The origin of this diary was a gift of my 75 year old aunt Elsa in the mid 90s.
It was written by her brother in WWII with a now fading pencil in a kind of old German sutterlin style. So, I decided to type it to be able to read it fluently.
The story was so fascinating that I decided to publish and share it in its original language after my aunts death in 2015. The diary covers the last few months my uncle was alive before he was killed at age 24 as a soldier in Russia.
The diary covers a small part of WW II from a different point of view what most articles report about the war and Hitlers strategies. It`is the point of view of a young PFC with all the worries and thoughts most soldiers had in the unknown and strange situation of a war.
O autorze
Peter Jäger, born 1959: joined the German Airforce in 1981 and stayed in the armed forces until he retired in 2013 as a captain.
In these years he became metrologist. He served in the United States Airforce in the years 1984 and 1985 and was stationed at Lowry Afb in Denver, Colorado. Later, he lived in El Paso, Texas and Alamogordo, New Mexico for longer periods of time – always working as metrologist / calibration technician and quality management supervisor for the German Airforce.
He participated frequently at conferences like NCSLi or the Measurement Science conference and published several lectures. Finally, after his first book 'Management of Test- and Measurement equipment and Calibration’ was published he decided to publish the diary of his uncle, who died in WWII. The success made him publish another book: Inspired by his uncles diary he was asked to edit and publish the WWII diary of Emil Lux, the founder of Germanys OBI home improvement and DIY chain. Inquiries from his US friends finally made him translate the PFC Paul Velte Diary into English language.