INTRO
In July of 1941 Peter was sent to Eastern Front, having spent the previous 2 years working on engineering projects within Germany. He was assigned to inspect pontoons built over rivers whose bridges had been destroyed by the hastily retreating Russian Army - a strange task, he noted:
“It is eerily devoid of humanity - much of the local populace has fled, leaving the countryside quite empty. It is almost beautiful, almost bucolic, this artificial tranquility. The war seems swallowed up in these vast open spaces, blanketed under dense forest.”
Assigned to inspect pontoons in the Rostov, Peter and his crew spent most of the time roaming the countryside, first in a motorcycle and sidecar, then in a slightly dilapidated Arbietswagen commandeered from a Politburo boss in Kiev. The speed of the German advance and Russian retreat caused a chaos all its own, in which vital supplies were often scarce. Despite the hardships, Peter clearly enjoyed the freedom and adventure of this period, as he wrote on the back of one of his photographs:
“Freedom, open roads to strange places and faces, living by our wits, day-to-day, no two alike! Shared a bottle with the crew of this tank, a lively bunch of boys from the Oberbayern, but if truth be told we were already drunk with the excitement of it all.”
GRID⋅1⋅2