Souveniers taken from the dead in time of war

[salesie]

Harry, I apologise. I apologise for "thinking out loud" and allowing my Yorkshire bluntness to surface and allow attention to be drawn away from my main point.

The German Minister of state's letter of justification, and Bob's admission to the contents of his grandfather's letters, give us two pieces of clear evidence that the "rape of Belgium" was not TOTALLY invented by the allied propaganda machine. Or is Bob saying that his own grandfather and the German Minister of State were willing participants in allied propaganda? He must, unwittingly by implication, be saying this if he would have us believe that the German army, in Belgium and northern France, was simply a misunderstood victim of an out and out smear campaign.

Cheers - salesie.

[marina]

Harry,

The Germans thought that they were being shot at by Belgian civilians

Des

Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

If you've got more of this report, Des, please post it. It is fascinating.

Marina

[SiegeGunner]

He referred to it as the 'Galician Division'. Not sure if they're one and the same unit.

No, 'Galizien' was the 14th Waffen SS Grenadier Division. Lots about it on the net, if you're interested.

[Jim_Grundy]

Thanks, Siege Gunner. Not sure my friend wants to know too much, though!

[Desdichado]

Marina,

Here's another excerpt from the report which is germane:

"From several of the houses the officers had the objects of value taken out before giving the order to burn them. Every one who showed himself in the street was shot down. In the Rue de la Station an officer on horseback, bursting with rage, was directing the incendiaries.

In the morning certain of the inhabitants, who had passed the night in their cellars or their gardens, ventured to go out. They then learnt that the Germans pretended that a plot had been hatched amongst them, that there had been firing on the troops, and that the whole responsibility for what had happened was thrown on the civilians.

From dawn squadrons of soldiers entered the houses, searched them from top to bottom, and turned out the inhabitants, forcing them towards the station. The poor wretches were compelled to run with their hands uplifted. They were given blows with the fists and with rifle-butts.

Soon a large number of townspeople were collected in the Place de la Station, where dead bodies of civilians were lying on the ground. During the night a certain number of people had been shot, without serious inquiry. While they were being hustled along, the townspeople were searched by officers and soldiers, and their money was taken from them (some officers gave a receipt in return), as well as any objects of value.

Those who did not understand an order, who did not raise their arms quick enough, or who were found carrying knives larger than a penknife, were at once shot. While these horrible scenes were enacted, the guns were constantly booming in the Malines direction, but the noise gradually grew more distant.

In the streets numerous civilian corpses lay, and in some places corpses of German soldiers, who had been killed by one another in the night. Victims of panic and obsessed by the thought of francs-tireurs, they had fired on every group which they met in the darkness."

The report itself is quite lengthy. It may be on the internet somewhere but my copy is one I picked up at a flea market some years ago when I was looking for law books.

Regards - Des

[salesie]

The full report can be read here: http://firstworldwar.com/source/louvain_judicialreport.htm

Cheers - salesie.

[Desdichado]

Thanks salesie. The link you gave also has links to the German response which I have never seen in full before.

[Beau Geste]

Harry, I apologise. I apologise for "thinking out loud" and allowing my Yorkshire bluntness to surface and allow attention to be drawn away from my main point.

The German Minister of state's letter of justification, and Bob's admission to the contents of his grandfather's letters, give us two pieces of clear evidence that the "rape of Belgium" was not TOTALLY invented by the allied propaganda machine. Or is Bob saying that his own grandfather and the German Minister of State were willing participants in allied propaganda? He must, unwittingly by implication, be saying this if he would have us believe that the German army, in Belgium and northern France, was simply a misunderstood victim of an out and out smear campaign.

Cheers - salesie.

Thank you Salesie.

I've said many times Salesie that your involvement raises the quality of any debate and that is as true here as on the many threads we've shared.

I've spent some time this morning reading up on the issue of whether or not the "rape of Belgium" was fact or fiction. The clearest and most sober analysis I could find was an article by David Menichetti called "German Policy in Occupied Belgium 1914 - 18" in which he states that:

"the true story of Belgium during the first World War largely depends on the perspective one takes. Behind all the political, economic, and social policies lies one concrete fact. Belgium was an occupied nation, and Germany was its occupying power. This fact is essential to understanding the reality of the Belgian situation. Compared to other occupations in World War One, the occupation of Belgium was tame indeed. This tameness, however, was only present in relative terms. The Germans attempted to divide Belgium into two separate regions, exploiting Flemish nationalism for their own purposes. They also exploited Belgium's natural, financial, and industrial resources to support the German army and the general war effort. German troops deliberately set fire to and destroyed Belgian cities and factories on several occasions. To any Allied observer or Belgian citizen, these actions constituted horrible examples of German brutality and inexcusable violations of Belgian sovereignty under international law. No matter what other policies the General Government instituted to remedy the situation, it still could not change these basic facts."

