Because these days torment was great
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Because these days torment was great is an autobiographical anti-war novel and factual report that Guy Mouminoux published under his pseudonym Guy Sajer in 1969 under the French original title " Le Soldat oublié " (Eng. "The forgotten soldier"). Sajer primarily deals with his personal and traumatic experiences as a soldier in the Panzergrenadier division “Greater Germany” in the German-Soviet war from 1942 to 1945. The novel was in the post-war years under the title “ The Forgotten Soldier ”, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries such as Great Britain , the USA and Canada very successful. In 2013, a new translation of the original French text was published, in which the original title of the book " The forgotten soldier " was retained.
content
Guy Sajer is 17 years old and comes from Alsace . His father is French and his mother is German. As a volunteer he takes, among others, with the division "Greater Germany" at the tank battle of Kursk in part and experiencing it in a rifle company "hell of war." Further stations are Charkow , Bjelgorod , the fighting on the Dnieper and Donets, the escape via the Romanian Carpathians to Poland , from there to the Memel in East Prussia , the shipment from Gdansk and the train journey to Hanover , where he is captured by the British. Years later he returned to France as a “homeless person” and in the post-war period did not find any connection to civilian life because he had chosen the “wrong” army at the time.
action
The action begins on July 18, 1942 in a military barracks near Leipzig . Like the war hero Rudel, Sajer wants to become a Stukapilot in the "Major Rudel" combat squadron. However, he failed the Luftwaffe's acceptance test and ended up in an infantry unit of the Wehrmacht . Training in the army is tough and exhausting. On September 15, 1942, the railroad transport began for him from Chemnitz via Dresden to Brest-Litowsk . With a short stop in Warsaw beforehand, they reach Białystok on the Polish-Soviet border. Here he learns about his intended use on the Eastern Front. For this purpose, Sajer and his comrades are prepared for life in the field and for their later military combat deployment in the USSR using brutal methods . These include forced marches in which marching songs are sung and shooting training. His platoon leader is Sergeant Laus. Another relocation to Minsk in Belarus follows . Here the half-French is assigned to the transport service on the taxiway as the passenger of the supply force . One of the most important tasks is clearing the runway from snow drifts so as not to impair the flow of goods to the eastern front. Out of sheer boredom, Sajer longs for his first “baptism of fire” and his first sharp battle. On the way he has a traumatic encounter with half-starved Soviet prisoners of war who are to be brought to the West as slave labor. On October 30th the march from Minsk to Kiev, 400 kilometers away, takes place . There he is placed under a truck transport unit under Major Uträner. The temperatures are currently still at −14 ° C. Sajer experienced his first firefight with partisans on a railway line, in which two people were killed. Meanwhile the temperatures drop to −25 to −32 ° C. In snowstorms, which let the cold drop again to -37 ° C, Sajer's unit suffers severe frostbite. The failures are high and the low calorie diet makes the general situation worse.
The 126th taxiway group, to which Sajer was assigned, was initially ordered to supply the 6th Army , which was trapped near Stalingrad , with essential goods. But then they have to march to Kharkov . On the way, the convoy is attacked and decimated by Soviet fighter pilots. On another occasion, Sajer gets to know the horrors of a German troop formation station where the severely injured are operated on as part of an emergency operation. Furthermore, he experiences how the case of Stalingrad is “heroized” propagandistically and how Field Marshal Paulus is awarded the Iron Cross First Class . Sajer experiences how older soldiers receive this report with defeatism , but the younger ones with misunderstood heroism and the desire to free Stalingrad.
At the beginning of March 1943, his unit reached a supply center 60 to 80 kilometers away from Kharkov, around which strong field fortifications had been built in the course of the fighting. The 19th taxiway company is relocated to the east in another grueling forced march through the snowy landscape and supplies an infantry battalion there with food and ammunition . Said unit defends a section of the bank on the Don . Sajer's eight-man group orientates itself on a telephone cable in order to reach the company assigned to it on an extremely arduous route with the supply sledge through snow-covered trenches and free plans. In doing so, they repeatedly come under the weaponry range of advanced Soviet posts and can only do their job by constantly risking their lives. Small arms and artillery shells cause the first casualties, so supplies are only carried out at night. At this point Sajer experiences his personal limits of the bearable. A look through binoculars shows the icy bank of the Don, on which hundreds of fallen Russians lie. In the meantime, the thaw sets in. The young recruits Sajer, Halls, Lensen and Olensheim are given the prospect of being accepted into the fighting troops, who feel honored as a result. They ignore the warnings of older soldiers. Winter is over and the temperatures are rising suddenly from -25 ° C to + 6 ° C again and turn the landscape into impassable mud ( Rasputitsa ). For a short period of time there was calm until the Red Army under General Zhukov launched a new spring offensive with artillery attacks. This development and the surprising advance of the enemy in the direction of Kharkov have the consequence that a large-scale withdrawal of the Wehrmacht is initiated. Sajer accompanies a transport of wounded and ends up in the battle of the Donets .
