Gerhardt Leer

Ostracised Draft-Dodger

An awkward and skittish gardener who shuns the chance to enlist. Garhardt is quickly villified as a coward by the locals, and verbally and physically assaulted on a daily basis. Forced to embrace the consequences of his decisions, and refusing to discuss his motivations, he shuts himself off from society.

When Elfriede is the only woman on the home front with a single non-venomous thing to say to him, the seeds of a shaky trust are sown. Amidst all the troubles plaguing Gerhardt's life as a pariah, her kindness comes to be his only ray of sunlight.