The Forgotten Soldier Movie is now Official!

[Doug Nash]

Great! Sign him up! (hey, if they can do "Tropic Thunder," why not?)

[cha]

I've got one at home, will try to scan it in and post it tonight.
Cheers,
Doug

Was that picture ever scanned and posted up yet? I would like to see what Sajer looks like.
I hope this movie does make it the book is my favorite in my collection.

[Doug Nash]

Here's a picture of Sajer taken about 1990 ---

[Doug Nash]

Here's a copy of a photo given me by Hans-Joachim Schaffmeister-Berckholtz, who was an NCO in 5. Kompanie, Pz.Gren.Rgt. "GD." The photo was taken in June 1943 a few weeks before the Battle of Kursk. Sajer is the soldier in the middle of the picture within the white circle. Apololgies for the poor quality.

[Doug Nash]

Here's another one taken in the 1980s when he had grown a beard ----

[Doug Nash]

Here's another photo, alledged to have been taken of Sajer when he was in a POW camp prior to being released.

[Doug Nash]

And what Sajer looks like today ----

[cha]

Thanks for those this is the first time I have ever seen an actual photo. You can really see how young he is in that POW picture. I heard his friend Hals was identified and then verified his story is there any information on that individual?

[Doug Nash]

His friend Hals (actually, it was spelled Halls) immigrated to US after the war and settled in Connecticut, where he pursued a successful career in the insurance business. I had heard that he verified Sajer's authenticity, but that's second hand, since I didn't hear that from Halls himself - it is believed that Halls died sometime in the late 1990s, but I could never verify that either.
Regards,
Doug Nash

[cha]

Thanks again for the pictures finally it's nice to see the person behind this book in wartime and later years.

[B Hellqvist]

Here's a portrait he did for the Swedish edition of TFS. He looks older and more harried, but then I guess experiences like his tended to age young men...

[TotenRot]

Here's a portrait he did for the Swedish edition of TFS. He looks older and more harried, but then I guess experiences like his tended to age young men...

As you can see in the background of the latest picture of him in his office, there is a picture that he drew of another German soldier. I don't think the picture he drew here was to represent himself. I also have to mention that on the cover of one of the books translated to English, there is a picture of a soldier wearing a Waffen-SS helmet cover. Whether or not the soldier in the picture is Waffen-SS is unknown, for there is no insignia. But there is photographic evidence showing
Waffen-SS soldiers wearing Wehrmacht camouflage, as well as Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe soldiers (Hermann Göring Division) wearing Waffen-SS camouflage.
This entire theory that the book is fictional really bothers me and reminds me of the people who believe that America never landed on the Moon, or that 9/11 was actually carried out by the American government, as well as other conspiracies. They take these thin shrouds of evidence against the book's authenticity (which by using common sense, is clearly believable as being misunderstood under the circumstances he was in), and completely ignore the large amounts of evidence for it.
I have spent many hours with German veterans as well, from the Waffen-SS, Wehrmacht, and Luftwaffe. One of the Waffen-SS veterans couldn't remember what type of camouflage he wore, because there was no specific name for the different types of camouflage really. I also looked at a picture of him during the war, when he was an Obersturmführer. There was clearly something odd about the pips on his collar rank, because they were in the shape of a triangle instead of a straight line. He doesn't recall the situation of him wearing that, as he expressed that he went through many different uniforms throughout the war. Yet, if you want to believe he is making up his war time experiences, I know through a second hand account that he was there at the Veterans Reunion, where his comrades recognized him by face and name.
I also know a German Wehrmacht veteran who can't even recall what division or armee he was in during the war nor where he was at any given time. He was as young as Sajer during the war and can only recall very few stories of his accounts on the Russian front and does not like to speak of them. Some of his accounts that he has mentioned brought him to tears.

