28 March 1944

I saw the medical lieutenant today.  

28/03/44 - Health refer.  Graudins Alberts, Diagnosis.  Leg Ulcers.  Not available for Service, 3 days bed rest Doctor E. Pōezfer - Medical Lieutenant.  10% Anti-infective ointment (keep any remainder ointment for future use with our compliment)

Once the main Russian artillery opened fire, and correctly spotted our position, their guns targeted camp.  The Russian bombardment is relentless.  We do not stand a chance.  Everything surrounding us caved in as shell after shell exploded.  I want to go home, I did not want to be here but I must stay.  I stay for Latvia.  I stay for my aged father and for my mother.  I stay for my fourteen-year-old sister, my ten-year-old brother and I stay for my baby sister, Rasmin.

Night after night disembodied war stories crawl out of the darkness on crystallised breath as the older men unburden their hearts.  They tell tales of horror as well as offer wise words of warning.  I listen silently to the advice on offer from each fatigued warrior.  Wrapping my arms across my chest, I hug my coat tightly against my body as the haunted voices forewarn of the fate awaiting any recruit who stumbles across the Russian line.  According to my comrades, if a soldier manages to get away merely having lost his tongue, he should think himself fortunate.

My leg ulcers are so bad my comrades have insisted I find the doctor.  I told him how difficult it is for me to keep myself clean.  I have no clean dressings to use or even any dry trousers to put on.  Everything is so wet and dirty around me all of the time, it is impossible to stop filth from penetrating deep into my sores.

28 December 1943

When German troops arrived, Latvian men were actively encouraged to fight at Germany’s side against an oppressive, communist Red Army.  Every village displayed posters celebrating the arrival of a liberating German army but my father was not fooled.  During his sixty-six years, he had experienced degradation and inequality under the rule of German nobility as well as varying Russian authoritarians in equal portion.  Any non-Latvian administration was bad for the people of Latvia.

My mother, Anna,believed me too ill for the army, any army.  She assured me I was safe at home on the farm with them.  

"The German army want tall, straight, strong men" she said.  "No German officer will want a 19 year old boy with a twisted, ulcerated leg.  No one will want you to go and fight."  

My left leg never fully recovered from that week I spent in my sick bed.  Even after almost three years, it stubbornly refused to straighten fully.  

Not long after my eighteenth birthday on 7 January 1942, I was interviewed by the German military but dismissed as unfit for military service, just as mother had promised.  I was assigned to compulsory labour duties along with those of my neighbours also pronounced as either unfit or too old for military uniform.  Mother convinced me the same would happen again when I attended Ranka Guard House on 20 March 1943 for a follow up medical but she was wrong.  The draft doctor dismissed my impairment.  Apparently, Hitler likes a challenge.

Although I did not know it at the time of my assessment, the doctor had a set quota of Latvian men and boys to conscript into uniform.  I think that is why minor handicaps were overlooked.  I have to wait and see if the army will be good for my left leg; see if the marching exercises will straighten it out forever.

1941 1st July 1942
Happily towards a common future