As some of you may have read, I was granted permission to post here some pictures I recently found in the inheritance of my mother.
These pictures illustrate some of my fathers, Walter Heinrich Müller, experiences during WW II.
He was part of the German armies that invaded Belgium, Netherlands and France. Accroding to the pics it seems there he reached the rank of Hauptfeldwebel (master sergeant). In 1940 he was transferred to Northern Africa where he stayed until the very End of the Afrikakorps. I know that he subsequently fought in Sicily, Italy and then again in France (albeit going in the opposite direction) until he ended somewhere in Bavaria in 1945 where he was taken prisoner of war by the Americans. The bulk of pictures is from Africa and before, just a handful, if any from after 1943. I don't know why.
Actually, looking at these pictures I realised how desperatly little I know. Not even the name of his unit, because he hated to speak about the war and kept these pictures well locked up. I had only a handful of photographs before and posted them some years ago in the german 'http://forum.sturmovik.de/' but I just found out they are deleted.
In total there were 331 pictures. Very few of them with any information written on the backside, and if so mainly things like 'film 4, picture 3'. Other information had been blackened, obviously when these pics were send home by post. At least about 80 of them were in an album, giving me hopefully some kind of chronological order.
Of all this I chose 123 of which I hope they might find some interest here. I tried to arrange them in a time line as far as possible, but I am sure I made a lot of mistakes.
July 15th this year would have been his 100. birthday.
His military 'career' started in the mid/late 30s when he had finished his apprenticeship as a taylor (he had hated it and later refused to do anything with needles and thread) and as all unemployed young men was transferred to the Reichsarbeitsdienst RAD.
Here (on the right) a picture of this time together with one of his elder brothers, who already was a 'real' soldier.
comp_001.jpg
Bookmarks