The 18-year old Werner Mork volunteered for the Wehrmacht immediately after the outbreak of war in September of 1939. He was still in the army when the war ended in 1945.
His memoirs constitute a full-faceted portrait of the daily life of a simple soldier in the German army.
Many episodes of his story have been published online by the Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum), but those posts are not very useful for non-German speakers.
I have received permission to publish English translations online.
Two have been completed so far.
One recounts Mr. Mork's arrival in North Africa in 1942 and speaks of the hardships of daily life with the Afrika Korps.
In the second he tells of his ordeal during the evacuation of Sardinia, across Corsica to the Italian mainland in 1943.
For those who are interested in the air war during WW II, it is interesting to see how often the ground troops looked to the skies. Mork also had the chance to fly in a BV 222 Flying Boat. There were only three in operation in the Luftwaffe. He gives a detailed description of that flight.
I believe these to be really incredible documents and a must for serious students of WW II.
Please stop by:
http://home.comcast.net/~dhsetzer/Mork/ to take a look. We are particularly interested in your impressions and comments on these memoirs.
16th August 2009, 20:04
Similar Threads
Linear Mode
