The remains of 5 German soldiers found (D-Day)

[gew98]

To be fair ...I don't recall US or UK haing KZ lagers where they murdered civilians and POW's and starved both to extremes and death. When german formations went to france for rest and refit that had fought no quarter asked /non given warfare on the Ost front... they brought that mentality with them. Can you recall of any brit or yank unit that captured whole german units made them POW's and machinegunned them?...... did'nt think so.

[hassiman]

I watched an interview done with a WWII "JUG" pilot who described what happened to him when he went into the front lines as part of some initiative meant to familiarize ground attack pilots with the conditions faced by the ground troops they were supporting. He said that at one point some 88s started to impact near they area and he dove into a shell hole only to land on top of a "ripe" German corpse. He relates how his arm sunk through the german's belly and his had grabbed his spine. He said the man's belly exploded covering him with gore... and experience he would live with forever. I doubt that there was much purposeful disprespect for the dead, only the absolute need to get the bodies buried ASAP many times under live fire conditions as the stench would have been inconcievably overpowering except during wintertime.

[Walkwolf]

I watched an interview done with a WWII "JUG" pilot who described what happened to him when he went into the front lines as part of some initiative meant to familiarize ground attack pilots with the conditions faced by the ground troops they were supporting. He said that at one point some 88s started to impact near they area and he dove into a shell hole only to land on top of a "ripe" German corpse. He relates how his arm sunk through the german's belly and his had grabbed his spine. He said the man's belly exploded covering him with gore... and experience he would live with forever. I doubt that there was much purposeful disprespect for the dead, only the absolute need to get the bodies buried ASAP many times under live fire conditions as the stench would have been inconcievably overpowering except during wintertime.

Quentin C. Aananson in 'A Fighter Pilot's Story'..............

File:Quentin Aanenson Training Photo.JPG - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[gend]

You surely know just this propaganda! You do not know the hunger camps (POW camps) in Austria and Germany ...!?!?! Many german soldiers died of starvation or were shot(after the war!!!!)...
There are enough reports, pictures and books of these camps and the conditions there!!!!
That's the true...

[Walkwolf]

You surely know just this propaganda! You do not know the hunger camps (POW camps) in Austria and Germany ...!?!?! Many german soldiers died of starvation or were shot(after the war!!!!)...
There are enough reports, pictures and books of these camps and the conditions there!!!!
That's the true...

True enough, except we do not hear of tales from the 'winning side' about such atrocities,
and there were no Allied camps set up explicitly for the purpose of the extermination
of human beings, which the Nazi's had. As the saying goes:
"To the Victor go the Spoils"..........

Quentin Aananson, as mentioned above, did say he got physically sick after strafing
a column of German soldiers, but he stated that he was simply doing his duty,
and to wimp out of an assignment would be letting his pilot buddies down.

[Wagriff]

NOT to start an argument or take sides here, but Actually...you should Google "Dachau massacre" where the 45th Infantry did, indeed, accept the surrender of a whole German SS unit and lined them against a wall and shot them down. And, no-these were not camp guards. Read the article-it's quite interesting. Another wikipedia article is even more informative: "Allied war crimes during World War II" . War isn't nice and it's never pretty. Both sides in every conflict pretty much commit acts like this-it's just part of War. We, today 65 years later and living in peacetime safety can Not look down and condemn everything that Today we would not condone or approve. We weren't there and we didn't experience what They did. Like I said, it's not just WWII-it's every war. Does anyone think that the British went out and carried in the hundreds of wounded Zulu warriors at Rorke's Drift and brought them in to the burned down hospital and nursed them back to health? Did the Carthaginians tend and save the thousands of wounded Romans at Cannae? War is War...and neither side can ever pretend that they have acted in a totally saintly manner. So Many field units in the thick of battle simply have Not got the resources to handle surrenders of enemy combatants that come up with hands raised. What to do? Withdraw your combat troops from the front lines during critical times to shuttle hundreds of prisoners back to "somewhere" and then sit and guard and feed and tend their wounds, etc etc? One Third of all allied POW's in Soviet liberated prison camps were never heard from again-despite some writing home that they were Being liberated. How is this to be explained? War cannot and Should not be examined under a microscope from the distance of years in peacetime and judged by modern standards. No, we should not condone wartime killings and No we do not have to accept them, but we Need to understand that these times were not Our times and things were and always will be different under battlefield conditions. Like Sherman said: "War is Hell". William

[Walkwolf]

Well said, I agree with you, William............

[big ned]

As Adrian said several posts ago, this thread is going off track big style and has sweet f.a. to do with the original post, so everyone calm down a little.

The one undeniable fact is that the first ever use of the words 'concentration camps' was invented by the British during the 1899-1901 Boer war for the internment camps for men, women and children who were imprisoned wholesale after we burned their farms and took or killed their cattle. They starved to death or died of disease in their thousands in these camps.

And before any of you may wish to condemn my comments, I will confirm that my forebears fought for this country through the Zulu wars, the Boer war, the North African campaign of ww2 and during the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya. I myself was brought up in Rhodesia, Kenya and Namibia until the age of 10.

I am proud to be British, but we haven't always got it right....but who ever has? War is hell as they say. Now please, let's move on fella's.

Regards, Ned.

[Adrian]

Ok. As only one member has acknowledged my 'friendly' warning earlier I am not going to let this continue. I warned about letting the thread digress from it's original purpose but some don't seem to take heed. The recent comments have absolutely nothing to do with the discovery and reburial of the German troops in the opening post so therefore the thread will be closed.
If you want to continue discussing the whys and wherefores of war crimes please do so by some other method..
This is not a denial they took place or shouldn't be discussed but this is also not the thread to do so and from past experience threads on that subject devolve rapidly and with precious little result.

[WW2Hunter]

I want to ad a few things, about those 5 german KIA's who were discoverd a few years back.
I read a lot of speculation about the finder and the faith of those 5 soldiers in this thread.
First, I lived 5km from the place they were found and know the area well.
The battle in that area was very confused due to the bocage and the Bavent forest.
And it was an area where the 6th Airborn made lot's of german casualties by ambushes and the dead could not always be recoverd or buried.
2nd, Mr Yver is the person who discoverd them.
He is a well known and respected amateur historian from Bavent, that got the information about the 5 KIA's tomb from a Brittish vet.
As soon as Mr Yver found the grave site, he reported it to the authorities and the atlantic wall museum.
3 of the soldiers were ID'ed with their compleet dogtags, so the archeologists suspect they were KIA's buried in a hury by Brittish troops in a shallow grave about 2.5ft deep.
They were eventually all laid to rest at the German military cemetery of Lacambe.

Regards,
Steven