Innocent Bystanders

One forenoon last week the Swiss burghers of Schaffhausen (pop. 21,118) came out into their market place, as they often have, to watch Allied bombers roar overhead on their way to bomb German border cities. Out of the overcast 30 U.S. Liberators appeared. But this time there was something different about them. The horrified Swiss saw that the bomb bays were open; suddenly a shower of incendiary and high-explosive bombs slanted down on the town.

Too late Schaffhausen's citizens rushed to bomb shelters. Thirty-five were killed, 52 wounded. The bomb shower struck the Jezler Silverware and International Watch factories, the electric-power station, post office, town museum, the Swiss end of the border railway station (the German end was untouched), and destroyed the homes of some 250 people. It was only a small raid. Estimates of property damage ran over $10,000,000 (for which the U.S. Government is liable).

Said a Liberator group commander: "We were simply blown off our course.... We are terribly sorry that it happened." The regret was genuine, for the Eighth Air Force knows that many a U.S. airman is alive today because he could come down in hospitable Switzerland instead of being shot down while flying home in a badly damaged plane.

The regrets did not help the Swiss, but they were not angry. Schaffhausen is not only on the German border; it is an island of Swiss territory lying on the north bank of the Rhine, which forms most of the boundary between Switzerland and Germany. The Swiss understood that they were victims of a mistake easy to make.

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