Forgotten soldier. Reviews of the book "the last soldier of the third reich" gi sayer. 37 - Book: Guy Sayer

Guy Sayer ... Who are you really?

I'll make a reservation right away, sometimes I call myself by name, as if someone else is talking to me, whose words have more power over me.

Who am i? The question seems to be simple, although how to say ...

In general, my parents are simple people, ordinary workers, endowed by nature with tact and intelligence. The provincial town of Wissembourg, where we have a modest house with a small estate, is located in the north-east of France, literally a stone's throw from the border with Germany.

When mother and father met, none of them could even imagine that they, young and in love with each other, the fatherland promises a very thorny path in life.

And not only to them, but also to me - their first-born - too!

Indeed, if you have not one, but two fatherlands, then, of course, there are twice as many problems, despite the fact that there is only one life. When you think about the future - what to do? how to proceed? - I really want everything that dreams to come true. Is not it?

With age, of course, the understanding comes that the past years are, in fact, a continuous discord between dreams and reality. But this is me, by the way ...

I had a wonderful childhood, but my youth did not work out. At the best time of life, when everything is so significant and important, when you live in anticipation of the first love, the war arrived, and at my incomplete seventeen I was forced to become engaged to her. Certainly not out of love and, of course, not by calculation! What kind of calculation is there if, when leaving for the army, he was going to serve under one flag, but happened to serve under another, if, relatively speaking, he had to defend the "Siegfried Line", but not the "Maginot Line."

And yet, when I was drafted into the army, I felt the incomparable pride of the defender of the fatherland. My father told me more than once that protection from the enemies of the hearth, in which the fire from time immemorial has been supported by a woman, is the sacred duty of a real man.

Everything is correct! But the war killed me, although I escaped from the shells.

I am not like those who did not fight. I am a soldier, and, therefore, different because I have been in pitch hell and now I know the terrible truth of the front line.

I became callous, ruthless, rude and vengeful. Perhaps this is good, because these are the qualities I lacked. If I did not have this tempering, I would most likely go crazy in the war.

Arrived in Chemnitz. The city barracks delighted me. When you look at a huge oval-shaped building white, just take it dumbfounded. I tried to enroll me in the 26th Flight Squadron under the command of Rudel. To my great chagrin, the experimental flights on the Junkers-87 dive bomber demonstrated my complete unsuitability for service in the air fleet. Of course it is sad! My father believes that, although the training and combat education is at a high level in all branches of the Wehrmacht, it is still in the tank forces and aviation - in particular.

Chemnitz is a cozy city. Its red peaked roofs are surrounded by greenery. The weather is fine, mild and cool. In the park, which is next to the barracks, centennial lindens and oaks have grown widely and violently, while beeches, on the contrary, grow upward and, despite their old age, remain straight and slender.

Time flies at a breakneck speed. This has never happened before. Every day there is something new. I have a brand new shape. Sits on me like a glove. I am a real soldier. I am bursting with pride. The boots, however, are worn, but in fair condition. I wonder who stomped in them before me?

In the penultimate tactical exercises, they practiced "the offensive of a rifle platoon on a long-term enemy firing point." Our infantry training is still like a sport. Near the park, on the lawn, we lay down in a chain, dash, attacks. In a hollow near the forest, we lie in tall grass, roll around, laughing ...

Recently it was raining all day, and we were driven with full gear and rifle in hand through the wet wasteland. Commands "Get down!", "Run march!", Until we became like garden scarecrows and did not collapse from exhaustion.

But more often than not, breaking up into squads, under the direction of non-commissioned officers, we march on the lawn. We walk, we stop on command, from a step we pass to a run, from a run - to a step, we approach the sergeant major with a fictional report, we move away from him in accordance with all the rules of military science. The words of commands are heard here and there, the simultaneous stamping of feet shakes the valley.

Trump, stand at attention, take on guard, turn "right" and "left", click his heels, endure thousands of nagging - is this preparation for exploits?

It turns out that drill is now acquiring special meaningbecause, as our sergeant-major said, appearance the army plays a special role in wartime. In general, he gave us a whole lecture about how bravery is not a bad thing these days, but it is secondary. The main thing now is the ability to learn everything a soldier needs to know.

