by Sean Longden
In the forward positions some of the men put their weapons to good use. One platoon found itself overlooking an open stretch of road being used by enemy traffic. With impunity they were able to pick off anyone trying to use the road: ‘We found that motorcyclists didn’t have a chance to survive, that nearly all tanks passed safely . . . and that troop carrying vehicles presented an easy target. We even had the pleasure of blowing an idle traffic controller to pieces with the anti-tank rifle.’5
With casualties growing, Les Allan had no choice but to keep working, which meant being outdoors, in full view of the enemy. At least the riflemen were supposed to keep their heads down. The medics and bearers just had one armband and a haversack with a Red Cross on it. Those he could help were taken to the cellars where the medics tried desperately to patch them up. Unfortunately for the wounded there were no doctors to help them. The medical officer had already been evacuated to find a safer position for the wounded. So many bodies were filling the floor that movement through the cellar became difficult: ‘As I entered I saw a man lying there in the entrance. It was a chap called Johnson, he had awful head wounds. His face was all torn open. There was blood everywhere. His jaw and skull were bashed in. I just kicked him out of the way. You soon realize you have to help those who can be saved, not those who are virtually dead.’ Many years later, at a battalion reunion, Les Allan came face to face with Private Johnson again. Amazingly, he had survived the destruction of the convent and his wounds had slowly recovered. As they chatted, Allan noted Johnson was smoking a pipe. He explained that he was unable to smoke cigarettes since the damage to his jaw meant he couldn’t keep a cigarette between his lips, however, he could comfortably hold a pipe up to his mouth.
As the battle raged, Allan moved around among the flaming wreckage of the battalion’s ammunition trucks and carriers. The wireless trucks were abandoned in the streets as movement became suicidal. Communication between HQ and the companies became impossible, as the runners were fired at whenever they tried to move in the open. No longer was the battalion making a coordinated defence of Hazebrouck, instead there were simply ‘penny packets’ of infantry desperately attempting to hold off the enemy for as long as possible. The survivors of D Company watched as German troops advanced towards the convent, yet they could offer no assistance. All the exits to the house they were defending were covered by enemy machine-guns; all they could do was watch the fate of their beleaguered comrades.
Eventually, the battle closed in on the defenders of battalion HQ. No longer did Allan need to go outside to find wounded to bring to the convent’s cellars, he could simply fetch them from the upper floors. At one point he found himself manning a Bren gun, convincing himself it was correct for a medic to bear arms in defence of the wounded. By dusk, stragglers from throughout the battalion had made their way back to battalion HQ for the final assault. Every available man was ready to fight and all the cooks and drivers were upstairs manning rifles and machine-guns. As the enemy assault continued, fire took hold of the upper floors of the convent and the defenders were forced to move down to continue the battles from the lower floors.
By dusk news had reached Hazebrouck that elements of the BEF were being withdrawn to Dunkirk, but it meant little to those within battalion HQ. Escape was impossible. All they could do was to sit tight inside their flaming position and pray for a miracle. Watching from D Company’s position, it became clear the defence of Hazebrouck was doomed: ‘The forward movement of the enemy could be observed by light signals which they fired as they advanced along each street, and I soon realized they were closing in on BN HQ from three sides.’6 Still the men within the convent continued to defy the enemy, firing their weapons and slowing the advance. Their defiance cost them dear: ‘Apparently by some pre-arranged signal four or five enemy bombers came over town and ruthlessly bombed the area.’7
Those watching soon realized the bombers were devastatingly accurate. An officer watching the scenes later wrote: ‘I then witnessed the most despondent scene of all my life . . . not fifty yards away was our battalion HQ which was simply being blown to pieces. Planes came down so low they couldn’t fail to miss it … at that moment the entire place was dead, there wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere. I felt an utter wreck after seeing this.’8 With the terrible work complete, the planes flew off leaving the Wehrmacht to complete the destruction of the convent. Six tanks closed in, firing into the already burning building. Suddenly there was a terrific roar as the entire building collapsed. Still the tanks advanced, firing into the rubble as if to advertise their devotion to the cause of destruction. Then slowly a section of infantry appeared from the shadows, their every movement silhouetted against the flames of the burning town. No longer did they need to take cover. There was no one left inside to offer resistance. The defence of Hazebrouck was over. One last obstacle on the road to Dunkirk had fallen.
Yet the battle was not over for some within the convent. Despite the pounding of the HQ, Les Allan had kept working. Bloody bodies had filled the cellars, dust had been shaken from the ceiling, coating the wounded men in a film of dirt, but his work went on:
The artillery had got the range. For the last hour we were down in the cellar for our own safety. We were keeping our heads down hoping to avoid the shelling. The convent was in flames, so the blokes upstairs were fighting in the gardens. They fought to the very last – at least to the end of their ammunition. It was a last-ditch stand, the Germans invited them to surrender but they refused. We couldn’t give the wounded much treatment. We just had first-aid bandages. All we could do was to stem the bleeding. We just helped those we could treat. But they were good – they were resigned to their position. We told them we’d get them out as soon as possible. I think the fact we didn’t desert them helped to ease their minds. None of us would have deserted them anyway – even if we wanted to there was nowhere to go.
