[cyberia]

Due to contractual restrictions with my employer, I am not permitted to post my last name on the Internet. Since my first name appears here often, my father's last name might be interpreted as a breach of that agreement.

My father joined the Wehrmacht in 1936, signing on with the 4th Infantry Division in Dresden. A unit which thereafter morphed into the 14th Panzer Division.

He served with distinction in Poland, France, Greece, Yugoslavia and Russia,. His last held rank was that of Oberleutnant and his last command was with a Panzer III.

He was captured at Stalingrad on either February 3rd or 4th, 1943. Among the last to lay down his arms. Though a fighting solider, he was tried and convicted as a "war criminal" and sentenced to eight years hard labor in the Soviet camp system.

He was released in 1952.

Having lost two children to the war, as well as two brothers and scores of other relatives along with his home, he emigrated to the Untied States with my mother shortly after I was born in 1955.

He died at my home in Pennsylvania in 1985, a few months shy of his 99th birthday.

Ich Vermisse Dich Popa.