Belgian War Graves Hargimont

The new Hargimont cemetery contains several graves from the Second World War.

" Memory of Françis DACHELET
Born in Hargimont on December 31, 1925
Tragically died in Winterwisch (Germany) on 7-9-1945
R.I.P."

Françis Dachelet went to the army as a volunteer. He was a soldier in the 1st engineer battalion "Iron" of the Piron Brigade. He was deported to Germany where he died in 1945.
According to his prayer card, on the day they learned of his death, his parents received his last written letter announcing his impending release.

There are also some civilian victims of the Second World War.

Emile CLOSTER: was murdered by the Germans in January 1945, when he was 43 years old.

Fernand COLLIN: was cowardly murdered by the Germans in Bure on August 1, 1944.
He was barely 20 years old.

Edmond DEBATTY : murdered by the Germans in 1944, when he was 31 years old.

In 1996, his brother André, born in 1920, told the students of the Hargimont municipal school about the circumstances of the tragic death of his brother Edmond in 1944.
"In a meadow of the Commanderie farm, two workers were mowing nettles. It was September 6, 1944, after the 7:30 a.m. mass and before the 8:30 a.m. class.
The Germans stopped to ask what they were doing, then searched the farm. They found a man with a socket in his pocket, it was Edouard Struelens, a Brussels resident. The Germans shot him. He did not die immediately and suffered a lot.
Two young people in the house on the other side of the bridge had seen what had just happened and fled to the meadow. The Germans saw this and chased them.
The two fugitives were dressed in blue, hence the terrible confusion that was to follow.
André Debatty had also heard the shots and saw the Germans coming into the meadow from his bedroom window. He shouted to his family "Run, quickly to the shelter."
He took refuge in the neighbors' attic. From there he saw the Germans enter their shed and later, on leaving the garden, they entered the cellar.
There, in a corner, they saw Edmond Debatty sitting in the dark on the coal heap.
Because he was dressed the same as the two runaways, the Germans thought he was one of them. They took him to a well and killed him immediately.
Two days later, the Americans entered the village of Hargimont as liberators."
(Source: Flammes & tisons de la Famenne, Info 2000, André Collard, April 15, 2004.)

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Source

• Text: TracesOfWar
• Photos: Marie-Christine Vinck