Lastly, I would like to remind people how lucky we are to have such a vivid account of the normal foot soldier of the German side during WWII documented. I worked a few weeks in Engelskirchen, Germany (40 km east of Köln/Cologne) as a Fusspfleger in a Fusspraxis where we would get patients with foot problems. Many of them were older men who had served in WWII. Seeing the trauma on their feet (most likely caused by the war), I would usually ask them if they had served at all in WWII. Most of their replies were just a nodding head continued by a glance at the floor, where they stated they were with the Wehrmacht, or Luftwaffe. I even had a guy who admitted being in the Waffen-SS, he is on multiple anti-depressant medications due to affects the war had on him. After hearing this, I tried to tell him that he shouldn't be ashamed to say that, but to no effect. Nonetheless, I asked him more detailed questions, as to where he had served, what division, etc. I only got simplistic answers and the man obviously didn't want to talk about it.

[Kim Sung]

Guy Sajer's 'The Forgotten Soldier' was already remade into a comic book 'Das Unternehmen Zitadelle' (ツィタデル作戰) by Japanese comic creator Kobayashi Motofumi (小林源文) in 2005 who is known to glorify the Nazis in a heroic manner. I'll introduce this comic book version of Guy Sajer's story when I have free time. Currently I'm very busy.

There are some threads on his WWII comics in this forum.

Spanish Skier Unit of the 250th Infantry Unit
viewtopic.php?f=51&t=91096&start=0

Jochen Peiper saves Jews' lives in Italy (A story already debunked)
viewtopic.php?t=93495

Boves Massacre
viewtopic.php?t=93486

Vlasov's Capture: Captain von Schwerdtner's Special Mission
viewtopic.php?f=55&t=111754&p=1005893

The Battle for Maksim Gorky I
viewtopic.php?f=55&t=119569

[Dan W.]

Here's a portrait he did for the Swedish edition of TFS. He looks older and more harried, but then I guess experiences like his tended to age young men...

As you can see in the background of the latest picture of him in his office, there is a picture that he drew of another German soldier. I don't think the picture he drew here was to represent himself. I also have to mention that on the cover of one of the books translated to English, there is a picture of a soldier wearing a Waffen-SS helmet cover. Whether or not the soldier in the picture is Waffen-SS is unknown, for there is no insignia. But there is photographic evidence showing
Waffen-SS soldiers wearing Wehrmacht camouflage, as well as Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe soldiers (Hermann Göring Division) wearing Waffen-SS camouflage.
This entire theory that the book is fictional really bothers me and reminds me of the people who believe that America never landed on the Moon, or that 9/11 was actually carried out by the American government, as well as other conspiracies. They take these thin shrouds of evidence against the book's authenticity (which by using common sense, is clearly believable as being misunderstood under the circumstances he was in), and completely ignore the large amounts of evidence for it.
I have spent many hours with German veterans as well, from the Waffen-SS, Wehrmacht, and Luftwaffe. One of the Waffen-SS veterans couldn't remember what type of camouflage he wore, because there was no specific name for the different types of camouflage really. I also looked at a picture of him during the war, when he was an Obersturmführer. There was clearly something odd about the pips on his collar rank, because they were in the shape of a triangle instead of a straight line. He doesn't recall the situation of him wearing that, as he expressed that he went through many different uniforms throughout the war. Yet, if you want to believe he is making up his war time experiences, I know through a second hand account that he was there at the Veterans Reunion, where his comrades recognized him by face and name.
I also know a German Wehrmacht veteran who can't even recall what division or armee he was in during the war nor where he was at any given time. He was as young as Sajer during the war and can only recall very few stories of his accounts on the Russian front and does not like to speak of them. Some of his accounts that he has mentioned brought him to tears.

Lastly, I would like to remind people how lucky we are to have such a vivid account of the normal foot soldier of the German side during WWII documented. I worked a few weeks in Engelskirchen, Germany (40 km east of Köln/Cologne) as a Fusspfleger in a Fusspraxis where we would get patients with foot problems. Many of them were older men who had served in WWII. Seeing the trauma on their feet (most likely caused by the war), I would usually ask them if they had served at all in WWII. Most of their replies were just a nodding head continued by a glance at the floor, where they stated they were with the Wehrmacht, or Luftwaffe. I even had a guy who admitted being in the Waffen-SS, he is on multiple anti-depressant medications due to affects the war had on him. After hearing this, I tried to tell him that he shouldn't be ashamed to say that, but to no effect. Nonetheless, I asked him more detailed questions, as to where he had served, what division, etc. I only got simplistic answers and the man obviously didn't want to talk about it.

