The Puy de Sancy and Plomb du Cantal mountains loomed large on the horizon. Further north, the Millevaches plateau stretched as far as the eye could see. In the meadow just ahead, a large German army truck was near a military tent decorated with French and Federal flags. French gendarmes guarded access to the Douglas fir forest that began here, declared a no-go zone.
Two mini-excavators were working with care under the watchful eye of Marine Meucci, archaeo-anthropologist with France's National Office for Veterans and Victims of War (ONAC), and Thomas Schock, expert with the VDK, a German association responsible for finding the bodies of soldiers who have disappeared in conflicts around the world. A total of 18 people will be assisting with the search, scheduled to last until August 27 or 28.
On this afternoon of Wednesday, August 16, on the heights above the village of Meymac, in the Corrèze département in central France, the prefecture had brought a busload of national and international journalists to the opening of the excavations. As reported in Le Monde on August 5, this was believed to be the site where German military prisoners were shot and buried on June 12, 1944.
Largely forgotten in the collective memory, this act of war was similar to the 99 hanged in, and 160 deported from, the town Tulle as well as of the 643 men, women and children burned alive in the church of Oradour-sur-Glane, in west-central France, and the 40 or so young Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP) members shot dead in Ussel (Corrèze) by the sinister SS Das Reich division. The matter of the buried German soldiers resurfaced at the end of 2019, at the Meymac veterans' traditional assembly. Edmond Réveil, 95, the last witness to these events and a member of the FTP, described the event, saying he was keen to free himself from the weight that he now carries alone.
The story was recounted to the Director of the ONAC in Tulle, Xavier Kompa, who has been investigating the case in conjunction with the VDK. After the Covid-19 pandemic and a series of checks further afield, a ground-penetrating radar survey campaign was launched this spring. A 50 x 25-meter perimeter was delimited and about 40 trees felled.
A first excavation campaign in the late 1960s unearthed the remains of 11 soldiers, who were subsequently buried in the German cemetery at Berneuil, Charente-Maritime. The VDK's report at the time was short on details but concluded "the mayor advised us not to continue."
"In this case, there are a lot of question marks," said Étienne Desplanques, prefect of the Corrèze region, on Wednesday. "And we now have a number of clues. The only way to find out is to dig. This is not an excavation site, but an exhumation. The area will remain off-limits, but we will operate with complete transparency. We must treat this subject with great dignity. Today, France has a legal and moral obligation to return the bodies of fallen soldiers while taking into account the Resistance fighters who were heroes in a Corrèze that suffered the horrors of the Das Reich, hence the need to properly contextualize this execution."
You have 16.2% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.