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Got a few moments so I thought I'd post this FYI:-
Was getting some data for someone else and I came up
with this data which is the type we try so hard to forget
even after 63+ years but it just won't go away!!
On September 1st, 1944 before the retreating SS left the
area of Plomion, France, they murdered townsfolk including
many innocent women and children, burning down houses
with incendiary grenades. Sadistic evidence was everywhere.
Plomion is almost on the France-Belgium border in the vicinity
of Hirson. The SS unit was not identified.
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F. Y. I.
Data on the Plomion Massacre:-
951st Field Artillery Battalion with 9th ID - (the first US Corps
to reach Belgium.)
The day before (August 31), German SS troops executed 14
males of all ages in Plomion.
Later on the morning of September 2, we started to leave this
position. A young Frenchman about my age came up to my jeep
with his World War I rifle. He lived in Plomion and had escaped
from the SS troops before the massacre. He begged me to take
him with us to help in the war, but there was no way we could
take a civilian. He was a very brave man and would have been
worth his weight in gold. He was one of the few male survivors
of Plomion.
In April 1996, Lt. Russell Kelch and I went back to Plomiom, France.
We were able to get the complete story of the Plomion tragedy from
two kindergarten teachers taking children on a walk. The teachers
knew of this event and showed us a document about the massacre.
The German SS were looking for someone who had taken a shot
at them, and when the SS couldn't find the sniper, they ransacked
and burned the village. When the villagers wouldn't turn anyone
over, the SS arrested 14 men and boys who had not fled the
village. The 14 were beaten and executed.
A monument has been erected in the meadow where this
atrocity occurred. As we stood looking at the monument, Lt.
Kelch said, "You know, there were times in my life when I
wondered if this really took place or if it was all a dream.
That's why I never spoke of it much." I replied, "And now
we know it really happened."
Originally published in 951st Battalion FA Newsletter, Fire Mission
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A monument was erected in the meadow to commemorate this
atrocity. Haven't been able to find a picture of if but the inscription
reads as follows;
Quote "Ce monument a été élevé vers 1950 sur les plans du
sculpteur R. Antoine et de l' architecte R. Cabet. Les 14 stèles
s' élèvent à l' endroit même où sont tombés, lors de la débacle
allemande du 31 août 1944, quatorze plomionnais victimes d'une
ultime riposte".end Quote
(MY Free Translation = This monument was erected circa 1950
using the plans of Sculptor R. Antoine and Architect R.. Cabet.
The bas relief was erected on the same spot where they fell at
the time of the German Massacre of August 31,1944,
14 Plomion people ,victims of an ultimate retaliation).
These memories just won't go away!! Reason #3 for absence!!

Sgtleo ![]()
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Dirty, rotten, lowlife bastards!
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Dogdaddy 1
Dirty, rotten, lowlife bastards!
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Dogdaddy:-
Since you got so mad at the Plonium story I decided to give you
some more to chew on
I have listed a number of SS atrocities that happened in Belgium
and France. There were many others in Greece,Holland and even
in Germany. I can find no sympathy for men like SS Col Peiper regardless
of whether he was physically present or not. Not all these were
performed by Peiper's men but rather others as well!!
With Command - Responsibility accompanies it!!
BELGIUM:-
BANDE (Christmas Eve, 1944)-34 men killed.
THE MALMÉDY MASSACRE (December 17, 1944) 84 of their comrades
lay dead
ATROCITY AT STAVELOT Kampfgruppe Peiper, systematically executed
130 Belgian civilians
THE WERETH KILLINGS (December 17, 1944) eleven slain black soldiers.
France
THE NORMANDY MASSACRES (June, 1944) SS soldiers brandishing their
machine pistols opened fire killing thirty five men.
On the 7th and 8th of June, in the grounds of the Abbaye Ardenne, the
headquarters of SS Brigadefuhrer Kurt Meyer’s 25th Panzer Grenadiers,
twenty of the Canadians were shot.