He goes on to add:

"the other perspective of the Belgian situation yields a vastly different view. The Germans were involved in a major war that required all the strength, manpower, and resources at their disposal. To ignore Belgium was to hurt Germany's chances of winning the war. No rational leader from any country would fail to support the exploitation of an occupied territory if it increased his nation's chances of emerging victorious. Later in the war, the German situation was dire indeed, and new pressures from the military gave industrialists and Pan-German politicians a staunch ally in their fight for further exploitative policies. Even for Bissing and the General Government, when push came to shove, German interests prevailed over those of Belgium. After all, this was a military government in the midst of a fierce continental war."

This "balanced view" does not hesitate to point out that atrocities were committed by the Germans in places like Louvain but, in the interests of propaganda, the scale of these might well of been exaggerated. To suggest otherwise, to argue it was all down to allied propaganda seems ludicrous. The German perspective cited above seems to suggest that "the end justifies the means," that because of Germany's increasing need for resources any type of behaviour was deemed if not acceptable, then definitely forgiveable.

Looting was also rife and the fact that this went on and was "accepted" by the German military and civil hierarchies in the region is suggested in the practice of pinning notices "forbidding looting" to the doors of the homes of Germans residing in the area. These were like an open invitation "Don't loot these premises, go next door !"

Kind regards,

Harry

[bob lembke]

Bob, Leon van der Essen, Ph.D, LL.D, was a professor of history at Louvain University.

Thanks for the info. I gathered from his output that he was probably a historian and unlikely to be a lawyer. He certainly wrote a lot. During the war he must have been outside of Belgium, and certainly cranking out a lot of stuff. Does anyone know when he was a professor there? about 1940 someone of that name wrote a history of the university over a period of say 600 years.

Bob Lembke

[Desdichado]

Thanks for the info. I gathered from his output that he was probably a historian and unlikely to be a lawyer. He certainly wrote a lot. During the war he must have been outside of Belgium, and certainly cranking out a lot of stuff. Does anyone know when he was a professor there? about 1940 someone of that name wrote a history of the university over a period of say 600 years.

Bob Lembke

He was an LL.D which means Doctor of Law.

He wrote "L'Universite de Louvain a travers Cinq Siecles" in the 1920s as it was reviewed in the UK in 1928.

[bob lembke]

I want to go thru this morning's harvest of posts and make several comments, but I perhaps should first state my overview. The German invasion of Belgium was in violation of international treaties. However, Germany had no chance whatever of winning the war if they did not go thru there. The Allies happily took over Greece when it suited their needs, but hardly was a matter of national survival.

There is no doubt at all that there was a great deal of firing on German forces by either civilians or by troops in civilian clothes. French-language Belgian and French sources brag about it. I can cite many first-person accounts written at the time that detail it. My grand-father wrote how in the town he was in the Belgians suddenly turned off the street lighting and a storm of sniper fire broke out. This and the other stuff from him is letters written at the time, sometimes even the midst of a battle, not published propaganda material written by committees of professors and public officials and then published in multiple languages in different countries.

I understand that most of these real or alleged atrocities did not occur in the area of operation of my grand-father's corps (III. Reservekorps, later Army Group Beseler when it was reinforced to about six divisions). This may be one reason why I have not read much about this, as my Belgian research is focused on g-f campaign.

I am sure that some of the Belgians shot were innocent, some were guitly as hell, and some were guilty but did not receive a fair legal process. I think that that question is the core of this matter. I do not know where the balance was.

What is the extent of this matter? I have seen a German source that stated that 6000 civilians were killed, rightly or wrongly, and an Allied-oriented source that stated that 6500 were killed. I have not really looked into this.

I would think that we all have nationalistic/ethnic/etc. leanings when we post military matters, and when we venture into real or imagined or fabricated atrocity stories the Pals who will tend to post will probably be in hormonic overdrive when they chose to post and comment on this sort of topic. That certainly applies to me. This is why we have to be as careful as possible about sources, sources of sources, etc., especially since, as several other Pals have just posted, there was an extensive, organized campaign to write and publish many atrocity stories, many of which are simply fantastic.

