Mortar Gunner on the Eastern Front Volume I PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Mortar Gunner on the Eastern Front Volume I PDF full book. Access full book title Mortar Gunner on the Eastern Front Volume I by Hans Heinz Rehfeldt. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Hans Heinz Rehfeldt
Publisher: Greenhill Books
ISBN: 1784383627
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 521
Get Book Here
Book Description
The first volume of the World War II diaries of Nazi mortar gunner constantly pushed to the brink of death while fighting against Russia. Following his Abitur (A-levels) in 1940, Hans Heinz Rehfeldt volunteered for Germany’s Panzer Arm but was trained on the heavy mortar and heavy MG with Grossdeutschland Division. In 1941, he was on the Front fighting for the city of Tula, south of Moscow. Battling in freezing conditions without winter clothes, they resorted to using those taken from Soviet corpses. In 1942, his battalion fought near Oriel, suffered heavy losses, and disbanded. Ill with frostbitten legs, Rehfeldt was treated in hospital, and once recovered, was dispatched back to the Front. Following various battles (Werch, Bolchov) his battalion again suffered heavy losses and it merged. In agony from severe frostbite to his legs, Rehfeldt defied the odds and astonished his surgeon when he walked again. He was promoted from Gunner to Trained Private Soldier in 1942, and to Corporal for bravery in the field in 1943. He was also awarded numerous honors, including the Wound Badge and the Infantry Assault Badge. On 3 May 1945, he was captured by U.S. Forces and held as a POW for one month in a camp at Waschow before internment in Holstein where he was released in July 1945, after agreeing to work on the land. Then, in December 1945, he put his past behind him and began studying for his future career: veterinary medicine.
Author: Hans Heinz Rehfeldt
Publisher: Greenhill Books
ISBN: 1784383627
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 521
Get Book Here
Book Description
The first volume of the World War II diaries of Nazi mortar gunner constantly pushed to the brink of death while fighting against Russia. Following his Abitur (A-levels) in 1940, Hans Heinz Rehfeldt volunteered for Germany’s Panzer Arm but was trained on the heavy mortar and heavy MG with Grossdeutschland Division. In 1941, he was on the Front fighting for the city of Tula, south of Moscow. Battling in freezing conditions without winter clothes, they resorted to using those taken from Soviet corpses. In 1942, his battalion fought near Oriel, suffered heavy losses, and disbanded. Ill with frostbitten legs, Rehfeldt was treated in hospital, and once recovered, was dispatched back to the Front. Following various battles (Werch, Bolchov) his battalion again suffered heavy losses and it merged. In agony from severe frostbite to his legs, Rehfeldt defied the odds and astonished his surgeon when he walked again. He was promoted from Gunner to Trained Private Soldier in 1942, and to Corporal for bravery in the field in 1943. He was also awarded numerous honors, including the Wound Badge and the Infantry Assault Badge. On 3 May 1945, he was captured by U.S. Forces and held as a POW for one month in a camp at Waschow before internment in Holstein where he was released in July 1945, after agreeing to work on the land. Then, in December 1945, he put his past behind him and began studying for his future career: veterinary medicine.
Author: Hans Heinz Rehfeldt
Publisher: Greenhill Books
ISBN: 178438366X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 469
Get Book Here
Book Description
This second volume of a Nazi soldier’s WWII diary continues the chronicle of his experiences on the Easter Front. A member of the Hitler Youth before the outbreak of World War II, Hans Heinz Rehfeldt volunteered for the Grossdeutschland’s panzer arm in 1940 and fought with them for nearly the entire war. He was decorated with the Iron Cross First and Second Class, the Eastern Front Medal, the Close Combat Clasp, and the Infantry Assault Badge. His diaries offer a historically significant chronicle of German military actions on the Eastern Front as well as a rare look inside the mind of a committed Nazi soldier. This second volume of Rehfeldt’s wartime diary covers his experience as a platoon commander in Romania, East Prussia and Lithuania during 1944. After being transferred by ship from Memel to Königsberg later that year, he took part in the battles for Ostprussen. Fleeing Russian imprisonment, he traveled west, where he fell into American captivity on May 3rd, 1945. In July, he was released and returned home.
