Against the Odds

 John A lent me this book recently, 'Against the Odds' by John Stieber. 

Now, while there are plenty of WW2 German Generals and officers memoirs, there aren't too many from an ORs  point of view.

Stieber was raised in the UK and Ireland but was at boarding school in Germany when war broke out, and as his father was Austrian, rather than being interned he went through the usual route for German children - Jungvolk, Hitler Jugend, then while he was still at school, serving in a Flak battery overnight as a Flakhelferin in 1943 then drafted into the RAD in 1944. After his mandatory labour service he was drafted into the Army, but as he didn't want to be conscripted into the SS, he'd already applied to  FJ Panzer Division Herman Goering. He was accepted and served there as a Flak gunner on SP 20mm and 37mm guns until the end of the war on the Eastern Front, while the HG Division expanded to a full Panzer Corps and fought a series of desperate defensive actions against the various Russian offensives.

The account of both his upbringing and wartime experiences are fascinating, and I don't want to spoil it for other readers. One thing which struck me was how resiliant units were, in contrast to our wargames - in one incident his battery was loaded onto trains but caught and strafed for an hour by Sturmoviks. The train was utterly destroyed, all the ammunition wagons exploded etc, but their total casualties were one man killed, and a number with minor shrapnel wounds. Even more astonishing was that all 12 SP guns (I think they were Sdkfz 251/17s, armoured SP 20mm at any rate) were driveable and only had minor damage. All were fully operational again within a few hours. 

They operated the same SP gun for months, until it was eventually knocked out by a Russian tank in early 1945 while operating against ground targets. One of his biggest complaints about the halftracks was how cold it was standing in an open topped steel box in Silesia in January! But it was better than walking.... 

Anyway, there is more in this vein. Highly recommended, and I'd say better written than 'The Forgotten Soldier'.