I received a signed copy of this book as a gift from a friend. The author Michel Reins is his colleague.
The book is in French, so a bit more difficult for me than English, but I am very glad now to have read it during the Christmas holidays.
Márton Angeli, the main character of the book, is a Hungarian boy from Veszprém who is lifted from the streets in his home town and drafted into the Wehrmacht. After basic training, he ends up at the front in the South of Holland, near Venlo, facing British and Canadian troops.
He has a very hard time of it, and looses a number of his comrades, but he survives and ends up as a POW in Belgium. After the war, German soldiers get to return to their country, but Márton is warned by his mother that he cannot return home because the Soviets have occupied Hungary, and that they send anyone who served in the German army to the gulag or a firing squad.
So he ends up staying in Belgium, working in the coal mines near Charleroi. Márton actually existed and experienced most of what happens in the book, but it’s a novel, not a diary or history book.
The book is very well written, and captivating. You can really see yourself in his shoes.