Trying to ignore the roar of the bombers and the crackle of the flames, he made one final effort to help the wounded. As he tried to leave the cellar his world, quite literally, collapsed around him. For a brief moment the hideous roar heard across the town terrified Allan – and then it was over. Silence engulfed his world.
By 9.30 p.m. the whole town had fallen silent. Hazebrouck, along with its defenders, was a dead town. As the remnants of the battalion scattered northwards towards Dunkirk they had no idea of the fate of those left behind in the ruins of the convent. Just twelve officers and 200 men of the Buckinghamshire Battalion reached England. The commander of D Company took almost a week to reach the coast. Some of the stragglers who made their way northwards were captured before they could get away. A party led by Lieutenant Powell from D Company reached Dunkirk one day after the last boats had departed. The group led by CSM Baldrick reached the Dunkirk perimeter but were taken prisoner.
How long Les Allan lay in the ruins, he would never know. Eventually he came to, as two German medics grabbed his inert body and dragged him upstairs into the street. Nursing a head wound, he sat in the street wondering what had happened. All he knew was that somehow he had survived. As the ceiling had collapsed he had just been leaving the cellar. The arched stone entranceway had taken the brunt of the collapse and remained standing – with him beneath it.
As he slowly regained consciousness, none of his comrades were to be seen. It seemed no one else had been pulled from the rubble that had buried the wounded men he had been caring for earlier. Nor were there any of his fellow bearers, or any of the infantrymen to be seen. He was alone. Dumped on to a lorry, he was driven to a French field hospital. As he struggled to make sense of what had happened, he realized someone had bandaged his head – when or who, he couldn’t remember. At the field hospital an English-speaking German officer took away the haversack, armband and papers that identified him as a medic. As soon as it became clear Allan was walking wounded he was separated from the French prisoners. Still alone, he was placed on to a truck and driven to a reception area for British prisoners. In the weeks, months
, then years, that followed he never met another survivor of the defence of Hazebrouck, a battle that the German Army described as having been carried out ‘in a manner truly worthy of the highest tradition of the British Army’.9
However, if some Germans rushed to praise the efforts of the British Army, there were plenty who did not hold the defeated men in such high esteem. Some believed their own propaganda that they were superior to all others. In their minds the prisoners were worthless specimens who deserved nothing more than to be beaten and humiliated. Initially, many prisoners found it was common for the German front-line infantrymen to treat the defeated British with respect, as Peter Wagstaff discovered:
There is no doubt there is a vast difference between the treatment by the fighting soldier at the front and the administrative bastard at the back. I remember I found myself at a German gunnery colonel’s HQ. He looked at me and stood to attention and then gave me a bottle of beer. I also remember sitting on the pavement of a railway station, as we waited to be put into cattle trucks. A whole lot of German troops passed us, they were young lads – I don’t suppose they were more than eighteen or twenty. And somebody lobbed a cigarette into my lap. He did it quite secretly.
Similarly, Eric Reeves discovered the fighting men who took him into captivity treated him fairly. Some men from his regiment were even offered lifts by German motorcyclists who dropped them off at the enclosures for prisoners, rather than leaving them to walk. Indeed, Eric Reeves was initially shocked at being so well cared for by his sworn enemy. He soon discovered not all Germans were so concerned about prisoners: ‘The next day the B-Echelon troops turned up. They kicked us all the way up the road.’
For some, such mistreatment became a regular feature of the round up. At Hesdin five British officers were singled out and forced to stand in the gutter. Three were wounded and one was suffering from a fever. The French and Belgian medics who passed through the streets were refused permission to help the wounded officers; instead the German soldiers stood and jeered. After four hours of humiliation, two of the officers were finally taken away by ambulance. An hour later the remaining officers were eventually allowed to rest.
Elsewhere five British officers and forty other ranks were forced to spend a night in a cowshed that was deep in liquid manure. The policy of deliberate humiliation, particularly of British officers, was widespread. Soldiers found themselves laughed at by their captors, many of whom seemed so much taller, physically fitter and better equipped than the exhausted POWs. Senior officers found themselves forced to stand to attention when speaking to junior German officers. Captain G.S. Lowden, captured at Rouen in June, was told by his captors that all officers would have their rank badges removed and then be sent to salt mines. Once the British had been defeated, his captors informed him, the prisoners would be held as slave labourers for thirty years. The threats were compounded by the promise that if any officer attempted to escape, five other officers would be shot as a reprisal. Such claims hit the already battered morale of the prisoners, although the next threat was even more worrying for Captain Lowden: ‘our women folk at home would be equally treated and those found to be of suitably Nordic stock would be reserved for breeding purposes . . . my own wife, being partly of Scandinavian stock, was practically certain to be amongst the favoured ones!’10
If it was not enough for the defeated British to see the modern tanks, guns, half-track carriers and automatic weapons of the enemy, they also had to endure Germans armed with cameras. Like tourists taking holiday snaps, their captors seemed obsessed with taking photographs of the battleground and the men who had lost the battle. One group of prisoners found camera-wielding Germans lining up to photograph their bare backsides as they used the open latrines. It was just the beginning of the degradation they would suffer in the months and years that followed.
