Once Upon A Time In War

Too many people learn about war with no inconvenience to themselves. They read about Verdun or Stalingrad without comprehension, sitting in a comfortable armchair, with their feet beside the fire, preparing to go about their business the next day, as usual.

One should really read such accounts under compulsion, in discomfort, considering oneself fortunate not to be describing the events in a letter home, writing from a hole in the mud. One should read about war in the worst circumstances, when everything is going badly, remembering that the torments of peace are trivial, and not worth any white hairs. Nothing is really serious in the tranquility of peace; only an idiot could be really disturbed by a question of salary.

— The Forgotten Soldier, Guy Sajer

January 19, 2011, 11:29pm / 107

I would burn and destroy entire villages if by so doing I could prevent even one of us from dying of hunger. Here, deep in the wilds of the steppe, we shall be all the more aware of our unity. We are surrounded by hatred and death, and in these circumstances we shall daily oppose our perfect cohesion to the indiscipline and disorder of our enemies. Our group must be as one, and our thoughts must be identical. Your duty lies in your efforts to achieve that goal, and if we do achieve it, and maintain it, we shall be victors even in death.

— The Forgotten Soldier, Guy Sajer

Tags: Quote Memoir The Forgotten Soldier Guy Sajer

December 01, 2010, 11:30am / 11

The war seemed to have turned me into a monster of indifference, a man without feelings. I was still three months short of eighteen, but felt at least thirty-five. Now that I have reached that age, I know better. Peace has brought me many pleasures, but nothing as powerful as that passion for survival in wartime, that faith in love, and that sense of absolutes.

It often strikes me with horror that peace is really extremely monotonous. During the terrible moments of war one longs for peace with a passion that is painful to bear. But in peacetime one should never, even for an instant, long for the horror of war.

The Forgotten Soldier, Guy Sajer

Tags: Battle of the Bulge World War II Wehrmacht Waffen-SS ETO Memoir The Forgotten Soldier

December 01, 2010, 10:32am / 42

Those who write of these events never mention the common soldier, sometimes covered with glory, sometimes beaten and defeated, burdened by the angry remonstrances of the noncoms and by the hatred of another herd of human beings whom it is officially permissible to hate, confounded by murder and degradation, and later by disillusion, when he realizes that victory will not return him his liberty. In the end, there was only the physical crime of war, and the hypocritical and intellectual crime of peace.

“That’s why you’re fighting,” Hauptmann Wesreidau, our captain, said to us one day. “You’re nothing more than animals on the defensive, even when you’re obligated to take the offensive. So be brave: life is war, and war is life. Liberty doesn’t exist.”

The Forgotten Soldier, Guy Sajer

Tags: Eastern Front Wehrmacht World War II Memoir The Forgotten Soldier

November 30, 2010, 9:31am / 18

From our filthy, mangy ranks, we watched them with curiosity. It seemed that we, in the ranks of the defeated, were happier than these children, for whom Paradise itself had no value. They seemed rich in everything but joy — a reassuring spectacle which reconciled us with humanity.

The Forgotten Soldier, Guy Sajer

Tags: Memoir The Forgotten Soldier Wehrmacht POWs World War II American Troops

November 29, 2010, 5:50pm / 14

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