# "Hamburg 1947 his descriptions have an unforgettable lyric beauty"-Indie Review



## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is now on Kindle for $1.99
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008216N7S

Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed.
Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947 A Place for the Heart to Kip * $1.99
_In it's truest definition, this is a true love story!_










Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed.
Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008216N7S


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947 A Place for the Heart to Kip $1.99
In it's truest definition, this is a true love story!*










_Conditions of Surrender
I don't know why but the winter rains stopped and spring came early in 1945. When Hitler committed suicide at the end of April, the flowers and trees were in full bloom and the summer birds returned to their nesting grounds. Not long after the great dictator's corpse was incinerated in a bomb crater by his few remaining acolytes, the war in Europe ended. After so much death, ruin and misery; it was remarkable to me how nature resiliently budded back to life in barns, in fields and across battlegrounds, now calm and silent. The earth said to her children; it is time to abandon your swords and harness your ploughs; the ground is ripe and this is the season to tend to the living. _


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947 A True Story of life lived on the Razor's Edge of History Only $1.99*










_It wasn't meant to happen but I fell in love with the german girl. It was astonishing and something I didn't expect to occur, considering our countries had been at war for five years. They were our mortal enemies and my knowledge of Germany was based upon propaganda posters and dirty pub songs about the Fuehrer's testicles. I only knew Germany through news reels which showed an endless sea of jackboots flood across Europe. The picture magazines taught me that Germans were tall, blonde and athletic, with a penchant for gymnastics and torch light parades. My RAF instructors reinforced the prejudice that Germans were lacking in humour or kindness. "Woe to any poor bastard shot down over Germany, they'll skin the bugger alive, the Nazi scum." By the time I had reached Belgium and Holland what I had already learned about Germans seemed about right. After I saw my first starving Dutch child, I knew Germans were evil and sinister.

It wasn't until I crossed over into northern Germany and and saw the enormity of destruction the air war had inflicted on their population; I accepted that no one escaped sorrow and hardship in this war. My hostility towards the german people began to dissipate after seeing that their cities had been bombed back to the middle ages. A month into our occupation of Hamburg, I had seen enough emaciated german children living in helpless conditions to haunt me for the rest of my life. So, I dispensed with our orders to treat all Germans as hostile and suspect. It didn't take me long to understand that Friede was both my Beatrice and my Virgil. She was the one who was to lead me through Germany's post war inferno and to a greater understanding of Germany and its people.
_


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947 A Place for the Heart to Kip Only a $1.99 *

_Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -judging covers_


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

* Hamburg 1947 A True Story of life lived on the Razor's Edge of History $1.99
*









_Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers

The memoir is well written, with a compelling story that carried me along steadily. I like to find at least one reviewing pinprick, although it's difficult this time. The book ends with a cliff-hanger, making me wonder what came next. In all, I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough.-The Kindle Book Review_

Product Description
"Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed.
Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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."


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*A True Story about a life lived on the razor's edge of history....$1.99*










_The memoir is well written, with a compelling story that carried me along steadily. Mr. Smith is a life-long reader of good quality prose, a sort of self-taught tutorial that prepared him well for putting ink to paper. He has beautifully transcended his wretched, lower-class roots.

I like to find at least one reviewing pinprick, although it's difficult this time. The book ends with a cliff-hanger, making me wonder what came next. In all, I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough.

The inclusion of so much history and the description of societal conditions throughout Hamburg 1947 really sets the scene. Smith brings in some lovely details, such as the way in which victory dances were held to mark an end to the tumultuous war, which are not always covered in similar memoirs or history books of the period. There is a lot of historical information, but not once does the reader feel overloaded or bogged down with details. Smith constantly reaffirms his position in immediate post-war history by first setting the scene and then placing himself within it. His personal experiences go hand-in-hand with what was happening within Germany, and on a wider scale in Europe. This balance works very well. _


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

Hamburg 1947: A Place for the heart to kip $1.99
A True Story about life lived on the razor's edge of history

_5.0 out of 5 stars A love story, 
By Kew "kbports" (england) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip (Kindle Edition)
Having read and appreciated (don't think enjoyed would be the right word considering how heart breaking the subject matter was) Harry's first book 1923: A Memoir Lies and Testaments I have been waiting for this book to be published. It was worth the wait. I really did enjoy reading this one which tells the tale of his time in postward Hamburg and his courtship of his wife. This is a love story. As before, it is very well written and he's now left me wanting to read what happened next! I hope that installment number three of Harry's life story will soon be in the pipe line?_


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947: A Place for the heart to kip $1.99
A True Story about life lived on the razor's edge of history*

_By Kirsty Hewitt - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip (Kindle Edition)
Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is an account of Smith's self-confessed `storm-tossed life' whilst serving with the RAF as a wireless operator in Germany. It details his time in the city of Hamburg directly after the end of the Second World War. His story begins in 1945 when he is twenty two years old. It is a follow-up to Smith's first book of memoirs, 1923: Lies and Testaments.

The book opens with a short introduction addressed directly to the reader. This informs the reader as to why Smith is grateful for, and even humbled by, the life he has lived. It is clear that the author relishes life. From the outset he makes it clear that he knows he is fortunate to have survived the war when he saw so many die around him.

The book details his relationship with a German girl, Friede, from the early days of picnics with stolen mess hut food, to their falling in love and eventual marriage. The reader is drawn into Smith's memories from the outset. We feel as though we are right beside him as he strolls through streets in Fuhlsbuttel, visits Friede and her mother or talks to his friends at the camp.

Smith's memoirs are incredibly sad at times. They show how the human condition essentially triumphs over the awful conditions in which it finds itself. Hamburg 1947 brings in incredibly moving tales of his childhood - growing up in relative poverty and his fractured family, for example.

The inclusion of so much history and the description of societal conditions throughout Hamburg 1947 really sets the scene. Smith brings in some lovely details, such as the way in which victory dances were held to mark an end to the tumultuous war, which are not always covered in similar memoirs or history books of the period. There is a lot of historical information, but not once does the reader feel overloaded or bogged down with details. Smith constantly reaffirms his position in immediate post-war history by first setting the scene and then placing himself within it. His personal experiences go hand-in-hand with what was happening within Germany, and on a wider scale in Europe. This balance works very well.

