BenjaminFR
Senior Registered
Dear all,
I am very thankful for finding this forum, after going through some fascinating stories on here, I wish to share with you all the journey I followed to discover the identity of a memory I carry since my early childhood.
Now, as a small introduction, I am today a 27 years-old man of both British and French citizenship, from my mother who is English and my father who is French. I am a world-traveler, very curious and open-minded, and I currently live in China, where I settled (quite different from the rural countryside and small village I was raised in!).
Starting from my earliest memories, I remember having terrible, terrible nightmares. I would be sleepwalking and being absolutely terrorized by what I saw surrounding me. I don't remember much of these visions, apart from insane battlefield sequences where tanks literally ram each other on fields full of smoke. As I grew older, the nightmares moved to me weeping in a very tight, metallic and dirty compartment, from which I never found a way to escape.
When I turned 14 or 15, these visions started to appear as I was awake, in the form of flashes, always very short in time but filled with emotions (for instance, I could know from a scene that I was walking to combat - deep in my stomach, with a smoke-filled sky that I could see in the distance, ahead).
When I moved to China, at 24 years of age, the visions started to "worsen" as I say because I had lots of these random flashes - walking on the streets of a chinese city would send me onto a battlefield, in the streets of a destroyed city, with bricks from crushed walls filling the streets. I'd look onto the highest windows, worried about getting shot. I'd be ducking, on those streets, always seeking cover from debris as I'd progress. I also remember a very uncomfortable instance, where two chinese police offers stopped in a street of a small northern city. I was having flashes of dirty, broken soldiers, who were surrendering, with their arms barely up from exhaustion.
I went back to France, convinced deep inside that I was losing it.
Now I must say that, since I was raised in a family where no one talked about topics of spirituality, and I had never heard of stories of reincarnation, my belief system was pretty closed. However, I always remained very surprised by the sheer precision of these visions. They were like memories, I was at the center of them, and always seemed to match the same period.
I went to see therapists, unbeknownst to my family, and there I began to investigate the policy that these visions were from a memory I was carrying! It was a very strong change in my life, as I had sometimes wondered what would happen after I die, but I never asked myself how was it before I was born. This opened up a lot of space inside me, as I did understand fairly quickly that I was seeing scenes from the life of one german officer during WWII.
It was hard to swallow, knowing full well the history of my current family:
- my English grandfather, whom I shared a very special bond with, was a British D-Day veteran (funny, since I was born June the 6th) and fought all the way from France to Belgium, Holland and Germany. He was awarded at the end of his life the title of Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by France (Knight of the Honor Legion). He actually encouraged me at an early age to visit Germany, against the advice of my grandmother who survived the blitz narrowly and clearly remembered the V1s...
- my French great-uncle was captured in May 1940 and spent 3 years as a POW, and I have studied earlier in my life his writings from that time, along with songs and poems. He was eventually freed by a German Heer doctor.
It was around this time that I undertook my first regression, which litterally filled me with images and very vivid scenes. I won't go into too many details (although I am very open to speak about it, if you have questions) but these scenes and details were key:
- I first saw the beginning of the last day, standing in a small trench, looking east. I remember very vividly the rays of light piercing the treeline, right in front of me as the sun was rising. I was incredibly frustrated by the tactical situation: we had been ordered to stop the assault and hold our line. I can't remember why. But I am frustrated, because I know my enemy: I know the Russians don't have the ability to handle a moving unit. I know their communications are bad, they can't react quick enough; I despise their officers, who sacrifice their men with their poor skills. Now that we came to a stop, they can organize an attack. I know they will attack. Around me are many men, I know they are my men, I am their leader.
- When I start to focus on me, invited by my therapist, I now see another scene. I notice my uniform: I have long, black leather boots, a dark uniform. I feel a red band, red like blood and with white borders, on my sternum. I touch it and it's a piece of fabric woven at a 45 degrees angle from a buttonhole to the inside of the jacket. On my neck, left side, I see a black square baring 3 aligned white dots, which later in the scene moved to the same black square with 4 white dots on each corner. I am also wearing a cap, that I see when I look up.
-I understand it's 1943 and we're East, and I know my enemies are Russian soldiers.
