Comments by "TotalRookie_LV" (@TotalRookie_LV) on "Late-War German Defensive Tactics at Courland" video.
-
While living as a kid in 1980s around that area, in some 150-200m from house in the woods I found a bit weird terrain, than I also found absolutely rusted jerry cans with an eagle on them, obviously that "weird terrain" were the remains of defence line trenches.
Latvia is still littered with "surprises" from both world wars and imperial Russia's and Soviet eras, thus our deminer guys are quite experienced and have some job to do pretty much every week. Echoes of wars can be found almost anywhere, like my mom bought a half of an old small house in a town in the middle of Latvia, as dad was doing some refurbishing under the roof, it turned out, there has been fire - some wood parts were charred. They asked neighbours, nobody could remember any fire, until an older man recalled, there was something about a shell hitting that roof back in WWII.
Oh, I might add that one of my distant relatives were in Courland in 1944 on German side. He got "volunteered" into the Latvian SS Legion - Nazis took 17 yo guys right from school and put him into Salaspils camp, then gave him a "choice" - to join the Legion or to be transferred to another camp somewhere in Poland. In late 1944 he got injured, got sent to a hospital in Germany, returned by a ship to Liepāja and soon got captured by Soviets and... ended the war among the ranks of the Soviet army as: 1) cannon fodder is cannon fodder, Soviets very well knew what a "SS volunteer" he was, and 2) as a POW he helped Russian soldier guarding him to get some moonshine, to cure his hangover, thus instead of being punished for being "a Nazi traitor", he got enlisted into Soviet army. Had no troubles after the war, even could travel out of USSR to work as engineer in Egypt.
180
-
@lkrnpk Sure, in the company I work for, there was a welder, I've never met him myself, I only know this story from our foreman. That man served in the Legion as a gunner on MG 42, a good one, he got awarded for that, but then he walked across the front line with his weapon, and continued to serve as a gunner, but on the Soviet side, again he was awarded.
After Latvia regained independence he used to joke about those awards and asked, so which day should he celebrate - 9th of May (Soviet Victory day) or 16th of March (commemoration day of Legionaries)? I'd say - both, and wear all medals at the same time just for giggles.
Look, Latvia as a state did not participate in the WWII at all, it got invaded and occupied by Soviets, that was it. All that was left of the republic was the embassy in the USA. Neither Soviets, nor Nazis were our friends, there were, concentration camps, mass shootings, forced conscription and other crap on both sides, thus we were not obliged to be faithful to either side, just swear allegiance to any of them, which gives you a weapon to shoot at the other one. However, since we were betrayed by Soviets in 1940, at that time it seemed to make more sense to fight on the Axis side, to revenge that injustice., sort of what Finns did, except they still had their own country.
28
-
2