When I mention propaganda, that does not necessarily state that the information is false. Skillful propaganda should contain a blend of fact and fiction to increase its believability. This material was written at every level of sophistication, from fantastic stories that only the brain-dead could believe, to weighty official looking tomes written by committees of Harvard professors. (It is quite interesting how a great wave of such material was published in the US the month that the US declared war on the Central Powers. They must have been worked on for months and years and been on the shelf for release upon the outbreak of war between the US and the Central Powers.)

A lot of the discussion and posting revolves about repeated reference to the material from the National Alumni 1923 publication. I doubt that anyone else has actually held this book in their hand like I have. It is not a post-war legal report, it is a large post-war compelation of war-time propaganda material. All you guys are seeing is what someone has posted on the Internet labeled something like "Belgian legal Report", or something, a page or two of material that has been accurately or inaccurately lifted from a multi-volume collection of propaganda pieces, with no page citations, etc. That material, as posted on the Internet, might be the Revealed Word of God. But probably not. There are several levels of selection and choice that almost insure that the material, as you read the fragment, is cooked up, fabricated, or whatever. Or perhaps not. But such a level of scholarship would get a university freshman drummed out and sent to the mills or the mines.

I have a dear friend of 50 years who repeatedly (until recently) trolls for pro-Iraq war, pro-Bush material on the Internet, and sends it to many dozens of friends on the Internet. Some is supposedly from foreign sources, some from supposed participants, etc. I have repeatedly looked into this material, and find mis-attributed, doctored translations, supposed inside participatants in Saddam Hussein's decision-making who turn out to be long-time Arab-American US based employees of Born-Again US Christian activist groups who were unlikely to be in policy meetings with Saadam while working for right-wing US organizations, etc., etc.

I recently bought on e-Bay a 82 page diary of a German soldier covering 1914 service in Belgium in my grand-father's army corps. (I paid a great deal, bidding against a Belgian who also really wanted it.) I should break down and translate it, or at least read thru it.

I should also poke thru the book written by the Belgian who is a graduate of the University of Louvain. Offhand I do not know if he discusses it in that book. Anything officially published in Belgium after the war will be from the Walloon point of view, who totally dominated Belgium at the time. (I have a Belgian book on these matters upstairs, a large official or semi-official work, and going thru it one would not even know that there actually were Flemish people in Belgium.) I again recite the interesting occurrance when, about 1931, Belgian Walloons built a monument to supposed Belgian war-time martyred civilians, and Flemish people dynamited the monument before the dedication ceremony. It does not seem like the Belgians are on the same page here.

Bob Lembke

[Desdichado]

Bob, please try not to patronise people. I have a copy of Prof. van der Essen's work. If you have held a copy in your hand, then you would have known that he was a professor at Louvain before and during the 1920s. You will also note that one of the first things the Germans did when they occupied Louvain was to take hostages, and that was before a shot had been fired at them. Many of these so-called professional soldiers were so damned drunk that they shot each other. You may sneer at academics all you like Bob but your contempt for them is quite unfounded. You simply cannot refute the evidence based upon the say-so, no matter how contemporary, of your grandfather, unless of course he happened to command the German forces in the area at the time.

[bob lembke]

He was an LL.D which means Doctor of Law.

He wrote "L'Universite de Louvain a travers Cinq Siecles" in the 1920s as it was reviewed in the UK in 1928.

Of course. A case of my mouth in gear when my brain was in neutral. At least in Germany at the time, the LL. D. was sort of a M.B.A., an ambitious prospective beaurocrat would get one without intending to practice law. The CO of the German flame regiment had a J.D., but actually was a senior fire-fighting official and a published scientist, not a lawyer. I fould quite an assortment of his books on abebooks, none seemed to be of a legal spin. But he clearly had the training.

Bob

[Desdichado]

There was no such thing as a JD until the 1970's was there? I thought that only American lawyers earned a JD but I may be wrong. Older American lawyers earned the LL.B degree. One man that I know graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1966 with an LL.B but it was later converted into a JD. When I asked him why this was, he told me that the ABA wanted academic parity with the medical profession, JD standing for Doctor of Jurisprudence. I have a licence to practice law in New York and my LL.M was accepted by the state bar as being an equivalent qualification.

