Those that survive this stage would be put to work on the western beaches of Denmark where an estimated 2.2 million anti-tank and anti-personnel mines lay buried. Graduation involved taking an armed mine into a barracks reinforced by hundreds of sand bags and disarming it by hand. Ebbe corrects each mistake with a swift wrap across the knuckles with a switch. Training in the sand and rain with disarmed mines Lt. When asked who has attempted to disarm one only a couple put their arms up. When asked who recognizes the mine half a dozen raise their hands. As a result there were more mines buried along that coast then in the rest of continental Europe. German High Command believed that when the Allied forces invaded they’d be crawling up the shores of Denmark rather than Normandy. He shows them the Tellermine 42 (T.Mi.42), the most common mine used in the German defense of the beaches. Told that Denmark is no friend of theirs they are set to the task of disarming and digging up mines with their bare hands. Teenage kids that are later described as “boys who cry for their mothers when they get scared.” It’s an accurate assessment. Ebbe stares at the now interned soldiers. He assembles them in a small hangar for training. In the prison camp they are put under the charge of Lt. A patriot to a land invaded who has learned that the battles are far from over. ![]() He is a bitter and conflicted human being that has suffered the torments of war. True to that nature he has a begrudging respect of the martial abilities of the defeated he is ordered to train and command. Rasmussen is a hard man, and this is your introduction to what he is capable of. When another of the captured begs for him to stop he too is subjected to punches and a few stomps on the ground. Daring the others to intervene he begins to pummel the young man’s face into burger. He snatches it from the soldier and delivers a head butt that drops the exhausted man to the ground. Rasmussen drives along the shuffling line of defeated Germans until he spots one carrying a folded Danish flag. Not content with their unconditional surrender Sgt. Carl Leopold Rasmussen sitting alone in his jeep, observing hundreds of captured soldiers on the long march to a prison camp in Southern Jutland for a three-day course on how to neutralize mines. It is one of the most moving war dramas I’ve seen. Nordisk Film claims their standard for Oscar entries is that it must be cinema with high cultural value to the Nordic countries, and in this effort they certainly succeeded. ![]() I despise the Oscars, but even I might take a peek to see if it wins. ![]() This is their story.ĭirected by Martin Zandvliet, Land of Mine is the Danish entry for Best Foreign Film in the upcoming Academy Awards. Roughly 300 were children, drafted near the end of the war. Half of these veterans were killed or maimed. In Denmark, under the direction of the British, two thousand soldiers were forced to clear mines along the west coast in violation of International laws prohibiting the use of captured soldiers for dangerous jobs. ![]() The purpose was to provide the Allied force with a ready supply of slave labor by skirting around the Geneva Convention. Following the surrender of German forces at the end of World War Two nearly one million captured German soldiers had their status downgraded from Prisoners of War (POWs) to Disarmed Enemy Forces.
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