On the twenty-first of July I arrived in Africa. The JU 52 had no seats. We had to sit on our gear on the floor, man next to man with no space in between. The plane took off shortly before sunrise, skimming the ocean ten feet above the water. It was my first plane ride. We looked anxiously out of the small dirty windows, hoping that no English fighters were in the air. After three and a half hours we touched the ground, leaving a great dust cloud on our landing trail. Dusty, red-brown sand greeting us everywhere. Our gear, including the rifle, weighed over a hundred pounds. We dragged our belongings to a truck and headed for the hills outside Tripoli. We barely had time to dump our belongings before filling our canteens with water and heading for the harbor. Unloading ammunition from a freighter had to be done without interruption because when the night comes, so comes Tommy. Numerous sunken ships in the harbor gave testimony of the enemy's successful bombing attacks. We had a one hour break to refill our canteens with hot coffee, the barley-coffee from Germany, a slice of hard rye bread covered with jam, which was all we had to eat. Then we went back to unloading ammunition. Eyes, nose and mouth were covered with fine red dust. This continued until late at night.

The next morning, while it was still dark, we dragged our tired bones to the field kitchen, filled our canteens and grabbed a few slices of bread. Then we returned back to the harbor to unload ammunition.

During the first two weeks in Africa I lost ten pounds, down to 135. On a "rest day" I had a chance to visit Tripoli. This city is a crossroad of the Orient, Africa and southern Europe. Wide streets are lined with palm trees, new government quarters, a governor's mansion and coastal avenues along the Mediterranean, which characterize the European section. Dirty narrow streets full of people and merchants hustling and bustling signify the Arab community, which is intermingled with Negroes and Berbers.

Dear Irmgard,

I have lost track of the days in Africa. The thermometer climbs up to 112 during the noon hours. For two days there were no ammunition ships in the harbor, so we started "goose-stepping" in the desert. What an idiocy! I have no way of looking into a mirror. My shirt now hangs very loosely and I gradually assume the look of an old tired African. Today I am running a low-grade fever and have to take quinine pills. Probably a touch of malaria or what people get here: "Papataci fever." Two days ago the British visited our camp during the night and left us with several casualties. So, we moved our outfit and are now a half-mile from the ocean. Our new camping place has lots of scorpions and I have to chase a few out of my tent each evening. When we arrive at the bivouac late at night, the hot wind always has my tent filled with the blowing fine sand. Our one-man tents have no bottom.

I have been assigned to a new unit as a wireless operator. I am scheduled to join the fifth tank division. But I have not given up my plan to end up with a field hospital, where with my seven semesters of medicine I could be more useful.....

My dear Irmgard,

It was no malaria after all. I came down with hepatitis the day I was to join the tank division. I made my own diagnosis with a mirror and my dark brown urine. This is what we now call hepatitis A, a viral infection. Several days of nausea and fever are followed by lethargy and fatigue. This bout of jaundice ended three weeks of hard labor from dawn to dusk. The nights were too hot to sleep. Most of the time I had to get by with a can of sardines in oil and hard German bread. Whenever we had a chance, we tried to get white bread from the Italian soldiers in the harbor. A can of meat, the famous issue of the Italian Army "Amministrazione Militare," in German "Alter Mann," with a piece of dry cheese and a thin soup were often the only daily nourishment we had.

I am now on my way to the hospital. The German Army hospital is located in the middle of town. The Red Cross sign is painted in bright colors on the roof. But this has not prevented its having been hit by British bombs days prior to my arrival. The pilots missed most of their targets inside the harbor because during the night German antiaircraft guns concentrated their fire in that area. So they unloaded the bombs over the civilian part of the town, including the hospitals. Several wings of the hospital were in shambles and I dragged myself into the only empty bed in the cellar. I received some sheets and made my bed. The first week I lived only on water. I could not eat one morsel of food and felt miserable. But things were beginning to look up. I kept myself busy by fighting a whole army of bedbugs which attacked only during the night. Tearing the mattresses apart did not help, neither did a can filled with water placed under each leg of the bed. Then I discovered that the bed bugs were coming out of the crevices of the walls and were crawling on the ceiling to let themselves fall on our beds. It was a "no-win" situation. The bedbug game was interrupted with nightly bombing attacks lasting several hours. I wondered where Göring's Luftwaffe was, maybe at the front line? Somebody had a radio with which we could receive music and news from Germany. What a luxury. "German troops before Moscow." That raised our spirits. At least, this was some encouraging news. Rommel is bogged down on the Egyptian border and used every soldier available in order to conquer Tobruk.

