SS General No 8 in the Sven Hassel series of novels. A great read in very good condition. It was said that Stalingrad had been burning since August, since the dropping of the first German bombs.

There was not much joy in looking ahead: there was nothing lying in wait for us but death and destruction. There was no joy at all in looking back: what had passed was a nightmare best forgotten. So we stared instead towards the far-off river, the silver ribbon of the Volga, where the dancing rays of the autumn sun made shining rings in the water. And for a short while we were almost hypnotised into believing that the present could last forever, and the past could be wiped out and the future avoided…" Stalingrad, the communal grave... Stalingrad, where one German soldier died every minute, while back in Germany a madman strutted and pranced and screamed himself hoarse: 'Fight to the last man, the last bullet!' The 27th Panzers in Hitler's Penal Regiment had fought through the winter in the hell-hole that was Stalingrad. Now there were few survivors from the last massive Russian attack. Weary and nauseated by the horrors they'd seen on the Russian front, they crawled into a bunker near the banks of the Volga. Hunger, they had discovered, was more demoralising than fear or defeat. Then the brutal SS General arrived...