German War Veteran Story-Comments?

[kaki3152]

Found this on the Web:
"I've been happy here," says retired Herscher farmer and fertilizer plant manager Joe Senzig. "I wouldn't want to go back."
The "back" Senzig refers to is the Saarland River Valley of southwest Germany, a formerly disputed bit of land hard against the French border and not far from the ancient Senzig family homeland of Luxembourg.
Saarland was still his home on Sept. 1, 1939, when Hitler's Panzer divisions attacked Poland, plunging the world into war for the second time in the century.
Eighteen days later, Poland lay defeated, and Senzig was drafted into the army along with his younger brother, Herman.
The next months would see the youthful Saarlander struggle to stay alive in the cramped cockpit of a Bf 109 fighter, escorting Luftwaffe bombers on strikes deep inside England.
But a near lethal brush with a British Spitfire over Norway ended his flying career and launched him on an equally perilous path.
First transferred to an anti- aircraft artillery unit where he briefly reunited with his brother, Senzig finally completed his military metamorphosis with a transfer to the Wermacht's Panzer command where he served as tank commander -- first of a Panther medium tank, then later of the dreaded, 63-ton King Tiger tank.
In the wake of the costly loss at Stalingrad, German Panzer units, including Senzig's, struggled to retreat across eastern Europe, hotly pursued by hordes of Soviet soldiers.
Finally, encircled by Soviet armored units at Budapest, 13 tanks, including the one Senzig commanded, attempted a daring midnight breakout toward Czechoslovakia and the American 3rd Army. Surrender to the Americans, rather than the Soviets, was the goal. Senzig's Tiger tank would emerge as one of only four tanks to complete the desperate, 15-mile run for survival. The burning wreckage of the nine tanks which failed the escape run lighted the roadway like bonfires at a Nuremberg rally.
Senzig survived the war, including a Soviet sniper's bullet which grazed his head. The scar yet remains. He will turn 87 next Monday.