Hptm. Emil Lang's crash site

[John Manrho]

Interesting, I never realized that Hptm. Lang did not have a known grave. Indeed he took off from Melsbroek for a transfer flight to Düsseldorf. Unfortunately the copy of the VLM I have is barely readable. However, it seems there was a Nachmeldung of the unit on Oct. 7, 1944 on the fate of Hptm. Lang. Don't know what that is.

However, I can tell you something about the term "Unter den Unbekannten". This is a phrase used by the VDK and indicates that Hptm. Lang is buried at Lommel but was not identified and rest in an unknown grave. At least, that is what you would believe.....this is not always the case.

Let me try to explain by using the Cemeteries of Ysselsteyn and Lommel (B) as an example. Ysselsteyn (NL) was created by the Dutch government to establish a grave location for all German dead in the Netherlands. The Dutch Grave Registration Unit performed the task of relocating them and admistrated the cemetery until the mid seventies when it was taken over by the VDK. The first burials at Ysselsteyn however were done by the Americans. They transferred the 3,000+ German dead from the Margraten Burial Site and buried them at the same blocks in Ysselsteyn. This means that the first 10 Blocks at Ysselsteyn (Block A to I with 300 Graves each) are an exact copy of Margraten. Of each burial there is the original Report of Burial of the US Grave registration units. Then the Dutch Army started reburials and from each re-burial there is an individual report. They are very accurate.

There are "Unter den Unbekannten" at Ysselsteyn too. Sometimes there were German documents that a soldier was buried at a Dutch cemetery but after the war the Dutch could not find him. This resulted in an UdU. However, there are also cases, for instance a pilot lost during Market Garden in the Arnhem area, where the UdU phrase is used but there is no proof at all that he was shot down over the Netherlands let alone recovered as an unknown. So, don't believe the phrase UdU means anything if you do not have access to the VDK file and have read what's in it.

Lommel is even worse. Again the Belgium MoD started reburials to Lommel. In this case there are no individual reports, at least I never saw them. There were lists at VDK Kassel from which cemeteries they original came from but these lists were lost in the late nineties when they were thrown away by mistake..... maybe copies of the lists exist somewhere else, but I do not know that. Only the reburials from US Cemeteries like Fosse and Henri-Chapelle (yes there was a German cemetery too) are properly recorded by Report of Burials.

Finally the reburials at Lommel were a mess at a certain stage. When the German VDK took over as caretaker they opened up several graves of unknown to discover that the names on the crosses did not match with the graves....sometimes in certain rows the actual graves were 2 or more graves shifted compared with the names on the crosses.....

Furthermore the example I gave for Ysselsteyn in reference to the UdU cases is valid for Lommel. too.

So, allthough Hptm. Emil Lang is listed as Unter den Unbekannten for Lommel it doesnt mean anything if you don't know the content of the VDK file.

Cheers,

John.