Snow and PanzerGrenadiers

It is snowing again. I do not like the snow. In fact, I really despise it. The reason I despise snow has not that it is cold and all that; I mean that too, but there is a more deep reason involved. Around thirteen or so years ago, I happened to read a novel called ‘PanzerGrenadiers’. This was about a division of German soldiers attached to armored regiments (hence Panzer) during operation Barbarossa. This was, of course, Hitler’s ill advised attempt to attack Russia. The book ends, as did the war for many Germans dying in the snow. Trying to get their machine guns to fire while the winter hardened Red Army, which they had thought to be decimated turned around and hurled a hundred divisions and armour at an absolutely incomprehensible scale at the Wehrmacht. And at one point in the book, a German soldier turns to his friend and says that, ‘the snow belongs in picture postcards’. My sentiments exactly.