The battery thus engaging the enemy, Luck spent the remainder of the day furiously trying to plug the gaps in his line.

In 1939 he was posted to the 2nd Light Division, serving with the 7th Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion.

He was present in virtually every theatre of war from the first day until almost the final day, and often involved in the crucial battles, so the account is full of interest from a historical point of view -- not to mention his close connection to Rommel.

During the night Luck was startled by the reports of paratroopers landing in his area, and establishing a bridgehead on the east side of the Orne River. In January 1945, when the division was moved to the Oder front, the division took part in fighting along the Reitwein Spur.His experiences were and still are relevant for today's people, of not just the brutality but the human side of war, of being himself able to understand and forgive harsh treatment in the gulags of Russia! Howard told Madame that von Luck might look suspiciously like a German, but that he was in fact a Swede. Rommel, however, led a decisive attack on the following day with the 21st and 10th Panzer Divisions, breaking through the Pass within minutes.

Over the next days, the Division advanced through Kielce, Radom and Łódź, but it was not until 6 September that serious resistance was encountered. Colonel Luck starts before the war and discusses his training, but as with most of the book, he doesn't detail what he is doing involving the Army as much as what he is doing and who he is meeting outside of the basics of what is going on. Nevertheless the barrage quickly persuaded the French garrison to surrender, while the two British destroyers steamed away. The British paratroopers had been reinforced by the British 51st (Highland) Division on the evening of 8 June. I am about a quarter of the way through the audio version (for some reason the voice actor puts on an obviously fake German accent and reads with a downbeat tone, which take a bit of getting used to) of this Second World War memoir.Military enthusiasts may be disappointed that Luck doesn't get into the tactical details of tank warfare, but I found his more anecdotal account of his experiences and fateful encounters with former rivals far more compelling. After the war, Luck wrote that he was responsible for this barrage of anti-tank fire, saying that he used his sidearm to threaten a Luftwaffe officer into action, to fire upon the advancing tanks with 88 mm flak guns. He also became good friends with several of his former opponents, most notably British Airborne Major John Howard. Luck's account has been widely repeated, [35] [38] although competing theories have also been suggested: The British 8 Corps history states that German anti-tank guns based in Soliers, which had escaped the aerial bombardment, were responsible. He talked about a battle I didn't know about "The Battle for Hatten-Rittershoffen" A nasty affair that decimated his unit, the American 72nd Infantry division and the 14th Armored division.

Napier stated that an officer of the 2nd Fife and Forfar wrote in his memoirs "of his surprise at seeing a German officer in dress uniform surveying the battlefield from Cagny". He describes in depth every theatre of the Second World War he was involved in, not just briefly but I believe in a very easily understandable way.

He argued that despite there being "no doubt that heavy anti-tank gunfire from in and around Cagny began to account for British tanks", no evidence that the Luftwaffe had guns in Cagny at the time given the dispositions of other Luftwaffe batteries. However, his war stories, while detailed, meticulous, and sometimes dreadful, were somewhat lacking in the technical and tactical details that made Japanese Destroyer Captain a much better read.