I am fortunate to know Fred…or so I thought. His soft Austrian accent adds so much to his saga. His ever present awkward gait that has been with him like so many memories I now understand. Always sincere, pensive and with an instrospective intensity he writes as he speaks. It’s not history retold from the ‘other side’s’ perspective that redefines ones attitude. It’s that one is reading what amounts to the diary of an Austrian German boy soldier in Hitler’s army whose purpose was the exact opposite of every Allied soldier who told their story. Thousands of ‘good soldiers’ spent horrible periods of time in battle, in hospitals, as prisoners in war camps, or sadly prisoners of their own minds and memories. Novotny’s only bitterness is aimed not at his military foes and blended with purposeful stealth into the late stage of his book. The unabashed honesty of Fred’s story is compelling and civilian as well as military. As a young waiter before being drafted he describes how he and several coworkers essentially steal some famous salami. They get found out, each slapped in the face and Novotny gets three weeks in the potato cellar. Like the rest of his story there is no faux remorse. He relates the salami saga because it says something about him; what that means he leaves to the reader. In a ‘dacha’ in Russia they find an American Gramophone and one 78rpm record. Schockingly it happens to be one of his favorites, “Stormy Weather”. This eventual American Austrian loved Harry James and Louis Armstrong. Describing how that left leg was wounded he mentions that there were 8 other bullets hitting his equipment including his helmet he didn’t get far enough into the hole he was digging. Many a ‘hero’have conjured up details of great bravery. Fred says, “Someone was looking out after me.” Honesty and heroism make strange bedfellows. Speaking of strange bedfellows perhaps the most revealing tale in the book is Novotny’s remembrance of his encounter with a young wom
The Good Soldier From