Wolfgang W. E. SamuelBesprekingen

I loved this book. Thank you for writing it! My father's family were also Flüchtlinge at the end of WWII, fleeing from Poland. We heard stories about it but this book has brought to mind more questions to ask my father's remaining siblings. The hardships this generation has endured is outstanding!

COMING TO COLORADO is Colonel Samuel's sequel to his bestselling memoir, GERMAN BOY, which I read and thoroughly enjoyed several years ago. This one is almost as good. It's his story of how he arrived in America with his mother after she'd married a USAF sergeant in Germany. He was fifteen and had only just barely finished eighth grade, and he spoke no English. So he was starting from scratch when he settled in the Denver area, part of a new family. But his determination and grit worked in his favor. He learned the language and got through HS, finishing in the top half of a class of over 700. College was too hard for him initially, so at his stepfather's suggestion, he enlisted in the Air Force and became a skilled clerk-typist, and got married at just twenty to a very spoiled rich girl from Texas. Stationed in England, they had a baby and the marriage disintegrated and ended in divorce. Using the GI Bill, he successfully completed college and ROTC, and was commissioned an officer in the USAF, which had been his dream. He remarried, trained as a navigator in strategic recon aircraft, and moved up through the ranks to full Colonel.

While it sounds like a rather ordinary 'success story,' it's really not, considering all the obstacles Samuel had to overcome. Colonel Samuel is a fine writer, especially considering English is a second language (and there is no hint of a ghost writer,), and I admire all of his accomplishments. Very, very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

Excellent biography of a boy who experienced a lot of trauma in his young years in Germany during World War II and after, when he escaped with his family from the Russian sector. I recommend this one for sure.

One area of success at the end of WW2 was hoovering up as much aircraft technology as these specialized could find and confiscate. Their main competition came from Russia and other Allies although there was much cooperation and sharing with the latter group after the conflict ended.½

In-depth, readable, and enjoyable

Excellent book that covers the acquisition and operations of yet another "interim" TAC aircraft. The author does a great job of fleshing out the politics and resulting compromises that the aircrew and maintenance troops had to make work. He spares no punches in describing the impact that failed projects such as the XB-51 and XB-68 had on TAC and how the pursuit of funding led to nuclear specialized aircraft to the detriment of TAC as critical mission capabilities atrophied.
The coverage of the RB/WB squadrons and their personnel is excellent and was obviously well researched. The anecdotes are well written and extensive throughout the volume. They provide an excellent glimpse into squadron life and the missions both accomplished and failed.
The book itself? The discussion of mission systems, their acquisition and use by the EWO community should be required reading for today's FOGO's. (Things haven't changed at DoD.)
The appendices are excellent and the bibliography is very extensive. The appendix covering losses in particular appears to be very factual with no attempt by the author to clean up the reputation of the airplane or aircrew. Overall this was obviously a labor of love for the author who has a connection to the aircraft.
Highly recommended as an aircraft history, unit history, and history of the Vietnam war.

This book was one of the best books I've read in a while. Having a personal connection to war-torn Germany during WWII, my expectations were high. This book delivered. I was immersed into the life of Wolfgang Samuel as a small child dealing with bomb shelters and air raids during the war. The atrocities this little boy endured while escaping from the German and Russian Army will make you cry. No food, no clothing, no where to live, this little boy was constantly searching for the necessities that we all take for granted. Shoes made of plastic, no coat and walking miles and miles in the snow was not the worst of it. He didn't understand why his grandfather was taken away and never returned. He didn't understand why the planes would drop bombs and destroy their house leaving them with no where to live. He simply knew he had to take care of himself, at the tender age of 9 years old, and take care of his mother and sister as well. A true story of a hard life of a young boy trying to survive in Germany and ultimately finding his way to America, just like many other families at the time, including my husband's family. A wonderful book and a must read!

An incredible and often forgotten and ignored story of human suffering, sacrifice, kindness and survival from the perspective of the losing side of war. A sobering and candid account of the ravages and results of war on the innocent. So many passages and excerpts in the book touched me deeply, especially "Personal humiliation had become our daily norm, and most of us didn't even recognize it for what is was anymore."