The book contains many of the author's opinions on numerous subjects which he encountered during his time in Germany. These include pilfering, thoughts and feelings toward the German people, the notion of good and evil, rights and wrongs and abject poverty amongst others.

The inclusion of conversations, particularly those between Smith and Friede, are a lovely touch. Both are philosophical in their dialogue and wonder about such things as beliefs in higher beings in such a devastated setting and the existence of beauty in the world. The memoirs become even more personal in consequence.

Smith's writing is extremely eloquent and he is often amusing. The entire account reads as though it has been written by an incredibly experienced writer. The quality of writing is consistently high throughout. His descriptions are almost poetic, and even those which depict death and destruction have a lyrical quality about them. The writing made the memoirs read almost like a novel at times. There is not a clumsy or redundant sentence to be found in the book. The story is easy to follow due to its chronological format and the chapters are a nice length. His memories weave seamlessly together.

Although the story in Hamburg 1947 follows that detailed in 1923, the book stands alone perfectly. Quite a lot of information which is depicted in Smith's first book is reiterated, which allows the reader to gain a full picture of his past. It is an incredibly interesting memoir which everyone interested in the period should read._


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Happy Birthday, Harry!  

Good luck with the book!

Betsy


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## B.A. Spangler (Jan 25, 2012)

Happy Birthday – hope I'm still writing when I reach your years.


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip $1.99*

*Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers*

*The memoir is well written, with a compelling story that carried me along steadily. I like to find at least one reviewing pinprick, although it's difficult this time. The book ends with a cliff-hanger, making me wonder what came next. In all, I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough.-The Kindle Book Review
Product Description
"Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed.
Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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."*


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip $1.99*

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0069XRLKO

_Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers

The memoir is well written, with a compelling story that carried me along steadily. I like to find at least one reviewing pinprick, although it's difficult this time. The book ends with a cliff-hanger, making me wonder what came next. In all, I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough.-The Kindle Book Review_


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers

The memoir is well written, with a compelling story that carried me along steadily. I like to find at least one reviewing pinprick, although it's difficult this time. The book ends with a cliff-hanger, making me wonder what came next. In all, I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough.-The Kindle Book Review

_I did not expect to have compassion for the German population after WWII, but I was shocked at the conditions the non-war-criminal average citizens of Germany lived with during the Occupation of the Allies in Germany_

_Hamburg 1947 is a rare bird, a genuine memoir that is honest and evocative_










http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0069XRLKO

"Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed.
Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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."


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers*










99 Cents for this Mother's Day Weekend

http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336742137&sr=1-4

_The memoir is well written, with a compelling story that carried me along steadily. I like to find at least one reviewing pinprick, although it's difficult this time. The book ends with a cliff-hanger, making me wonder what came next. In all, I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough.-The Kindle Book Review

"I did not expect to have compassion for the German population after WWII, but I was shocked at the conditions the non-war-criminal average citizens of Germany lived with during the Occupation of the Allies in Germany"
_

*Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed. Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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.*


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*A True Story About a Life Lived on the Razor's Edge of History 99 cents*









http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008216N7S

_*it wasn't meant to happen but I fell in love with the german girl. It was astonishing and something I didn't expect to occur, considering our countries had been at war for five years. They were our mortal enemies and my knowledge of Germany was based upon propaganda posters and dirty pub songs about the Fuehrer's testicles. I only knew Germany through news reels which showed an endless sea of jackboots flood across Europe. The picture magazines taught me that Germans were tall, blonde and athletic, with a penchant for gymnastics and torch light parades. My RAF instructors reinforced the prejudice that Germans were lacking in humour or kindness. "Woe to any poor bastard shot down over Germany, they'll skin the bugger alive, the Nazi scum." By the time I had reached Belgium and Holland what I had already learned about Germans seemed about right. After I saw my first starving Dutch child, I knew Germans were evil and sinister.

It wasn't until I crossed over into northern Germany and and saw the enormity of destruction the air war had inflicted on their population; I accepted that no one escaped sorrow and hardship in this war. My hostility towards the german people began to dissipate after seeing that their cities had been bombed back to the middle ages. A month into our occupation of Hamburg, I had seen enough emaciated german children living in helpless conditions to haunt me for the rest of my life. So, I dispensed with our orders to treat all Germans as hostile and suspect. It didn't take me long to understand that Friede was both my Beatrice and my Virgil. She was the one who was to lead me through Germany's post war inferno and to a greater understanding of Germany and its people.*_


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

A True Story About a Life Lived on the Razor's Edge of History 99 cents









http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1338064198&sr=1-2

*One of the most worthwhile features of Hamburg 1947: a place for the heart to kip is its portrayal of life as a member of an occupying force in a conquered city... his descriptions of the devastated city have an unforgettable lyric beauty.-Indie E-Book Review 
*

_From the Author
It is autumn, the wet and damp time. I can already feel the approaching cold and heavy breath of the frozen months upon the nape of my neck. If I survive, this will be my eighty-ninth winter on this Earth. Some say age brings wisdom, reason, serenity. I say bollocks; great age brings rheumatism, deafness, vascular degeneration, and organ failure. So far, I have been lucky and my body has endured my storm-tossed life, healthy and intact. It is a blessing I appreciate and honour every morning by performing the graceful movements of tai chi which provides me the balance to combat the punishment great age bestows on those who dare to live so long. We suffer the irretrievable loss of love, through death. We abide the profound loneliness of age as friends and lovers disappear from our grasp and are replaced with static photographs mounted high up on our fireplace mantel. I don't ask for condolences or your pity because I have felt an elemental chart of wondrous emotions during my life. I have experienced the very best and the very worst that mankind has to offer. I have loved and been loved and that is a great matter. It is all that should matter. It is all that must matter, even to you, dear reader. So as I walk into the fourth season of life, I say accept love as it comes and accept love as it goes because it is the only currency that never devalues us. 
I leave you now with a small piece of my life; my time in Germany following the last Great War. It is a simple story about people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed._


