Erich Sonntag Goes to Nancy, April 1941

Old photographs, the collector's diary, and a few notes about a young lad arriving in occupied France

Feb 24, 2025

Among the cool things I’m finding among the postcards are—old photographs of certain places. In the present context, this is even cooler as I found several such pictures tucked among the postcards—with one of them reading: “first leave, 1 May 1941”.

Curiously, I went back to Erich Sonntag’s diary, and—lo and behold, there are several entries around that date that tell of his strolls into town.

So, today I’ll have a first instalment of my translation of Erich Sonntag’s diary entries combined with several of the photographs from Nancy (which I think he bought as a souvenir).

But to set the stage properly, here’s a few entries from his diary that relates how Erich Sonntag came to Nancy in spring 1941, accompanied by a few images from his scrapbook:

Saturday, 26 April [1941]…via Sierck, Diedenhofen, Metz (23:15 o’clock) we arrive, finally, in Nancy on Monday, 28 April at 2 a.m. At first, we’re permitted some more resting time, and it isn’t before 5:45 a.m. that we commence our trek across the calm, morning town towards the airfield Essey le Nancy; around 7 a.m. we march through the grand entrance of the Kleber Barracks and set up camp after we’ve been assigned rooms. Soon we learn that the extensive barracks also hosts a second RAD [Reichsarbeitsdienst, Germany’s compulsory labour service] unit. This is how I ended up abroad for the first time, of course in a manner that is very different from how I would have liked it.

Wednesday, 30 April: We have gorgeous weather, and spring is making itself felt in us; we feel like young stallions, and we act out like that. Our previous superiors didn’t join us in France, they were discharged, and not Hermann Dippel is our leader of the pack [orig. Leithammel]. He joined together with us, and while we were still in Kassel, he was sent to a deputy trainer course [Hilfsausbilderkurs] in southern Hesse together with 11 others. Even one of us Viennese was sent there (Pichler of Troop 3—1 Viennese and 11 Hessians, even though we were 120 Viennese and 60 Hessians!) Of those 12 course participants, 4 deputy trainers are now deployed and required to command a troop. This happened to our comrade Hermann Dippel, a pharmacists’s son from Kirchhain, who’s about my height, blond, and a good lad. Of course, we didn’t also let him have his way, as far as “internal matters” were concerned. As far as external matters were concerned, we’ve always, to the best of our abilities, helped him to increase his standing among those higher-ups. As long as he led our troop, he enjoyed a fairly good reputation. Thereafter, however, he quickly, and increasingly so, got a bad reputation, although we all thought long and hard as to why…This Wednesday we shall receive our first payment in France, which is twice as high as earlier: deployment surcharge. At the barrack’s cinema, we watched the movie “Robert Koch”, which I already knew, but the artistic mastery of Emil Jannings is nothing to be sneezed at.

The Kleber barracks had apparently come through the war undamaged, but the airfield’s tarmac and its immediate surroundings were in a rather sorry state. Together with the second RAD detachment, we were now tasked with tidying up the tarmac and the surrounding area. So mainly earthmoving and road construction. As we had received sufficient training with the simple tools required for the above-mentioned work in Rothwesten, Harleshausen, and Hessisch-Lichtenau, hence we got on well with the job. As we were moving things along properly, often in competition, for example when loading box lorries which we then pulled to the unloading point ourselves, there was also time for all kinds of jokes. The more simple-minded comrades, who were always willing to believe anything, were often tasked to get the “electric eye-measure” or “the embankment plane” [Böschungshobel] from the neighbouring troop, and they often returned, sweating heavily, to our workplace carrying one or the other huge tool. We then chased them back with the remark that should not bring the small, but rather the big version of this or that “tool”. Outside the barracks, there was a small pub run by a man from Lorraine who once had worked in Vienna and who would sometimes treat us to Schnitzel, if he had enough un-rationed meat to sell. I also ate excellent mushrooms there, especially in salads. Later I got to know a restaurant in the city that served mushroom sauce with sausage without required rationing certificates [Marken]. Ever since then I have remained a mushroom lover.