Sam's Story

Occasionally on this blog, I wanted to highlight one particular soldier's story. I came into contact with him a few years ago, and he related his tale of personal war experience first-hand and later sent his memoirs to me. Too long and far too detailed to reproduce here, I thought it would be nice to parallel some of these world-shaking events seen by one young man who lived it.
In 1939 he turned 14, which was graduation from public school for him. It was also the time a boy graduated from the Jungvolk to the Hitler Youth, both required organizations for all young children. Yes, he was in Germany, and he had no choice but to follow his country's path bent on destruction.
He was raised from a modest, borderline poor household, but had loving parents and siblings. His hometown was in Thuringia, a region just north of Bavaria in central Germany. A small milltown did not have many opportunities in the 1920s and 30s, but his family did not starve as some citizens did at that time. He liked to read adventure stories similar to Indiana Jones of today.
His father was skeptical of the Third Reich, being an injured veteran of The Great War during heavy fighting in the Ardennes Forest (later the focus of the largest battle of WW2 and perhaps in all history, The Battle Of The Bulge). This skepticism was kept quiet as publicly doubting the leaders of Germany amounted to high treason. Sam saw a neighbor hauled away by the Gestapo to the camps for his beliefs.
Upon the invasion of Poland in September of 1939, the radio propaganda painted a picture of border unrest, with the Poles attacking border guards and persecuting the German citizens. In actuality, these were trumped up allegations, SS soldiers were disguised as Poles and were routing out the Jewish farmers along the border, as well as 'attacking' their own patrols.
Sam was excited and scared at the prospect of war, not wanting to become a soldier himself and be forced to live far away from family. He believed the war would end soon and that he would never be old enough to fight.