MY friends Dad was taken from his home in Slovenia (Yugoslavia)and was sent to the ME to fight - first chance they got they arrested those on command and surrendered to a group of Canadians. He spent the rest of the war in Canada and loved it. After the war he came to Australia to live as he didn’t want to live under the Socialists. He always used to laugh at how, once they had been taken captive and forced to fight they played the convert to Nazism right up until the first sight of the Allies. He thought the Germans stupid but in reality the Germans thought themselves so ideologically perfect and superior that if someone was shown what they truly stood for they would make believers out of them. Sounds a lot like liberals!
He took the train out to the Eastern Front and spent the rest of the war walking back to Germany, where he surrendered to the British and worked as a gardener.
Heinz passed last year and with his passing one of the last direct links to WW II in our family.