Saving My Enemy
This great book "Saving My Enemy: How Two WWII Soldiers Fought Against Each Other and Later Forged a Friendship That Saved Their Lives" written by Bob Welch is about two soldiers, Don Malarkey (2nd Battalion, E company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division) born on July 31, 1921. Malarkey grew up in Astoria, Oregon where he had a happy childhood as a free-range American.
Fritz Engelbert born in 1925 and drafted into the German Wehrmacht in 1943. Fritz's boyhood couldn’t have been more different than Malarkey's. Regimented and indoctrinated by the Hitler Youth, he was introspective after years of being indoctrinated by the Nazi propaganda machine. The two men who fought on opposite sides during World War II.
Sixty years after they fought against each other in the Battle of the Bulge, Don and a Fritz meet over beers in Bastogne, where the battle was fought. Both men suffered from Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but as they learn how similar their lives have been, they bond like brothers, forgiving each other and forging a friendship that passes down to their own children. They formed a close friendship, and Malarkey even traveled to Germany to visit Engelbert and his family.
The book explores the unlikely friendship between these two former enemies, and how their shared experience of war ultimately brought them together. Saving My Enemy is the unforgettable true story of two soldiers on opposing sides who became brothers in arms.
'War takes courage but peace takes courage too!'
- Bob Welch