An Alsatian Tragedy: A memoir of forced conscription into the Wehrmacht (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798240964138)

Eugene Philipps' memoir begins in 1940 during World War II. The young Alsatian teacher found himself caught in the path of the German army's blitzkrieg through France. Like his fellow citizens, he struggled to adapt to the Nazi's near total control of their lives in annexed Alsace. Against his will he was removed from his teaching post and his job as the secretary of his small, beautiful wine making village at the foot of the Vosges Mountains and sent to the state of Baden across the Rhine River for indoctrination and to learn the Nazi way of teaching. At one of his teaching assignments in Germany, Eugene suffered the ire of his superiors by mocking the Nazi salute in public when tipsy on wine with some of his colleagues. He was lucky that all he received was a stern warning and another teaching assignment. Some of his friends and family members had been sent to concentration camps for similar indiscretions. In 1943 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and eventually sent to the Russian front in Belarus where casualties in his battalion were some of the highest in the army and nearly all of his close Alsatian friends were killed. Eugene held on to hope for survival. As a trench runner or liaison man, the Corporal delivered messages between units. It was a dangerous duty, but Eugene avoided death or even serious injury. He experienced numerous close calls including once when he was ill in the Borisov military hospital well behind the front lines. The Russians bombed them even there. He escaped with minor injuries and some hearing loss while several others just feet from him were left dead or seriously injured. Near the end of the war, he deserted and returned to Alsace. In the succeeding years he and his wife continued to raise their six children. Eugene became an English professor, a renowned sociolinguist and a passionate activist for bilingualism.