Two days ago I was transferred to a partially destroyed school for my final recovery. The school is only 100 yards from the harbor. That means half the night we spent in the ditch until the air attacks let up. The ground is shaking madly each time a bomb hits close by. The force of the concussion jars me a few inches out of the shallow ditch. I cannot wait to get out of the city back to my outfit.

After three weeks I managed to escape from the city and join my old unit, which now has shrunk to 50 soldiers. Almost everybody has a rash or has come down with jaundice or diarrhea. They need me to help in the medical tent to dress the multitude of skin infections and treat numerous maladies which have now befallen most of the soldiers. In the meantime the flies have multiplied by the millions. Trying to chase them from a piece of bread is futile. We had to cover our heads with a net and eat underneath it. A few days ago we shot down an English flyer as he swept fifty feet above our heads.

As the sun sets and the air cools off, the flies settle down for the night. It is already September. Huge butterflies with a deathhead insignia on their backs are taking off now. Chameleons come out of the bushes and lizards are chasing the flies--not to forget the scorpions which become active during the night and march into every corner of the tent. Far in the distance one can hear the humming of the thousands of trucks which are the lifeline of Rommel's army. They are on their way along the 1,400 miles toward the front line.

Dear Irmgard,

The trip toward the front starts tomorrow. A new order from the captain arrived. With three other medical students we have to report to a field hospital at the Egyptian border. The long journey toward the front starts in Tripoli. We throw our gear onto a truck, then 15 men climb into the back of the truck which will be "home" for the next two weeks. There is barely enough room between our baggage to place our feet because we also carry 30 cans of gas, five gallons each, and several crates of ammunition. We are driving in a convoy of 15 trucks. After we pass a few palm trees and bushes, the red-brown sand of the typical Libyan desert takes over. The blowing sand of the dry landscape obliterates our contours and changes them into grotesque ghostlike figures. A pair of goggles at least shields our eyes. We do not want to be surprised by the Tommy who rakes the Libyan lifeline almost daily with machine-gun fire.

On the fourth day we are passing Agedabia, from where Rommel started to throw the English forces back toward the Egyptian border, using mainly German jeeps to drag "two-by-fours" from the back of the vehicles to generate a lot of dust so the English would think that there were German tanks approaching. Once in a while we pass a burned-out English tank. This reminds us that Rommel started out his campaign only a few hundred miles from the gates of Tripoli when Mussolini sent the emergency call for help to Hitler to send German troops. The road now passes through the large gulf of Syrte until we reach Benghazi. At times the narrow highway approaches the coastline so we can get a glimpse of the ocean. It takes us six days to make it to this town, which must have once been an elegant city with a strong European character. But now it is a pile of rubble. The harbor is full of supply ships. Some of the supplies come from Greek harbors. Here one can see half-sunken ships, partly English partly Italian, proving the effectiveness of the air force of each side. We stop shortly to refill our gas cans. After 500 miles numerous English and also German burned-out tanks and trucks clutter the landscape.

Our trucks climb 1.000 feet to a plateau covered with a large number of trees. Houses line the highway off and on, green grass, palm trees and even plowed fields greet us. Farm vehicles are on the road and indicate that we have entered the Cyrenaica and are approaching the city of Derna. Here Mussolini had brought Italian farmers with the promise of land and government support to start an agricultural colony. Farmers are busy harvesting fruit, melons and corn. I have a chance to wash my dirty clothes. The wells of Derna, from which we fill up our canteens, contain 0.5% salt. So, fresh coffee has to be piping hot in order to cover up the salty taste. I barter my liras for a watermelon. What a treat to have fresh fruit! Our convoy makes only a short stop in Derna. The front line is still 300 miles away and we have to pass around the large swoop of Tobruk.

