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"As a 15-year-old boy I fought briefly in a war. My fight was neither noble nor heroic. I saw the horrors that no 15-year-old boy should ever see. I came into war purely by happenstance, and survived it purely by luck."
Gerhardt B. Thamm grew up on his grandfather's farm in Lower Silesia, the hinterlands of Germany. In early 1945 this land, near the Czechoslovakian and Polish borders, became a battleground. The Soviets captured Lower Silesia in February, and Thamm, like many of his Hitler Youth high school classmates, was conscripted to fight on the Eastern Front until the last few days of World War II, experiencing firsthand fearsome barbarity and atrocity. Thamm's family was deported from Silesia in 1946 to West Germany. Gerhardt Thamm arrived in the United States in 1948. The 17-year-old Thamm joined the U.S. Army the same year and served more than 20 years as an enlisted man.
"Maybe, just maybe, I fought in this war to escape the barbarity. Maybe I wrote this book to still the memories."
Contents
Table of Contents
Preface
Prologue
PART ONE : THEWAY IT HAD BEEN
PART TWO : ON THE HOME FRONT
1. 1939
2. 1940
3. 1941
4. 1942
5. 1943
6. 1944
7. 1945
PART THREE : GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG (APOCALYPSE)
8. The Omen
9. Distant Thunder
10. Flight
11. Retreat into the Sudeten Mountains
PART FOUR : BOY SOLDIERS
12. Oh, to Be a Soldier
13. Sergeant "One-Eye"
14. Frontline Duty
15. The "Forgotten Front"
16. The Russian Boy
17. "Routine" Patrol
18. Ah, Natascha
19. To the Bitter End
Postscript: Strangers in Their Own Land
Notes
Index



