Five Brothers and a War

Operation Manna/Chowhound

The Russian presence at the meeting increased one rank level from a Colonel (Zenkowitch) to a Major-General (Ivan Sousloparov, head of the Russian Military mission to SHAEF—the Soviets did not have a rank of Brigadier. Their equivalent was Major General, the next rank above Colonel).

The Allied welcoming party was also upgraded. Whereas it had been a Brigadier General two days earlier, now it was headed by Lt. General Foulkes, assisted by Brigadier Bogert. At 11:00 am, the two left Barneveld in a convoy of five staff cars and nine jeeps bound for the same rendezvous point as the day before. When the staff cars could not proceed past a road block, the two generals changed to jeeps. They were thus able to ride past a second road block and drive to the rendezvous at Vinkenhoef, a tiny village on the outskirts of Amersfoort,. The total distance from the Canadian headquarters in Barneveld to Vinkenhoef was about 10 km (6 miles). There was a short delay until a German colonel and two staff officers arrived to explain that the main body of their party had been somewhat delayed as they were forced to scramble over or around the many German roadblocks they encountered after they passed through Amersfoort on their way to Vinkenhoef. A few minutes later the other Germans arrived headed by Reichskommissar Seyß-Inquart, known by the Allies to be the number one war criminal in Holland. With the Reichskommissar were the Judge Advocate-General, Reichsrichter Schwebel and Generalleutnant (“Lt. Gen.”) Hermann Plocher, who was the Luftwaffe commander of the

the war

Five Brothers and a War

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