June 8, twenty six Canadians were shot at the Chateau d’Audrie
After the war, investigations established that separate atrocities were
committed in 31 different incidents involving 134 Canadians, 3 British
and 1 American
LE PARADIS (Pas-de-Calais, May 26, 1940
A company of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, trapped in a cowshed,
surrendered to the 2nd Infantry Regiment, SS 'Totenkopf' (Death's Head).
When the 99 prisoners were in position, two machine guns opened fire
killing 97 of them.
WORMHOUDT ATROCITY (Pas-de-Calais, May 27/28 , 1940 The day after
the Le Paradis massacre, around 100 men of the 2nd Royal Warwickshire
Regiment, the Cheshire Regiment and the Royal Artillery, were taken
prisoner by the No 7 Company, 2nd Battalion of the SS Leibstandarte
Adolf Hitler.
The prisoners were marched across fields to a nearby farm and there
confined in a barn with not enough room for the wounded to lie down.
There the massacre began. About five stick grenades were lobbed in
amongst the defenceless prisoners who died in agony as shrapnel tore
into their flesh. When the last grenade had been thrown, those still
standing were then ordered outside, five at a time, there to be mown
down under a hail of bullets from the rifles of the executioners.
ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE (Central France, June 10, 1944)452 women and
children in the local church were then suffocated by smoke grenades
lobbed in through the windows and shrapnel grenades
THE TULLE MURDERS (Near Limoges, Central France, June 9, 1944) the
SS murdered 99 men in the town of Tulle
ASCQ (Near Lille, April 2, 1944) Altogether 70 men were shot beside the
railway line and another 16 killed in the village itself.
OUTRAGE AT IZIEU (Central France, April 6, 1944) The Gestapo, led by the
regional head, Klaus Barbie, entered the home and forcibly removed the
forty four children and their seven supervisors, throwing the crying and
terrified children on to the trucks like sacks of potatoes. All were transported
to the collection centre at Drancy outside Paris where they were put on the
first available train to 'points east'.
FRAYSSINET (Near Tulle, Central France, May 21, 1944) fifteen hostages
were taken and executed. These hostages were all young males from
one child families.
SAULX VALLEY ATROCITIES (August 29, 1944)
Robert-Espagne All males were then rounded up (49 in number). Three
machine-guns, firing in unison, sent their deadly stream of bullets into the
helpless group. In the village of Couvonges, 26 men were killed and 54
out of the 60 houses were burned to the ground. The village of Beurey-sur-Saulx
was also targeted by the SS and seven inhabitants met their deaths, the
church and houses put to the torch.
In Mogeville, three people died as a result of the SS retaliation. Similar
atrocities were also carried out almost simultaneously in the villages of
Sermaize-les-Bains, (thirteen died), Cheminon and Tremout-sur-Saulx by
the SS 3rd Panzer-Grenadier Division.
I know of NO Documented actions such as these by the Allies. Isolated
instances could and did happen I agree.
Sgtleo ![]()
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Sgtleo 
Hello Sarge:
Nice to hear from you. While all this may not be very pleasant, we all need to be reminded from time to time of the atrocities that occured during the war. Yes, I AM glad you added,
I know of NO Documented actions such as these by the Allies. Isolatedinstances could and did happen I agree.
because sure enough someone is going to jump in and say, hey wait a minute I know of... Those people are always out there. I always try to point out to those people that we are not here to make things equal. We don't have to go point for point about everything in life. That's like a little kid crying, "Well Johnnie did it too!" ![]()
And no, the Americans, the British and the rest of our allies did not make it a case in point to do such things. No orders ever came down from HQ that said, "Round up those women and children and off 'em"! If someone wants to point out an isolated incident, don't waste our time. Right Sarge, right Dogdaddy?
