Looking at the war diary of 246th Field co on 2nd December Netherlands '1 Platoon maintenance Kleindorp - Venraij Road 40 Collaborators and 3 Tippers' Excuse my ignorance but would collaborators be people or some sort of machine?
good day toki2.yesterday10:03pm.re:collaborators,it is as you ask people.those who collaborated with the enemy.in my case i am collaborating with you to clarify the meaning of the word(i hope)regards bernard85 :group2:
246 field and platoon, makes me think it was a Royal engineers unit, and not REME. Try asking in RE thread.
Unless it's some sort of special road mending meaning, which I can't find, I would have thought they've got collaborators in the classic sense - those accused of aiding and abetting the enemy - working on the roads. '40' would seem about right for a road mending gang?
Ive come across an italian unit which provided pows to work work with the reme units so im guessing its not unusual
I did think that it referred to Dutch collaborators. The reasons that I queried it was 1) It was written as Collaborators with capital C - and 2) On the same day another platoon was also doing road maintenance also with 40 Collaborators. I was thinking that there must have been a hellova lot of them in that area. Would the local militia or underground fighters have been in charge of them or the Allies?
