Letter 295

Zyierz Oct 16th 1942

Dear Parents and Werner.

Greetings from here to all of you. Hope all is well at home. I am getting better now, today I had your letter and another one from Artur Dornberger, My injury is still unchanged, but I can move my fingers a bit now. And every day I have to force them into a fist. You can imagine , it hurts, I can hear the Angel in heaven playing flutes. The shrapnel in the arm is still there, they will take it out later. I don’t mind, it all goes off from war time. Now about furlough, any recovery, that takes less than 3 months, will be send to a recovery reserve, and they determine the furlough time. 4 weeks is for those that are longer than 3 months in hospital. I try and get the things that you wrote about, but remember, things are scarce too here. But I will try my best, yes, that fat guy can be happy that he is in a motorcycle Machine Gun Company, but at times I have felt pity for these poor guys. I have been moved, we had 2 transports of wounded arriving from the front, and we are now in Room 32. Everything else is going ok, except that it has gone cold already. Nobody wants to go out, we have no other clothing than that what we brought with us. Our other gear has all stayed behind in Russia. Today I send you a few photos from our hospital room with the Comrades , there are more photos to come but they need developing yet, Please write soon and now I send you Greetings and lets hope for a reunion soon.

Your Artur.

From: Pvt Artur Ketschau, Reserve Hospital Roome 32, Zyierz,

Litzmannstadt.

To: Family Erich Ketschau, Kleinmélsen, Erfurt Thurg.