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Mine field clearance post-WW2

That Danish location is a tank range today. The Germans had bunkers there during WW2 and they heavily mined the area as it was a suspected landing zone for invasion forces. The last mines were cleared about 1 or 2 years ago.
 
It makes sense that the men with most knowledge of the mines and how they were laid should clear them. It is pleasing to know that they were volunteers and to my mind it is therefore sad that any of them should become casualties when clearing them. On holiday in France earlier this year we went for a drive in the Somme valley area, southeast of Abbeville. We noted three war cemeteries: two near a place named L'etoile and another near Bourdon and visited all three. The first was French and contained the graves of about 4,000 men. All died in 1940. There was a mass grave containing over 1,000 `inconnus'. At least half of the dead were French colonial troops from Senegal and Algeria. The second was a British cemetery and contained about 50 dead, mostly from 1918. The third was a German cemetery, near Bourdon, and contained over 22,000 men, who died between 1940 and 1950. I suspect that many of those who died after the end of hostilities in 1945 were involved in munitions clearance. It surprised me to see a date as late as 1950. As far as I know the cut-off date for British dead to be commemorated as having died as a result of World War 2 was some time in 1948, eg those involved in bomb and mine clearance.
 
Those Germans could have well been members of the French Foreign Legion. Ammo clearance was not so dangerous that it contributed essencial amounts of the deaths on that cemetary.
 
I've heard stories of German cemeteries in Vietnam, and that it was rumored that they were German soldiers that had joined the French Foreign Legion at the end of WWII and were sent to Vietnam to fight with the rest of the French troops there.
 
That is no rumor. Thousands of German former Paratrooopers and SS havee died in Vietnam. The had whole German Units there.
 
EOD said:
That is no rumor. Thousands of German former Paratrooopers and SS havee died in Vietnam. The had whole German Units there.
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A great book called" Devils guard " is about German SS in the FFL not sure if it is completely factual but a bloody good read !
 
The book `Devil's Guard' by George Robert Elford is information that was supplied to him by a former German `guerrilla hunter / head hunter' SS officer, Hans Josef Wagemueller, if that is his real name. It was first published in 1971. My edition is a 1980 reprint. The subject was sufficiently contentious for the publisher to add a note: `This book is being published to provide the reading public with a new and clearer insight into the mentality and personality of an unregenerate and unrepentant Nazi. It is a story that shows the total dehumanization of men in war and it illustrates the hypocrisies and lengths of degradation to which men are driven in order to defend their actions.....'. The foreword was written by Wagemueller.
 
I might have owned `Devil's guard' since around 1980 but had never read it. I have since read it between these two posts of mine. Elford's information is that Wagemueller was not the man's real name and that he used a tape machine over a period of time to record his experiences. Somewhere in the book it mentions that Wagemueller kept a journal while on operations. I think it possible that such a man should keep a written record but in practice, bearing in mind that if it were lost or captured and he was supposedly so professional a soldier, it would have been a liability in the wrong hands. But that is the only way that one could recall conversations blow by blow. Many names had been changed to protect the men, their families and the regime where `Wagemueller' was living when the book was first published. I agree with 25th April that it is a good read. As a book on counter insurgency it is very interesting and there are similarities with Freddie Spencer Chapman's book `The jungle is neutral'. The message seems to be that one side has to fight at least as dirty as the other in order to win. For the most part the UK has adopted the attitude of moral superiority and its servicemen and women have died in greater numbers as a result - are these`acceptable' losses? As an aside, I recently spoke with a former RN sailor. He was explaining the rules of engagement that existed some years ago. If a ship were under attack it must first attempt dialogue with the attacker and only after several escalating verbal warnings were they allowed to shoot back. Well how ludicrous is that? To an aggressor the message should be `Peace through superior firepower', to limit our own side's casualties and to demonstrate to a potential aggressor that they had better not start. Conflicts can be won by force but ultimately there has to be a political solution. I think it is right that empires should fall, leaving individual states to run their own affairs, however there is always a larger state with vested economic and political interests that insists on manipulating the smaller states. In the words of the Irish, humankind needs to `wise up and catch yourself on'.
 
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