A Soldier’s Legacy

It is 1943 and Wenk, a young German soldier guarding the Normandy coast, finds himself in a war where the main enemies are loneliness and misery. Corruption is rampant in the High Command: supplies are being siphoned off, and starving, exhausted soldiers must cross their won mine fields to steal potatoes from the neighboring French farms.

Against all army rank and protocol, Wenk forms a friendship with Lieutenant Schelling, whose protests on behalf of his men have incurred the wrath of another officer. When the company is transferred to the fighting on the Russian front, fear, suspicion, and mistrust forces events to a shocking conclusion.

Written in 1947 and lost in the chaos of Germany in the postwar years, A Soldier’s Legacy now takes its place beside All Quiet on the Western Front as a depiction of the horrors of war.