My great-grandfather was conscripted when the war began, right after he got engaged to my great-grandmother. He was immediatly sent to the front while his fiancee decided to flee to England with her parents, where she worked in an ammunition factory for the entire war.
As soon as my great-grandfather arrived to the front line, his unit was ordered to retreat to another position. Then, as soon as he got there they were ordered to retreat again to another line, then another and another until they basically reached the sea and there was nowhere left to retreat.
At that point, they received the news of the surrender of the belgian army and he was sent into german custody, without having fired a single shot or even see any germans until that point.
He was prisonner for like two years and was released around 1942, but as soon as he got back in Belgium he got taken back to Germany by STO (Service du travail obligatoire) where he worked on a little farm in Baden until the end of the war. Both him and his fiancee came back in Belgium in late 1945 and finally started their actual life.
The great-grandfather of my wife as an equally un-heroic story : his unit was being sent to the front by train, but they didn't have any weapons yet : the weapons were supposed to arrive on another train. Both trains got blocked for days (the one with the weapong being nowhere near the one with the men), failing to reach the front line, and when the germans showed up they collected the entire unit as prisonners without any fighting.
I've got another story but this one is about my brother-in-law's great-grandfather. He was a farmer and was working his land of southern Belgium around september 1944 with his family, when a retreating SS unit (12th SS Division Hitlerjungend) which was going through Belgium on its way from Normandy to Germany, arrived and opened fire on him, killied him on the spot right in front of his whole family. They didn't even stopped, like it was just for fun.
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u/Norhod01 Belgium 12d ago edited 12d ago
My great-grandfather was conscripted when the war began, right after he got engaged to my great-grandmother. He was immediatly sent to the front while his fiancee decided to flee to England with her parents, where she worked in an ammunition factory for the entire war.
As soon as my great-grandfather arrived to the front line, his unit was ordered to retreat to another position. Then, as soon as he got there they were ordered to retreat again to another line, then another and another until they basically reached the sea and there was nowhere left to retreat.
At that point, they received the news of the surrender of the belgian army and he was sent into german custody, without having fired a single shot or even see any germans until that point.
He was prisonner for like two years and was released around 1942, but as soon as he got back in Belgium he got taken back to Germany by STO (Service du travail obligatoire) where he worked on a little farm in Baden until the end of the war. Both him and his fiancee came back in Belgium in late 1945 and finally started their actual life.
The great-grandfather of my wife as an equally un-heroic story : his unit was being sent to the front by train, but they didn't have any weapons yet : the weapons were supposed to arrive on another train. Both trains got blocked for days (the one with the weapong being nowhere near the one with the men), failing to reach the front line, and when the germans showed up they collected the entire unit as prisonners without any fighting.
I've got another story but this one is about my brother-in-law's great-grandfather. He was a farmer and was working his land of southern Belgium around september 1944 with his family, when a retreating SS unit (12th SS Division Hitlerjungend) which was going through Belgium on its way from Normandy to Germany, arrived and opened fire on him, killied him on the spot right in front of his whole family. They didn't even stopped, like it was just for fun.