We Will Not Go to Tuapse: From the Donets to the Oder with the Legion Wallonie and 5th SS Volunteer Assault Brigade 'Wallonien' 1942-45

This memoir is written by a young Belgian who joined the German Army's Walloon Legion during the Second World War. Fernand Kaisergruber, a French-speaking Belgian, chose to fight with the force that occupied his homeland, and his account covers the Eastern Front campaign from the Donets region to the Oder. Drawing on wartime diaries, the recollections of comrades, and his later work for the legion's veterans' association, he describes marching, fighting and the people and places he encountered. He does not defend the German cause, but presents his own experience as a young man entering combat for the first time. The result also raises questions about collaboration, the motives of foreign volunteers and how occupied populations responded to them.