This is an unrivalled account of one man's service in the elite Waffen-SS Liebstandarte division, principally on the Eastern Front. The author, an 18-year old Belgian, was blackmailed into volunteering for the Waffen-SS in 1941 to save his mother from a concentration camp. After enduring the MG harsh training with the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (considered by some to be a worse experience than the fighting front), Maeger went on to be selected as a frontline driver in Russia. He saw combat at Kharkov and at the legendary battle of Kursk. In 1944 he was transferred out for training as an SS paramedic, but after two months was sent against his will for SS-officer training. Overheard making a defeatist remark, he was sent to the notorious SS penal division Dirlewanger on the Oder front, where he survived the horror of the Halbe pocket. On 1 May 1945 he was captured by the Russians near the Elbe. He served at the prison camp infirmary as a volunteer which won him the admiration of the Russian female doctor and with her help he gained his early release the same year. AUTHOR: Herbert Maeger was born at Hergenrath/Eupen in Belgium on 10 November 1922. After release from Soviet captivity in late 1945 he settled in West Germany in the Rheydt area and began pre-clinical training. He obtained German citizenship on 21 June 1971. He was unable to return to Belgium for decades after the war, having been sentenced to life imprisonment in his absence by a military tribunal at Verviers on 19 February 1947 'for having borne arms against Belgium's allies in particular as a member of the Waffen-SS'. SELLING POINTS: ? Memoir of a Belgian 18-year-old blackmailed into joining the Waffen-SS ? First-hand account of the terrible conditions on the Eastern Front ? An unparalleled story of survival both in battle and later in Soviet captivity ? Eyewitness view of the elite Waffen-SS in combat ? Vividly details the grievous losses suffered by the unit as a 'fire brigade unit' on the frontline
