German War Cemetery …..
In my post on Glendalough
and Saint Kevin I mentioned that County
Wicklow
has many secluded beautiful places off the beaten track.
One such little piece of heaven is the Cemetery
for German military personnel who died in Ireland during the two
World Wars. It contains 134
graves, including six from the First World War.
Many were
members of the Luftwaffe who
‘got lost and crashed in the mountains’,
and some from the Navy. Others were detainees who were being taken to
Canada from
Britain for
internment when their ship was torpedoed by of all things, a German U-Boat. Others
were naval sailors washed up on the shores of Ireland.
The Cemetery is situated
high up in the Wicklow Mountains at a place
called Glencree. As a child I
used to travel to the area with my father, uncles and brothers to ‘cut
the turf’
for winter fuel. It is
lonely, isolated, windswept and yet quite a beautiful place.
There is a specific incident that
is of interest. Major
Hermann Gortz was a German Secret Service agent. He parachuted into Ireland north of Dublin in 1940 in
order to liaise with IRA republicans. He escaped capture for quite a time but was
arrested and detained in 1941.
Eventually, after the War, in 1947 in
fact, he was issued with a Deportation Order but feared
that he would be handed over to the Russian
authorities. He broke and swallowed the
contents of a vial of prussic acid and died
shortly afterwards. He was
buried in a Dublin Cemetery.
In 1974, secretly and with the cooperation
and help of Irish Republicans and German ex-army
officers his body was secretly exhumed and reburied by them in the War
Cemetery at Glencree.
Finally, unlike Glendalough, this
cemetery, although beautiful, is slightly eerie but well worth a visit. During wet weather, wellington
boots are advised…….
There is a Youtube Video of the site on this
link:
----------Mike----------
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