Sven Hassel

We hear the crawlers closing in. A T-34. They must have seen us, Tiny whispers. - Stay low until it is right here, then we run! The horrible clattering of the crawler comes closer and closer. I know this fear, creeping up the spine. It will mean certain death if they run just one second too soon. How we get up, I don't know, the legs move automatically. The tank wiggles over the hole and crushes everything in it. Then it rumbles on...

Book 3 in the Legion of the Damned series.

Convicted of deserting the German army, Sven Hassel is sent to a penal regiment on the Russian Front. He and his comrades are regarded as expendable, cannon fodder in the battle against the implacable Red Army. Outnumbered and outgunned, they fight their way across the frozen steppe....

This iconic anti-war novel is a testament to the atrocities suffered by the lone soldier in the fight for survival. Sven Hassel's unflinching narrative is based on his own experiences in the German Army. He began writing his first novel, Legion of the Damned, in a prisoner of war camp at the end of the Second World War.

Book 1 in the Legion of the Damned series.

A special command from the convict regiment, wearing Russian uniforms, take over four Russian T-34 tanks. Remote reconnaissance far behind the Russian lines in Caucasus. The year is 1942. Hour for hour, the tanks roll eastward. Several times, Russian departments challenge them. We follow the soldiers in their desperate struggle to find their way back to the German lines. The distances are great, the friends are few and death is always right behind them...

Book 4 in the Legion of the Damned series.

Stationed on the Russian Front and now equipped with armoured vehicles, Sven Hassel and his comrades from the 27th Penal Regiment fight on remorselessly... All of them should be dead: Life expectancy on the Russian Front is measured in weeks. But Sven, Porta, Tiny and The Legionnaire fight to the end, not for Germany, not for Hitler, but for survival. Wheels of Terror is a sobering depiction of war's brutalities, and the violence and inhumanity that the history books leave out.

Book 2 in the Legion of the Damned series.