- I then experienced my own death. Inside a Panzer, I am sitting in the back of the turret, the scene starts by an explosion in front. I understand we've been hit by a round from the right side, hitting the hull next to my machinegunner. I see 3 other men: I know their role. In front, on the left, my driver has also been killed, mutilated by the blast. Both motionless bodies and the damaged mechanical part between them strikes me: we cannot move (I later found it's the transmission that separated both), I know look at my right and my loader is screaming hysterically, eyes wide open. I can't hear him, everything is silent, I must have gone deaf from the bang... And I understand that it's all over. I'm going to die in this tank, I know the soviet gunner will strike us again. I know it's a very basic tactic: strand the tank by hitting the driver or the transmission, and then demolish the gun.
I know the second round is coming, and barely noticing it, another shell explodes very close to me, on the turret. I feel no pain but great confusion. I won't go too much into details right now about what I saw once I died, but I can tell that, on that battlefield, I saw many other confused "souls", russian and german, saw the battle I dreamed about with great terror as a child, and was desperately trying to talk to a soldier I named Georg, yelling that I was there. The fact that he could not hear my message greatly pained me.
I went on to see many scenes, some fighting and some very random moments of a German man's life, in and out of the army, before and during the war.
I will skip the details of my following search, but I got to understand that I carried the memory of a SS-Sturmbannführer (I think the US equivalent is Major, or Commandant in the French army) who was awarded the Iron Cross, who started the war as Hauptsturmführer leading an infantry unit, until he moved to armored forces and led a unit of battle tanks, until he died in a counter-offensive from the Soviet army.
Well, I had decided at the time not to look for his name, but one day, in a very extraordinary manner, I found that these memories match the life of a man that existed.
I was having a peaceful day, writing a letter, when all of a sudden I felt the urge to stand up, go in front of my computer and search: I immediately, and I still can't explain how I found it, ended up reading a scanned page from an obscure book describing the battle of Kursk: I read there the fate of the Totenkopf Division during Operation Citadel. I was astonished to read that, at this battle, a SS-Sturmbannführer leading their Panzer Regiment was killed in the exact same way I saw in my visions (two AT rounds on his command tank). The Totenkopf division was actually halted that day, during the Kursk offensive, to cover the flank of the other Divisions, and ordered to face East. That day, a Soviet counter-attack was detected, and the order were passed to the Totenkopf's Panzerregiment to advance and face it, leading to the early death of their commander.
Another funny twist of fate: that special day, when I found his name, was actually his birthday. I was amazed to find that I uncovered the name of the memory I carry on the day he was born.
I am very thankful for finding this forum, after going through some fascinating stories on here, I wish to share with you all the journey I followed to discover the identity of a memory I carry since my early childhood.
Now, as a small introduction, I am today a 27 years-old man of both British and French citizenship, from my mother who is English and my father who is French. I am a world-traveler, very curious and open-minded, and I currently live in China, where I settled (quite different from the rural countryside and small village I was raised in!).
Starting from my earliest memories, I remember having terrible, terrible nightmares. I would be sleepwalking and being absolutely terrorized by what I saw surrounding me. I don't remember much of these visions, apart from insane battlefield sequences where tanks literally ram each other on fields full of smoke. As I grew older, the nightmares moved to me weeping in a very tight, metallic and dirty compartment, from which I never found a way to escape.
When I turned 14 or 15, these visions started to appear as I was awake, in the form of flashes, always very short in time but filled with emotions (for instance, I could know from a scene that I was walking to combat - deep in my stomach, with a smoke-filled sky that I could see in the distance, ahead).
When I moved to China, at 24 years of age, the visions started to "worsen" as I say because I had lots of these random flashes - walking on the streets of a chinese city would send me onto a battlefield, in the streets of a destroyed city, with bricks from crushed walls filling the streets. I'd look onto the highest windows, worried about getting shot. I'd be ducking, on those streets, always seeking cover from debris as I'd progress. I also remember a very uncomfortable instance, where two chinese police offers stopped in a street of a small northern city. I was having flashes of dirty, broken soldiers, who were surrendering, with their arms barely up from exhaustion.
I went back to France, convinced deep inside that I was losing it.
Now I must say that, since I was raised in a family where no one talked about topics of spirituality, and I had never heard of stories of reincarnation, my belief system was pretty closed. However, I always remained very surprised by the sheer precision of these visions. They were like memories, I was at the center of them, and always seemed to match the same period.
I went to see therapists, unbeknownst to my family, and there I began to investigate the policy that these visions were from a memory I was carrying! It was a very strong change in my life, as I had sometimes wondered what would happen after I die, but I never asked myself how was it before I was born. This opened up a lot of space inside me, as I did understand fairly quickly that I was seeing scenes from the life of one german officer during WWII.
