French resistance to Allied liberation.

In Edwin Hoyt's book "The G.I.'s War" ( a splendid book provided one ignores the marked anti-British attitudes ), I have been astonished to learn just how established was the French resistance to the British and US forces who liberated them from their German conquerors and occupiers.
Time and time again I read of the advance of Allied units being held up by pro Nazi French who, surprisingly , were often teenagers and/or women. When captured they were generally shot out of hand in order to avoid embarrassing the French with the many Court Martials it otherwise would have required, although it must be said that these French resistors were not often taken alive. When talking of resistors it should be noted that these pro German French people frequently manned machine gun posts, rifle pits and sniper nests, as well as acting in other serious "infantry" type roles - i.e. they didn't just slow down the Allied advance with kisses and flowers.

On the other side of the coin, it was also shocking to learn of just how often U.S.infantrymen interpreted their "Seek and Destroy" orders as carte blanche to shoot anybody on sight - a U.S. soldier reports just how annoyed he was when his regiment's padre stopped him from shooting an old French woman sitting outside her house. Later in life he came to be very grateful for the "sky pilots" intervention. This attitude on the part of American soldiers immediately after D-Day can, I think, be attributed to the statements of General Patton about "the only good German etc." , as well as policy on the matter of having no facility to hold prisoners taken.
BG

 

Shooting of German prisoners.

Reading more of Hoyt's book, which was published in 1988, it is difficult to avoid thinking that it is an official history of U.S. infantry regiments,since is full of information such as names, ranks, units and other details such as dates and locations. This makes it all the more surprising that information of this scope is given when, for example, the shooting of prisoners and other atrocities are reported in detail. In this respect, it was a foolish senior German officer who thought that the protocols of war would permit that they gave their surrender to an American officer of equivalent rank, since many that requested this courtesy of N.C.O's and enlisted men were then executed on the spot, especially those who were equipped with sidearms, ceremonial daggers, field glasses etc., since these items were, of course, regarded as legitimate booty. In one instance a senior grade German staff officer was stabbed to death with his own dagger by an American sergeant whose name, rank and unit are openly stated. Given that murders such as these are being reported decades after such Vietnam war massacres as My Lai, for example, it cannot be said that the author and even the surviving perpetrators were unaware of the potential consequences. This makes it all the more astonishing that details of this nature are published in such a respectable hardback book.
BG