07-12-2011, 04:18 PM
I don't know what it is about being on vacation and reading depressing Eastern Front books, but it started when I was home from school at Christmas time and read Guy Sajer's The Forgotten Soldier - nothing like a cheery novel to put you in the Season's good spirits.
Well, this vacation I read the Kindle version of Eastern Inferno: The Journals of a German Panzerjaeger on the Eastern Front 1941-1943 published in 2010 by Casemate edited by Christine Alexander and Mason Kunze. Again, I was not disappointed.
Our hero, a German non-com panzer hunter, recounts his actual experiences in three diaries that have become the book. He invaded on the very first day and not a spoiler alert, but didn't live to tell about it.
He mentions pre-war Soviet combat patrolling WEST of the Soviet border as asserted by pseudonum Suvorov as evidence that Stain was actually preparing to invade the Third Reich, but I digress. There is also his dispassionate mention of a Jewish massacre in Kiev (probably Babi Yar), mobile and trench warfare, longing for home, horrific artillery and air raids, penetrations and encirclements, fatigue, death, partisans, tanks, home leave, food and lack of it - plenty of stuff you don't want to think about while on vacation.
I'll never again disregard a common infantry or artillery "X killed Y fascists" citation again.
All of the savagery and suck you expect of the Eastern Front is here bearing evidence to the fact that EVERY front-liner earned his decorations in this war and we should do our utmost to remember those that did...
I highly recommend this grunt-level
Well, this vacation I read the Kindle version of Eastern Inferno: The Journals of a German Panzerjaeger on the Eastern Front 1941-1943 published in 2010 by Casemate edited by Christine Alexander and Mason Kunze. Again, I was not disappointed.
Our hero, a German non-com panzer hunter, recounts his actual experiences in three diaries that have become the book. He invaded on the very first day and not a spoiler alert, but didn't live to tell about it.
He mentions pre-war Soviet combat patrolling WEST of the Soviet border as asserted by pseudonum Suvorov as evidence that Stain was actually preparing to invade the Third Reich, but I digress. There is also his dispassionate mention of a Jewish massacre in Kiev (probably Babi Yar), mobile and trench warfare, longing for home, horrific artillery and air raids, penetrations and encirclements, fatigue, death, partisans, tanks, home leave, food and lack of it - plenty of stuff you don't want to think about while on vacation.
I'll never again disregard a common infantry or artillery "X killed Y fascists" citation again.
All of the savagery and suck you expect of the Eastern Front is here bearing evidence to the fact that EVERY front-liner earned his decorations in this war and we should do our utmost to remember those that did...
I highly recommend this grunt-level
