Belgian War Graves Executed Bande

The Grune municipal cemetery contains the grave of Paul SMITZ, Alphonse LEROY and Louis PETRON, executed on Christmas Eve 1944 in Bande.

During the Second World War, the village of Bande had a bad reputation with the Germans due to the spirit of resistance that prevailed there.
A German was murdered in July 1944, and on July 6 the German telephone communications between Marche and Champlon were sabotaged.
In September 1944, eight days before the liberation, a group of the Secret Army installed itself in the forests of Bande. On September 5, they attacked the Germans and killed three soldiers.
The reprisals did not wait: on September 6, the Germans systematically set fire to all houses on both sides of the main road from Marche to Bastogne.
They had the families evacuated and placed fire grenades in every house: 35 homes were completely destroyed.
After September 8, 1944, the German army was pushed back into Germany.
But on December 22, soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht again occupied the region (Offensive von Rundstedt). Special Forces soldiers installed themselves in or near the burned houses in Bande.
On December 24, 1944, members of the Special Forces detained the villagers and subjected them to long interrogations. They freed some elderly men. After leading the family to believe they were leaving for Germany, the unit members took with them 33 men, aged between 17 and 32. One by one they were shot in the neck in the basement of a dilapidated house. One man was able to escape the massacre but in response two youths
from Roy were murdered the next morning.
After this gruesome crime, the murderers collected the 34 bodies of the victims on three layers of planks and prohibited access to this part of the road, so that no one in the village, except the escaped Léon Praille, knew anything about it.
On January 11, 1945, a patrol of paratroopers from the 1st Canadion parachute Battalion, accompanied by Belgian paratroopers SAS Marche-en-Famenne, entered the village of Bande and discovered with horror the bodies of the 34 civilians shot with a shot to the neck on the eve of Christmas and left in a basement of a house in ruins.
The victims were given a dignified burial and honor was paid to them.
Three of them found their final resting place in the Grune cemetery.

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Source

• Text: TracesOfWar
• Photos: Marie-Christine Vinck