He is very young, very na ve, and the men who are with him are only marginally more worldly. The casual brutality of the Wehrmacht training is followed by assignment as a truck driver to the infamous Rollbahn -the long supply tail of the advancing Germans. Sajer describes the truck mounted journey across the bleak Russian terrain via Minsk and Kiev to the front lines by the Don River. There is a certain amount of vagueness in the narrative as if Sajer was retelling this story based on hastily scribbled notes. When he talks about military hardware it is typically generalized unless it belongs to him.
Similar treatment is given to tanks and artillery in most cases.
The generalizations IMO add to the book as the typical soldier was mostly concerned with being able to identify that which could kill him and ignoring the details. Make no mistake-the vivid descriptions of endless artillery attacks, tanks grinding over those trapped in foxholes, and seeing the endless lines of Soviet infantry screaming their way across the snow more then make up for the lack of detail that many grognards revel in. With the arrival of spring 1943 Sajer volunteers with his friends to join the SS division Gross Deutschland as a pure infantry trooper. Granted a leave prior to training with his new unit he attempts to head home to Strassbourg and gets stuck in Berlin for his entire leave. He is a witness to the US Army Air Force daylight bombing campaign and describes the aftermath of the attacks.