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip 99 cents*


[URL=http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=sr_1_2]http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1338064198&sr=1-2[/url]

_Harry Smith has written something you rarely find these days; a genuine, unpretentious and honest memoir that is at once a fascinating story of the early years in post-war Germany and a heart-felt coming of age love story. Hamburg 1947 was hard to put down. Smith's clean, honest prose and eye for detail never fail. As an American born in 1941, I was too young to experience the war, nor did I have any real concept of what life was like for the avrage working man in England after the war. I have studied WWII extensively, but I learned more about the human reality from Smith's excellent book than I would have exp[ected. Highly recommended. Honesty in memoir needs to be rewarded_


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip 99 cents

http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

*One of the most worthwhile features of Hamburg 1947: a place for the heart to kip is its portrayal of life as a member of an occupying force in a conquered city... his descriptions of the devastated city have an unforgettable lyric beauty.-Indie E-Book Review *

_Smith's style of writing is perfect for telling his story, there's no need to flowery unnecessary language, instead Smith uses simple language and I found his story to be believable, genuine and all the more interesting to read because of this natural style. _

*Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed.

Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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.*


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip 99 cents*











[URL=http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0]http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC[/url]

_"As a regular vistor to Hamburg since the early 60's I thought this book might be of interest to me. Life in immediate post war Hamburg is very well described. The characters are written about in such a way I felt I knew them.

A wonderful story, exceptionally well written, I could not put it down."_


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip 99 cents*











[URL=http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC]http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC
[/URL]

_"Most books we read about WWII deal with the horrors of the war itself. Smith's Hamburg 1947 presents a horror less frequently highlighted - that of ordinary Germans trying to survive in post war occupied Germany. That they survived both the Nazis and occupation is a testament to the strength of men and women given no choice in their lives. But Hamburg 1947 isn't all doom and gloom. It's also a love story that honors both the author and his wife."_


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip 99 cents*

*Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers*











[URL=http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0]http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC[/url]

_By Doug DePew
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I just finished "Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip", and I'm nearly speechless. I spent a couple years living in Germany decades after the author, but I still found many bits and pieces that seemed familiar. Harry Leslie Smith has written a masterpiece. The plotline is gripping, the narrative flows, and the dialogue is stark. This memoir is beautifully written. He sets scenes with such detail that I felt as if I was experiencing the story with him. It's just a great book.

I truly got to know Harry, Friede, and the other characters as this story progressed. It gives us a glimpse into a little told part of the World War II story. Prior to this account, I knew almost nothing about life in the British zone of occupation Germany. Mr. Smith has given us a rare gift by telling his story and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in WW-II history or a good love story._


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

_Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip 99 cents

Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers_










http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

*Most books we read about WWII deal with the horrors of the war itself. Smith's Hamburg 1947 presents a horror less frequently highlighted - that of ordinary Germans trying to survive in post war occupied Germany. That they survived both the Nazis and occupation is a testament to the strength of men and women given no choice in their lives. But Hamburg 1947 isn't all doom and gloom. It's also a love story that honors both the author and his wife.-Good Reads Review*


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip 99 cents*











[URL=http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0]http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC[/url]
_
Harry Smith has written something you rarely find these days; a genuine, unpretentious and honest memoir that is at once a fascinating story of the early years in post-war Germany and a heart-felt coming of age love story-Goodreads Review

Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is an account of Smith's self-confessed 'storm-tossed life' whilst serving with the RAF as a wireless operator in Germany. Goodreads Review

Most books we read about WWII deal with the horrors of the war itself. Smith's Hamburg 1947 presents a horror less frequently highlighted - that of ordinary Germans trying to survive in post war occupied Germany. Goodreads Review_


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip 99 cents

*A True Story about a Life Lived on the Razor's edge of History*











[URL=http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0]http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC[/url]


----------



## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip 99 cents

A True Story about a Life Lived on the Razor's edge of History*










http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

_It was dawn in late November when I left Hamburg. On the horizon, strands of smoky, grey clouds jostled against the dark sky. Winter had begun to creep through the city and a light frost covered the ground. I slipped away from our home on cat paws, while Friede was asleep, looking lost in a pleasant dream. For the last time, I walked dejectedly on the path to the airport. The guard at the gate lazily waved me into the still half-asleep air force base. I didn't look left or right or back through the camps gates; I just made my way to embarkation. There I stood in a pencil-thin line waiting to board a Dakota, back to Britain. _


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*A True Story about a Life Lived on the Razor's edge of History*










http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

_His is one of the most poignant memoirs I've ever read. Harry Smith's life is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit to survive, endure, and thrive against all manner of tragedies and obstacles._-*Amazon Review *

_Smith writes a true love story during wartime in Hamburg 1947. The time span is during the Great Depression and ends in Germany post war. The love story involves the author and his wife, Friede._-*Amazon Review*

_
I highly recommend this work to all literary students and sociologists. It is an excellent read_-*Amazon Review*


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947 is both a love story for a city and a passionate retailing of a love affair with a young German *

*Only 99 Cents*










http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

*At times grim & other times amusing, Smith writes a memoir relaying both a social history & providing a unique look at post-WWII Germany*


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*A True Story about a Life Lived on the Razor's edge of History only 99 cents*










http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

*Good Reads Review:*

_*This review is from: Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip (Kindle Edition)
Admittedly this book is right up my street as I have always had a major interest in the 2 World Wars, however, this is a very refreshing change to the usual accounts of life on the front line during the conflict itself.

This memoir of Harry Smith follows his life from the end of the war based on an RAF base in Hamburg and provides a shocking insight into the plight of innocent German civilians in the years immediately after the war. It tells of the unending struggle to find enough food and other supplies to survive and how many German families were forced to barter all of their previous worldly possessions just to be able to eat.

The main part however, focuses on Harry's love for a young German girl, Friede and how he has to overcomes many obstacles and prejudices to further their relationship and to finally to be allowed to marry his true love.