I am sure that you and many other WWII vets, are carrying horrible memories, and for that I am so sorry. I have had small things happen to me, and it's hard enough when they come flashing back, but I cannot imagine going through months and/or years of war, and have those memories surfacing. ![]()
Marion J Chard
Proud Daughter of Walter 'Monday' Poniedzialek
540th Combat Engineer - H&S Company
I would like to echo that last paragraph in M's post and maybe add a little something to it. One of the reasons I have admired the WWII Veterans for my entire life is that in spite off the horrible memories these men brought back home--- they got right back into the mainstream and raised decent families while returning to work or learning new job skills. Getting back to the subject of atrocities and the SS......I have never in my 55 years heard of even one case of women and children being intentionally killed by American GI's during WWII....not one. *
Dogdaddy ![]()
* and I wouldn't believe it if I did!
Dogdaddy 1
Thanks Sgtleo for all the above info. I sure didn't know this. If it came out in the
"Stars and Stripes", I never saw it, we never got copies of it where I was at. Roque
Roque J.(Rocky) Riojas
Ditto Marion & Dogdaddy. In doing research about my Dad, I once came across
a website with letter after letter from people in Italy & France looking for WWII
American GIs and their families to thank them. Some of the letters were incredibly
touching about GIs who shared their food & saved families from starving & so many other stories.
Moral relativism is choking our country. The idea that every culture & belief & behavior
has equally value is obscene. American children are being taught this nonsense every day.
"Everybody wins & gets a trophy! , War is always bad...we mustn't make any judgements,
there is no right & wrong etc etc". It's extremely dangerous because we'll end up with
people who can't think, and are incapable of discernment and people who have no moral compass.
Nazism was EVIL. Period. Founded on evil premises, it results could only be evil (as the world would discover). It had to be stopped, and thank God that we had the GOOD men to do it!
mary ann
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Thank you for the commentary and the understanding!!!
Roque I believe it was purposely kept low key to prevent any
escalation by the Krauts(and if one doesn't like the word Krauts
tough stuff) if they found out how much it bothered us they
might have escalted their actions.
As some of you know, I was with Intel for a while and what some
of the SS Troopers did bordered on the Satanic for me especially with
the women and girls that had no part in the war except they lived
there at that time. This is a "Don't ask me because I won't tell you"!!
The SS Totenkopf (Death Head)Troopers and the Abwehr had
interrogation methods that I don't even want to think about today.
I know of one case where an elderly man walked out the front door of his
house when he heard a commotion and was shot right between the eyes
for being too inquisitive and when his wife asked why they grabbed her and
put her on a train to one of the camps.
Sgtleo ![]()
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Sgtleo 
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Thank you for the commentary and the understanding!!!
Roque I believe it was purposely kept low key to prevent any
escalation by the Krauts(and if one doesn't like the word Krauts
tough stuff) if they found out how much it bothered us they
might have escalted their actions.
As some of you know, I was with Intel for a while and what some
of the SS Troopers did bordered on the Satanic for me especially with
the women and girls that had no part in the war except they lived
there at that time. This is a "Don't ask me because I won't tell you"!!
The SS Totenkopf (Death Head)Troopers and the Abwehr had
interrogation methods that I don't even want to think about today.
I know of one case where an elderly man walked out the front door of his
house when he heard a commotion and was shot right between the eyes
for being too inquisitive and when his wife asked why they grabbed her and
put her on a train to one of the camps.
Sgtleo
ROGER THAT ,SGTLEO----Roque
Roque J.(Rocky) Riojas
Yesterday I watched a 2-DVD documentary called "Voices of Hitler's Army", where they interviewed German veterans of all branches of military service during WWII. When it came to the section about the Waffen-SS, it was the same old song of "I didn't know about any of those things" and "even my children don't like me, but things were different then." So I guess we should stop saying all these mean things about the poor, misunderstood men of LAH, Das Reich, und Der Totenkopf Division. All these horrible stories we've read were just made up by the Allies, right Sarge? In fairness the the majority of Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe veterans I listened to expressed some sadness and regret for getting caught up in Hitler's lies, and except for the language reminded me of average men of any nation, and I'll leave it at that.
