‘Legion of the Damned’ – Sven Hassel (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

When I first started high school, we had ‘library lessons’ (I can’t believe that was actually a thing, did they seriously think we needed to learn how to use a library?) in the community library, which was part of the school building. Honestly, I was like a pig in, well… you know… as I walked in for the first time; I could actually feel my reading horizons broaden as I saw shelves upon shelves of new books to read. It was pretty ironic then that as the rest of the class went over to the kid’s section (what would probably be ‘Young Adult’ these days) I went straight to the adult sci-fi shelves and got stuck in ;o) Having said that though… The ‘War Fiction’ shelves were next to the sci-fi/fantasy and that is where I discovered Sven Hassel for the first time.

Having been brought up on a diet of war films (amongst all the other stuff), I remember it feeling really different seeing books where the WW2 German army was the main focus of the plot; that and the covers were the kind of brutal fare that an eleven year old boy like me would love. So of course I checked a handful out, of the library, and ploughed my way through them, just like a German tank making its way across the Russian steppe ;o)

After listening to the ‘Breakfast in the Ruins’ podcast for ‘Wheels of Terror’, I thought I’d revisit some Sven Hassel and see what I made of, far too many years on from those first reads. I did order a copy of ‘Wheels of Terror’ but that never showed up so I thought I’d go right back to the beginning with ‘Legion of the Damned’, a book that funnily enough, I never read back in the day. I’ve read it now though, here’s what I thought…

Convicted of deserting the German army, Sven Hassel is sent to a penal regiment on the Russian Front. He and his comrades are regarded as expendable, cannon fodder in the battle against the implacable Red Army. Outnumbered and outgunned, they fight their way across the frozen steppe...

War fiction isn’t generally my reading of choice, these days, so it took me a lot longer to get into ‘Legion of the Damned’ than I thought it would. It was worth the effort though. There’s a lot of talk around what part Sven Hassel actually played in the Second World War and I’ll be honest, I don’t have the time or the inclination to try and work my way to the bottom of  that particular rabbit hole. And if I read further into the series, which is very likely, I’ll probably shy away from the fact that Sven and his comrades have a strange habit of fighting on two fronts at the same time, which you shouldn’t really be able to do… Nope, I’m just here for the story and it’s not a bad one either.

The first thing I noticed about ‘Legion of the Damned’ is that it doesn’t have that vein of brutality running through like the other books I remember reading. Don’t get me wrong, Hassel doesn’t shy away from that brutality when it’s called for but ‘Legion of the Damned’ is a much more thoughtful book where ‘narrator Sven’ not only lets the reader really see how he feels about the war but also gives us a look at what the regular German soldier is also thinking while he’s getting shot at (amongst other things, the German soldier gets up to a lot while not fighting). There are no real surprises here, the regular German soldier would rather be anywhere but the Front and may think negatively about his superiors but doesn’t dare say anything; one area where Hassel doesn’t shy away from brutality is in the punishments that the SS and Gestapo dish out to soldiers and civilians alike. No surprises then but I’d say that it is handled very sensitively and honestly. As as character in his own book, Sven Hassel is someone that it’s very easy to like and feel a degree of sympathy for. I wonder if this will continue in later books…

When it comes to displays of warfare, the sensitivity goes straight out of the window but the sense of honesty remains with a no holds barred account of what it was like to fight on the Russian Front. I say ‘honesty’ in terms of it feeling like nothing is left out. With most of it, you do have to take Hassel’s word for it. I’m no scholar of the Second World War but I’d be surprised if there was a part of the warzone where Russian and German soldiers had a mutual agreement not to kill each other and just fire their guns in the air. If Hassel says there was though, I’ve got to take his word for it and it does lend to that sense of chaos around warfare, the sense that stuff like that could happen when the generals were looking the other way. I’ll take it because it makes for a good story. It’s when the tanks start rolling that the Sven Hassel that I remember really comes to the fore with passages that really don’t hold back on what tank warfare must have been like, especially when a phosphorous shell explodes in your hands. War is hell and Hassel proves that over and over again. The only thing that keeps soldiers going is the sense of camaraderie, having a comrade who will have your back in a fight and will also do the weirdest kind of shit in the downtime. I’m looking at you Porta… This is one of the reasons that I’ll end up reading at least a few more of these books, I’ve got a real soft spot for that ‘band of brothers’ vibe.

‘Legion of the Damned’ wasn’t quite the book I thought it would be but that’s no bad thing as what we get is a deftly handled account of men at war that offers a new perspective on the grey uniformed men who lined up to be gunned down in all those war movies I remember watching. I think I will keep reading this series.