SS Wallonien memoire "Et mets ta robe de bal", by Henri Phillipet

[Jean-Loup]

I would like to make a brief report on an exellent and very detailed SS memoire called "Et mets ta robe de bal", by Belgian SS volunteer Henri Phillipet, who served in the SS Wallonien. The main 'drawback' of this book, is that it is written in French... The title means 'And put on your dancing dress/ball robe', which were the words from a period song describing what girlfriends of SS soldiers were to do in case they found out their lover had been KIA...

The memoire is in two volumes, and is very detailed, starting with Henri Phillipet's volunteering for the unit early in the war, and it ends when he is liberated from captivity.

He explains a bit of the reasoning behind why he and other Belgians joined, describes the training, and then he is off to Russia, first southern Russia, then Tchekassy, then Estonia in 1944, with a bunch of other stuff going on in between. He ends the war in the SS officers training school at Bad Tolz. He manages to evade capture for a while, but ends up in a Belgian prison.

I would rate the book as being very good and a very interesting read, the cherry on the cake being the description of the battle of Tcherkassy, with the encirclement and then the breakout. It is difficult to put the book down during that chapter!

There are quite a few photos throughout the book, but nothing stunning, and the reproduction is of rather poor quality.
A very good book to read for anybody who understands french; and perhaps a good future translation project?

JL

[MarcRikmenspoel]

This sounds very much worth reading, and/or translating. What does the author say about after Lippert was killed at Nova Buda? Does he confirm that Jules Mathieu in fact took command, instead of Degrelle?

Thanks for the detailed description!

[Jean-Loup]

I forgot to mention that I haev not read the book for 8 years... I dont remember anything about Lippert.
However the author talks about Degrelle several times, on a personal level from seeing him every now and then in person on the front.
I remeber that the author had a huge blister on his ankle, so had to cut the back of his boot open. Then he heard Degrelle commenting that in his days youths walked more and were in better shape, which damaged the author's ideolised opinions of Degrelle....

It's a good book, defenetly worth translating. I am shocked by some of the books that fail to get translated into English, such as Hein Severloh's account of being at Omaha beach which only got translated very recently.

JL

[Josh Cowell]

I forgot to mention that I haev not read the book for 8 years... I dont remember anything about Lippert.
However the author talks about Degrelle several times, on a personal level from seeing him every now and then in person on the front.
I remeber that the author had a huge blister on his ankle, so had to cut the back of his boot open. Then he heard Degrelle commenting that in his days youths walked more and were in better shape, which damaged the author's ideolised opinions of Degrelle....

It's a good book, defenetly worth translating. I am shocked by some of the books that fail to get translated into English, such as Hein Severloh's account of being at Omaha beach which only got translated very recently.

JL

Thanks for the heads up on this. I may have to buy it and use my school boy French. Btw, other good WSS memoirs that I am surprised have not been translated into English are Sadi Schneid's SS Beutedeutscher and Fritz Hahl's Mit Westland im Osten.