2022 US Trip – Day 26 (The National WWII Museum in New Orleans – German Soldbuch)
On display at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, this is a German Soldbuch which was issued to all members of the German military and was used as identification and to record pay and other matters. This one, which has been damaged by a bullet, belonged to Alfred Heisig, but I can’t find any details about him on the German war graves site, so perhaps he survived. Again, the museum doesn’t have any more information on-line about the item which seems something of a shame.
Anyway, this was another item that I thought was powerful as any German soldier wouldn’t have wanted to have been parted from this book. At one stage in the life of this document it was pristine and cared for by the soldier who would have placed it in his tunic pocket whilst perhaps fearing for the next day and the military action that he might have been involved in. I find myself thinking of the Stoic writing that “remember that all we have is on loan from fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission”, the soldier could never have thought that this book would have been taken away from him and then eventually taken on a new life in a museum in Louisiana.
