I remember in "Monte Cassino" "The Old Man" got a keepsake ring from the Pope ! Porta had a yellow top hat as far as I can recall , "the signs of my misspent youth !
Is Sven Hassel a credible author? I've read some critic of him (in the www), but I must say that I enjoyed reading his books when I was a youngster. Michael ADMIN: would you please be so kind as to move this thread to the General section of 'Books, Films, TV, Radio'? I started it under 'Book Reviews' by mistake
I am going to stick my head above the sandbags here and say that Legion of the Damned is a superb anti-war novel if not memoir, in the same league as All Quiet on the Western Front. I have no doubt that it is based, to some degree, on personal experience (and bear in mind that Erich Maria Remarque was not a front line soldier). The dedication at the beginning is striking, and the litany of the fallen towards the end seems to be written with genuine anger. None of the sequels come close - they seemed rambling and self-indulgent even when I read them as a teenager - with the exception of Reign of Hell, which, while much more obviously fictionalised, gets the balance between harrowing violence and black comedy exactly right. It also seems better written than many of them, but to be fair the English versions had a number of different translators and some came to us from the original Danish via French, so it's hard to say how closely they reflect the author's style!
The only time my Dad actively censored what I read was when I came home one day with a copy of 'SS General', which was being passed around the class. It had strangely disappeared next morning. Very little merit in them looking back. And as for Leo Kessler, Mr Whiting's fiction had as much standing - or merit, again - as his factual work. That is, next to none.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/books/sven-hassel-novelist-who-depicted-nazi-soldiers-lives-dies-at-95.html?_r=1&
