This photo shows my grandfather Rudolf S. as a Private in Basic Training in the spring of 1941. Yes, even Air Force boys had to live through this! Barracks and garrison of his original unit, Flak-Regiment 36, were in the town of Wolfenbüttel/Lower Saxony. My grandfather looks quite worn out on the photo, carrying the carbine 98k on his shoulder like a club. Photo must have been take after a longer march. I guess if he'd known by then that the &quot;snafu&quot; really started for him a couple of months later in Southern Russia, he and his comrades wished themselves back to Basic Training. (flamethrowerguy)

Private Rudolf S. in Basic Training

Not family of mine but still an interesting and tragic story behind the picture I\'d like to tell. The man on the photo, Gefreiter Rudi Roscher (+24.12.1944), was the best friend of my grandfather during the war, they were comrades in the same unit. On Christmas Eve of the year 1944 (their unit was fighting their way back to Germany) they were resting somewhere in Romania when the CO gave the order to send out a patrol and find out how far the Red Army had already advanced. My grandfather was picked for the patrol by the officer. But because my grandfather was the better cook, his friend Rudi answered: \"You stay in and fix christmas-dinner and i\'ll go on patrol for you.\" Well, what had to happen, did happen. On patrol they encountered a russian counter-patrol and it came to fight and things got messy. When the russians had retreated Rudi was missing. They searched and found him dead lying in the snow, a dead russian soldier a couple of feet away. Most probably both pulled the trigger the very same fraction of a second and killed each other. (flamethrowerguy)