INVASION ATTEMPT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 81, 3 October 1944, Page 5

INVASION ATTEMPT

NAZI FAILURE OF 1940

STORIES FROM BELGIUM (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) LONDON, October 2. Thousands of Germans were burnt to death during an attempt to invade England in 1940, says John Parris, of • the British United Press. , Giving new details of the invasion attempt, which are supplied by Belgians, Mr. Parris says that British planes dumped oil on the German invasion fleet in the middle of the English Channel and set the oil alight with incendiary bullets. The Germans left Belgium in self-propelled barges about 180 feet long, each of which carried about 150 soldiers. Germans who survived the blazing oil tdld Belgians that it was a "nightmare in hell." :

A Belgian Red Cross nurse told the correspondent: "On September 13, 1940, we heard rumours that the bodies of thousands of German soldiers were being washed up along the Belgian beaches. At 7 o'clock that night a German Red Cross train of 40 coaches pulled into Brussels station, and the commandant asked if we could help his wounded. He said the train- had been shunted on to the wrong line and the men were dying for lack of treatment.

"We began taking the wounded from the train. The moans .and screams were terrible. I helped to carry out a young German who was horribly burnt about the head and shoulders. He said that the Germans had been told they were going to invade England and nothing could stop them, and he added: 'It was horrible., The whole Channel was in flames. The British bombed and machine-gunned us. Hell could not have been worse.' Then he died. "We looked after more than 500 soldiers as best we could. Many of them died on the Brussels railway station.* Other nurses said that between 40,000 and 50,000 German soldiers were burnt to death or maimed for life, and that Red Cross trains passed through Brussels for three days.