I was born in the countryside. My family tended to a farm in Bavaria for generations too many to count, but I never did like the countryside all that much; I’ve always been a city dweller at heart. The crowded streets, everybody going about their own business; it created a sense of direction and progress that the countryside just couldn’t match.

Back during the farm years, I was a single child and my parents doted on me quite a lot when I was young, it was a simple but hard life. We were not wealthy, but we found comfort in our neighbors and I had a memorable childhood playing with the children of nearby families. My mother would tell the best tales about the things my grandparents did in their lifetime. My father and I would sit with her beside a kindled fire under the night sky, listening to her stories that I thought I would forever remember. My father never knew his parents, so I guess in a way, he wished he was a part of my mother’s stories. Those nights I really did enjoy, but something inside me cried out for a sense of purpose, to do something with my life. I always knew this something was not to be found in the countryside, but because of my parents’ ill health, I stayed to tend to them.

My parents did their best to help around the farm but their poor health meant that they could only watch me most of the time. A few years before the war broke out, my mother died working in the fields. She just collapsed and no matter what we did, my father and I couldn’t get her to move again. My father was grief stricken, he would stare at her possessions, like a wolf entranced by the warm and loving glow of the moon, but forever out of its reach. A few months after my mother’s death, my father passed away too, probably from sadness, and then I was alone.

After my parents died, there was little reason for me to stay alone in the countryside. I heard of all the new opportunities in the cities and I was desperate to grasp these. At the time, Berlin seemed like the best place to go because it was the center of the ‘Third Reich’, and so, together with Hudel, Hinkel, Kant and Wittman, some of my closest childhood friends, we set out for the city, eager to make a purpose for ourselves.

The first year in Berlin was very rough. I was not familiar with the lifestyle, the overwhelming choice of goods and the sheer number of people made my head spin. Eventually though, I found a job as a supply distributor in Berlin and rented a nice little room in the city with Hinkel and Kant. Again, life was hard, but it was no longer as simple as in the countryside. For the first time in over a year, I felt happy.

A year later Germany enforced conscription, it was very widely enforced. “A way to serve the fatherland”, “a way to make something of yourself” they said. Well, I was not too enthusiastic, but Hinkel and Kant certainly bought into it and convinced me to join too. “Why not?” I thought, it would be another way for me to make something of myself, and I didn’t want my friends to think of me any differently. I cared for them deeply, and I knew they felt the same.

When the war began, Hinkel was immediately separated from us and transferred elsewhere. Kant and I missed him dearly, but our friendship kept the two of us going. Years passed and it looked like Germany was going to win the war, enemy upon enemy were defeated in quick succession. Then the Führer began Barbarossa, and for a time we were so successful that Kant and I didn’t see any direct action until Stalingrad. But Stalingrad was not just a gradual learning process for us. No, Stalingrad was this cesspit of violence and death that even the most hardened of veterans in our company wanted to leave. I had seen plenty of dead bodies on the road to Stalingrad, but in that damned Kessel within Stalingrad, bodies were stacked up so high you could make fortifications from them, and some men did just that, it was a total nightmare. One day, news came to us that they were evacuating men from the Kessel by plane and I immediately pleaded with Kant to evacuate with me. Call me a coward if you like, but I had never seen a man shot until that evacuation. The evacuation plane was full of men desperate to escape. I managed to climb onto the plane as it was about to leave but Kant trailed behind, he was not going to make it. I couldn’t leave him behind, and as I was about to jump out of the plane I saw the grimmest of fates. Kant’s head simply... exploded. I didn’t know what to think at the time but it was likely a Soviet sniper shot him. It’s impossible to describe that sense of horror mixed with sorrow when you see something like that. After that day, all I wanted to do was get out of the war, but desertion didn’t occur to me until much later.

After Stalingrad I was re-allocated further back on the Eastern Front, I was put under the command of a man called Wilhelm Apel. I was initially weary of talking to anyone; losing Kant took its toll on me. I didn’t want to make friends again, losing them was just too much to bear. But Apel was very much a ‘soldier’s soldier’. He knew how to get to you, he would keep coming back to you until you opened up to him, and gradually I confided in him my deepest fears and my hatred for this war, I learnt how to trust again, it felt good.

Come early 1943 and the Soviets are on the offensive. I and the rest of Apel’s men were called to defend Kursk from the Soviets. That battle was a nightmare for us; we were lightly armed infantrymen in the biggest slaughter of tanks the world had probably ever seen. Almost everyone under Apel’s command died at Kursk, but about a dozen of us survived that battle. When the order came to withdraw, Apel did not hesitate, I was glad, everyone left was glad. We spent the next few months very far behind the frontlines. We did not participate in the second offensive at Kursk, instead Apel had orders to link us up with a column of Panzers and a few men and take everyone back within German borders.

It was pretty ruthless walking, the days were getting colder and sitting on the tanks became too cold so we had to walk to keep warm. One day we met up with a small garrison of Wehrmacht soldiers and Apel received fresh orders via radio to collect the guards from a nearby ‘labour camp’, as Apel described it.

Nobody wanted to go and fetch these labour camp guards. Everyone was tired and weary from walking day and night. When Apel asked for a volunteer to pick up the guards later, nobody raised even an eyebrow. Apel looked slightly amused, he took out a deck of cards and told us each to draw a card, whoever drew the ace of spades would be the one to go escort the guards back to the column. With these words, everyone began to move, and one by one they each drew a card. I was last to draw and Apel looked at me as if to examine my fate and uttered “good luck”. I drew the card, and so I guess our journey began...