Otto W. Renger's just published true life account of his service as a machine gunner with Germany's famed Fallschirmjagers.
  This book begins with jump training in France and Germany and then covers heavy combat and specialist panzerfaust and engineer training throughout Italy. The story moves on to his time as a POW in Egypt under the British.
  This book contains incredible detail regarding fallschirmjager training/combat and day to day life. This very rare German veteran autobiography is a must for the collector or enthusiast. The books are personally signed by the author.

Privately published in a limited number, 260 pages, A5 format, $49 (Australian) +Postage.

Excerpts from the book:
  Life began to matter for me when I was just ten years old in 1936. Europe was the center of everything where a lot of political events took place. Not that I really was too interested in it, but I remember sitting with my two older cousins in the YMCA cinema in row one, the cheapest seating available. We watched with great interest on the "Fox toenende Wochenschau" (News reel) the war in Abbessinia. Excitedly we took sides against the fancy and so poorly dressed Abessinians and we cheered, when the so clean looking Italian Fascist were victorious. In reality, they received a beating from that backward Nation, because they could not handle the African desert.
  Life in Czechoslovakia was a very pleasant one. The benign and fatherly looking President Thomas Garrigue Masaryk gave the country a peaceful appearance in a fabulous and modern democracy, built on the English system. This gave the people enough of freedom, food was cheap and plentiful, schooling was excellent and this part of Europe was lovely structured. We had soft flowing mountains, beautiful lakes and forests and cozy little towns with Prague, the jewel in the crown. Never did I envisage that in between two years this idyllic life would change for me. Hitler and his Great German Reich was keen to get my little country under the spreaded wings of the German Eagle.
   There was a Nazi party in the Sudetenland that was very interested to get "connected" to the great brother that spoke the same language. Naturally the Czechs did not want to know about it. Although 3 million German speaking people wanted "Heim in's Reich"
  Then it happened, in October 1938 Hitler's troops marched into my little town of Gablonz. I clearly remember standing under thousand of excited citizens, "Sieg hailing" the grey columns of soldiers, marching with the noise of their hobnailed boots over our cobblestonesÄÄ..
  Sudetenland became part of GermanyÄ.and we all liked it. For us kids, exciting times foreshadowed our otherwise boring small town life. We soon became members of the "Hitler youths". And I woke up to the fact, that personal freedom was evaporating like water in the sun.
  Five years later, the war was already ravaging in the summer of the year 1943. I was then just seventeen years old when my life changed very drastically to a manner I never envisaged.
  On my 14th birthday my mother gave me a beautiful diary bound in red and gold, she asked me to keep tracks of the things that were happening to me to be remembered in later life. I accepted this gift with the slight suspicion, that mother only wanted to know what I was doing when I was together with my friend Alex. We both spent many hours in my unheated and in winter icy-cold-gable-room where snow and wind blew through the shingles and the drab boredom of a small town made us young boys miserable.
  What we mostly did, was reading "forbidden Literature" of a Krafft-Ebbing nature that we borrowed from the so called "black library', were one could borrow "dirty reading". We also "fumbled" constantly with a 6.35mm Belgian Pistol that I bought secretly from a young boy. He had stolen it from his soldier father. This Pistol was loaded with six rounds and I was amazed that we did not kill ourselves by handling this weapon so unprofessionally.
  My diary soon was laid aside with only a few recorded but unimportant events. Sixty years later I appreciated to have my follow-up army and POW. diary's, thanks to my mother who started me and kept them safe, up to her death.

  The stand of the war in 1940 to 1942 was such, that in the European south, German forces had taken the Balkans and Greece, whilst the German flag flew over the summit of the Elbruz Mountain in the Caucasus. Our advanced Panzers had penetrated the outer suburbs of Moscow. North Africa was almost all in our hands stretching east to Egypt and onto the doorstep of the Suez Canal. This was all two years previous. Germany was convincingly victorious, but not much longer as this book will reportÄÄ
  In Hitler's Germany existed an organisation that called itself R.A.D.( Reichs Arbeits Dienst, Reichs Work Service). There, young men had to absolve at least three months of manual work, like helping farmers with the harvest, or digging aircraft-and bomb shelters. In reality, the R.A.D. already provided a pre-military training for the very young in order to help speed up the proper military training. In short, "they" wanted us for the front line as quick as possible.....
  I was coaxed to take my apprentice test six months earlier as normal and I followed suit with the others. As soon we had finished our test, the R.A.D. called for us. None of us young fellows liked to go there because of the hard manual labor one had to expect in those camps.
  I vividly remember the progressively stronger and colder winds furiously blowing through the gaps of our old wooden barracks standing in a forlorn part of former Poland Years before these barracks were used by the workers of the German Autobahn in 1935.
  All barracks incorporated three rooms with ten double bunks each. The training we received was very hard, the food extremely lean, and we had to bear plenty of sadistic intimidation's of our drill N.C.O's. Most of these men had been failures in their private life and the R.A.D. was a good relief valve for their deficiencies.
  We had to undergo constant military exercises and our "weapon" became the spade, substituting the rifle. This spade gave us all a headache because during the day we had to do normal work with this tool of digging. It was glorified more than a weapon and had to be cleaned after work to the shine of a blinking mirror..... Polishing the blade became our evening occupation after duty had ended. The boring countryside, the terrible food, the cold autumn months and the harshness of our superiors made life unbearable. My memoirs in regard to the R.A.D. are only bad ones and despite the dangers of the army, I preferred the later army life. Unfortunately I always had been spoiled by my mother in regard to comfort etc.etc. Life in the R.A.D. was really a drag for me. We worked and exercised six days a week and were looking towards Sunday, away from camp for the cinema of Konin. During the war there was no public transport to town. If lucky, we caught an old horse drawn hay-wagon. Cinema session was only in the afternoon and we had plenty of time to make it there but after cinema, we had to rush on foot the long distance back to camp to reach it on time before "Zapfenstreich" (tattoo) Excerpt.... I just reached the ridge top when hell broke loose, the Tommy showered us with an absolute barrage of mortar and machine gun fire. In long jumps I hurried to my hole just to see Pester falling to the ground, right in front of me. I grabbed his jump suit and pulled him in our hole, catching my breath, I laid on top of Pester. Around us shells exploded in short intervals. I heard comrade Pester moaning: "Otto, get off me and look at my back". Slowly I turned him over and noted a long piece of metal protruding out of his shoulder. The blood had stained his tunic and I called loud for the medic. I guessed that some of the enemy must have seen me and were waiting with rifles aimed at the spot of my disappearance. My bluff worked well when I sprinted out of the creek and "zig zagged" towards our hole. My uniform was now soaked, plus the bottles I was much heavier than before and I went right for the doubtful safety of our hole. Pester had lost conscience but as soon I poured some water over his face, he opened his eyes and licked the water of his lips. I gave him only short sips but he almost finished the one litre bottle. My pounding heart slowed down and I must have had a little snooze, or was I gone too for a few minutes ??? Our neighbouring hole received a direct hit and as I called their names, there was no answer.Suddenly I heard somebody calling:"Tanks. approaching!"

Image and texts © 2002 Otto W. Renger. All rights reserved.

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