When infantry officers speak to him in the field, he and his comrades are promised 14 days' leave if they "voluntarily" join the fighting force. 300 men report, including Sajer, Halls, Olensheim and Lensen. Sajer, whose military designation from now on was Gefreiter Sajer, G., 100/1010 G4. Seventeenth Battalion, Panzer Grenadier Division Greater Germany, G. South. reads and the others are transferred by truck to the training camp of the Panzer Grenadier Division "Greater Germany" in Aktyrkha. Before that, they will witness how Soviet prisoners of war who allegedly looted German soldiers were sadistically killed with hand grenades. Your new division holds a defensive section in the central Russian steppe in the Kursk - Bjelgorod section. But first they get the promised vacation days, which Sajer spends first in Magdeburg and then in Berlin . Both are cities that are currently badly affected by bombing. In doing so, Sajer runs the constant risk that the military police will tear up his leave certificate and send him back to the front, as was the case with some of his comrades. Sajer visits the Neubach family and their daughter Paula. The two fall in love and spend a romantic night together, accompanied by the glow of the heavy bombing. They promise to see each other again.
The vacation is over and Sajer has to return to the Eastern Front. He is happy when he discovers his comrade and friend Lensen in the front control center in Poznan . Together with Comrade Halls they march into Camp F of the Panzer Grenadier Division "Greater Germany". Captain Fink is their new instructor and uses extremely brutal and inhuman methods to prepare them for their new combat mission as grenadiers. Fink makes it clear to them that from now on they will serve in an elite division and places the highest demands on camaraderie , perseverance and physical performance. The following weeks turned into an ordeal for Sajer and his comrades. The day begins with morning exercise, then Captain Fink lets the training company lie down and strides over their bodies. The next exercise is about transporting the wounded. One group drags the wounded over a long period of time and a long distance, until many collapse from complete physical exhaustion. In another, Captain Fink fires his pistol at a group that is sliding towards him. In addition, close-to-combat anti-tank combat is very important. During the forced marches, they have to sing marching songs like “Erika” or “ The good comrade ”. During the 36-hour training units in the heat of the Russian summer, there are high absences, serious injuries and even fatal accidents. The last remnants of individualism or disobedience are rudely driven out of the young soldiers. In the run-up to the Battle of Bjelgorod, Captain Fink said goodbye to the new soldiers from "Greater Germany" in a solemn ceremony.
Bjelgorod is occupied by the Red Army and its outposts extend to the positions of the "GD" division. Sajer reports that at least 180,000 German soldiers were involved in the Battle of Bjelgorod. From Silesia was SS Division "Hitler Youth" (18,000 men) marched to intervene there with. Sajer takes part in a nightly shock and security squad that ends in a fiasco. The mostly very young soldiers of the SS division "HJ" suffer devastating losses. Days later, Sajer's company had to defend a small village and was overrun by the enemy after heavy fighting. As if by a miracle, Sajer survived the inferno.
The rest of the book deals with Sajer's experiences during the fighting for retreat in autumn 1943. He experiences the breakthrough at Konotop and flees across the Dnieper . In the spring of 1944, Hauptmann Wesreidau dies when his Kübelwagen drives over a mine. Instead of getting home leave, Sajer is used against partisans . The heavily decimated division GD is being reorganized in Poland and has to fight one last time in the Ukraine . But the advance of the Red Army can no longer be stopped. Sajer fled from southern Poland to East Prussia, from Pillau , Kahlberg and Danzig , to embarkation in Gotenhafen . It goes over the Hela peninsula to Denmark and Kiel. And from there to Hanover in British captivity. Finally, Sajer arrives in France , where he meets his mother again. He was accepted into the French post-war army, but was released after ten months. The novel closes with the following sentences:
“And then there is only one person I have to forget. His name was Sajer. I think I have forgiven him. "
History of origin
The story arose after the war through handwritten entries in numerous exercise books. Sajer's intention in writing the story should be to present his memories “without any whitewash”. It was a concern of his “to translate the screams of the slaughterhouse with the greatest possible intensity” in order to give those who weren't there at the time, using easily understandable language, an impression that they had been there after all.
Doubts about authenticity
Several historians have raised doubts about the authenticity of the novel. Some quotes are incorrectly reproduced, while other details can no longer be verified due to the lack of surviving contemporary witnesses and documents. Acceptance as a volunteer in the elite unit “Greater Germany”, one of the strongest and most prestigious German combat units in 1943, may be questioned. A 17th battalion, as he describes it, never existed in the structure of this unit. Instead a 17th department. Sajer reports that in the course of the Russian campaign he repeatedly had to serve in quickly raised "ad hoc combat groups". In the battle for Kursk his unit had to replace the 5th Company, which however never existed in the form he described. The alleged name of his company commander at the time, Captain Wesreidau, could no longer be proven on the basis of the military logbooks. Nash admits, however, that due to the enormous losses of "Greater Germany", which were much higher than any other comparable unit, various lists of names and staffing lists were lost in the course of the fighting.
