A best seller and critical success in France and Germany, "The Forgotten Soldier" is an epic chronicle of an individual caught in the vast, faceless horror of total war. Guy Sajer was sixteen years old and living in Alsace when, in July 1942, he donned the Wehrmacht uniform. The son of a French father and a German mother, he could just as easily have become a French soldier and, indeed, at sixteen, "still playing with me Meccano set," didn't really care which uniform he put on. In fact, the whole idea of soldering and war seemed rather an exciting adventure. And so it goes-very well at first with the Wehrmacht still winning on every front through Poland and into Russia. Because of his youth Sajer is attached to a supply rather than a combat unit. It is October, supplies and clothing are adequate, and the job of supplying Von Paulus' Sixth Army at Stalingrad, 1,000 miles away, still seems perfectly feasible. Then in November the Russian winter begins, and the cold, the snow and the partisans make the movement of supply convoys extremely difficult. And by now young Sajer knows about war, and that to survive the Russian winter is a desperate struggle in itself. Yet even after this first winter he doesn't know the true horror. Gradually the author changes from a young soldier experiencing a new dimension in his life to a very small pawn caught in a pitiless struggle between two modern industrial giants. Survival is the one and only goal, and even that is reduced to an instinctual drive without any beginning or justification or reason. In the summer of 1943 Sajer joins the elite "Gross Deutschland" division as a front line soldier. He is involved in the great battles in the Ukraine, from Kursk to Kharkov, in mud, in snow, in bitter cold, under the terrifying Russian artillery, against the endless Russian assault waves who move forward oblivious of losses. Lacking enough men and supplies, and facing odds of twenty to one, the "Gross Deutschland" fights desperately to stem the Russian advance. The Battle of Belgorod and the crossing of the Dnieper, through part of the German retreat, become almost victories of achievement and endurance in this apocalyptic saga. Later on the German retreat outdistances the pursuing Russian armies, but fighting continues in an equally savage dimension as the partisans hurry and press home their attacks. Worn by fatigue, shock and hunger, yet still miraculously preserving some form of unity and discipline, Sajer and his companions-the last survivors of this elite German division-straggle through Rumania into Poland. In the winter of 1944-1945 they make one last desperate and doomed effort in Prussia to prevent the Russian hordes from entering the "Fatherland." There is the agony of Memel and Danzig, the mass exodus of millions fleeing toward the West and away from the dreaded Russians. Finally, sick, wounded, utterly exhausted and incapable of further action, Sajer is taken prisoner by the English in Hannover. If this story of the war in Russia is like no other, if it surpasses in truth, in pain and in scope everything else that has been written, it is not only because the author has really experienced everything he writes about; it is not only because under the pen the words cold, hunger, sickness, blood and fear take on the terrible force of complete reality. It is also because Sajer is able to make you see and feel what happened to him with extraordinary power and vividness. The reader never doubts the truth, always realizes that this is the way it was-that this was the courage, the fear, the misery and the torment of a young man who becomes a very small part of a great world war, and who miraculously survives to go home and tell his story.

Translation of Le Soldat oublié.

Author's preface -- Prologue / Part I. Russia: Autumn, 1942. Toward Stalingrad -- The front -- The march to the rear / Part II. "The Gross Deutschland": spring, 1943-summer, 1943. Leave -- Training for an elite division -- Belgorod / Part III. The retreat: autumn, 1943. The new front -- The breakthrough at Konotop -- Crossing the Dnieper / Part IV. To the west: winter, 1943-summer, 1944. "Gott mit uns" -- Cancelled leave -- Red tanks -- The third retreat -- Return to Poland -- Return to the Ukraine / Part V. The end: autumn, 1944-spring, 1945. From Poland to East Prussia -- Memel -- Calvary -- The west / Epilogue: return.