Great post. There is a German Wehrmacht veteran of the Eastern front who s alive today and lives in the general vicinity of where I do (and has written a book that I have now forgotten the title of) that is open about most of his experiences, I've met others from Das Reich and Großdeutschland who admitted blacking out their incarcerations after the war, saying they suffered their own Holocaust as POW's. And wouldnt describe their experiences in that period but would talk about the war if you asked them about it. . I also lived down the street from a survivor of Bataan and three years of captivity and he would never speak of his experiences. He told me that he just couldnt, as anytime he remembered his captivity it would trigger flashbacks that would ruin his sleep and scare his wife. And he never knew when they would occur, either, sometimes when he was awake.

[Doug Nash]

For your viewing pleasure, here is the review of TFS soldier that was originally published in the February 1969 Edition of Paris Match. Since no one here reading this is going to be moved from their positions about the book either way (why should we? This way, we can argue about it forever), I thought I'd mix it up by adding in some articles that few, if any, readers of this website have ever seen before. That way, we can at least entertain if not reach any kind of common ground.
Cheers,
Doug Nash

The following article is from the 3 February 1968 Edition of Paris Match, p. 20


“Guy Sajer - he did not dare sign his book”

He won the "Deux Magots" [Two Golden Ingots] prize for his account of the Russian Campaign

He was born in January of 1926, by happenstance in Paris. For the father, from Auvergne, is an art merchant, and he travels and works from place to place. The mother is German.

The boy, robust already at an early age, thus grows up stage by stage during their travels.

And he finds himself in Wissembourg, on Alsatian land, when Hitler annexes the regions of Alsace and Lorraine.

All of a sudden, instead of the Huns the old stories told him of, he sees tall soldiers approaching, superb in their strength, pride, and triumph who go to war while singing idyllic songs.

The boy marvels at so much adventure.

After a short period in the Arbeitsdienst (Labor Service), which he finds too drab, he enlists in the Wehrmacht.

He is seventeen years old.

The Reich is at its height: Nazi flags fly over the Great North [N. Europe], at Brest [Harbor city in French Brittany] near the Pyramids, near Moscow, and at the gates of the Caucasus.

The boy, in Feldgrau uniform, receives a rifle and grenades to take his place in the epic events.

Barely has he become a soldier when the fate of (German) arms changes. Instead of triumph, he lives only carnage upon carnage at Smolensk, Kharkov, Stalingrad, and again Kharkov, Kiev, and especially Memel. In Eastern Prussia, he escapes only by a hair's breadth from the same fate suffered by the German Army in Courland, which is being trapped in a vise by the Soviet troops who are closing in [note: he wasn't in Courland, the interviewer just compares Memel to Courland, so don't start a thread on that, for goodness' sake].

It is an unrecognizable ghost who arrives, on a mild evening in the late fall season, in the area of Wissembourg. From the bottom of the ditch where he hides to avoid the gendarmes, he sees a small woman, bent over walking; a milk jug in her hand, her shoulders covered by an old shawl, his mother... This child of nineteen, whose trial cause him to speak like an old man, no longer even knows how to cry...

But he writes a big book, mesmerizing in its truth and sincerity that brings the most atrocious visions, so ferocious and appalling that it becomes almost unreadable. It is entitled Le Soldat Oublie [The Forgotten Soldier].

The boy did not even dare sign it with his name.

He kept only his first name: Guy, and takes on his mother's family name: Sajer. It is purely by coincidence that Robert Laffont Publishers learned of the work, by scanning certain extracts published by a Belgian review.

Then, it takes his winning of the "Deux Magots" literary prize by a healthy margin to attract attention to him.

"People surprise me when they tell me that I have written a real book. I only told (what I lived). I only have the 'Certificat d'Etudes' " he says. [note: in France, a Studies Certificate is roughly equivalent to a General Equivalency Diploma].

Tall, solid, with short hair over a straight forehead; a face both candid and hard where the eyes, steel-gray, seem to look inward.

"Have you returned to Germany?

"Yes, I go regularly, to see friends, who lived that which I lived: for we are tens of
thousands who have gone through those triumphs and nightmares. But the Germany of today, it does not interest me.”