I found Harry's bravery and determination to be very endearing and inspiring, it is to be remembered he was only 22 when the war ended, but showed maturity and bravery beyond his years to achieve his goal.

A thoroughly gripping read, I'm just sorry it ended where it did and hope Harry produces a follow up of this fascinating insight into life in post war Britain.

*_


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

*A note from the author:

When I wrote Hamburg 1947, I wanted to recreate that hungry, desperate and uncertain world I witnessed as a member of the post war occupational forces in Germany. I am not aware of any books, asides from my own, that deal with the lives of ordinary occupational soldiers stationed in Hamburg, from 1945 to 1947. My time spent in Hamburg at the end of the war was an eye opener, as were my earlier travels through freshly allied liberated Holland and Belgium. Cheers, Harry
*

_Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed. Hamburg 1947 recounts Smiths youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesnt want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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._


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

_Excerpt from Hamburg 1947

It snowed on Christmas Eve day. It fell like icing sugar and dusted the city as if it were a stale and crumbling Christmas cake. The peddlers, black marketers, and cigarette hustlers scrambled to finish their commerce before the church bells pealed to celebrate the birth of Christ. Along the St. Pauli district, steam-powered trucks delivered beer and wine to the whorehouses, who expected exceptional business from nostalgic servicemen. Across the Reeperbahn, the lights burned bright, while in the refugee camps, the homeless huddled down against the cold, warming themselves with watery soup and kind words provided by visiting Lutherans priests.

The airport was somnolent; the service men charged with keeping it operational were as sluggish as a cat curled up on a pillow before a fire. Outside the communications tower, LACs took long cigarette breaks, draped in their great coats. In between puffs and guffaws, they swapped lewd jokes or tales about their sexual exploits with German women. 
The air traffic control nest was unmanned for the next few days. The radio transmitters hummed emotionlessly because the ether above was empty and the clouds ripe for snow. Nothing was expected to arrive or depart until Boxing Day. On the ground, the roadways around the airport were quiet because the fleet of RAF vehicles was stabled at the motor pool for the duration of the holiday. Everywhere, it was still, except on the runway where a platoon of new recruits cleared snow from the landing area.

At the telephone exchange, the switchboard was staffed by a bored skeleton crew who waited for their shift to end. The normal frenetic noise and activity from hundreds of calls being patched and dispatched through the camp to the military world in Germany and Britain was hushed as there were few people left to either place or receive a call. Some communication operators hovered around mute teletype machines, which awoke every hour and furiously printed out wind speed, temperature, and ceiling levels, "For bloody Saint Nick," someone remarked.

This was a unique Christmas because for the first time since 1938, the entire world was at peace. So anyone who was able took leave and abandoned our aerodrome for a ten-day furlough. For those of us who remained, a Christmas committee was formed to organize festivities. The Yule spirit around camp mirrored row house Britain. It was constructed out of cut-price lager and crate paper decorations with the unspoken motto: "cheap but cheerful cheer in Fuhlsbüttel." In the mess hall, a giant Christmas tree was erected dangerously close to a wood stove by the Xmas team. They had festooned it with glittering ornaments and placed faux presents underneath its boughs. Sleighs and Father Christmas figures cut from heavy paper were pinned to the walls as festive decorations. Mistletoe dangled from light fixtures and gave our dining hall the appearance of a holiday party at a carpet mill in Halifax.
On the morning before Christmas, I negotiated with the head cook for extra rations for Friede and her family to allow them a holiday meal. The cook was an obliging Londoner whose mastery of culinary arts began and ended with the breakfast fry up. Never one to saying no to sweetening his own pot, the cook amicably took my bribe of tailored shirts in exchange for food. He let me fill my kit bag to bursting with tinned meat, savouries, and sweets.
"Give the Hun a bit of a treat tonight," he said. "Take the pork pie along with a bit of plum pudding."_


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

A True Story about life lived on the Razor's Edge of History

By Dr. Albert Amedeus (Pomezia, Rome, 07, Italy)
★★★★★ June 21, 2012
a lovely story, with an intimate insight to the immediate Post War fate of Hamburg-Fuhlsbuettel and its inhabitants. I recognised all the landmarks, that I was to come across between Jan1970-Dec78, when I was stationed at the very same Airport.
By Doug
★★★★★ July 02, 2012
I just finished "Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip", and I'm nearly speechless. I spent a couple years living in Germany decades after the author, but I still found many bits and pieces that seemed familiar. Harry Leslie Smith has written a masterpiece. The plotline is gripping, the narr... ...more
By Alex (The United States)
★★★★★ February 29, 2012
Harry Smith has written something you rarely find these days; a genuine, unpretentious and honest memoir that is at once a fascinating story of the early years in post-war Germany and a heart-felt coming of age love story. Hamburg 1947 was hard to put down. Smith's clean, honest prose and eye for... ..
By Kirsty (Cambridge, The United Kingdom)
★★★★☆ January 13, 2012
Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is an account of Smith's self-confessed 'storm-tossed life' whilst serving with the RAF as a wireless operator in Germany. It details his time in the city of Hamburg directly after the end of the Second World War. His story begins in 1945 when he is


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC
A True Story about a life lived on the razor's edge of history

Preface to the Reader
It is autumn, the wet and damp time. I can already feel the approaching cold and heavy breath of the frozen months upon the nape of my neck. If I survive, this will be my eighty-ninth winter on this Earth. Some say age brings wisdom, reason, serenity. I say bollocks; great age brings rheumatism, deafness, vascular degeneration, and organ failure. So far, I have been lucky and my body has endured my storm-tossed life, healthy and intact. It is a blessing I appreciate and honour every morning by performing the graceful movements of tai chi which provides me the balance to combat the punishment great age bestows on those who dare to live so long. We suffer the irretrievable loss of love, through death. We abide the profound loneliness of age as friends and lovers disappear from our grasp and are replaced with static photographs mounted high up on our fireplace mantel. I don't ask for condolences or your pity because I have felt an elemental chart of wondrous emotions during my life. I have experienced the very best and the very worst that mankind has to offer. I have loved and been loved and that is a great matter. It is all that should matter. It is all that must matter, even to you, dear reader. So as I walk into the fourth season of life, I say accept love as it comes and accept love as it goes because it is the only currency that never devalues us. 
I leave you now with a small piece of my life; my time in Germany following the last Great War. It is a simple story about people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed.
Cheers, 
Harry Leslie Smith


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC
*A True Story about a life lived on the razor's edge of history*

*The October Birthday Party 1945*

_I stumbled through my love affair with Friede in ignorance and youthful lust. I had neither a map to chart my affair nor a lexicon to define its development. In truth, I didn't even have a compass to show me the true direction where love might be found. My past was certainly not a reliable guide; it only harboured betrayal, hunger, and familial misdeeds. As for my previous love affairs, they were few, brief, and about as satisfying as eating soggy chips in a November rain. So, it was only natural for me to believe that my developing attachment to Friede was beyond my learning experiences.

