Festival of the poor Book

Very interesting book showing the rare German experience. It covers a short time (June-July 1943) with great detail, so we experience the daily grind. Steinhoff fought the whole war and this book focusses on his short time in Sicily, after the fall of North Africa and the invasion of Sicily. I wondered why & he explains in the epilogue that it was when he first thought Germany would lose the war. His experience of facing crazy odds, being constantly bombed, retreating from airfield to airfield seemed very much like what the RAF faced in France in 1940. Steinhoff's account was well interspersed with descriptions of the Battle of Britain, Russia & his short stint in North Africa. The English edition I read did not tell me when Steinhoff published the original German one, but he mentions later it was 25 years after the end of the war, so 1970. The English translation includes words like "scramble" etc. I wonder if that was the translator using English equivalents, or if there really were evocative German words that said the same.