I swear to you that in one of these dreadful meadows, I saw a line of our Hitler Youth boys, the lads who were sixteen or seventeen, that had been stupidly sent to fight with the Waffen SS. They were all dead, these boys, lined up as if on parade, all shot one after the other. What the devil was the explanation for that act, I do not know. And we were shown all this deliberately, you realise, in order to have an effect on us. We were all crushed by the sights, and we remained virtually silent for days afterwards. This is why I call the events at Falaise and Argentan a massacre.
