A blog sharing stories from the Eastern Front gathered in the writing of my books. I specialise in oral history and eyewitness testimony, so these are the memories of people caught up in the hell of WWII in the east.

Some stories come from archive testimony recorded in Latvia, which I have had translated into English; some comes from interview I have done myself with veterans in the UK and America and some of it comes from the post-war Latvian diaspora press – painstaking research which often takes years. But the results are pretty dramatic as a picture develops of a unit of men thrown into battle poorly trained, without enough weapons, with no artillery support – often with no helmets – in blizzard conditions and facing the overwhelming force of the Red Army.