Even a birthday party was an exotic occurrence for me. Friede's eighteenth birthday was the first coming of age celebration I had ever attended. For my own eighteenth birthday, I prepared for induction to the RAF; where I was to be taught to kill or be killed by Germans. Now my only apprehension about Germans was whether Friede's mother was going to find me an acceptable match for her daughter.

Friede had described her mother from so many different angles; I began to think of her as a cubist canvas of vice and virtue, coloured by sacrifice and sensuality. To Friede, her mother was impossible, glamorous, selfish, and loving.

In sentimental moments, Friede showed me pictures of her mother and said, "Wasn't she beautiful?" The studio portraits revealed an attractive woman, but I also noticed steel in her beauty, flashing from her eyes.

On my way to the birthday party, I fretted that her mother was going to dismiss me as unworthy because I lacked their continental outlook. I dreaded a cold rebuff similar to my treatment by Friede's foster mother, Frau Bornholt. She had accepted me as a sort of English delivery boy who was welcome to stand at the apartment entrance while she took my gifts from the RAF storehouse.

When I arrived, Friede was waiting for me at the front entrance to the apartment. She rushed over to greet me. I kissed her and whispered into her ear, "Happy birthday."

"Thank God you are here."

"Why?" I asked.

"Mutti and Grandfather have been fighting for the last hour because the old man keeps stealing the cigarettes you gave me. The old Nazi cuckold says he has a right to everything because we are all horrible, immoral women. What a crazy man he is. I think Oma must have died to get away from him. Let me take those flowers from you. Mutti is dying to meet you and has been practising some English 
expressions I taught her. I am afraid she has not had much luck in pronouncing them correctly."

I hope it's not bugger off, I thought. _


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers

One of the most worthwhile features of Hamburg 1947: a place for the heart to kip is its portrayal of life as a member of an occupying force in a conquered city... his descriptions of the devastated city have an unforgettable lyric beauty.-Indie E-Book Review

"I did not expect to have compassion for the German population after WWII, but I was shocked at the conditions the non-war-criminal average citizens of Germany lived with during the Occupation of the Allies in Germany"

The memoir is well written, with a compelling story that carried me along steadily. I like to find at least one reviewing pinprick, although it's difficult this time. The book ends with a cliff-hanger, making me wonder what came next. In all, I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough.-The Kindle Book Review*










http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

*4.0 out of 5 stars Hamburg after World War II 11 Nov 2012

It's an absolutely hair raising account of the conditions in that city after the war. Yes, if there was any food to be had it meant cuing for ages with ration cards of course. Or people could try to obtain something on the black markets or from farmers, bartering their valuable possessions for bits of food. - I wish more people would read books like this one to make them aware of the consequences of warfare, including demoralisation and hopelessness. -

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic read 28 Aug 2012
By Moleyman69
Format:Kindle Edition
Admittedly this book is right up my street as I have always had a major interest in the 2 World Wars, however, this is a very refreshing change to the usual accounts of life on the front line during the conflict itself.

I found Harry's bravery and determination to be very endearing and inspiring, it is to be remembered he was only 22 when the war ended, but showed maturity and bravery beyond his years to achieve his goal.

A thoroughly gripping read, I'm just sorry it ended where it did and hope Harry produces a follow up of this fascinating insight into life in post war Britain.

5.0 out of 5 stars Heart-felt Memoir with a Difference - Review Copy! 28 Aug 2012
By FrancineHowarth

Format:Kindle Edition
A memoir with a difference, for this is no grand posturing account of post-war Hamburg (Germany) WWII as seen through the eyes of some famous general. This is a poignant and compassionate chronicle penned by a humble wireless operator serving in the Royal Air Force. No less brave than anyone else who fought and ducked and dived through the war years, Harry is suddenly a victor of war with distinct awareness to the plight of the defeated. A cigarette gifted here and there seems small compensation for the scenes of destruction all around him, not to mention people half-starved and scraping through the rubble for items that might - if traded with the victors - bring forth food.*


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

[URL=http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0]http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC[/url]

_Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed. Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he re-enlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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._


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

*Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip 1 Dec 2012
By primrose mcluckie
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Most enlightening...it's a period of time which for personal reasons I wished to know more about and I feel its observant details filled gaps in my knowledge.Very personal and revealing.....looking forward to the sequel.

4.0 out of 5 stars Hamburg after World War II 11 Nov 2012
By Atir
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
It's an absolutely hair raising account of the conditions in that city after the war. Yes, if there was any food to be had it meant cuing for ages with ration cards of course. Or people could try to obtain something on the black markets or from farmers, bartering their valuable possessions for bits of food. - I wish more people would read books like this one to make them aware of the consequences of warfare, including demoralisation and hopelessness. - What did Harry and Friede do next? But surely, the story does not end there!
I give this book four stars because there some German words misspelled. And, the U-Bahn (underground train/metro) is heading towards Berlin? No damaged buildings along the Jungfernstieg?

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic read 28 Aug 2012
By Moleyman69
Format:Kindle Edition
Admittedly this book is right up my street as I have always had a major interest in the 2 World Wars, however, this is a very refreshing change to the usual accounts of life on the front line during the conflict itself.

