WOMAN MOURNS TRAITOR TO FRANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 October 1920, Page 11 (Supplement)

WOMAN MOURNS TRAITOR TO FRANCE.

Secret exhumantion of the remains of Colonel Wolff, former commander of the Twenty-sixth French Colonials, from ihe tomb where the body was placed, near Jjuneville, after execution ordered by court-martial iu September, 1914, presents a mystery thus far unsolved, although a Luneville court of inquiry oelieves it has a clue to the identity of a. heavily veiled woman who removed fragments of the bone and flesh in a common market basket a few weeks ago. The Trench censor during the wa* prohibited any reference to th.; reason for Wolff's execution, but it is now known that lie was accused of pro German sympathies and a readiness to surrender to u. brother in the enemy's forces while charged to defend a line between Epinal and Rozelieures. His forces were decimated in the German advance, and Wolff was said to have' tied a handkerchief to a sword and awaited capture. Instead of German, French officers arrived and arrested Wolff. He was placed immediately before a court-mar-tial and shot the following morning. He was buried a few kilometres from Luneville in a grave, because it was known by the French population of what he had been accused, but on?e a year an unknown woman place! a wreath of flowers on the grave.