lines at Namur on the day of the coming attack. Reinberger was going to Cologne for a staff meeting. The previous evening, over a drink in the mess, Hoenmanns had offered to fly him there. Usually, Reinberger would have had to make the tedious trip by train, but Hoenmanns needed some extra flying hours anyway and wanted to take his laundry to his wife in Cologne. Hoenmanns was unaware that Reinberger would be carrying documents related to the German plan for the attack on The Netherlands and Belgium, which on the day of the flight was decreed by Hitler to take place a week later on 17 January. Only after landing did Hoenmanns become aware that Reinberger was carrying secret documents when they asked a farmhand, Engelbert Lambrichts, where they were, to be told that they had unknowingly crossed Dutch territory and landed just inside Belgium. On hearing this, Reinberger panicked and rushed back to the plane to secure his yellow pigskin briefcase, crying that he had secret documents that he must destroy immediately. To let him do this Hoenmanns, as a diversion, moved away from the plane. Reinberger first tried to set fire to the documents with his cigarette lighter but it malfunctioned; he then ran to the farmhand who gave him a single match. With this Reinberger hid behind a thicket and piled the papers on the ground to burn them. But soon two Belgian border guards, Sergeant Frans Habets and Corporal Gerard Rubens, arrived on bicycles. Seeing smoke coming from the bushes, Rubens rushed over to save the documents from being completely destroyed. Reinberger fled at first but allowed himself to be taken prisoner after two warning shots had been fired. The two Germans were taken to the Belgian border guardhouse near Mechelen-aan-de-Maas (French: Malines-sur-Meuse). There they were interrogated by Captain Arthur Rodrique, who placed the charred documents on a table. As a diversion once more, Hoenmanns asked the Belgian soldiers to let him use the toilet; Reinberger then tried to stuff the papers into a burning stove nearby. He succeeded but yelled with pain when lifting the extremely hot lid of the stove. Startled, Rodrique turned and snatched the papers from the fire, badly burning his hand in the process. The documents were then locked away in a separate room. The failure to burn them made Reinberger realise that he would surely be shot, for letting