No Place To Lay My Head: A Memoir of the Eastern Front in World War Two Paperback - 2023

Perfect for fans of first-person memoirs from the Second World War.

By 1944 Byelorussia had been brutally occupied by Nazi Germany for three years, but now the Red Army were coming. The nation was torn apart as violence erupted between the ruthless Communist partisans and the equally menacing Nazi forces.

Sixteen year old Sasha Nioman's brother was carried off and forced to join the local partisans, leaving his family at the mercy of Nazi reprisals. To stop this from occurring Sasha was given little option but to join the German Army with the 34th Battalion Field Police - a force of anti-partisan legionaries of mixed nationalities commanded by Wehrmacht officers.

No Place To Lay My Head charts Sasha's terrifying ordeal through the Second World War as he was forced to fight for an occupying force he hated. This book provides an eyewitness account into the brutal atrocities committed by both Nazi and Soviet forces on the Eastern Front, including the massacre of six hundred defenceless men by the Russian army, of which Sasha was one of only a handful of survivors.

This was not the end of Sasha's war, however. He was sent to the Western Front to stem the Allied advance but his officer's fled in the face of the American onslaught and he gave himself up. It was only now that he was able to fight against the Nazis, initially joining the Free Polish Army before serving in Italy as a member of the British Forces.

Anthony Richardson charts Sasha's unique journey through the Second World War in exquisite detail. After the war Sasha moved to Britain and through a number of interviews he gave his remarkable story to the author. It should be essential reading for anyone interested in an eyewitness account into a much-overlooked front of this brutal war.

'It has the stamp of authenticity and is a most valuable and timely addition to the literature on guerrilla war.' Otto Heilbrunn