Vinkt Massacre - The Situation On May 25

The Situation On May 25

As the German Army continued to advance west, pushing back both the British Expeditionary Force (trying to escape to Dunkirk) and the Belgian army, the village of Vinkt became an important target, as it lay both on the road south from Gent to Lille, and astride the Schipdonk Canal that blocked the German advance to the west. However, on May 25, both sides already knew the outcome of the Battle for France: the French army had collapsed and the Belgian army had been reduced to prolonging the war for the sole purpose of protecting the British retreat.

The bridge over the Schipdonk Canal was being guarded by the 1st Belgian Division of Chasseurs ardennais (which in the Belgian army of the day meant one regiment of tanks out of five regiments in a division - the rest being motor riders and cyclists). Coincidentally, this division turned out to be one of the most motivated in the Belgian army. The Belgian command decided not to destroy but to guard the bridge, so as to help as many British stragglers as possible on their way west, and as many Belgian refugees as possible on their way south: more than one million Belgians (most of them on foot, as cars and horses had been requisitioned by the different armies) had become refugees. News of what happened at Vinkt would cause an additional one million to flee south or even west. By the middle of June, according to Red Cross figures, 30% of the Belgian population had left the country.

Arriving near the bridge on May 25, the German 225th Division, consisting mostly of badly trained soldiers from Itzehoe in the North of the Hamburg area, found it impossible to cross. They then took 140 civilians hostage and used them as human shields. As the Chasseurs ardennais managed to continue to harass the German positions with great precision, and crossing remained impossible, a grenade exploded among the hostages, killing 27.