Sergeant Karl Edelsheim was a career soldier with the Wehrmacht and fought for nearly four years on the Eastern Front. He was the top sergeant in Captain Hasso Pemsel's company for several of those years. In April 1945, Edelsheim and the survivors of the company were making a last stand in Berlin's Old Museum. A heavy smoker and good scrounger, Edelsheim was smoking a cigarette he had made with dubious fixings and a strip of paper torn from Der Panzerbär when Pemsel pointed out a stone artifact in the museum.