大象传媒

My wife's grandfather who was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1939, spent the next 6 years away from home fighting. He was in Dunkirk on the German side ( ironically my mother's father was at dunkirk in the british army) (Georg said that whilst in Dunkerque he picked up a very nice motorbike , a norton in fact, polished it up nicely only to have his officer take it off him). He ended up in the 25th panzer grenadiers , part of army group vistula in the final battle for berlin. Here he was mortared and captured . The russian soldiers who captured them where from a very rural area of Russia , they found out Georg's collegue was a watch maker and saw he was wearing a watch , the russian demanded that he make 2 watch's from the 1 , he said he couldn't so they shot him dead on the spot.
The Russians had some potatoes with them which were muddy , they tried to wash them in a toilet and of course they were flushed away, whereupon they went crazy and threatened to shoot Georg for sabotage.
Georg was then taken to a slave labour camp for another 5 years in Russia. On his return home some 11 years later to Weiherhammer in Bavaria his teenage children didn't recognise him and ran away from him. He was awarded 11 medals including the Iron cross. He would always eat anything and everything , he would say that if we had known hunger like he had over those lean years we would do the same.
We moan about our lives today , but I think the late Georg had a tough old time of it. He unfortunately died aged 80

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