The Kingsclere Murders

[Great War truck]

Someone posted a new topic on this subject a while back and i cant find it. Basically 10 Black GI's armed themselves and went out to revenge themsleves on some MP's who sent them back to base while they were trying to get to a pub. They shot one MP and accidentally another black soldier and the pub landlady. It was in After the Battle a while back. A neigbour of mine used to live there and gave me a link to a website which tells the whole story. Try

 

http://www.kingsclere.org.uk/murders.html

 

and tell me if it doesnt work. Interesting stuff.

 

Tim (too)

[Mark]

It works Tim and very interesting it is, do you know what happened to the black soldiers who were jailed?

[Great War truck]

Not sure. The sentence was life, but a lot of these sentences were commuted in the late 1940's. The GI's killed two other black guys and a civilian. You wonder if they had killed two white MP's whether the sentence would have been so lenient (if life with hard labour is lenient?)

 

Tim (too)

 

 

[Mark]

Mmmm! surprisng that they were not hanged in those days

[Great War truck]

Strangely enough, while in my local book shop today i came across a book called "The Interpreter" which was written by a French interpreter working for the US military judicial system in Europe. The book appeared to be about how badly the black US soldiers were treated in the Courts, with almost all of the 70 executions they quote being black soldiers (I guess Eddie Slovak being the odd one out). In the case of Kingsclere though they seem to have gotten off quite easily.

 

I do remember in ATB an article about two black soldiers who on landing in Normandy raped and murdered a French woman. They were hung in front of the whole Batallion. What i found interesting was that there were a large number of MP's with MG's surrounding them in case they tried to rescue the prisoners. If that was the worry, you wonder why they brought the whole Batallion up to watch the execution as opposed to the British way of bringing just a few representatives from each Company in the Batallion.

 

As we know, military executions are a controversial subject, so i will just cover this topic with petrol and hand the matches to the next person who wishes to post.

 

Tim (too)

 

 

[Bodge Deep]

An interesting but sad little episode in an already unpleasant time in history. Thanks for posting it

Sad that the black GI's who served with distiction would be treated so badly on their return home (those who were lucky enough to gat back).

[Tony B]

Funny thing, one of the great medical breackthroughs of WW2 was blood tranfusions, developed by a Black doctor. But he was not allowed to donate in case it was given to white soldiers. Me if I was bleeding to death I wouldn't give a ***

[LeeEnfield]

Funny thing, one of the great medical breackthroughs of WW2 was blood tranfusions, developed by a Black doctor. But he was not allowed to donate in case it was given to white soldiers. Me if I was bleeding to death I wouldn't give a ***

 

 

Nor Me...............