Dogdaddy ![]()
Dogdaddy 1
No regime is good where they teach your children to hate your parents ..... if you look how children got "educated" in the Jungvolk or Hitlerjügend, you'll know what I mean.
During The Bulge, a lot of atrocities were committed by SS troops in the north.
It is shocking to see how many were killed or are missing without a trace.
Not only soldiers (PoWs) but also civilians (old men, women, children).
There are a lot of small memorials in the area listing a brother killed or a father/mother missing, ...
Bande - near Bastogne - where they murdered 34 civilians has been wrongfully pinned at the 2nd Wehrmcht Panzer Division.
Little is known that behind them, a SD unit operated in search for so-called "collaborators" (people siding with the Allies).
I don't say it is ok to do so, but I can understand that if I was a GI soldier and had seen these atrocities and the next German I saw had the "SS" markings on his collar ..... I'd let him have it too.
Erwin
704th Tank Destroyer Battalion
https://ardennes-breakthrough-association.com/
I don't say it is ok to do so, but I can understand that if I was a GI soldier and had seen these atrocities and the next German I saw had the "SS" markings on his collar ..... I'd let him have it too.
Erwin
On one episode of the History Channel's "Last Days of WWII" that deals with the liberation of one of the deathcamps, the Narrator said that the former inmates beat 40 or so SS guards to death. He (the Narrator) went on to say that a group of American soldiers who had been sickened by what they saw at the camp "gunned down several hundred SS soldiers that had surrendered." If that is true, I have no problem with that at all and would probably do the same thing under the circumstances. I think that any human being with a heart would want to take revenge on the perpetrators of such atrocities.
Dogdaddy ![]()
Dogdaddy 1
As far as I know, they also gunned down some wounded SS from a nearby hospital.
Now that's is something I can't agree with.
The wounded SS were combat soldiers, not KZ guards.
Sometimes Wehrmacht tank crewmembers were mistaken for SS due to their black uniforms and were shot on sight.
As I can understand that not every GI knew the difference, I do have a problem with that.
A lot of the American Veterans I spoke with over the years told me that those Wehrmacht boys were just "in the same sh.t as us, but on the wrong side". When SS was mentioned, they mostly were not so polite in their comments.
They certainly did not think it was "elite".
Erwin
704th Tank Destroyer Battalion
https://ardennes-breakthrough-association.com/
As far as I know, they also gunned down some wounded SS from a nearby hospital.Now that's is something I can't agree with.
The wounded SS were combat soldiers, not KZ guards.
Sometimes Wehrmacht tank crewmembers were mistaken for SS due to their black uniforms and were shot on sight.
As I can understand that not every GI knew the difference, I do have a problem with that.
A lot of the American Veterans I spoke with over the years told me that those Wehrmacht boys were just "in the same sh.t as us, but on the wrong side". When SS was mentioned, they mostly were not so polite in their comments.
They certainly did not think it was "elite".
Erwin
What you said is 100% accurate and the shooting down of the wounded SS WAS WRONG!!
I have no qualms at all about the Greif Commandos that came across the lines in GI Uniforms to raise havoc but when they were caught they were shot by us many times right on the spot. Would do it again if I had to.
Did you read my stories above about the SS?? - if you did you'll know why!!!
The every day, run of the mill Wehrmacht or Hess soldier was just as afraid of and just as happy as we were when the SS(any Regiment) got what they had coming. Many of you know that I was with Intel as an interpreter/interrogator and the Wehrmacht/Hess guys wanted exactly what we wanted - end the war and let me go home!! Some times we sent them back to the rear to be put in POW camps without a guard as they were that happy to be off the line for good.
Sgtleo ![]()
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Sgtleo 
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Damn it I must be getting old I forgot about our POWS especially the Fly Boys.
As long as the Luftwaffe had the POW camps they played by the rules but when the
SS took over the POW camps that is when the **** hit the fan for our guys and the Brits.
Sgtleo ![]()
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Sgtleo 