Witness supports mass graves in U.K. claim

Press, 23 September 1987, Page 11

Witness supports mass graves in U.K. claim

NZPA-AAP London A witness has come forward to support allegations that hundreds of American servicemen are buried in mass, unmarked graves in the south of England. The allegation comes just a month before a ceremony to commemorate the deaths of 749 American servicemen in a wartime exercise in the south of England. , The men were killed during a mock invasion, codenamed “Operation Tiger,” in preparation for the D-Day landings. In the “Independent” newspaper yesterday Dorothy Seekings, aged 68, told of how she watched in April, 1944, as lorries piled high with corpses in green uniforms were unloaded and buried in

a freshly dug pit. The United States military admits that 300 of the 749 victims of Operation Tiger are still officially listed as missing, but it denies having left the bodies of soldiers in unmarked graves. There is no denial from the United States that bodies were buried in temporary graves near the beach at Slapton Sands, Devon, so they could be easily recovered. But Mrs Seekings claims the bodies were taken to a pit 12km from the beach and are still there. “Everybody in the area knows that those dead soldiers are in that field, and in other fields,” she told the “Independent.” “The Americans say they came and dug them up after the war, but that’s hot true.”