As far as I know German lawyers were, and perhaps still are referred to as Doktor. In the UK, an LL.D is normally and honourary degree. Most academic lawyers have a Ph.D or at least an LL.M.

Regards - Des

[Jim_Grundy]

At the risk of this getting silly, surely there can be no debate about whether or not the Germans killed civilians in Belgium and Northern France during the invasion of 1914 on a scale that was wildly disproportionate to the scale of the so-called franc-tireur activity? And, anyway, what does that amount to? If defending your country against an invasion by a foreign power isn't what many people would do instinctively, who's the criminal?! I was going to say 'illegal' invasion but it's superfluous in this context!

When the Germans presented Belgium with an ultimatum in 1914 they weren't too concerned with opposition coming from uniformed or civil combatants, they assumed it could be steam-rollered and the general population terrorised into submission. 'War' and 'crime' to me is tautologous in most cases and the German invasion of Belgium - remember the Belgian response to Germany when its representatives were asked what would history make of them, 'history will show that Belgium did not invade Germany' (can't give the exact quotation) - doesn't fail that criterion.

Fact - Germans committed atrocities in 1914. Stating that doesn't demonise the German people, it happened. No matter how you dice it, people with no connection to any form of resistance were killed and the fact that this was a possibility was just another part of German strategy at the time cannot be denied. The German armed forces didn't deny that at the time and similar policies have been applied both before and since by different nations. It's in the history and there's no point in trying to pretend otherwise - it's just another reason why we should do everything possible to avoid going to war again. But that doesn't suit all nations now or at any time in the past, does it?

Jim

[salesie]

Bob, I have to say, whether I'm barred from the forum or not, that your posts are now insulting my intelligence by "talking" a lot but saying nothing apart from constantly trying to excuse German atrocities in the face of good evidence to the contrary.

I used the official German reply to the U.S. government as well as your own admission as to the contents of your grandfather's letters to prove my point. Both of these give clear evidence on their own to show that atrocities were commited by the German army in Belgium.

I repeat, and would ask you to answer the questions they pose:

Gottlieb von Jagow, German Minister of State, in his statement to the U.S. government confirmed that severe reprisals were carried out. I quote: "The barbarous acts of the Belgian people in almost all the territories occupied by the German troops have not only justified the most severe reprisals on the part of the German military authorities but have even compelled the latter to order them for safeguarding the troops."

Also, civilian shootings are confirmed by your grandfather's letters, I quote, "Incidentally I will happily admit that my grand-father's letters from Belgium mention shooting good numbers of Belgians seemingly caught firing on German troops....The family oral history cites him having to dive under his staff car for shelter from urban sniper fire."

Question 1: Jagow attempts to justify these "most severe reprisals" on the grounds of international law and self-defence - he, just like you do now, regarded the Belgians themselves as the law breakers! If a teutonic brain of high office thought them "most severe", when actually trying to justify these acts, then how bad must they have been in reality?

Question 2: The German Minister of State's letter of justification, and the content of your grandfather's letters, give us two pieces of clear evidence that the "rape of Belgium" was not TOTALLY invented by the allied propaganda machine. Or are you saying that your grandfather and the German Minister of State were wrong and only wrote these things as willing participants in the allied propaganda campaign?

Cheers - salesie.

[Beau Geste]

Desdichado Posted Today, 05:42 PM

Bob, please try not to patronise people. I have a copy of Prof. van der Essen's work. If you have held a copy in your hand, then you would have known that he was a professor at Louvain before and during the 1920s. You will also note that one of the first things the Germans did when they occupied Louvain was to take hostages, and that was before a shot had been fired at them. Many of these so-called professional soldiers were so damned drunk that they shot each other. You may sneer at academics all you like Bob but your contempt for them is quite unfounded. You simply cannot refute the evidence based upon the say-so, no matter how contemporary, of your grandfather, unless of course he happened to command the German forces in the area at the time.

Hello Bob,

Please don't misinterpret this but I think you are in danger of losing some of your credibility as an objective academic when it comes to commenting on some of the less savoury aspects of Germany's role in The Great War. As Des says, you appear to be over committed to the stories you've heard or read that originated with your grandfather.

I can empathise with that but one really can take it too far. The evidence that is available and some of it has been discussed at length on this thread, would suggest that atrocities were committed in Belgium and elsewhere, as they were on a much greater scale during WW2 and by denying that fact you run the risk of being branded a German "apologist".

