that has, over the centuries, been fought over by France and Germany. The people there have mixed blood so it is no surprise that Sajer had a French father and a German mother, though considered himself French, having grown up in France.

Germany invaded France on 10 May 1940, and in 1942, when Sajer was 16, he joined the Wehrmacht (German army). It is not clear if he was forced to do so, having a German mother, or if he did so voluntarily. Throughout the book, however, he states that he believed in their cause and also that Germany would win the war – and that it would be good for Europe. To be fair, we all have very strong views when we are 16 and sometimes make very bad decisions, so I think he can be forgiven for this – he certainly suffered for it!

He was destined for the Eastern Front, and the book opens with his arrival at a training camp in Poland, going on to explain some of his training, including a few ‘shocks to the system’ like having to dive in and swim in a freezing lake – little did he know how innocuous that experience was in comparison to what he experienced during the Russian winters that followed.

Sajer was assigned to a transport regiment, so was tasked with driving a lorry full of supplies of every sort long distances to the front. This entailed dealing with the enormous steppe that seemed to go on forever, the feet-thick mud in the autumn and the desperate cold during the winter, not to mention the continual risk of air attack from Soviet aircraft. His main support mechanism consisted of his best friend, Hals, and a few others, but mainly Hals, without whom he didn’t think he could survive.

He also describes his period of leave when he tried to get back home to see his family but could get not much further than Berlin, where he met and fell desperately in love with a young woman, Paula. His love for Paula and the occasional letters he received from her also helped him get through some grim times.

Back in Russia, once his convoy reached the Volga (some miles north of Stalingrad), he was caught up in a Soviet offensive, and the Germans had to retreat. After a good deal of hardship and some fighting, they arrived at a ‘rest camp’ where they expected to finally be able to sleep in a bed and get some decent food – not so, they had to sleep outside and got soup. There came a point a short time later when some officers arrived and asked for volunteers, promising them leave if they joined the infantry. Hals volunteered, so Sajer did too. They got their leave but this was later cut short, so he didn’t make it to Germany, let alone France.

He was assigned to the Gross Deutschland Division, an elite motorised infantry division that was supported by armoured formations. He attended another training camp, this one much harsher than his previous one but by then he had already undergone many hardships in the field and could cope – just.

From then on, he was continually fighting off or attacking Soviet forces, his division being moved around to weak areas of the front because they were tough and had high morale, so usually won their battles even against poor odds. He spent months living in holes in the ground, even in winter, enduring poor food, fear, artillery and rocket attacks, enemy tanks and hordes of Soviet infantry trying to overrun them. Despite their fighting and organisational superiority, the Soviet forces were growing stronger as theirs grew weaker, and inevitably the attrition resulted in a slow, inexorable retreat through Russia, Ukraine, Poland and, finally, Germany.

Sajer was incredibly lucky; he suffered all kinds of terrible privations but was lucky enough to get away with some of his comrades to Germany on a ship from the Baltic coast of what today is Poland but was at that time East Prussia; incredibly lucky because he was captured by the British and French, not the Russians. He was questioned by a French officer, who seemed to be believe that he had not fought willingly for the Nazis, and he was told that if he served with the French Army for a period of time, he would be honourably discharged and could go home with no shame. This he did, of course.

The best feature of this book is that Sajer explains his feelings throughout: his conversations with his mates, his physical circumstances, the conditions in which they lived, the food, the reactions of the Ukrainian and Russian peasants he met, the orders they were given and the appalling fighting and suffering he witnessed and participated in. He does all this in a good deal of detail so you get a real feel for what life was really like for an ordinary soldier on the front line – and just how terrible is war. After reading this I can understand why so many men who fought in the first and second world wars never spoke about their experiences; they were too terrible for words, literally, and no civilian could ever understand how they felt.

The jacket of this book describes it as ‘The greatest true story of armed combat ever written’, and this may be true. I found it very moving, thought provoking, humbling and so grateful that I never had to fight in a war.

I read a review of this book around 1971 and my Dad and I eagerly awaited its arrival at the library. We both thought it was a great read.

It was one of the first popular 'from the German point of view' stories available. The genre has grown quite a bit since then.

Twenty years later in the early '90s, there was and perhaps still is a controversy over whether the author is telling his story or one that is, shall we say, a composite.

The debate is available, just search the web, I've ready the book 2 or 3 times, either way it's a good one.

There is a lot to take away from these memoirs of the most terrible conflict in human history. Gives you some perspective on your own life.

"Those who haven’t lived through the experience may sympathize as they read, the way one sympathizes with the hero of a novel or a play, but they certainly will never understand, as one cannot understand the unexplainable."

War accounts don't get any better, and I read lots of them. This is probably top of the pops. The other books can only be as good because I don't believe there's room for improvement.

Horrifying