We already know by heart all the existing infantry weapons of the enemy, because underestimating the enemy, as our sergeant-major said, is a great stupidity.

I am in a state that can be defined by the words: "Restrainedly happy." I feel great. True, tactical exercises and drill are exhausting to the limit. At dinner I literally nod off. By the way, the food is tolerable, but from time to time I remember our family meals at home. Red and white checkered tablecloth ... For breakfast coffee, honey, croissants and hot milk.

I learned a couple of marching songs and now I'm bawling them along with everyone, but only with a monstrous French accent. Everyone laughs, of course. Well, let! We are now one family. We're friends now. Military partnership, where everything is for one and one for all. I liked it. I bear the hardships of the barracks drill easily and even willingly.

We leave for Dresden.

For nine weeks we went through military training, and during this time they managed to re-educate me more thoroughly than in all my school years. I have already learned that a polished button is more important than many school wisdom, and you can't do without a shoe brush.

That drill is useful thing, I understood immediately and came to the conclusion that, in the end, the main thing is to be conscientious. How simple it is, in general, and how difficult it is in conditions when the order is almost law.

"Follow the order" - how familiar this phrase has become, how convincing its meaning is, eliminating the need to make your own plans.

Well, goodbye Chemnitz! We left early in the morning at an accelerated march. A light grayish fog was melting every minute, and soon the sky cleared and turned bluish. On the sides of the road along which we walked, among the bushes of hawthorn and elderberry, dark green trees could be seen. It was quiet. A huge sun was rising behind us. Ahead of each soldier moved its long shadow.

We walked in three squares, platoon - according to all the rules of the charter. After passing about fifty kilometers, they plunged into a military echelon in Dresden and drove east.

We stood in Warsaw for several hours. Many expressed a desire to see the sights of the Polish capital. We examined the ghetto, or rather, what was left of it. And when it was time to return, three or four broke up. The Poles smiled at us. Especially girls. The older and bolder soldiers than me have already made girlfriends and talked in a nice company.

Finally, our train departs, and after a while we arrive in Bialystok. After a couple of hours, taking a step, we are already walking along the highway. It is necessary to walk twenty kilometers to the barracks for formation before sending to the front.

Breaking through the foliage of the trees on the sides of the highway sun rays and fall in a dense net on the whitish road surface and the green helmets of soldiers.

Autumn is already in full swing in this region. Nice and quiet everywhere! The wide hilly plain warms up in the rays of the warm autumn sun.

Feldwebel Laus gives the command to switch to an accelerated march, and literally ten minutes later, the squat towers of a medieval knight's castle appear high on a hill, one of those that once protected the principalities, and possibly the duchies, from robber raids and peasant uprisings. Gray and gloomy in any weather, even now - on a sunny day - it has a formidable appearance, reminiscent of the scenery, against which the actions of an opera by Richard Wagner are usually played.

The castle, which from a distance seemed empty and uninhabited, turned out to be our barracks. Soldiers were quartered in rooms with walls of extraordinary thickness, located in the fortress wall.

Sing along! - barks the sergeant major, when we come to the bridge, thrown over the moat.

She sang from the second platoon, seemingly quite scrawny, a thin and short soldier, with an unexpectedly high and strong voice writes the first stanza: "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alley ..."

French artist and writer.
Grew up in Alsace. Mumin's mother was a German woman by the name of Sajer, which allowed Mumin in 1942 to enroll in the German army under her mother's surname.
Guy Zayer fought on the Eastern Front. First, in the 19th company of an unknown unit in the rear support troops. Then as part of the "Great Germany" division. Participant of the Third Battle of Kharkov, Belgorod-Kharkov operation, Battle of the Dnieper, Defense of Bobruisk and battles in East Prussia. Two and a half years of service, which ended with his surrender to the Americans in 1945, were described by Guy Mumin in the book "The Forgotten Soldier" (fr. Le Soldat oublié; 1967), published under the signature of Guy Zayer. This book was reprinted many times, translated into different languages, including Russian, and is considered a vivid testimony to the everyday life of the German army, the life and customs of German soldiers. Translation of the book into Russian contains many errors and inaccuracies.
In France, however, Guy Mumin in to a greater extent known as an artist, author of numerous comics published since the early 1960s. in the leading comic magazines: "Cœurs Vaillants", "Fripounet", "Charlie Mensuel" and others. As an artist, Muminu is usually signed by the pseudonym Dmitry (French Dimitri). The Russian theme occupies a large place in the work of Mumin: in particular, he owns the comic strip "Raspoutitsa" (fr. Raspoutitsa; 1989) about the fate of a German soldier taken prisoner at Stalingrad, a series of 16 issues "Gulag" (fr. Le Goulag; 1978), depicting the USSR and Russia in a satirical manner, and other works.

