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"I once had a comrade". Photos of graves of German soldiers.
Having reached a certain age, many of us know the deep pain caused by the loss of a friend, especially if it occurs in full youth. Maybe that experience helps us understand the story we're going to tell today.
One of the most traumatic experiences for a soldier, without a doubt, is the loss of a comrade of arms. Above the trauma of the soldier's own wounds; even more than the fear before the fight or the anguish of being bombed; The pain for the loss of a dear companion of your platoon, of whom he was truly a brother, has always marked the memory of the soldiers who survived any war.
The only good thing about all that hell was my squad comrades (Jürgen Peters, soldier. October 1942)
The feeling that the best always leave, those who would not deserve to have fallen. And the eternal question: Why did they all die and not me? Accompany the veterans of any campaign, until the day when they die, meet again for all eternity with those companions, those young soldiers who one day were their brothers.
How many penalties have we spent together ...
Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers took their Leica, Zeiss, Praktica, Agfa…… cameras with them and made millions of photographs of how long they lived during the war.
There are countless photos of tombs of soldiers, or military cemeteries throughout the European geography.
Especially they are, for being the most numerous, those taken in the Soviet Union. In them the name of the fallen comrade is usually read clearly and they constitute an obvious desire to have one last memory of the dead friend who will remain forever in Russia and whose grave cannot be visited again because the Wehrmacht is in retreat since 1943.
An unnamed place in Ukraine.
In not a few of these photos the friend is portrayed next to the cross of the grave of the fallen soldier. The expressions on the faces of these soldiers tell us everything.
Nearly three million German soldiers died on the eastern front. Under the land of Russia their bodies remained in all kinds of burials: from singular and isolated graves, through small burials of groups of soldiers, to large rear cemeteries or in the immediate vicinity of hospitals. Some of unknown soldiers, many others with indication of the number of soldiers buried in the same pit. We found photographs of all these types.
Many tombs were in the immediate vicinity of the “Rollbahn”, the roads and paths. There are tombs in the cornfields, among sunflowers, in dense forests and wet swamps, in the same villages or in the shadow of a lonely tree or an “isba” of peasants. And many, many covered with snow.
Crosses of all kinds, some very artistic and others very simple, many of birch logs. The helmet on the cross or on the removed soil from the grave. Ornaments, plants and flowers.
We will always see the cemeteries organized in such a characteristically German order. They look solemn, imposing at times and silent. Some are true works of art of wood carving in its elements. Others are immense. There have been so many casualties…
German burial units had a lot of work throughout the war, but in addition to these organized units. Each platoon, each company had the sad duty to bury their fallen. Rare will have been the German soldier who did not have to dig with his own shovel the grave of a fallen comrade or a beloved or respected officer or noncommissioned officer.
I will now quote two descriptions of these graves of German soldiers.
The first is from the Italian writer and correspondent Curzio Malaparte, in his well-known work "The Volga rises in Europe", during the advance of the Army Group South.
- “On the other side of the road the crosses of the German cemeteries line up: the tombs are covered with flowers, and on each cross, under the steel helmet that tops it, the name, grade, age of the fallen is read "
The second is that of a member of the Spanish Blue Division and famous post-war writer Dionisio Ridruejo in his book "Letters from Russia" which describes the progress towards Leningrad of his Division, within the Northern Army Group:
- “We found the first tombs of soldiers, placed under ground where they fell. Tombs with their rectangular heap of fresh earth; in the header a cross. Many times, on the cross or on the ground, a soldier's helmet (...) On all the graves (even the most humble and secluded) there are still fresh flowers.
The two farthest fronts and two non-German observers (one Italian and one Spanish) but the description of the graves of German soldiers is almost the same.
This collection of images is a tribute to all those soldiers killed in combat and buried far from their homes and those of their comrades who buried their bodies, photographed next to their graves to represent that they would never forget them, but that they had to leave them behind in a hostile land.
Rest in peace all of them. Ich hatt einen kameraden….
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02-16-2020 12:41 PM
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