The author has given us an incredible personal tale of tragedy and triumph. I highly recommend this book and enjoyed it thoroughly.½

While the title is perhaps just a tad bombastic, this is a good aircraft history, as Samuel examines the changing fortunes of the B-66 (which he flew during Vietnam) in the Cold War. This gives you the arc of how a stop-gap tactical bomber became an essential component of the USAF strike operations in the air war over Vietnam in the electronic warfare mode; at least until the aging machines reached the end of their effective usefulness.

In as much as this is a memoir as much as it is an organizational and technical history, Samuel seems to be a good writer who has a talent for evoking the flavor of the service he was a member of. He also does a good job of integrating the stories of his colleagues in the B-66 community into this history. Finally, you can count Samuel as another U.S. veteran of the Vietnam War who will disdain the strategy of the Johnson Administration until his dying day.

This is an eloquently told, often nearly heartbreaking story of what a young German boy endured as a refugee in the closing days and the years following WWII. Wolfgang Samuel tells his story with grace and heart. He dedicates the book to his mother, a major character in his story who, to keep her family alive, sacrificed nearly everything, even to the point of prostituting herself so her children could eat. As Samuel put it -

"People were hungry and would do whatever was necessary to put food on the table for their children ... We were the people who had nothing and lived from hand to mouth. We were the human debris of that evil war. We had no reserves of food, clothing or anything else that sustained life. We were desperate people, easy to exploit."

In a passage startlingly reminiscent of Gone with the Wind, the classic novel of the US Civil War and its aftermath, Samuel tells of how for many years immediately after the war, his mother had no new clothes. "The nicest looking dress she had owned ... she had made herself from curtains which hung in our barracks apartment ..."

And this is not just a book about being refugees and the awful conditions after the war; it's also a universal coming-of-age story, about a boy grappling with the physical changes of puberty and having no one to talk with about what's happening to him. It's about a boy left to take care of himself at the tender age of 14. It's also an homage to his grandparents, who helped sustain him through these worst of times. In other words, there's an awful lot of stuff in here that so many people will relate to, regardless of their own backgrounds.

I know I'm several years late in discovering this book, but I plan to recommend it highly to everyone, particularly history buffs and humanists interested what the human spirit can endure and still rebound. Because after his eventual emigration to the U.S. in 1950 at age 15 (where German Boy ends), Samuel went on to complete college and made a distinguished career for himself in the US Air Force for 30 years. The next book to go into my Amazon cart will be the sequel to this memoir, called Coming to Colorado. This guy can write! And I want to know the rest of his story. But start here, folks. READ THIS BOOK! - Tim Bazzett, author of Soldier Boy

A few months ago we went to visit Bacharach, a small town in Germany. While there, we met Herr Jung, a retired schoolmaster in his 70's. He took us on a tour of his town and told us stories of what it was like being a boy in Germany during WWII that moved us to tears. Then he recommended this book. How could I not read it?

This is a story of WWII, told from the point of view of a nine year old boy, Wolfgang, starting in January 1945 in the small German town of Sagan (now the Polish town of Żagań). The war is coming to an end in Germany and the Russians are moving in. He and his mother and younger sister must escape the Russians, the cold, rape, and starvation over and over again for six long years. For Wolfgang, the battle of his life didn't start until the war ended. The most amazing thing about this story is that it's all true. People really lived through times like this, and continue to do so all over the world.

My biggest issue with the book was that it was too long. It could've used some editing. Yes, he's hungry. Again. And cold. It grew slightly tiresome at times. But only slightly. The other thought that I couldn't get out of the back of my mind was that he wrote this at least 40 years after the fact, how could he remember everything in so much detail? He stated in his preface that when he started to write, it all just came back to him, but I had trouble getting over a bit of doubt.

Over all a very amazing story and I recommend it to everyone.½

Wolfgang and his family barely get away from the advancing Russian army in the winter of 1944-45. After they find refuge with Wolfgang's father's parents in a small town, they have to flee once more, only to wind up in the East zone. After two years, his father comes from the British Zone and takes them there, where they wind up in barracks for refugees.

3442. German Boy: A Refugee's Story, by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel (read May 7, 2001) This book published last year is an unpretentious account of a boy born in 1935 and tells of his life from January 1945, in the last days of the Nazis, till about 1950. I found this artless tale consistently interesting, though I suspect the author is less anti-Nazi than anti-Communist. (He survived in part thru his mother's prostitution to get food for her kids.) I found this realistic and memorable story a very engrossing read.