I’ve received the newspaper article underneath from An Verlinden. I don’t know what the date of the article is, or out of which newspaper it originates. (Translation by Patrick Marquenie).

Overseas sabotage mission fatal Victor Lemmens

Leopoldsburg. The municipal street map shows the George Lemmens and Victor Lemmens street. Outside the family both have nothing in common. Victor Lemmens was during World War II 5 month active in England at the Intelligence and Action Services.

The Germans were aware of his sabotage commands that he would perform from England in Limburg. He was shot in the famed Brussels Shooting and his remains are located in the cemetery in the Hechtelse Gemeentebos. This under cross N° 71.

Victor Lemmens Born in Koersel on May 27, 1900, was a professional soldier and was living with his wife Maria Geukens, whom he married in 1924, at the Englebert Adang Avenue. He was billeted at the 1^st Hunters on horseback (1^ste Jagers te Paard) and was captured after the 14-day campaign and moved to Brasschaat. There he escaped along with two other inhabitants from Leopoldsburg (Kampenaars) from the hands of the Germans. Along the way he got civilian clothes and reported back in Leopoldsburg. Not for long, however, he apparently had a difficult time living under pressure from foreign occupation and forged plans to go abroad. Officially he went through France to Africa (Belgian Congo), but in reality he sailed from Portugal with the Batovi in to England. Until the embarkation his wife received regular letters and cards. Afterwards, all contact was omitted until she learned that her husband was trapped in the prison of Saint-Gilles.

Parachutist

Just before his departure Victor Lemmens was a long time stuck in Barcelona after the Guardia Civil had arrested him. In England the ‘Kampenaar’ became Lieutenant in the Intelligence and Action Services. He was trained to perform some acts of sabotage in the region of Hasselt. So he had to attempt to sabotage the train line Hasselt – Herentals,

also a number of locks on the Albert Canal and he had to try to slow down the mining activity in Beringen. On June 26, 1942, he was flown to Belgium and parachuted. At an agreed place other resistance fighters were waiting for him. Victor Lemmens had just folded his parachute or the Germans had already nabbed him. They probably intercepted some messages or were tipped. At St-Gilles he was sentenced to death by the German military court and executed on October 8. His wife had previously visited him twice in Brussels prison. Meanwhile, she also had made a mercy request with the help of municipal Mees, but General Falkenhausen seemed adamant. By chance, the widow discovered years later that the body of her husband was buried at the military cemetery in Hechtel. The local gravedigger had in fact identified the body and more than three years after the execution Maria Geukens had to formally identify the body of her deceased husband. “A painful event” testifies son Georges Lemmens, “but mother recognized the body immediately because of the double nail on the left thumb, his baldness and the clothing.” Only then they handed her the personal belongings of her husband, strictly according to regulations. Those pieces with even the fake passports ended up in the archive of son Georges who keeps it accurately..

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