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December 16, 2005

23:37 - Book: Guy Sayer - Forgotten Soldier.

In the Russian edition it is called " The last soldier of the Third Reich"The publishers can be understood - being published in the ex-USSR under the original name, it risked incurring suspicion of yet another shedding of tears over some local conflicts or loser sighs about the former might of the Soviet Army. And the Third Reich is understandable. : heroic Wehrmacht, nickel-plated merciless terminators with Schmeissers, glory and glory of the best army in Europe.

And the book is not about that at all. Rather, it really is about a Wehrmacht soldier. But this soldier is not German. He is French. And the book was written in French. Guy Sajer - Le Soldat Oublié... Sayer - Alsatian, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1942 as the greenest youth even not knowing how to speak German (!) And got from Europe straight to the snow fields of the winter of 1942/1943 on the Eastern Front. And I endured this brutal war in full. At first he served in supply units, and in the summer of 1943 hit volunteered for the division "Great Germany", where he fought to the very end.

And yet he is a German soldier. Why? Because he fought with the Germans for Germany. And he believed that he was doing his duty.

However, Sayer is least of all inclined to talk about debts to the Motherland. Without getting out of battles, he gradually has one duty - to his family and friends. The book is oversaturated with emotions, this is not Manstein's memoirs. No strategy, no Ostrogradsky equations. Where Manstein has an organized withdrawal of troops across the Dnieper - Sayer has a crowd of tattered soldiers at the crossing, under fire and bombs trying to climb on another loose raft on the Dnieper. And right into this crowd at the crossing the Soviet "thirty-four" rushed, simply crushing the Germans with caterpillars. Where Manstein has a successful operation to withdraw troops from the cauldron at Sayer - a frantic battle in which his platoon is mixed with the ground with artillery fire. Battles on the Dnieper, battles near Vinnitsa, battles near Lvov, battles near Memel, a terrible retreat to East Prussia. And surrender to the British.

He was released very quickly - like a Frenchman. He returned home to a foreign, even enemy French land. I hid my war. He even enlisted in the French army. And maybe even occupied Germany later.

In general - you will not envy.

The book is very good, maybe even the best I've read recently. Recommend.

PS. During the reading, I constantly remembered another, too screaming a book about forgotten soldiers -