Salesie in post # 391 asks two extremely pertinent questions I think.

Bob, as the thread originator I can't step in again and say that these gentlemen are out of order asking these questions. I hope you apprecaite that.

Best wishes,

Harry

[bob lembke]

Has this thread been Limoged? I was writing a reply to one of the questions Harry posted and it went "blewey", and I can't find the thread on the Forum.

Bob

[Beau Geste]

Has this thread been Limoged? I was writing a reply to one of the questions Harry posted and it went "blewey", and I can't find the thread on the Forum.

Bob

I received your PM Bob and checked on the Classics section to confirm what you said, that it had vanished !!!! It hadn't. It's still there, exactly where it has been for days now, ever since it was transferred from it's original position when it was accorded "classics" status !

Best wishes,

Harry

[bob lembke]

Harry;

I see. The thread was not "Limoged", but sent off to the Classic Thread corner.

You have posted Des' post, and I was writing a detailed response when it disappeared. Perhaps that was when the thread was moved. I have to go out soon, perhaps I can take a shot at some of these items.

Bob

[bob lembke]

Bob, please try not to patronise people.

?????

I have a copy of Prof. van der Essen's work. If you have held a copy in your hand, then you would have known that he was a professor at Louvain before and during the 1920s.

I was asking what or who he was. Can you state what Prof. van der Essen's work was? It is being quoted, but no one has given a meaningful citation. The old boring author, title, publisher, place and year of publication. Digging thru the 185 hits I got on abebooks.com, about 100 seemed to be books by him, and they were about 10-15 titles published from 1915 to 1940 or even later. If I have a title, I can probably have the book in 24 hours, as it may well be in my wife's library, which has 8 million volumes.

You will also note that one of the first things the Germans did when they occupied Louvain was to take hostages, and that was before a shot had been fired at them.

I have no idea what happened in Louvain. Since I am writing about what my g-f did in Belgium, that is what I study. He never was in Louvain. What you state may well be true. I have briefly pointed out that some of what has been previously posted about what the Germans did in Louvain is clearly a fabrication. You guys seem to be working soley from a book that clearly written for propaganda purposes during the war. Some of it may well be true, much of it, I am sure, is not. I have a few books of that sort, some bought for purposes of amusement. I rarely read secondary sources written during the war, as they are very unreliable, and usually do not read secondary sources written well after the war, unless they are of exceptional quality, such as Jack Sheldon's superb books, or if they contain sourced chunks of primary source material, as Jack's books also do. But if you are relying soley on an Allied (or German) book written during the war to find out what happened, you might as well read comic books.

Many of these so-called professional soldiers were so damned drunk that they shot each other.

This is a standard theme in the Allied stories about what happened in Belgium. The German troops are always drunk, always firing on each other in the dark, always in a panic, and then they go on a rampage. Even elite units. Another stock story is the anti-Catholic rampage. This ignores that about a third of the German Army was Catholic, probably a much higher percentage than in the UK Army. If the "German" (Prussian?) Army went on anti-Catholic rampages, there would have been severe problems with the Bavarian Army, the second-largest Army in the Imperial Army. Even significant parts of the Prussian Army were Catholic.

You may sneer at academics all you like Bob but your contempt for them is quite unfounded.

What! I will rise to new heights of pomposity to refute your charge of "anti-academic contempt". I have 10 years of professional education at two Ivy League universities, in four degree programs, mostly graduate; mechanical engineering and operations research, regional planning, and regional science (mainly econometrics, mathematical economics). I also did a graduate program in Europe in another discipline. I have taught at several US universities, and taught at several US and European research institutes. I am published. I have done consulting in academic areas in the US and Europe. Once I was simultaniously consulting for Cornell University, the US Department of State, the Slovene Urbanistic Institute, and the Jugoslav Federal Committee on Scientific Cooperation. For two years I was the de facto state economist of Pennsylvania. I have run two world-class projects on mathematical modeling. For many years I was a member of several professional societies in several different fields. In short, I am vastly over-educated, and am a pompous academic. Anti-academic, indeed!

You simply cannot refute the evidence based upon the say-so, no matter how contemporary, of your grandfather, unless of course he happened to command the German forces in the area at the time.