This memoir of Harry Smith follows his life from the end of the war based on an RAF base in Hamburg and provides a shocking insight into the plight of innocent German civilians in the years immediately after the war. It tells of the unending struggle to find enough food and other supplies to survive and how many German families were forced to barter all of their previous worldly possessions just to be able to eat.

The main part however, focuses on Harry's love for a young German girl, Friede and how he has to overcomes many obstacles and prejudices to further their relationship and to finally to be allowed to marry his true love.

I found Harry's bravery and determination to be very endearing and inspiring, it is to be remembered he was only 22 when the war ended, but showed maturity and bravery beyond his years to achieve his goal.

A thoroughly gripping read, I'm just sorry it ended where it did and hope Harry produces a follow up of this fascinating insight into life in post war Britain.

Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Heart-felt Memoir with a Difference - Review Copy!
A memoir with a difference, for this is no grand posturing account of post-war Hamburg (Germany) WWII as seen through the eyes of some famous general. Read more
Published 3 months ago by FrancineHowarth

5.0 out of 5 stars Rivetting
As a regular vistor to Hamburg since the early 60's I thought this book might be of interest to me. Life in immediate post war Hamburg is very well described. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Johannsen
4.0 out of 5 stars Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip
Harry Leslie Smith's book, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip, is a first-hand account of what it was like in Germany immediately following World War II. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Anneli
5.0 out of 5 stars A WWII surprise
I did not expect to have compassion for the German population after WWII, but I was shocked at the conditions the non-war-criminal average citizens of Germany lived with during the... Read more

Published 5 months ago by The Kindle Book Review
4.0 out of 5 stars Hamburg 1947
Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is an account of Smith's self-confessed `storm-tossed life' whilst serving with the RAF as a wireless operator in Germany. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Kirsty Hewitt*


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

[URL=http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0]http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC[/url]

Christmas 1945, Hamburg
Stille Nacht

*It snowed on Christmas Eve day. It fell like icing sugar and dusted the city as if it were a stale and crumbling Christmas cake. The peddlers, black marketers, and cigarette hustlers scrambled to finish their commerce before the church bells pealed to celebrate the birth of Christ. Along the St. Pauli district, steam-powered trucks delivered beer and wine to the whorehouses, who expected exceptional business from nostalgic servicemen. Across the Reeperbahn, the lights burned bright, while in the refugee camps, the homeless huddled down against the cold, warming themselves with watery soup and kind words provided by visiting Lutherans priests.

The airport was somnolent; the service men charged with keeping it operational were as sluggish as a cat curled up on a pillow before a fire. Outside the communications tower, LACs took long cigarette breaks, draped in their great coats. In between puffs and guffaws, they swapped lewd jokes or tales about their sexual exploits with German women. 
The air traffic control nest was unmanned for the next few days. The radio transmitters hummed emotionlessly because the ether above was empty and the clouds ripe for snow. Nothing was expected to arrive or depart until Boxing Day. On the ground, the roadways around the airport were quiet because the fleet of RAF vehicles was stabled at the motor pool for the duration of the holiday. Everywhere, it was still, except on the runway where a platoon of new recruits cleared snow from the landing area.

At the telephone exchange, the switchboard was staffed by a bored skeleton crew who waited for their shift to end. The normal frenetic noise and activity from hundreds of calls being patched and dispatched through the camp to the military world in Germany and Britain was hushed as there were few people left to either place or receive a call. Some communication operators hovered around mute teletype machines, which awoke every hour and furiously printed out wind speed, temperature, and ceiling levels, "For bloody Saint Nick," someone remarked.

This was a unique Christmas because for the first time since 1938, the entire world was at peace. So anyone who was able took leave and abandoned our aerodrome for a ten-day furlough. For those of us who remained, a Christmas committee was formed to organize festivities. The Yule spirit around camp mirrored row house Britain. It was constructed out of cut-price lager and crate paper decorations with the unspoken motto: "cheap but cheerful cheer in Fuhlsbüttel." In the mess hall, a giant Christmas tree was erected dangerously close to a wood stove by the Xmas team. They had festooned it with glittering ornaments and placed faux presents underneath its boughs. Sleighs and Father Christmas figures cut from heavy paper were pinned to the walls as festive decorations. Mistletoe dangled from light fixtures and gave our dining hall the appearance of a holiday party at a carpet mill in Halifax.
On the morning before Christmas, I negotiated with the head cook for extra rations for Friede and her family to allow them a holiday meal. The cook was an obliging Londoner whose mastery of culinary arts began and ended with the breakfast fry up. Never one to saying no to sweetening his own pot, the cook amicably took my bribe of tailored shirts in exchange for food. He let me fill my kit bag to bursting with tinned meat, savouries, and sweets.
"Give the Hun a bit of a treat tonight," he said. "Take the pork pie along with a bit of plum pudding."*


----------



## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

[URL=http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0]http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC[/url]

*A True Story About a Life Lived on the Razor's Edge of History.*


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

[URL=http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0]http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC[/url]

_Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed. Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he re-enlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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._


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> *Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip $1.99*
> 
> *Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers*
> 
> ...


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

_This is the sequel to 1923: A Memoir Lies and Testaments in which Harry Smith tells the story of his miserable childhood in Halifax. He was the third child of an unhappy marriage. His eldest sister died, gruesomely, from TB during the General Strike of 1926 and was buried in a common grave. His father, cheated of his inheritance as the licensee of the Barley Hole public house, eventually lost his job as a miner when his health could no longer stand even surface work, and the family struggled to survive on his pension of 12 shillings a week. Harry and his surviving sister Mary formed a fierce and lifelong bond as they foraged for chippings among the coal dust and endured the institutional cruelties of the worst type of Roman Catholic education.

Their mother, Lillian, fortunately or unfortunately, was more resourceful. She was considerably younger than her husband, an attractive woman who learned how to use her body to survive. She demoted her husband to the status of unwanted lodger in a draughty attic room and moved other men in to take his place as provider. She had two more children with different fathers and became an alcoholic. Harry Smith struggles to be fair to his mother. Intellectually he can see that she did whatever she did out of desperation and to save herself and her family from the workhouse: emotionally he cannot forgive her. He is full of anger at the injustice of a system that is so unforgiving to so many people and he hates the blackened ugliness of Halifax.

