“That was the way my war ended, in May 1945, on the West bank of the Elbe, under American occupation but without an American in sight. After my two years of fighting, after Kursk and the retreat to the West, after the Halbe Kessel and the fields full of bodies. After everything I was ashamed of, and everything that I took pride in, my war ended with a drunken Kettenhund shooting a hole in my shoulder blade.”

“That was the way my war ended, in May 1945, on the West bank of the Elbe, under American occupation but without an American in sight. After my two years of fighting, after Kursk and the retreat to the West, after the Halbe Kessel and the fields full of bodies. After everything I was ashamed of, and everything that I took pride in, my war ended with a drunken Kettenhund shooting a hole in my shoulder blade.”

— Wolfgang Faust