After two more days we leave the asphalt road and take to the dirt road, which the German engineers have built around the hundreds of pillboxes, concrete bunkers of Tobruk. These were left behind by the Italians on their retreat several months ago and are now defended tenaciously by a South African division. The road traverses several steep "wadis," which divide the landscape. These are abrupt edges of a ravine one to two hundred yards wide, which cut into the plateau. The wind carries the thunder of the Tobruk cannon to us. A whole German division has been tied down to trench warfare for the past several months. As we drive through the perimeter we can see a German battery unit in the distance firing at pillboxes to soften the enemy for another attack. Occasionally the South African artillery lets loose a barrage of mortar fire into our lines. We can see the explosions two miles from the road. There is not a single tree in sight. Brown sand, alternating with camel-bushes, rocks, large boulders and cactus plants cover most of the desert. Sometimes a gentle hill might give some cover for a tank or truck. The dirt road has turned to fine dust, but two inches below the dust a hardened surface gives enough traction for the trucks. Dust covers everything.

We leave the Tobruk battlefield behind and bed down in a ditch for the night to avoid enemy pilots who like to come at night and rake us with machine-gun fire on their way to re supply their garrison in Tobruk. The vital traffic artery is already falling apart at the edges. When two trucks pass each other, they have to go with one wheel into the dirt.

On the eleventh day I finally arrive at the front line. We four medical students are trucked to the "Hauptverbandsplatz," front line hospital. I have now moved 13 degrees latitude toward the East.

Dear Irmgard,

I arrived at our new location one hour after dark, which means seven p.m. The sun sets in Africa quickly and darkness engulfs one within minutes. After I dragged my tent half a mile, not far from the ocean, I joined my comrades in the large tent with chairs and tables. Unknown artists had decorated the walls of the tent with pin-up girls. In one corner an "organized" bar obtained from a British officers' mess decorated the tent. A small generator gave some light and kept the radio going. A dozen soldiers were reading or writing letters. The bar had Chianti wine and a few "Schnäpse." But the main drink was fruit juice with the obligatory salty taste from the distant Arab wells. It all seemed very luxurious to me. I could hear the rumbling of the artillery of Tobruk and could see the firing of the cannons on the Egyptian front. The radio sounded soothing as it brought dance music from Germany. After eleven days on the truck tears come to my eyes when I hear those lovely melodies. The food is tolerable. At times they even serve a piece of chocolate.

On a distant hill there stands a single dwelling, the only one within 30 miles. It harbors 40 diphtheria patients. I am told that diphtheria has taken a great toll of the Africa Corps. Only light cases are kept in the field hospital. The Italian Army hygienist has assured the German Commandant that there are no cases of amebic dysentery present in Libya. But recently the German physicians discovered that amebic dysentery is spreading dangerously through the troops. There is a small pharmacy with a laboratory attached to the "White House" as we call it. It was recently hit with a large bomb. But we were able to save all the medications and equipment. One of my jobs is to collect diphtheria bacilli from the patients and examine them under the microscope after I have stained them. I even have to check diarrhea cases daily for amoebae. In spite of the large Red Cross painted on the tents, the British Air Force visits us almost every night. Most patients can get up, and we help them into the ditches between the tents. There are 20 fresh graves a few hundred yards from the operating room tent. There is quite a civil, almost collegial tone between the physicians and us medical students. Everybody has his assigned duties and performs his job without a fuss. I already have had several chances to swim in the ocean...

...(several days later)

During the last few days we had nightly visits by the Tommy. That meant we had to drag the freshly operated soldiers and the very sick ones from their beds into the ditches each time the alarm sounded. As a field hospital we have no assigned antiaircraft batteries to protect us. Our Commander decided that we would have to move our field hospital to prevent further casualties. I moved my tent closer to the ocean and overslept the air attacks until I could feel the bomb hits shaking the ground. The next day a three-day long ghibli paralyzed friend and foe. The British could not fly either. The war came to a complete standstill when the 30-to-50-mile per hour winds hit us. We couldn't run our engines because of the sand storm. Each one struggled to cover his mouth with a handkerchief. We ran around with goggles all day. The fine sand got everywhere including into all the food. There was no escape. Finally the ghibli let up in the evening of the third day...