Author: Hans Heinz Rehfeldt
Publisher: Greenhill Books
ISBN: 1784383686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Get Book Here
Book Description
Returning to his old unit, the grenade launcher, in May 1944, he experienced the heavy defensive battles in Romania as a platoon commander and from August 1944 in East Prussia and Lithuania. After being transferred by ship from Memel to Königsberg in late 1944, he took part in the battles for Ostprussen in the winter of 1944/1945. Constantly exposed to the attacks of Russian bombers and fighter planes and severely wounded by shrapnel on the leg, he manages, with the help of a Russian volunteer and a horse-drawn vehicle from Balga to Rosenberg, from there by ship transport via Pillau to ?winouj?cie and by train to Schwerin. Fleeing the impending Russian imprisonment to the west, he falls into American captivity on 3 May 1945 and is released in July 1945 in the home. Memories of a corporal and platoon commander in the grenade launcher 1943-1945
Author: Erhard Steiniger
Publisher: Greenhill Books
ISBN: 1784386197
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Get Book Here
Book Description
The true and dramatic testimony of a German grenadier during World War II. Erhard Steiniger joined his Wehrmacht unit on 12 October 1940 as a radio operator, a role which required his constant presence with troops at the Front, right during combat. On 22 June 1941, he accompanied his division to Lithuania where he experienced the catastrophic first day of Operation Barbarossa. He later witnessed intense clashes during the conquest of the Baltic islands and the battles leading up to Leningrad on the Volkhov and Lake Ladoga. He describes the retreat from battles in Estonia, Kurland and East Prussia and his eventual surrender and captivity in Siberia. He finally returned to Germany in October 1949, a broken man. From the first page to the last, this is a captivating eyewitness account of the horrors of war. Praise for Radio Operator on the Eastern Front “This often subdued, but continuously hypnotic, memoir is rare since it offers so much information, knowledge, and insight about the enemy from the beginning of the war on the Eastern Front right up to Steiniger’s release from a prison camp in Russia and return to Germany in 1949.” —ARGunners.com “Witting testimony of a German radio operator—a extraordinary account from a German perspective. Fascinating.” —Books Monthly
Author: Arno Sauer
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 152673334X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Get Book Here
Book Description
A Nazi infantryman recalls the horrors of combat against the Soviet Union in this WWII memoir as told to his son. Friedrich “Fritz” Sauer was posted to the Eastern Front in 1942. A soldier in the 132nd Infantry Division, he was deployed in Hitler’s grand invasion of Russia. But instead of the swift knockout blow the Germans had anticipated, Operation Barbarossa ground on for almost four years. Sent first to the Crimea and then the region around Leningrad, Fritz experienced horrors of all kinds. In this memoir, Fritz recalls losing his best friend to a sniper, rescuing the body of a fallen comrade from No Man’s Land, enduring Soviet tank assaults, and his own wounding during a counterattack. Fritz was later transferred to a tank assault regiment where, on a mission to contact another unit, he lost his way in the snow. After sheltering with a farmer’s family, Fritz headed west to flee the advancing Red Army. His subsequent journey home took many twists and turns.
Author: Christine Alexander
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 161200024X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Get Book Here
Book Description
“Remarkable personal journals . . revealing the combat experience of the German-Russian War as seldom seen before . . . a harrowing yet poignant story” (Military Times). Hans Roth was a member of the anti-tank panzerjager battalion, 299th Infantry Division, attached to the Sixth Army, as the invasion of Russia began. As events transpired, he recorded the tension as the Germans deployed on the Soviet frontier in June 1941. Then, a firestorm broke loose as the Wehrmacht tore across the front, forging into the primitive vastness of the East. During the Kiev encirclement, Roth’s unit was under constant attack as the Soviets desperately tried to break through the German ring. At one point, after the enemy had finally been beaten, a friend serving with the SS led him to a site—possibly Babi Yar—where he witnessed civilians being massacred. After suffering through a brutal winter against apparently endless Russian reserves, his division went on the offensive again when the Germans drove toward Stalingrad. In these journals, attacks and counterattacks are described in you-are-there detail. Roth wrote privately, as if to keep himself sane, knowing his honest accounts of the horrors in the East could never pass Wehrmacht censors. When the Soviet counteroffensive of winter 1942 begins, his unit is stationed alongside the Italian 8th Army, and his observations of its collapse, as opposed to the reaction of the German troops sent to stiffen its front, are of special fascination. Roth’s three journals were discovered many years after his disappearance, tucked away in the home of his brother. After his brother’s death, his family discovered them and sent them to Rosel, Roth’s wife. In time, Rosel handed down the journals to Erika, Roth’s only daughter, who had emigrated to America. Roth was likely working on a fourth journal before he was reported missing in action in July 1944. Although his ultimate fate remains unknown, what he did leave behind, now finally revealed, is an incredible firsthand account of the horrific war the Germans waged in Russia.
Author: Gunter Koschorrek
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1848325967
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317
Get Book Here
Book Description
Günter Koschorrek wrote his illicit diary on any scraps of paper he could lay his hands on, storing them with his mother on infrequent trips home on leave. The diary went missing, and it was not until he was reunited with his daughter in America some forty years later that it came to light and became Blood Red Snow. The authors excitement at the first encounter with the enemy in the Russian Steppe is obvious. Later, the horror and confusion of fighting in the streets of Stalingrad are brought to life by his descriptions of the others in his unit their differing manners and techniques for dealing with the squalor and death. He is also posted to Romania and Italy, assignments he remembers fondly compared to his time on the Eastern Front. This book stands as a memorial to the huge numbers on both sides who did not survive and is, some six decades later, the fulfilment of a responsibility the author feels to honour the memory of those who perished.
Author: Mansur Abdulin
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 184415145X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Get Book Here
Book Description
Mansur Abdulin fought in the front ranks of the Soviet infantry against the German invaders at Stalingrad, Kursk and on the banks of the Dnieper. This is his extraordinary story. His vivid inside view of a ruthless war on the Eastern Front gives a rare insight into the reality of the fighting and into the tactics and mentality of the Soviet army. In his own words, and with a remarkable clarity of recall, he describes what combat was like on the ground, face to face with a skilled, deadly and increasingly desperate enemy.
Author: Infantry School (U.S.)
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428916911
Category : Infantry drill and tactics
Languages : en
Pages : 428
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Joseph Farris
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1426208170
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Get Book Here
Book Description
"New Yorker cartoonist and painter Joseph Farris chronicles his experience in World War II through letters and sketches that he wrote at the time. The letters, some of which are reproduced as facsimiles, are illustrated with photographs, artifacts, and other archival documents as well as newly commissioned maps. The voice of the 20-something narrator in the letters is balanced with the voice of the man today, who interweaves his own commentary into the book to explain gaps in the correspondence. All told, the book is a rich and poignant glimpse at the experience of one man's journey through the European theater of war"--
