English Translation

2 DR. ING. ADOLF METZNER Gablonz, 6 January 1944 Vryane,bef Misteta 7711.44 Highly honored minister and dear KonejMa194ank! Due to my wound and the associated circumstances, I will only be in possession of your shareful letter of 23 July 1943 today. Even if I offer your help in no way. As I am still in bed, I choose a dictated legible typewriter letter instead of a perhaps less legible pencil letter and apologise for this. Although this wound is 6 months ago, the healing is only slowly progressing, but I am happy to have healed in between so well, and to have preserved life. On July 4th we attacked - you should know that I was a company leader at "Great Germany". - at Bjelgorod with enormous strength. I can well say that the division had the impact of a whole tank corps. We drove up with a huge mass of tigers and panthers, had an artillery-preparation, stucas and battle-flyer, setting us in astonishment, and we believed to be in Kursk in 3 days. But when the Russian i2 Divisions confronted us, the attack had to remain after a successful breakthrough. I was wounded twice behind each other. Within a short time, almost all the officers of the division fell out except for the division commander and two regiment commanders and few officers of supply. The team losses are so strong that I can't call them at all. I was attacked with my battalion commander, a former HJ leader from East Prussia, first of all a severe wound that smashed my right leg and ripped my lungs so hard that I was considered lost. I can say today that I believed in myself, praise to God only at a fainting, that Solda-tentod in green field to die. It is not a god-slasing when I say that it was me that the soldier-death could be as beautiful as it is sung in the songs. I was lying in a wheat field, the sun was shining and the crickets were chirping. Then the courage of life in me awoke again, I was found and connected and received a second hit in the right upper arm. With the above-mentioned commander I was then brought back on a tank. When I awoke from the narcotics, I heard the doctor who still thought I was stunned, saying to his assistant doctor, "Oberleutnant Metzner can no longer get through." Then I decided to annoy the doctor to prove the opposite to him. I was then taken with the Fieseler stork to Kharkov and then with the "Ju" to Poltawa. Here I could only be artificially fed for 8 days by spraying glucose and salt into the veins, getting 4 blood transfers and was punctured lltimes, every time almost 1 litre of purified blood was tapped from the lungs. After 6 weeks I was able to transport to Germany. St.M. $-9q42 b.w.!