[Milsurplus] "How I Spent the War" - Guenther Grass

[Hue Miller]

By Guenter Grass, German novelist, in  "The New Yorker" for June 4.
2007.  Grass recently revealed that he previously had kept hidden the
fact that he had served in the SS. 
Grass entered the Flak anti-aircraft service at the age of 15. At 16 years,
he was transferred to an SS tank school, where he was being trained
to be an panzer gunner. After hurredly being sent to the front, his short
military experience consisted mostly of harried and confused retreats
as one unit after another dissolved.
Not strictly on-topic, but somewhat so, and interesting, i think. A couple
quotes:

"Dusk was descending, and after a number of false starts we wandered
onto a forest path churned up by tank tracks . The tracks had been made
only hours before, we learned, by a column of Tigers and personnel 
carriers racing forward to serve as an advance guard. But, hard as we 
tried to make radio contact with them, all that came over our walkie-talkie
was gibberish and static".

[ Tank column communications was in the 27-34 MHz range; German
late-war walkie talkies working in this range were superregen circuits
along the lines of our SCR-194/195; there was no way this was going
to reach more than a mile or two. ]

"We were standing near a street on which a column of tanks trying to 
advance and counterattack was being obstructed by a column of 
refugees advancing in the opposite direction......And then came the first
explosions of the Soviet tank fire...The shots came closer. Our Jagdpanther
tanks, because of their fixed barrels, had to turn before they could return
fire. Commands vying with screams, our tanks pushed packed carts and
their passengers and horses over the edge of the road into the quarry pit,
tipping them over like trinkets."
(via: Hue Miller )