It was hard to swallow, knowing full well the history of my current family:
- my English grandfather, whom I shared a very special bond with, was a British D-Day veteran (funny, since I was born June the 6th) and fought all the way from France to Belgium, Holland and Germany. He was awarded at the end of his life the title of Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by France (Knight of the Honor Legion). He actually encouraged me at an early age to visit Germany, against the advice of my grandmother who survived the blitz narrowly and clearly remembered the V1s...
- my French great-uncle was captured in May 1940 and spent 3 years as a POW, and I have studied earlier in my life his writings from that time, along with songs and poems. He was eventually freed by a German Heer doctor.
It was around this time that I undertook my first regression, which litterally filled me with images and very vivid scenes. I won't go into too many details (although I am very open to speak about it, if you have questions) but these scenes and details were key:
- I first saw the beginning of the last day, standing in a small trench, looking east. I remember very vividly the rays of light piercing the treeline, right in front of me as the sun was rising. I was incredibly frustrated by the tactical situation: we had been ordered to stop the assault and hold our line. I can't remember why. But I am frustrated, because I know my enemy: I know the Russians don't have the ability to handle a moving unit. I know their communications are bad, they can't react quick enough; I despise their officers, who sacrifice their men with their poor skills. Now that we came to a stop, they can organize an attack. I know they will attack. Around me are many men, I know they are my men, I am their leader.
- When I start to focus on me, invited by my therapist, I now see another scene. I notice my uniform: I have long, black leather boots, a dark uniform. I feel a red band, red like blood and with white borders, on my sternum. I touch it and it's a piece of fabric woven at a 45 degrees angle from a buttonhole to the inside of the jacket. On my neck, left side, I see a black square baring 3 aligned white dots, which later in the scene moved to the same black square with 4 white dots on each corner. I am also wearing a cap, that I see when I look up.
-I understand it's 1943 and we're East, and I know my enemies are Russian soldiers.
- I then experienced my own death. Inside a Panzer, I am sitting in the back of the turret, the scene starts by an explosion in front. I understand we've been hit by a round from the right side, hitting the hull next to my machinegunner. I see 3 other men: I know their role. In front, on the left, my driver has also been killed, mutilated by the blast. Both motionless bodies and the damaged mechanical part between them strikes me: we cannot move (I later found it's the transmission that separated both), I know look at my right and my loader is screaming hysterically, eyes wide open. I can't hear him, everything is silent, I must have gone deaf from the bang... And I understand that it's all over. I'm going to die in this tank, I know the soviet gunner will strike us again. I know it's a very basic tactic: strand the tank by hitting the driver or the transmission, and then demolish the gun.
I know the second round is coming, and barely noticing it, another shell explodes very close to me, on the turret. I feel no pain but great confusion. I won't go too much into details right now about what I saw once I died, but I can tell that, on that battlefield, I saw many other confused "souls", russian and german, saw the battle I dreamed about with great terror as a child, and was desperately trying to talk to a soldier I named Georg, yelling that I was there. The fact that he could not hear my message greatly pained me.
I went on to see many scenes, some fighting and some very random moments of a German man's life, in and out of the army, before and during the war.
I will skip the details of my following search, but I got to understand that I carried the memory of a SS-Sturmbannführer (I think the US equivalent is Major, or Commandant in the French army) who was awarded the Iron Cross, who started the war as Hauptsturmführer leading an infantry unit, until he moved to armored forces and led a unit of battle tanks, until he died in a counter-offensive from the Soviet army.
Well, I had decided at the time not to look for his name, but one day, in a very extraordinary manner, I found that these memories match the life of a man that existed.
I was having a peaceful day, writing a letter, when all of a sudden I felt the urge to stand up, go in front of my computer and search: I immediately, and I still can't explain how I found it, ended up reading a scanned page from an obscure book describing the battle of Kursk: I read there the fate of the Totenkopf Division during Operation Citadel. I was astonished to read that, at this battle, a SS-Sturmbannführer leading their Panzer Regiment was killed in the exact same way I saw in my visions (two AT rounds on his command tank). The Totenkopf division was actually halted that day, during the Kursk offensive, to cover the flank of the other Divisions, and ordered to face East. That day, a Soviet counter-attack was detected, and the order were passed to the Totenkopf's Panzerregiment to advance and face it, leading to the early death of their commander.
Another funny twist of fate: that special day, when I found his name, was actually his birthday. I was amazed to find that I uncovered the name of the memory I carry on the day he was born.