My g-f was not the commander of the German forces in the area. I think that that was a fellow named Faylkenhausen (sp?). My g-f was the "Id" of the Generalkommando of the III. Reservekorps, and then, when it was tripled in size, of the Army Group Beseler. As such, he was in charge of one of the four sub-sections of the General Staff section of the Generalkommando (he was not a General Staff officer), reporting directly to the cheif of staff of the Army Group. As he had a deputy, he seems to have spent a lot of time roaming about the battlefields, even during actions, and I have several PCs/letters written as an engagement was going on. Then, when Antwerp was taken, the Ministry of War telegraphed von Beseler to mount an operation to corral any strategic materials in Belgium, and as g-f was a Feuerwerk=Offizier, an explosives expert, he was given staff cars and an escort and he sped about Belgium looking for strategic materials, finally finding the hidden Belgian strategic stockpile of explosives, 1100 rail cars of nitrates. His letters and PCs from Belguim are frank, mention the good and the bad, and he certainly was on the spot.

By the way, exactly what "evidence" did I attempt to "refute" with my g-f's material? He candidly mentioned Belgians being shot for francs-tireur activity, and also he mentioned looting. He also repeatedly mentioned organized sniping attacks in urban areas, the assassination of officers, and Belgian atrocities, such as the murder of 43 wounded German soldiers that I mentioned before. He was on the site of these incidents. No one, or ten, nor a hundred sources can "prove" what actually happened. But his letters are useful and believable. Was the van der Essen "work" a war-time publication, published in England in English? You accept such a source as definative? Or even reliable?

Bob Lembke

[Pete1052]

The war crimes treaties are often honored in the breach as much as in the observance, but they are still better than nothing.

I don't know much about this Belgium subject, but it seems to me that the Germans did indeed do some nasty things there in 1914 and that also there was a lot of mendacious Allied propaganda after the fact. (Propaganda-wise, my late mother believed that German soldiers in the Great War cut womens' breasts off just for fun.) The confused actions that took place in Belgium happen in war and no nation's military is completely unblemished by that type of thing, although some armies are a lot worse than others. Much earlier in this thread Harry and I talked about the role of leaders in curbing this this kind of thing when we can. The problem is that even if one's own troops transgress, the war still goes on. Even if something unfortunate happens a company commander still has to follow orders, keep his unit together and focus on the objective, which is usually the next hill to be taken or defended. I know of no cases in which an officer has voluntarily resigned his commission and turned himself in to tribunals in Geneva or The Hague to be prosecuted as a war criminal.

[salesie]

Bob, any chance at all of you giving a reasoned answer to the questions I presented for your deliberation?

Cheers - salesie.

[bob lembke]

Bob, any chance at all of you giving a reasoned answer to the questions I presented for your deliberation?

Cheers - salesie.

Yes, it is the next thing on my agenda. I hope to get to it in a few minutes.

Bob

[PBI]

Des,in reply to your Question regarding My Friend who was captured at Arnhem,He is From Southern Ireland,and joined the Army in 1939,and served in the 1st Battalion of the Border Regiment,he was captured at Arnhem on the Night of the last Day of the Battle,whilst He and 4 Mates were attempting to get down to the River Rhine from a Path at the Back of the Church at Arnhem,he had taken cover in a Coal Bunker and recieved a Stick Grenade all to Himself,after being dragged from the Coal Bunker He was taken to St.Elizabeth Hospital were he witnessed the Shooting of Unarmed Men by Dutch SS Men,He does not know if these Men were Poles or British.He personally met Bittrich who gave Him 20 Players and a Bar of Chocolate and asked Him to convey His thanks to The R.A.F. for keeping the German Troops so well supplied with Cigarettes and Chocolate..My Pal said that Bittrich was a very imposing Figure,and made sure that the British wounded were well Treated and cared for,My Pal apologised to Bittrich for Bleeding all over the Carpet,Bittrich immediatley ordered 2 German Medics to start Working on my Friend.My Friend did mention that whilst some of the British POWS were being searched that certain Items were found on them I.E. Home made Knuckle Dusters,Garottes,and even Cut throat Razors....maybe this somewhat enraged the German Troops.

As a Footnote i have just Purchased 2 Mint condition Books from the Local Charity Shop.The 2 Volumes are Entitled

"Belgium The Glorious,Her Country and Her People"

And Subtitled "The Story Of A Brave Nation,and a Pictorial and AUTHORITATIVE RECORD OF A FAIR COUNTRY RUTHLESSLY PLUNDERED AND DESTROYED".