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"This is a classic soldier's chronicle, told in unvarnished candor, about the author's experiences as a volunteer with the Wallonian Legion of the German Army and later the 5th SS Volunteer Assault Brigade Wallonien and the 28th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division Wallonien. However, it also ventures far beyond the usual soldier's story and approaches a travelog of the Eastern Front campaign, seldom attained by the memoirs of the period. Kaisergruber's self-published book in French is highly regarded by Belgian historian and expert on these volunteers Eddy de Bruyne, and Battle of Cherkassy author Douglas Nash. This book merits attention as the SS volunteer equivalent of Guy Sajer's The Forgotten Soldier, a bestseller in the USA and Europe. By comparison, Kaisergruber's story has the advantage of being completely verifiable by documents and serious historical narratives already published, such as Eddy de Bruyne's For Rex and for Belgium and Kenneth Estes' European Anabasis. Until recent years, very little was known of the tens of thousands of foreign nationals from Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France and Spain who served voluntarily in the military formations of the German Army and the German Waffen-SS. In Kaisergruber's book, the reader discovers important issues of collaboration, the apparent contributions of the volunteers to the German war effort, their varied experiences, their motives, the attitude of the German High Command and bureaucracy, and the reaction to these in the occupied countries. The combat experiences of the Walloons echoed those of the very best volunteer units of the Waffen-SS, although they shared equally in the collapse of the Third Reich in May, 1945. Although unapologetic for his service, Kaisergruber makes no special claims for the German cause and writes not from any postwar apologia and dogma, but instead from his first-hand observations as a young man experiencing war for the first time, extending far beyond what had been imaginable at the time. His observations of fellow soldiers, commanders, Russian civilians and the battlefields prove poignant and telling. They remain as fresh as when he first wrote some of them down in his travel diary, ""Pensées fugitives et Souvenirs (1941–46)'. Fernand Kaisergruber draws upon his contemporary diaries, those of his comrades and his later work with them while secretary of their postwar veteran's league to present a thoroughly engaging epic.This is a classic soldier's chronicle, told in unvarnished candour, about the author's experiences as a volunteer with the Wallonian Legion of the German Army and later the 5th SS Volunteer Assault Brigade Wallonien and the 28th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division Wallonien. 80 photographs, maps"

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9781914059568

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Fernand Kaisergruber was born in 1923 in to the family of an administrative officer in the Belgian Colonial Office. While still in school, he fell in with Leon Degrelle’s Rex party before the coming of the Second World War. Amid the turmoil of the German conquests of 1940–41, his interesting wanderings led to his returning from the factory job he had taken in Germany and enlisting in the Walloon Legion that had formed in 1941 with the German Army. He finished the war in SS Sturmbrigade Wallonien as a sergeant, or SS-Unterscharfuehrer, having fought as an infantryman in the Caucasus, the Battle of Korsun/Cherkassy and the Defence of the Oder River, all against the Red Army. After the war, he raised a family and worked as a sales representative and insurance inspector. He became secretary and archivist of the Walloon volunteers veteran’s league. He has participated and given interviews in documentaries on film and television, and assisted researchers and scholars for several decades in their work. Numerous scholars have read and endorsed the French edition of his war experiences as authentic and revealing with unique insights into the campaigning and military experiences of foreign volunteers in the German forces during the Second World War.

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