Letter 199

Eastern Front Sept 19th 1943

Dear Parents and Grand Dad !

Today we arrived at the place that had been our target in the retreat and we at the Main Front Line again. Let us hope the line is strong enough to stop the Russians. With Gods help I am still ok, I can not tell you the dreadful things that happened these last few weeks. I wonder whether you got all the letters I have written in August. Yesterday I got your letters from Aug 27th and Sept 1* but no parcels have arrived as yet. Now there is a parcel restriction going on again. Maybe the last parcels ended up in enemy hands and so I assume that all the cigars and the 300 Cigarettes ended up in Russian hands I had in mind sending them home but had no parcel stamps. Now I got stamps but no Cigars or Cigarettes. I am just glad that we escaped the Russians in the encirclement and broke out. We lost one piece of Artillery because we had no more horses. The next day we tried to recover it but it was shot to bits. Our Stukas had bombed it. All these things do happen in war. Anyone who has never been in the front line has no idea what is all going on here. You can be glad that you have a home and security, here everything is destroyed , burned to ashes, civilians follow us with cows on arope, most of them want to go with us . I myself have never set fire to a Russian house, I did destroy a few big German made trashing boxes they had I burned so Stalin could not use them again. I am glad that you are all ok, that the harvest was a good one , and when I come on furlough next time, I want to try some of your preserved fruit. If you can , finish the new annex with the garage and the strong horse gets a box. So now I will get back to work and end this letter there is a war going on here. Greetings from -Heinrich.

From: pvt H. Bredemeier FP # 10331 Art Regt 117

To: Family Bredemeier, Rehren, A.O. #12 near Rinteln Weser