Who know something about this ?

[Dan Po]

This days i talk with a person who said something very interesting :

After the battle of Stalingrad many romanian desertors find a good place to hide : the gipsies champs near BUG where they were deported by romanian gouvernment. The gypsies accept them in their comunity till the end of war only if they swear to keep this secret for 40 years.

Who know something about this story ?

[Dr_V]

The only thing somewhat related to this I've hared from one of my patients (WW2 vet) about 2 weeks ago. He told me that he was part of a small group of Romanian soldiers running away from Stalingrad lines and strained by their units (not desertors, just lost and isolated, some lightly wouned).
He sais that those Romanian soldiers, isolated from their units and starving for days, traded with some Romanian speacking gipsies near Bug parts of their uniforms, the waches, some other goods they owned and even 2 pistols for food and a small cottage drawn by a mule. They wondered more than a week, completely disorientated, before they've reached a small, severely beaten, retreating German unit and joined it untill they reached a command point and they were directed back to their units.

[rcristi]

I hope this is just a joke. Those guys weren't deserters? Hilarious. How come they could not find any authorities between Don and Bug to report their wereabouts after Stalingrad? If you check the map there's a huge distance between those two rivers, and in between there's also the Dnepr (unless they confused the Dnepr river with Bug river) there's no way to cover that distance in a week by foot.

Cheers

[Dr_V]

No joke, but I admit it's strange. It can be also completely untrue, the man I've spoke with is a 88 years old guy, very ill (heart related problems) and a little crazy (senile schlerosys). He's full of stories about the front, but he can't tell what happened to him last month...

If this patient would have been a more serious eye witness I'd had invited him to tell his memoires for the forum (see Victors post "Call to arms!"). I considered it's not the case. But this little story came into my mind reading this new thread and I saw no harm in telling it. :oops:

I really believe that my patient was on the East front, but he's now a lonely and confused old man. He might have participated in such an event as described, but I doubt that the details are accurate.

[rcristi]

That's more clear now. I didn't put in question the fact that he participated to WW2, but I was surprised to found out that somehow some soldiers got lost at Stalingrad and reapeared near the Bug river, and on top of that they were not deserters. Maybe his story is true (why not), if is the case, for sure they were deserters. If I remember well, after the soviets broke the Stalingrad front, the stranded units were regrouped at Chir river almost at half way distance between Don and Dnepr.