World War Two and enlistment in 1941 as a wireless operator in the RAF came as a temporary reprieve to Harry. The inanities of the training system meant that he saw little action until he was drafted to Germany in the closing months of the war. However he now had somewhere to live, enough to eat, regular pay and cheerful friendships. As he observes the devastation of Hamburg from 1945 - 1947 and comprehends the hunger of its people he realises that for the first time in his life he is in a position where he can be a benefactor. When he falls in love with beautiful, starving, emotionally complicated Friede he has no hesitation in blagging and purloining RAF stores, bribing, black-market trading - whatever is necessary to watch the ulcers from vitamin deficiency vanish from her legs and ingratiate himself with her suspicious family. There is nothing to tempt him back to Halifax and he continues extending his RAF service until finally the law is changed to allow serving English personnel to marry foreign nationals. His account of the suspicious questioning and the intimate investigations Friede is forced to undergo to establish her suitability to become his wife is frankly shocking.

One of the most worthwhile features of Hamburg 1947: a place for the heart to kip is its portrayal of life as a member of an occupying force in a conquered city. Harry Smith's writing style is varied and sometimes uneven but his descriptions of the devastated city have an unforgettable lyric beauty. He is clearly a very intelligent as well as an angry man and there's a hidden story of self-education running through both these volumes. His glimpse of the potential of the wider world began, he says, with his father's greatest treasure, eight volumes of the Harmsworth History of the World, which he was occasionally allowed to look through. For the reader who has suffered the misery of Harry Smith's early years through volume one it's revealing to observe the difference made to him, as to anyone, by a basic level of material security. When he and Friede are finally permitted to marry there is even, briefly, comfort.-Indie Book Review_


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

By Dr. Albert Amedeus (Pomezia, Rome, 07, Italy)
★★★★★ June 21, 2012
a lovely story, with an intimate insight to the immediate Post War fate of Hamburg-Fuhlsbuettel and its inhabitants. I recognised all the landmarks, that I was to come across between Jan1970-Dec78, when I was stationed at the very same Airport.
By Doug
★★★★★ July 02, 2012
I just finished "Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip", and I'm nearly speechless. I spent a couple years living in Germany decades after the author, but I still found many bits and pieces that seemed familiar. Harry Leslie Smith has written a masterpiece. The plotline is gripping, the narr... ...more
By Alex (The United States)
★★★★★ February 29, 2012
Harry Smith has written something you rarely find these days; a genuine, unpretentious and honest memoir that is at once a fascinating story of the early years in post-war Germany and a heart-felt coming of age love story. Hamburg 1947 was hard to put down. Smith's clean, honest prose and eye for... ..
By Kirsty (Cambridge, The United Kingdom)
★★★★☆ January 13, 2012
Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is an account of Smith's self-confessed 'storm-tossed life' whilst serving with the RAF as a wireless operator in Germany. It details his time in the city of Hamburg directly after the end of the Second World War. His story begins in 1945 when he is


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC

_Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed. Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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._


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

_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._










http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC&tag=vglnk-c1533-20

*From the Author
It is autumn, the wet and damp time. I can already feel the approaching cold and heavy breath of the frozen months upon the nape of my neck. If I survive, this will be my eighty-ninth winter on this Earth. Some say age brings wisdom, reason, serenity. I say bollocks; great age brings rheumatism, deafness, vascular degeneration, and organ failure. So far, I have been lucky and my body has endured my storm-tossed life, healthy and intact. It is a blessing I appreciate and honour every morning by performing the graceful movements of tai chi which provides me the balance to combat the punishment great age bestows on those who dare to live so long. We suffer the irretrievable loss of love, through death. We abide the profound loneliness of age as friends and lovers disappear from our grasp and are replaced with static photographs mounted high up on our fireplace mantel. I don't ask for condolences or your pity because I have felt an elemental chart of wondrous emotions during my life. I have experienced the very best and the very worst that mankind has to offer. I have loved and been loved and that is a great matter. It is all that should matter. It is all that must matter, even to you, dear reader. So as I walk into the fourth season of life, I say accept love as it comes and accept love as it goes because it is the only currency that never devalues us. 
I leave you now with a small piece of my life; my time in Germany following the last Great War. It is a simple story about people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed.
Cheers, 
Harry Leslie Smith*


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip
A True Story about a life lived on the razor's edge of history*










http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1

_5.0 out of 5 stars A True Love Story May 10, 2012
By Vickie Adair
Format:Kindle Edition
In Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip, I found myself reading a love story. Harry tells his story of meeting and falling in love with Friede, a young German girl, with a realistic poignancy that I have seldom found in the written word. Reading his words about about the young girl who would become his wife and share half a century with him, I remembered for the first time in decades what young love was like. I remembered it just as he described it, "It was primal, it was emotional, and it was natural...." For anyone who loves a love story that depicts truth instead of trite romance, this book is a must read.

But even more, this book is a love story between a man and a place that existed in the restraint of a given time. The place is no longer the place it was, and that time is now long past. But, that love still lives strong, and is now captured forever in the pages of this book. For me, perhaps, the most astonishing thing was to read about a post-war that I had never been taught and never even imagined. Being an American, I have been taught that we and our allies were the "good" guys. Now I know that innocent people, children, mothers, and old people suffered at the hands of the Allies for simply having been born where they were born. I know that, "Friede and her family lived off a soup that tasted like rainwater and ate bread made from animal feed." Such hardships were the result of Allied occupation. This knowledge has given me a greater understanding of the long-term horrors of war, any war, that continue long after the last shot has been fired.
I've never met Harry Leslie Smith, but, I feel like I know him, that in someway I've shared his experiences, and that he's taken me on a journey through a great depression in England and a war in Europe. I would recommend this book to anyone!

5.0 out of 5 stars What a wonderful book!
I just finished "Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip", and I'm nearly speechless. I spent a couple years living in Germany decades after the author, but I still found many... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Doug DePew
4.0 out of 5 stars A different view of WWII
Most books we read about WWII deal with the horrors of the war itself. Smith's Hamburg 1947 presents a horror less frequently highlighted - that of ordinary Germans trying to...

