[Larry Hickey]

Note: someone with info on this who cannot post here has some meaningful information on this issue. I am quoting some of his remarks on the subject for the sake of furthering this discussion--Larry Hickey:

"It seems that this incident really took place. Many years ago I read a fairly precise account of it in one of the many issues of "Icare" (French aviation review published by the pilots' trade union SNPL) devoted to the fighting in the 1940 French Campaign. I can't remember in which issue this article was (the article was much longer than that and the "Senegalese incident" was only a short part of it), perhaps one of the "Bombardement" issues. The author witnessed this beheading himself but was not able to do anything. Approximate quotation : "A few Senegalese troops walked towards the German aircraft and suddenly, before anybody could do anything, they calmly beheaded all German airmen with their coupe-coupes" (African kind of machete).

I think these soldiers were convinced that they were doing the right thing: they were standing in front of enemy soldiers wearing enemy uniforms (and still armed with pistols!) so they killed them, in their eyes this certainly was all right. Most probably their French officers had never bothered to teach them a few rules, like not killing enemy prisoners or such soldiers who obviously were unable to fight. Senegal has traditions very different from those of France or Germany and this was even more true 1940. Clearly the responsible men were the French officers."

Hope this is useful.