The carnage at Texel has been largely forgotten.

For five years it was as idyllic as war could be. But for the last six weeks – extending beyond the official end of the Second World War – it was bloody carnage. Those who were once comrades in uniform suddenly took to butchering one another in a conflict that has come to be called 'Europe's last battle'. Photographs of German soldiers, who in the Second World War were stationed on the pastoral island of Texel, the largest of the West Friesian Islands, show them beaming as they write home. Texel (pronounced 'tessel') was a plum posting, a gem of endless sandy beaches surrounding productive fields of grain, potatoes and pasture for contented sheep. By April 1945, in what everyone knew were the last days of an appalling conflict, the 1,200 Wehrmacht soldiers on Texel had good reason to hope they would see war's end without firing an angry shot. But early on the morning of April 6th, tranquility turned to terror as Wehrmacht soldier slaughtered Wehrmacht soldier, using everything from bayonets to artillery. Friend and foe were distinguished by one small difference in their uniforms: some 800 of the men wore a small patch identifying them as Georgians, while 400 officers and non-commissioned officers were German.



http://www.historytoday.com/larry-hannant/europe%E2%80%99s-last-battle