The Eastern Front was hell. In the winter temperatures dropped to minus 20. Many men got frostbite and thousands of Latvians were killed in combat. I have pieced their stories together in English with a great deal of help from a team of translators, archivists and researchers behind the scenes. There were two Latvian divisions in combat during the Second World War – the 19th, which was sent to the Russian Front and retreated into Courland/Kurzeme and the 15th, which was smashed on the Russian Front and sent to Pomerania to rebuild.
Instead these men – some veterans, but most conscripts – were sent into battle with little training, poor equipment and no support. In Pomerania Red Army tactics were to encircle and then destroy their enemy. The Latvians fought their way out of NINE encirclements – but they left a lot of men behind.
An exhausted soldier from the Latvian 15th SS Division during the seven-week retreat from the Red Army across Pomerania. Some men slept as they walked: others fell asleep instantly during a rest period. The key thing was not to take off your boots – because your feet would swell up and wouldn’t go back on. Picture from the Latvian War Museum collection.
Eastern Front Eyewitness 