One day a mile from our field hospital clusters of Arab tents appeared. There were several camels with the tents. I decided to pay them a visit in the evening. As I approached, a group of several Arabs came out of one tent and greeted me. I was invited to visit their rather primitive housing. With their and my limited Italian I made out that they had come here to get some medicine from our field hospital. In the flickering light of the lamp I was led to a group of five young Arab girls, who were all afflicted with the early stages of trachoma of the eyes. Some elderly men had signs of healed trachoma, which leaves the cornea severely scarred. The affected person usually can see only light. I had read that sulfonamides, of which we had an abundance at the pharmacy, were very effective against trachoma. To my horror I was invited for a cup of tea inside the tent. The cup consisted of an old aluminum mug, which had probably not seen a rinse for days. It was filled with hot tea and passed around to me so I had the honor of taking the first sip. There was no way that I could refuse this honor. Fortunately, the cup was very hot, so that the hot tea had a chance to sterilize the chlamydia, the organism which causes the illness. After a while I found my way back to the camp and met a friendly, smart young doctor in the community tent with whom I was on good terms. I told him about my tent excursion to the Arabs. The next evening we both paid them a visit and examined the five young girls. We started the patients on oral Prontosil. After three weeks I could see the eyes of the girls improve. After another three weeks their eyes had almost cleared up, and I ventured to ask them whether I could ride one of their camels. The riding of a camel requires a good balance. The motion of the animal gives one the feeling of severe rocking. It was not a very pleasant ride and I was glad when I could dismount.

Off and on several Arab tribes had hang around our camp and they moved with us to our new location. They constantly bartered their watermelons for some clothes. But they also stole anything of value. So, we kept great distance from them. The English bombs sometimes hit them as well as their camels. Our cook became an expert with camel meat. It tasted better than that old canned meat we received from Italy and Germany. Our hospital had to move 20 miles into a large wadi to avoid the constant English air attacks. I had to remain next to the old "White House" and take care of the pharmacy and the lab. The requests for bandages, drugs, injectables and first-aid kits came in daily from the battalion medical officers. Sometimes they picked the orders up; sometimes a messenger car or I had to deliver them.

During the last month there was no chance to wash our clothes. Sometime ago we were issued a bar of special soap which would make a lather in salt water. But since we had moved away from the ocean, there was not enough drinking water available to wash clothes. I noticed to my horror that I was infested with body lice. Sometimes in the evening when the lice became too thick, we stripped off all our clothes and buried them in the desert sand leaving just a small portion above ground. The lice would than gradually crawl to the area above ground, where we soaked the clothes with a small amount of gasoline. It gave us a few days' rest from the itching until a new crop of animals had hatched from the eggs.

In mid-October the trench war became more active. Rommel had ordered nightly scouting ventures so that his troops could take some prisoners and find out what the enemy was up to. I had to rush to the field hospital because they had several wounded soldiers and also some English prisoners to take care of. For the first time I was allowed in the operating room with a fly swatter in my hand to chase away the flies and wipe the sweat off the operating surgeon. When the young doctor saw me in the operating room, he thought it would be a good job for a medical student to examine a whole battalion for amebic dysentery. That meant I had to be ready with the microscope for people to stand in line, each with a freshly collected stool specimen. After three days this was extended to another battalion on the front line. Anyone who was found to have amebic dysentery had to take a two-week dosage of Vioform tables. I was glad I could always make it back to my tent 20 yards from the ocean, where I wrapped myself into two sweaters and a coat and listened to the music of the ocean. The nights had already become very cool.

Dear Irmgard,

In the next few days I must leave my spot on the beach and will join the field hospital which is located in the large wadi 25 miles inland. Half a mile from the operating room tent I spotted a small cave in which I put up my tent. I know I will be safe during nights from Tommy attacks. They did spot us last night, but it will not be easy to hit us inside of the wadi. They missed last night. Yesterday I met the company commander for the first time after he had returned from a vacation in Germany. He made a good impression. He wants to give us medical students some schooling in instrumentation and anesthesia. The stream of wounded soldiers who have to undergo surgery or need their dressings changed never lets up. If the English knew that one quarter of our troops are down with diphtheria or amebic dysentery, they could easily overrun us. But things are looking up now......

It is now November. Two weeks ago we had to dismantle our camp and move into another wadi closer to the city of Bardia. This happened during a week-long ghibli. To move a field hospital involves the transport of all freshly wounded soldiers to the rear of the front. Most of them are trucked to an airfield and shipped out by air to Catania. Then we have to take down all tents and move all gear by truck to the next location, where we prepare the ground, anchor the tents and set up the operating room. Then we have to put up the beds, get the field kitchen going, find out where we can get our supplies and water. Then we are ready to receive wounded soldiers within the hour. Our bodies are aching and we are bone-tired since all this was done with a ghibli blowing 40 to 50 miles per hour.

