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Re: How report dead aircrew in occupied Europe
Hi Greg,
There might be some more details in the records of the Red Cross. Unfortunatley most of the records were destroyed during a bombardment in March 1945 on The Hague and after the war the files were as much as possible completed with the grave records of the municipals where Allied airmen were buried.
Perhaps the Red Cross records of Vlissingen merely list a date of finding and burials of the body, but sometimes the records show details such as found items e.g. Mea West or parachute.
These records are now at the Red Cross in The Hague.
Apart from this the Germans compiled there own records with so called Namentliche Verlusstmeldungen (individual lossrecords), not only with regard to own losses, but also for found bodies of Allied airmen.
I do have copies of surving NVM's of Den Helder, I'm not sure where the originals are held. Perhaps just as the NVM's of German casulaties at the WASt archives in Germany, perhaps these NVM's were lost in the before mentioned bombardment.
Another option might be records of the Grenz Aufsicht Stelle (GASt), a kind of militairy customs, which had as task to patrol and guard the border lines of the German held territory, so also the coast line of Holland. Most of the time they were the first ones to be contacted/involved when a body had washed ashore. I've pretty detailed reports of the GASt with regard to found bodies in 1940, but I'm not sure whether this unit still existed in 1943, nor where the records (if survived the war) would be held nowadays.
Finally, after the war the Missing Research and Enquiry Service (MRES) investigated the allied graves. The records are held by the British Ministry of Defence and are to released to public 100 years after the ordeal, so 2043 in this case.
The indexes of The National Archives show that a document class (AIR 81) has been reserved for future transfers of documents of the MRES, however this only maybe declassified documents regarding the circumstances of the loss of an aircraft, not the grave records.
And yes, there must have been German atopsy reports to, however I've never seen such reports, nor do I know whether these survived the war and if so, where these are held nowadays...
Best wishes,
Hans Nauta
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