Lieutenant Joachim Schafmeister-Berckholtz, who served in the infantry division "Greater Germany" in the same period as Sajer, had confirmed in a letter the historical plausibility of the events at that time, as they were pointed out by Sajer. For his part, the author wrote that “Because these days torment was great” should represent very personal notes from his point of view, in which he was moving in a very chaotic phase of German military history, and not a serious historical study of the Second World War.
“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. "
“I never intended to write a history book. On the contrary, I have written about my innermost and felt experiences that are related to the Second World War I experienced. "
In 1997, in a letter to US historian Douglas Nash, Sayer emphasized the non-technical and anecdotal nature of his work and admitted that apart from emotional outbursts, he had made numerous mistakes. Therefore, under no circumstances should the novel be viewed as strategic or chronological evidence. The British historian Alan Clark mentions in his book Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict 1941–1945 that Sajer, author of The Forgotten Soldier, served on the Eastern Front for three years without interruption.
people
- Guy Sajer: protagonist and first-person narrator
- Sergeant Laus: Sajer's first platoon leader from his apprenticeship at Brest-Litovsk
- Halls: Comrade from Sajer's unit. Halls is big and hungry.
- Lensen: Sajer's friend
- Olensheim: Sajer's friend
- Morvan: Sajer's comrade
- Uterbeick: Sajer's comrade
- "The old man": A veteran on the Eastern Front who befriends Sajer during their time together at "Großdeutschland", later identified as August Wiener
linguistic style
“In this elite training camp - every division with a name was considered an elite - we sweated blood and water. Either you ended up in the hospital after seven days, or you got through it, got accepted into the division and went to the front, where things got worse. We marched through a kind of portal that had been set up between the trees of the forest that stretched to the northeast. Our NCOs let us sing 'The clouds are drawn' at the top of our heads, our boots stamped the forest floor, and we read the slogan that adorned the portal in large black letters on a white background: 'We are born to die.' "
The crisis of meaning in his old homeland is documented in the following quote:
“'Mannheim', he says, 'It's with the Boches, isn't it?' 'No monsieur', I replied honestly, 'It's in Germany'. "
reception
The US Army Command, as well as the United States Marines Corps, call Sajer's “Because these days torment was great” as a key novel and has therefore been included in a list of recommended books about World War II.
filming
In 2008, a planned film adaptation of the material was announced on locations in Eastern Europe. In July 2009, however, it was announced by director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Michael Frost Beckner that the project would not be pursued further due to funding problems for the adaptation, which was estimated at 70 million US dollars.
Text output
- Guy Sajer: Because torment was great these days (original title: Le Soldat oublié , The Forgotten Soldier in the English language edition, new edition Potomoc Books Inc, November 2001). Molden-Verlag, 1969, ISBN 978-1-57488-286-5 .
- Guy Sajer: Le Soldat Oublié. Editions Robert Laffont, France, 1967.
- Guy Sajer: The Forgotten Soldier. Weidenfeld & Nicholson Ltd, Great Britain 1971 (translation rights Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1971).
- Guy Sajer: The Forgotten Soldier. Reprint, The Penguin Group, Harmondsworth, UK, 1988.
- Guy Sajer: The forgotten soldier. New translation, Aachen: Helios, 2016. ISBN 978-3-86933-146-1
Web links
- A Frenchman in the Wehrmacht - An Unbiased Account of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front, Book Essay on: Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier , by Jonathan Kraetsch, May 13, 2009
Notes and individual references
- ↑ At that time the “Autobahn” and the most important main traffic axis in the direction of Brest - Minsk - Moscow
- ↑ 35 km from Romny et al. 250 km from Bjelgorod away
- ↑ multiple mentions in the Wehrmacht report
- ↑ Citadel Company
- ↑ Guy Sajer: Because torment was great these days, product description on Amazon
- ↑ a b c d The Forgotten Soldier
- ↑ Dr. Robert H. Berlin: Historical Bibliography No. 8, Military Classics, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 66027-6900, Combat Studies Institute
- ↑ Verhoeven involved with WWI story, “The Forgotten Soldier”, Movie Mail, July 22, 2008 ( Memento of the original from May 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Verhoeven attached to direct “The Forgotten Soldier”, Screendaily, 2008
- ↑ A Look Back At Paul Verhoeven's Canceled WW2 Epic, Manly Movie Net, July 12, 2014 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