The book was first published in France in 1967, in 69 - in Germany, in 71 it was translated into English, from which Russian translation was made in 2002. Everywhere it was highly praised by critics and readers who are confident in its authenticity. Military and historians have often cited it as a brilliant example of describing battles through the eyes of an infantry soldier. According to the American historian D. Nash, the book has long been used in the training of American soldiers who studied how war affects a person physically, psychologically and intellectually.
It was later revealed that the author of the book is the French artist and writer Guy Mouminoux (1927-). He took the surname of his German mother, Seier, to enlist in the German army. In France, M. has been known since the early 60's. as an artist, author of numerous comics (under the pseudonym Dmitry). The Russian theme occupies an important place in the work of M: for example, he has a comic strip "Raspoutitsa" (Raspoutitsa; 1989) about the fate of a German soldier taken prisoner at Stalingrad.
The hero of the book is a native of Alsace. His mother is German, his father is French. In the summer of 42, 16-year-old Guy volunteered for the Wehrmacht. After detailed training, he ended up as a driver on the Eastern Front. In the spring of 43, Mr .. S. enters the infantry in one of the most famous divisions of the SS "Great Germany", in whose ranks he stayed until the end of the war. His story about the trials he faced, which were many even for experienced soldiers, constitutes the main and most famous part of the book (a little over 250 pages). S.'s work became revolutionary for its time - the life of an ordinary soldier at the front had never been described so frankly and in detail. In the spring of 1945, he surrendered to the Americans, who quickly decided that he was a German soldier who had been sent home en masse, and not a French collaborator worthy of the gallows. Guy was released home, where he joined the French army.
I have two complaints about this book. The first is to the author. The second - to the translator. Let's start with the title. First, the original title of Guy Sajer's book is Le soldat oublié or The Forgotten Soldier (he became a forgotten soldier for his homeland, France, since he served in the German army during the war). Secondly, he was a private for a very short time, having risen to (at least) a corporal. True, S. himself admitted that he had no leadership qualities. Probably, this can be called not fundamental - the name was changed, the corporal is the same private, but questions about inaccuracies, alas, are not limited to this.
S. announced that he saw as his goal to describe the suffering and experiences of the soldier in the war. However, conversations, feelings, actions of 10-20 years ago, no matter how bright and significant they are, CANNOT be reproduced with full accuracy. And Sayer's book is full of this. It is clear that much has been thought / rethought, i.e. underwent alteration. So already in this respect, Sayer's book is an example of a hudlite, not a memoir.
For the first time, questions about the truth of these memoirs began to be asked only in the 1990s, and since then there has been a dispute whether these are real memories of the war with individual factual errors, or skillfully written fiction. Historians have expressed doubts about the reliability of S.'s book, pointing out inaccuracies in the names of military units and the names of officers, plot inconsistencies. From this point of view, S.'s book should be considered a historical novel (like Remarque's story "All Quiet on the Western Front"). In the opinion of others, these inaccuracies are not fundamental (S. forgot something or confused something, and he knew German badly), and in some cases they do not take place at all (something was caused by a discrepancy between German, French and English military terminology). However, there are moments that raise questions. There is not a single photograph of the author of those years, there are no photographs before or after the war. Is it all lost? Unlikely. In the German archives, documents on S.'s military service have not been preserved, which is also strange. There are actual errors: what he writes about the battles near Belgorod is completely wrong - the Germans recaptured the city in March 43, and not in the summer, and it was taken by another SS division.
The confusion was compounded by the translation. A. Danilin is an excellent translator, but he does not know military terminology at all. Here are examples of his blunders: the Germans had not engineers, but sappers (p. 32); the Mauser rifle is written with a capital letter (p.32, etc.); "Panzerdivision" (p. 46) is a tank division; soldiers receive not bullets for their rifles, but cartridges (p.67); there was a Walloon division, not a “Valunskaya” division (!) (p. 113); general-regiment. Guderian in 1943 did not command a division (p. 121), but was from 42 in Berlin the chief inspector of the armored forces; in Berlin there is a p. Spree, not Spree (p. 152). The Germans had 88-mm anti-aircraft guns, not 80-mm (p. 333). The patches with the name of the division (p. 130) were called sleeve cuffs. Military ranks are not explained (Hauptmann et al.). There were no sergeants in the Wehrmacht, there were sergeants and non-commissioned officers (p. 60 and others). In the Wehrmacht, British tanks Mark-2, -3 and -4 (p. 111-12, etc.) were not in service, there were P-1, -2, etc. until 6. They are also referred to as T-1, etc. There were no T-37 and KV-85 tanks (p. 309) in the Red Army, there were no grenade launchers (p. 241), there were mortars. We didn't have a 50mm cannon, we had a 45mm (and a 50mm mortar). Airplanes drop "four hundred and five hundred thousandth bombs" (p. 144) - what is this? Funnels 20 m wide (p. 261) - mb, feet? - from the fall of a conventional aircraft are not formed. Machine guns are called heavy, not powerful (p. 268). They are grabbed by the barrel, not the muzzle (p. 323). Get on your feet! (p.146) no, there is "Stand up!" Machine guns are quadruple, not "four-barreled" (p.357). My favorite pearl: “Complete order reigned. The wounded were buried ”(p. 365). Anti-aircraft guns (p. 432) are called anti-aircraft guns. For some reason, the translator left yards, miles, and feet throughout the text (p. 32 and others), although there are meters and kilometers.
When reading memoirs, it is important to believe in the author, in the fact that his text is not a fantasy, but a reality. Sayer is hard to believe. This book, for all its artistic merit, is a controversial example of MEMOIR literature about World War II.