The original 1953 trail in Bordeaux descended into farce because 14 of the 21 Das Reich men arraigned were from the French province of Alsace. Their lawyers claimed they had been conscripted into the SS and would have been shot if they disobeyed orders. One had become a police inspector after the war. Another had won the Croix de Guerre (France's highest military medal for valour) whilst fighting in Vietnam. The trial took place in a vile atmosphere with two of the defendants sentenced to death and the rest to prison for between 8 to 12 years. Violent protests in Alsace led to the release of all the men soon after the trial. It is simply too late to arraign yet another nonagenarian with dementia.