Darlene Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars A WWII surprise
I did not expect to have compassion for the German population after WWII, but I was shocked at the conditions the non-war-criminal average citizens of Germany lived with during the... Read more
Published 8 months ago by The Kindle Book Review
5.0 out of 5 stars A rare book...
Hamburg 1947 is a rare bird, a genuine memoir that is honest and evocative. Harry Smith makes no apologies for who he is/was in 1947 and paints a picture of post-war Germany most..._


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip
A True Story about a life lived on the razor's edge of history*










http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> _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._
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> *Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip
> A True Story about a life lived on the razor's edge of history*
> 
> 
> ...


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> *Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip 99 cents*
> 
> *Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers*
> 
> ...


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC
> 
> By Dr. Albert Amedeus (Pomezia, Rome, 07, Italy)
> ★★★★★ June 21, 2012
> ...


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*Written by a 90 year old veteran of the Second World War. This is a true account of his experiences in Germany after the defeat of Hitler. 99 cents 
Hamburg 1947: A Place For the Heart to Kip*









http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1

Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers

One of the most worthwhile features of Hamburg 1947: a place for the heart to kip is its portrayal of life as a member of an occupying force in a conquered city... his descriptions of the devastated city have an unforgettable lyric beauty.-Indie E-Book Review

"I did not expect to have compassion for the German population after WWII, but I was shocked at the conditions the non-war-criminal average citizens of Germany lived with during the Occupation of the Allies in Germany"

The memoir is well written, with a compelling story that carried me along steadily. I like to find at least one reviewing pinprick, although it's difficult this time. The book ends with a cliff-hanger, making me wonder what came next. In all, I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough.-The Kindle Book Review

Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed. Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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.


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*A True Story written by a 90 year old RAF Veteran 99 cents*










[URL=http://www.amazon]http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1[/url]
Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers

_One of the most worthwhile features of Hamburg 1947: a place for the heart to kip is its portrayal of life as a member of an occupying force in a conquered city... his descriptions of the devastated city have an unforgettable lyric beauty.-Indie E-Book Review

"I did not expect to have compassion for the German population after WWII, but I was shocked at the conditions the non-war-criminal average citizens of Germany lived with during the Occupation of the Allies in Germany"

The memoir is well written, with a compelling story that carried me along steadily. I like to find at least one reviewing pinprick, although it's difficult this time. The book ends with a cliff-hanger, making me wonder what came next. In all, I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough.-The Kindle Book Review
_

*Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed. Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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.*


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> *A True Story written by a 90 year old RAF Veteran 99 cents*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

*A True Story written by a 90 year old RAF Veteran 99 cents*









http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1

_Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers

One of the most worthwhile features of Hamburg 1947: a place for the heart to kip is its portrayal of life as a member of an occupying force in a conquered city... his descriptions of the devastated city have an unforgettable lyric beauty.-Indie E-Book Review

"I did not expect to have compassion for the German population after WWII, but I was shocked at the conditions the non-war-criminal average citizens of Germany lived with during the Occupation of the Allies in Germany"

The memoir is well written, with a compelling story that carried me along steadily. I like to find at least one reviewing pinprick, although it's difficult this time. The book ends with a cliff-hanger, making me wonder what came next. In all, I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough.-The Kindle Book Review

Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed. Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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._


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> *A True Story written by a 90 year old RAF Veteran 99 cents*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

_A True Story written by a 90 year old RAF Veteran 99 cents_










http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1

_Harry Leslie Smith's second memoir, Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip is a love story in my mind and it's just brilliant. -Judging covers

One of the most worthwhile features of Hamburg 1947: a place for the heart to kip is its portrayal of life as a member of an occupying force in a conquered city... his descriptions of the devastated city have an unforgettable lyric beauty.-Indie E-Book Review

"I did not expect to have compassion for the German population after WWII, but I was shocked at the conditions the non-war-criminal average citizens of Germany lived with during the Occupation of the Allies in Germany"

The memoir is well written, with a compelling story that carried me along steadily. I like to find at least one reviewing pinprick, although it's difficult this time. The book ends with a cliff-hanger, making me wonder what came next. In all, I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough.-The Kindle Book Review

_

*Twenty-two years old and ready for peace, Harry Leslie Smith has survived the Great Depression and endured the Second World War. Now, in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, he must come to terms with a nation physically and emotionally devastated. In this memoir, he narrates a story of people searching to belong and survive in a world that was almost destroyed. Hamburg 1947 recounts Smith's youthful RAF days as part of the occupational forces in post-war Germany. A wireless operator during the war, he doesn't want to return to Britain and join a queue of unemployed former servicemen; he reenlists for long term duty in occupied Germany. 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.*


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> _A True Story written by a 90 year old RAF Veteran 99 cents_
> 
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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> _A True Story written by a 90 year old RAF Veteran 99 cents_
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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> *A True Story written by a 90 year old RAF Veteran 99 cents*
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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> *A True Story written by a 90 year old RAF Veteran $1.99 *
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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> _A True Story written by a 90 year old RAF Veteran 99 cents_
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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> *A True Story written by a 90 year old RAF Veteran 99 cents*
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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC
> A True Story about a life lived on the razor's edge of history
> 
> Preface to the Reader
> ...


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> _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._
> 
> 
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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> _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._
> 
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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> _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._
> 
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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC
> 
> *A note from the author:
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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC
> 
> *Most Helpful Customer Reviews
> 
> ...


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC
> 
> *Most Helpful Customer Reviews
> 
> ...


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC
> 
> By Dr. Albert Amedeus (Pomezia, Rome, 07, Italy)
> ★★★★★ June 21, 2012
> ...


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## 1923 (Jul 2, 2011)

1923 said:


> http://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-1947-Place-Heart-ebook/dp/B008216N7S/ref=pd_cp_kstore_0?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC
> A True Story about a life lived on the razor's edge of history
> 
> Preface to the Reader
> ...


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