This week Sabine’s battlefield guide Saturday
this blog was going to be about so called British atrocities on the 25th of October 1914 , You might remember I wrote 3 blogs in 2021 May/June about the action RIR241 was involved with around Broodseinde . I found a whole file about atrocities
in the state archives and though give it a go. Sorry to say I wasted time thinking this was blog material.
Feilgenhauer was not an officer but he did end up as a POW on the 25th near Keibergmolen.
A quick search in the book : British battalions in France& and Belgium by Ray Westlake told me the 1Bn. Berkshire were indeed in that area. The Yorkshire boys were in France on that day.
The sentence ‘of the 150 men who had to surrender, only 36 were spared’ I’m afraid even that is not correct. I checked lists in the regimental history, went through ‘ verlustlisten’. Less casualties than he claims, some of them I can be surtain that they were involved in the battle, since mainly men from the 1,2 and 4th company died that day
Feilgenhauer’s statement that only non-commissioned officers, one-year-olds and decorated soldiers were murdered is difficult to confirm, as the list shows that the fallen were almost without exception soldiers, hardly any non-commissioned officers or officers. And very few of them are likely to have had any decorations or other externally visible signs, as these ‘young regiments’ were made up of hastily formed troops of mostly previously unpaid people who had only received a makeshift and far too brief training at home,( Thank you Jürgen for helping me once again.)
One of the missing soldiers of that day was Grellmann Friederich, I found him as a prisoner still alive on the 16th of October 1917 in Tours – le Mans ( P32885)
Kolba Paul was missing but reported as fallen via the red cross to his family, he is buried in Menen in block D frave 3127, Minkmar Johannes and Neubert Rudolf were remorted missing and the family did inform for news ablout their loved ones, dead end I didn’t find anything.
So conclusion this is one of my dead end stories and it is what it is, it was a war, and a fight was going on, the truth is somewhere in the middle