On September 3, 1939, France declared war on Germany. Like millions of others, Georges Woltersdorf was mobilized and had to suddenly leave everything behind, abandoning his wife and child. He was 30 years old and left to join his regiment in Avignon. This marked the beginning of an incredible journey fraught with painful trials, from the Vaucluse region where his regiment was formed to the Ardennes, then from the Austrian forests of Upper Austria to the shores of the Baltic Sea in Poland and the Black Sea in Russia. It was a journey from which he returned almost miraculously, having faced hunger, cold, corporal punishment, illness, and, most cruelly, separation from his loved ones. He came close to death many times, but it was the will to see his family again that sustained him throughout those war years and allowed him to survive.