Willy Peter Reese (1921–1944)

This is an autobiography of sorts. More journal than anything else. The author writes mainly in prose. So much so that it is like being inside someones head with thoughts darting all about on beauty, hope, no hope, war, danger, sunlight, moonlight, not being fitted for war, wanting to go home, not caring if death catches up with you, or the horror of seeing a comrade killed by your side. A bit chaotic.

Perhaps the most poignant part was when he was wounded and recovering in a hospital ward and had some time to talk to the night nurse for a bit alone. She told him what it was like to be a nurse. To see men at their worst and weakest. To help them, and then slowly as the men got better to watch as their care was returned with innuendo, groping, and sexual advances. The nurses wanted to fall in love and settle down one day, but they burned out one by one. Even if one man seemed different than the rest eventually they sounded just like the others.

If you want to read about this front from a ordinary soldier's perspective I recommend The Winter Soldier over this brief book.… (más)

There are no heroes in this war story. The author wrote this book from notes and journals he kept while serving with the German Wehrmacht on the Russian Front in World War II. The book recounts a young man's journey from a life filled with family, books, poetry, and the youthful dreams of a happy future to the bleak reality of more than three years of conscription as a soldier assigned to the hell of the Russian Front. Willy Peter Reese was never a member of the Nazi party, but he did have a pride in his nation. He describes his journey with, at first, an almost poetic touch, but the realities of war soon wipe out his his youthful exuberance. He is beaten down and forever changed by the cruelty, deprivation, pain, and suffering he witnesses. He is sickened not only by what he sees, but by what he does. The war has such a profound effect upon him that it seems to become an essential part of him. When he he is home on sick leave, he feels he no longer belongs there. His experiences in the war have become so ingrained in him that he feels lost when he is removed from it. Intellectually he is repulsed by what he has seen, done, and who he has become. During a leave from the fighting in 1944, he could find relief only in alcohol and in writing about his descent into hell. Soon after, Willy Peter Reese answered the call of his demons one last time. He returned to the fighting on the Russian Front, never to return home. War changes the conquerors as well as the conquered.… (más)