A36 Partisans

Narrator: Stefan Sommer
Reporter: Stefan Sommern jun.

On Feb 28, 1943 my fellow soldiers of the infantry unit and me, we drove a small lorry through a village in Yugoslavia. Suddenly an old woman came along and shouted, “Bang! Bang! Many partisan!” The officer jumped off the lorry quickly and pointed his gun at her and said, “Go! Go!”

Suddenly there were shots from all directions. They shot from every attic. We tried to hide in the ditch as quickly as possible. I lay next to a man who shouted, “Ammunition, I need ammunition!” I jumped out, ran to the lorry quickly and tried to open the hold of the lorry. But it didn’t open. Suddenly I felt a bit dizzy. I slowly crawled back into the ditch. Back in the ditch I felt something very warm in my right boot. In the meantime the man next to me had gotten some ammunition. While he was aiming, a partisan shot exactly into the narrow gap between his the combat helmet and his gun. He was dead immediately.

Later I found out that they had shot my right shinbone.