It looks like he was in the Weirmacht, not the SS. Had a cousin who was drafted into the SS at 16 and shipped to the Eastern front. He made it back to Germany one step ahead of the Russians. Had another cousin that was in Rommals Afrika Corps. captured there, and spent most of the war in a POW camp in the US. So, you can tell your friend we all have our skeletons.
A few years ago, I took the woman I had been dating back to the former East Germany to visit her family. I spent some time with her father who was in a Panzer Tank crew near the Baltic Sea. On May 8 1945, after the war was over, while walking home to New Brandenberg the Russians captured him. He told me how the Russians lined up all the German POWs and had a few guys in plain clothes walk through. If they pointed at you, you were executed on the spot. Ends up they were executing the German prison guards who harmed the Russian POWs.
The Russians shipped her father back to Siberia to work on a potato farm. He told me how they butchered the Russian guard dog for Christmas dinner in 1948 so they could have some meat!
He learned Russian so well that in 1952 they sent him back to Germany as a spy as a police officer in the Stasi. It was fascinating, hearing his stories.
At one point he started to cry as his older sisters (in their late 80’s) started to sing an old German hymn. He explained that was the hymn they sang during his induction ceremony into the German Army. I never knew that Hitler sold the war to the German people as a Christian war!
WWII Spitfire raised from Donegal bog
Because he had crashed in neutral Ireland, he ended up being sent to Curragh Internment Camp in Kildare County, Ireland. The surprising fact is that Allies and Germans were held there. The camp was a cushy place. The guards and both allies and German soldiers were allowed to go to town on a regular basis. I had known of German officers being held in Hershey, Pa., but I had never heard of Allied Forces and Germans sharing the same internment camp. A quote from a BBC article:
"It was an odd existence. The guards had blank rounds in their rifles, visitors were permitted (one officer shipped his wife over), and the internees were allowed to come and go. Fishing excursions, fox hunting, golf and trips to the pub in the town of Naas helped pass the time."
Here's a link to that article:
Needless to say I was flabbergasted, or as the Brits would say: Gobsmacked by all of this.