The best of enemies...
FRIENDS FOUGHT ON OPPOSITE SIDES IN WWII DESERT BATTLE
TWO Second World War veterans have become best friends, despite fighting on opposite sides in one of the conflict’s bloodiest battles.
Brit Graham Stevenson, 93, and German Karl Koenig, 94, survived the Battle of Mareth in Tunisia.
More than 10,000 soldiers died in the fighting between British and Italian-German forces in March, 1943.
Karl, from Hamburg, was captured and acted as a translator while a POW.
Decades later, he decided to trace the British soldiers he had been trying to kill in the North African desert.
His British “enemies” welcomed him with open arms and even made him a member of their regiment.
He and Graham, from Walsall, West Mids, are the last surviving men from the group, and hope their friendship will send a powerful message to younger generations about the futility of war. Graham said: “People are people and it’s the circumstances that cause you to go to war to shoot one another. It shows how damn ridiculous war is. People aren’t natural enemies. You’re only shooting because your country has ordered it.”
Graham was 16 when he signed up, lying that he was 18 to get in.
He became a machine gunner for the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, 8th Armoured Brigade, and fought at the Battle of El Alamein.
He was part of the British Eighth Army’s advance through Tunisia before the bloody battle at Mareth.
On the opposite frontline, Karl, then 19, was part of Rommel’s 5th Panzer Division, which was fighting to keep control of the country.
He was a loader in a Panzer IV longbarrelled tank, supplying ammo used against Graham and his men.
Karl was captured by the Americans two months after the battle and held as a POW in the US, Belgium and England. He returned home to
Germany in 1947, but often thought of the men he fought against in Africa.
Graham’s war ended when he was hit by machine gun fire in Normandy.
More than 40 years later, Karl began researching British Army records and sought out the Sherwood Rangers.
He contacted Ken Ewing, who was head of the Sherwood Rangers Old Comrades’ Association, in 1991, and was invited to join the group as an honorary member, becoming friends with Graham a decade ago.
They are the only members of the group left alive who fought in Africa.
Graham said: “Karl is now one of my closest friends. We joke now that it’s a damn good job that we missed each other that day.
“When we first met, we just clicked. We figured out that in the battle, he was on the left flank and I was on the right flank. There was a very good chance we would have come across each other that day.
“He was captured in the desert and whisked off to the United States to a prisoner of war camp.
“He was moved to England when the war was still on. He could speak very good English and was more or less an informal interpreter.
“He was in with a couple who had a son who was virtually his age, who was away at sea.
“It was quite the thing, at weekends, to dress him up in their son’s clothes and go down to the pub.
“Because he had a bit of an accent they said it was their nephew from Canada or something like that.
“Years later Karl found out who he was fighting against, which was my regiment, and tried to get in touch.
“He was given the phone number of the gunner of my tank and we made him an honorary Sherwood Ranger.
“We accepted him, put the tanks away, we weren’t fighting any more. He was just accepted.
“When you stop fighting, you’re just two people. If you don’t forgive, you just extend the wartime atmosphere. There were some awful Nazis, but they were very much in the minority.
“Otherwise they were just the same as we were, they were doing a job they didn’t want to do and had been ordered to do it.
“I know all about the futility of war. Stand in any military cemetery and look at the graves and the ages on those graves. They’re 19, 20, 21. A life before them and they are buried in the ground. The only sensible thing to come out of war is when old enemies can become friends.”
The pair speak every year and have regularly met up in Normandy for the anniversary of the D-Day landings.
Although Karl had not been involved in that part of the war, he still wears his adopted British beret with pride.
He said: “I was thinking of what was practised in Africa – they used to call it a gentleman’s war – and it was up to a point.
“It was a mutual understanding of respect. I wanted to meet the other people as human beings – they were honourable soldiers.
“I telephoned a lot of people and I eventually managed to find them. There was a feeling of camaraderie between us. It was unusual for a German soldier to seek out English soldiers and to become friends.
“They became my closest friends in my life. It is hard to believe that we had to shoot at each other.” The World War II History Project has now launched a crowd-funding page to reunite Graham and Karl once more in Normandy this summer.
Heather Steele, the American-based project’s executive director, said: “Their friendship has transcended the brutality of war. It reveals mutual respect, healing and reconciliation can exist between former enemies. “It sends a powerful message to future generations.”
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They were just the same as we were – they were doing a job they didn’t want to do GRAHAM STEVENSON SECOND WORD WAR VETERAN Their friendship sends a powerful message HEATHER STEELE OF HISTORY PROJECT