Today we spotted an open "Horch 12-cylinder car" parked in front of the Company Commander's tent. Rommel is paying us a visit. He must have left orders to move us again. We are breaking up the camp again and moving this time into the totally destroyed town of Bardia. The only house, which still has a roof, will be our next operating room. A rumor is passed around that a large English Army unit with the strength of several divisions is approaching us from the deep south and has moved around the front-line on the Halfaya pass and is ready to attack us. Rommel has taken all his entrenched men from the Halfaya pass and is now ready with his tanks and his mobile "88"guns to confront the British forces. We have to get ready to handle many casualties.

Many weeks later, when I was already in captivity, I tried to reconstruct what happened around us. Several months previously Churchill had appointed the English General Auchinleck to take over the command of the Eighth Army. Many new American tanks and war materials had arrived with a convoy in Suez during the last few months. The English Army was reinforced by two Australian divisions. They had made large cardboard disguises and attached them to their tanks to give them the appearance of trucks as they were approaching us through the desert. Rommel had only two German and one half-strength Italian divisions available, to man the Halfaya pass. When he found out that the approaching English units were not just trucks but brand-new Mark IV American tanks, he withdrew his troops within two days to an area around Tobruk. Two-thirds of our field hospital unit retreated with him. He left a good Battallion-sized group of soldiers of mixed infantry,.artillery and fragments of the field hospital unit, around the city of Bardia, hoping that he could regroup his forces and attack the enemy 200 miles farther west and then relieve us. The English Army initially ignored our presence behind their lines. They thought that they had Rommel on the run, and they did. Rommel had to give up his attack on Tobruk. The South African division in Tobruk was now free. Within a few days he moved further west, avoiding any decisive battle with the British forces. After stretching out their supply lines, the English would cope with us later. Our group of 700 to 900 defenders around Bardia very soon realized that we were the victim of Rommel's initial optimism. His plan to stem the attack at some point farther west proved to be a miscalculation. He ended up where he had started eight months previously, in Agedabia.

Dear Irmgard,

Ghibli, always ghibli, seven days a row with gusts at 60 miles per hour. I have found shelter in the ruins of a destroyed residency. It gives me at least some protection against the unrelenting sandstorms. But with the nightly bombing attacks from above and the artillery fire from English destroyers on the town I do not know how safe my luxury residence will be.

Bardia is located on a one 1,000 foot-high plateau dominating the peninsula and the harbor below. The harbor has only a small opening as an entrance to the ocean. The town is in shambles. The houses are in ruins and most still carry the evidence of fire which gives them a black coating on the white-painted walls. The cupola of a burned-out mosque creates a beautiful contrast to the deep blue of the ocean, the brown sand and rocks which cover the African desert. I could almost forget the war for a moment. The moaning and suppressed cries of the wounded men remind me of the long day and night I have ahead of me. There hasn't been much time to get trained. Together with a 10-semester medical student I was taught all the names of the surgical instruments. Now I have to help and assist the surgeon. For a change they sometimes press a can of ether into my hand and I start giving anesthesia. If the wounded have eaten recently before their injury, I switch to chloroform. The only interruptions are bombs falling around us. The operating room is now busy 24 hours a day until the surgeon is too exhausted to carry on. He is freshly imported from the university and is not capable of improvising. He makes a frustrated impression since everything is so different from his university surroundings. Tomorrow a more experienced battalion surgeon takes over. At least he knows what he is doing. My experience and skill improve from day to day and the doctors consider me a great assistant. During the morning hours I have to help with the doctor's rounds. That means I have to change most of the dressings, give morphine injections and decide who can walk to a foxhole when the bombs strike.

Yesterday I was called to the hospital commander, who said "Otto, I have a request from the commanding general to look for a masseur. Can you do it?" "Of course, I can," I replied without hesitation. I figured that this might be an interesting meeting although I had never massaged anybody. I was driven a half mile to a cleverly disguised tent and met General Krüvell, the second in command after Rommel. I wondered how he got caught in the encircled group of soldiers. While I was giving him a full-body massage, I asked him how he happened to be caught here. After some hesitation he told me his story while I worked him over. His car and driver were hit by an English tank shell and he was thrown into a ditch, where he was found and picked up. He ended up in our unit with superficial injuries. His driver was killed. He plans to leave with the next German submarine and join Rommel. Today my arms and hands are still sore from the massage.

This letter will have to be mailed with the next submarine which tries to supply us by sneaking into the harbor for a few minutes and to take the mail along..