Nearing 90, British author pens true story account of live in occupied Germany after Hitler

Nov. 28, 2011 - PRLog -- He is not a historian but he is history.  Nearing 90, Harry Leslie Smith has witnessed or participated in pretty well every major historical event in the twentieth century. As a boy, he lived through the social and political upheavals generated by the conclusion of the first Great War. Growing up in the both the mining and factories towns of Northern England, he experienced the devastation wrought by the Great Depression.  When Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and started the Second World War, Smith volunteered on his 18th birthday and joined the RAF. So began Harry Leslie Smith’s involvement in the charnel house of war which concluded for him as a member of Britain’s occupational forces in defeated Nazi Germany.
Now nearing the end of his life and understanding that there are few witnesses left to these great and horrible events in one of mankind’s bloodiest and cruellest centuries, Smith has documented his early years in a series of social histories.  Harry Leslie Smith latest work is aptly called Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip. It is the first book every written from the perspective of a British occupational soldier stationed in war ravaged Hamburg. From his billet in Hamburg, a city razed to the ground by remorseless aerial bombardment, he witnesses a people and era on the brink of annihilation. This narrative presents a street-level view of a city reduced to rubble populated with refugees, black marketers, and cynical soldiers.
At times grim and other times amusing, Smith writes a memoir relaying the social history about this time and place, providing a unique look at post-WWII Germany. Hamburg 1947 is both a love story for a city and a passionate retailing of a love affair with a young German woman.  Hamburg 1947 is an excellent introduction into the social and political history of post war Europe from a unique perspective of a common man at the forge of history.  Hamburg 1947 is an excellent continuation of Harry Leslie Smith’s progress through the 20th century with the rest of his peers.  Hamburg 1947 is available through Amazon, Indigo, Barns and Noble, booksellers worldwide and also as an e-book on Kindle and Kobo.  Hamburg 1947 is a must read this holiday season for anyone interested in lives lived on the razor’s edge of dangerous times.  Harry Leslie Smith is also the author of the highly praised memoir 1923 and The Barley Hole Chronicles: From Hell to Hamburg.  For further information about Hamburg 1947, review copies, interviews or to learn more about the author please contact Barley Hole Press LLC