Morgens um 5 Uhr treffen wir in Hürtgen ein. Im Privatquartier haben wir bis mittags geschlafen.
5 'o clock in the morning we reach Hürtgen. We slept until noon in private quarters.
FRA
IT
Willkommen
Bitte beachten Sie, dass die Einträge in umgekehrter Reihenfolge geschrieben sind, der erste Eintrag befindet sich unten auf der Seite. Um Dieters ersten Eintrag zu lesen, beginnen Sie bitte hier!
Please note that the entries on each page are in reverse order, first entry at the bottom of the page. To read Dieter´s first entry, please start from here! 
Veuillez noter que les inscriptions au journal figurant à chaque page sont reprises dans l'ordre inverse, la plus ancienne étant en bas de page. Pour voir la toute première inscription de Dieter, commencez ici!
Si noti che le date di inserimento nel diario sono in ordine inverso, si parte da quella a fondo pagina. Per andare al primo giorno del diario di Dieter clicca qui!
- Dieter Finzen
- In Mori (Stockelsdorf) bei Lübeck aufgewachsen, habe ich bereits von 1916 bis 1918 am Ersten Weltkrieg im Füsilierregiment "Königin" Nr. 86 teilgenommen. Im August 1939 wurde ich als Veteran in die Wehrmacht eingezogen. In diesem Blog veröffentliche ich mein Kriegstagebuch.
5 'o clock in the morning we reach Hürtgen. We slept until noon in private quarters.
AntwortenLöschenHi, Thomas. Glad to see you've picked up the heavy lifting again!
AntwortenLöschenI'll do my best to support the process, but since I've retired I'm staying away from the computer as much as possible, because my eyes, shoulders and wrists need a break.
Initially, I'll contribute by comments and suggestions to support the translation effort, please take these as a well-meaning contribution, and not as a criticism of your translations. I haven't spoken much German in the last 40 years, and now even some things that would once have been obvious leave me unsure of their precise meaning. Also, my vocabulary was more literary than military, though I picked up a lot of the LTI (lingua tertii imperii) in my time, and loved the way some dissidents mocked it, especially in the army.
So, for starters, I think that Privatquartier probably means that the soldiers were billeted on (i.e. accommodated in) private households. That would help explain how Dieter and comrades were left in bed till midday.
This practice, which was common for centuries, gave rise to the very term "billet", as quartermasters (the rank title says it all!) would nail a note (French "billet") to the door of each house concerned, indicating how many soldiers were to sleep in each house.
In British army usage, the term billet continued to be used as a name for the barrack room (as a reservist in the Irish army, which drew much of its military jargon from Irishmen who had previously served in the British army, I was on occasion "billet orderly" responsible for things like keeping the floor swept and the fireplace clean).
As an incidental footnote, the Hürtgen forest would become a household name in the US in 1944, as the US army suffered heavy casualties there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_H%C3%BCrtgen_Forest