Vinkt massacre

As the German Army continued to advance west and pushed 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 Ghent to Lille and astride the Schipdonk Canal, which blocked the German advance to the west.

Arriving near the bridge on May 25, the German 225th Infantry Division, consisting mostly of badly-trained soldiers from Itzehoe in the North of the Hamburg area, found it impossible to cross.

As the Chasseurs ardennais continued to harass the German positions, and crossing remained impossible, a grenade exploded among the hostages and killed 27.

The divergence stems from the fact that other historians include the victims in front of the bridge and those 27 killed by the explosion at the church in Meigem.

Since no corpses of women or children were later found, that would imply, if true, that the scene was later cleaned up, and the real death toll of the executions is much higher than the 86 or 140 usually claimed.

[citation needed] As news of the carnage spread, German press sources denied it or excused it, claiming that Belgian civilians had dressed up as soldiers.

They were afraid of being accused that they were repeating the war propaganda claims that they had made in 1914 with the exaggeration of "The Rape of Belgium".

[1] The lack of conspicuous commemoration of the massacre in Vinkt has been commented upon by various writers, including the Belgian novelist Xavier Hanotte.