The Plot of Shame Us Military Executions in Europe During WW2

The Plot of Shame Us Military Executions in Europe During WW2 written

by Paul Johnson and published by Frontline Books - £20 - Hardback - Pages 224

The Oise-Aisne American Cemetery is the last resting place of 6,012 American

soldiers who died fighting in a small portion of Northern France during the First

World War. The impressive cemetery is divided into four plots marked A to D.

However, few visitors are aware that across the road, behind the immaculate façade of the superintendent’s office, unmarked and completely surrounded by impassable shrubbery, is Plot E, a semi-secret fifth plot that contains the bodies of ninety-six American soldiers. These were men who were executed for crimes committed in the European Theatre of Operations during and just after the Second World War.

Originally, the men whose death sentences were carried out were buried near the sites of their executions in locations as far afield as England, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Algeria. A number of the men were executed in the grounds of Shepton Mallet prison in Somerset – the majority of whom were hanged in the execution block, with two being shot by a firing squad in the prison yard. The executioner at most of the hangings was Thomas William Pierrepoint, assisted mainly by his more-famous nephew Albert Pierrepoint.

Then, in 1949, under a veil of secrecy, the ‘plot of shame’, as it has become known, was established in France. The site does not exist on maps of the cemetery and it is not mentioned on the American Battle Monuments Commission’s website. Visits to Plot E are not encouraged. Indeed, public access is difficult because the area is concealed, surrounded by bushes, and is closed to visitors.

No US flag is permitted to fly over the plot and the graves themselves have no names, just small, simple stones the size of index cards that are differentiated only by reference numbers. Even underground the dishonoured are set apart, with each body being positioned with its back to the main cemetery.

In The Plot of Shame, the historian Paul Johnson uncovers the history of Plot E and the terrible stories of wartime crime linked to it.

A really fascinating book that tells the tales of a group of American men, you would very rarely her about as these are the tales of US servicemen sentenced to death for crimes at the time were seen as heinous even during a time of war. The book is good in that it starts out with the Articles of War, the executioners and the plot where the majority of these men were buried in uncelebrated graves. The book then goes through the various stories on a year-by-year basis. The stories are explained in great detail and a really good amount of research has gone into this book, a very well informed book. Certainly a great book for those true crime fans.