To some of the survivors such behaviour seemed little more than gesturing compared to what they had already witnessed. After all, what were kicks, punches or humiliation compared to the fury of mass murders? In May 1940 there were two incidents that have, in the post-war years, come to sum up the brutality shown by the SS towards defeated British soldiers. The massacres at Le Paradis on the 27th, and at Wormhoudt the following day cost the lives of scores of soldiers who had given their all in battle and then surrendered.
When the survivors of the 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment surrendered they were filled with the same sense of trepidation shared by all prisoners. They were marched away, their helmets and equipment taken from them, then sent to a nearby farm, Le Paradis. Their treatment at the hands of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, of the SS Totenkopf Division was rough, but initially no rougher than that experienced by many prisoners. Wounded men were kicked to their feet, others were hit with rifle-butts and threatened with bayonets. But it was what followed that was so different to the majority of POW experiences. Around ninety of the Norfolks were marched to a brick farm building with a pit running along the outside. When they saw the two machine-guns pointing towards them it was clear they were to be executed. There was nowhere to run or hide as the machine-guns poured fire at the helpless men. Eventually the bullets stopped and the survivors could hear bayonets being clipped to rifles. The survivors then heard the ringing of pistol shots and the sound of bayonets being thrust into screaming men. Others had their skulls smashed in with rifle-butts, a sight that appalled some of the Germans who discovered the massacre site. Some of the badly wounded men pleaded to be finished off desperate to be released from their agony. Slowly the cries of the wounded and the noise of gunfire died down as the SS finished their deadly labours. When the attack was finally over just two men were alive. Privates Bert Pooley and Bill O’Callaghan had somehow survived, despite both being shot and having been checked over by the SS men. When night fell the two men were finally able to escape the scene.
In the aftermath of the defence of Wormhoudt a group of survivors from the 2nd Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment were herded towards a barn. Those unable to walk were simply shot where they lay. In common with so many of the defeated troops, the fifty or more who were hustled inside the barn were exhausted and apprehensive. All knew the terrible reputation of their SS captors. At the entrance to the barn stood a German soldier who spoke with an American accent. The actions of this man, taking out a hand grenade and preparing it to be thrown, convinced the prisoners of their intentions. Believing they were to be executed, Captain Lyn-Allen asked for permission for the men to have a last cigarette. The request was granted, then the Germans began firing machine-pistols and throwing grenades into the barn. Two of the grenades had little effect on the assembled men since Sergeant Moore and CSM Jennings threw themselves on to the grenades, absorbing the blast but sacrificing their lives.
The SS then called for the survivors to leave the barn in groups of five. As they left they walked six or seven paces, then were shot in the back by the Germans. Realizing their fate, the following groups refused to move, causing the Germans to continue throwing grenades into the barn. When they believed their work was done the Germans departed. Yet they had not been thorough enough. Some of the men had survived despite their injuries. Some had feigned death, others had suffered sufficient injury to lose consciousness and appear dead. One, Private Albert Evans, had escaped from the barn when the Germans threw the first grenades. Along with Captain Lyn-Allen, Evans – his arm shattered by the first grenade – made for the safety of a copse, where they sheltered in a pond. Soon a German appeared and fired at the two men. The captain received a fatal wound and slumped into the water. Two bullets then struck Evans in the neck and he too collapsed into the dirty pond. Believing his quarry dead, the German departed. Some minutes later, Evans regained consciousness. Amazed he had survived, he crawled away, being hit again by a stray bullet fired during the execution of others at the barn.
Albert Evans was incredibly fortunate, he was found by a German ambulance unit who treated his wounds and saved his life. Others who survived include
d one from the groups taken outside; he had been hit then feigned death. Some of the survivors within the barn were eventually saved by a German anti-aircraft unit who turned up and treated their wounds. Another man was actually blown from the barn by a grenade and shot in the face, but he too somehow escaped death.
The first reports of the Wormhoudt massacre reached London via letters from an officer who met survivors of the incident while in hospital in Ghent. At first Lieutenant Kenneth Keens did not believe the man’s story, the shocked survivor of the massacre being unable to remember any of the names of his comrades. However, as the days passed, three survivors, Edward Daly, Albert Evans and Private Johnson, recounted the same version of events.
Although the incidents at Wormhoudt and Le Paradis became widely publicized in the post-war years, they were not isolated incidents. There were plenty of other murders and acts of violence towards prisoners right across France and Belgium. When Lieutenant Keens reported the Wormhoudt massacre he also pointed out stories he had heard of similar incidents on a smaller scale. One wounded officer from the Worcestershire Regiment told Keens he had watched as his men were lined up against a wall and executed by SS troops. He was then also shot but somehow survived. French sources later also revealed that twenty-one Scottish soldiers had been discovered in a mass grave. Each corpse displayed neck wounds suggesting they had not fallen in battle but been executed by their captors.
