After The Battle 150 - The Lost Soldiers of Fromelles

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CONTENTS THE LOST SOLDIERS OF FROMELLES 3 WAR FILM The War Lover 22 WAR CRIME Return to Cefalonia 28 READERS’ INVESTIGATION Tank Fight at Sinalunga 38 UNITED KINGDOM Coventry Blitz — November 1940 41 REMEMBRANCE The Civilian War Dead Roll of Honour 44 FROM THE EDITOR 48 Front Cover: The dedication of the new military cemetery at Fromelles, France on July 19, 2010. (Gail Parker) Back Cover: The Memorial to Londoners killed in The Blitz now to be seen at Hermitage Wharf, Wapping. (Gail Parker) Acknowledgements: The Editor is very grateful for the assistance given by Lambis Englezos, Dr Tony Pollard, Jean Paul Pallud and Tim Whitfield during research for the Fromelles article. Alan Tomkins provided background material for The War Lover and Sergio Andreanelli and Dionissies Arvanitakis gave help with the article on Cephalonia. Photo Credits: AWM — Australian War Memorial; CWGC — Commonwealth War Graves Commission; GUARD — Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division; IWM — Imperial War Museum; USNA — US National Archives. 2

With this 150th issue over 37 years have passed since I ventured to Normandy with my Jeep to see if it was possible to match up wartime photos. Since the 1970s the exploration of battlefields has become big business for many tour companies although many locations have since been commercialised or have changed out of all recognition. While the internet has vastly aided research, at the same time many of the official bodies that we relied on to help us with information have closed their doors, hiding behind the wretched Data Protection Act. And that attitude is different depending on the country concerned. Getting simple grave references for French servicemen is well-nigh impossible; likewise the location of the graves of US servicemen repatriated to the States. On the other hand the Americans are willing to provide copies of complete files, including courtmartials. It is now impossible to get servicemen’s records in Britain but the Australians have no problem in making the same information freely available on the web. German personnel records now have redactions added but the Belgian authorities will provide them in the fullest detail. My mind often goes back over all the stories and events we have covered these past years and which were the most significant. Readers will have their own opinions but for me I think it has to be finding General Eisenhower’s pre-D-Day HQ at Portsmouth (above), described in issue 84. No book, document, historian or museum knew where it had been located . . . the place where he must have agonised over the decision to send a million men on the largest amphibious operation in adverse weather, and where he penned in advance an admission of failure should it be necessary. It surely has to be one of the most important places we have discovered. I am grateful that so many readers have supported us from our very first issue. Since then many of our authors and contributors have passed away, in some cases like Bart Vanderveen (2001), the fountain head of all knowledge on military vehicles; Roger Freeman (2005), the foremost Eighth Air Force historian; Peter Chamberlain (2006), the German armour expert, and Alan Hall (2008) who founded Aviation News with me, leave a void very difficult to fill. One of our journalists on that publication was Jerry Scutts and back in the 1970s he wrote me a piece on the making of The War Lover. For some reason it never got used so I have included it in this issue in memory of Jerry who died in December 2008. More recently we lost Connie Richards who was steeped in the Glenn Miller era as she lived on the edge of Twinwood Farm aerodrome from where he departed on his fatal flight. She was such a charismatic lady — readers will have met her on page 53 of issue 117 and page 53 of issue 138 in her role with her husband Gordon as UK representatives of the Eighth Air Force Historical Society. WINSTON G. RAMSEY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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© Copyright After the Battle 2010 Editor: Karel Margry Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey Published by Battle of Britain International Ltd., The Mews, Hobbs Cross House, Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow, Essex CM17 0NN, England Telephone: 01279 41 8833 Fax: 01279 41 9386 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.afterthebattle.com Printed in Great Britain by Warners Group Publications PLC, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH. After the Battle is published on the 15th of February, May, August and November.

Connie Richards being interviewed with a Glenn Miller fan at Twinwood Farm.

THE LOST SOLDIERS OF FROMELLES By Gail Parker

Following the assassination of their Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. Germany and Russia joined in on August 1 and France followed on the 3rd. Great Britain entered the war the following day although the honour of firing the first shots was claimed by the commander of Fort Nepean on Port Philip Bay, Melbourne. News of the declaration of war by Great Britain was received by the Governor-General in Australia at 12.30 p.m. (Eastern Australian Time) on August 5. Consequently, a German vessel attempting to leave the bay received a shot across the bows (see After the Battle No. 90).

By 1918 over 330.000 Australians had served and more than 60,000 had lost their lives of whom 23,000 were recorded as missing. Although the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) had fought long and hard at Gallipoli, what has been described as ‘the worst 24 hours in Australia’s entire history’ occurred near the little French village of Fromelles on July 19/20, 1916. The Australian 5th Division, under Major General James McCay, had only arrived in France the previous month. It had been formed in Egypt in February and, apart from a few trench raids, this was to be the first occasion that the Australians would fight a major battle on the Western Front. Although

Top: This is the little French village of Fromelles some 12 kilometres west of Lille, before the ravages of war reduced it to a ruin. On March 10, 1915, the British First Army launched an attack against nearby Neuve-Chapelle, capturing the village within an hour. In that case the preassault bombardment had lasted just 35 minutes giving the Germans no lengthy advance warning. Two months later the British Expeditionary Force followed up with a more-extensive assault on a fivemile front between Festubert and Fromelles, the latter village being held by the 6. Reserve-Infanterie-Division. However, by now German pioneers had worked to create an impregnable front line. The attack which followed on May 9 devastated the village. It was called the Battle of Aubers Ridge by the British but Gefecht (fight) von Fromelles by the Germans: ‘The ruins of the shelled church tower loom in the dim light of the moonlit night. Prussian subalterns await the transport and conduct [the men] into the new positions. The light of dawn removes tension and curiosity: a level field with water channels, willow trees and willow stalks, in the distance towards the enemy lines lies an insignificant wood with barbed-wire entanglements. A veritable no man’s land.’

The Germans even changed the name of the village to Petzstadt and also the street names — this was Linke Hochbahnstrasse.

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untried, General McCay wanted his 5th Division to have that honour. Designed partly to be a diversion for the main battle of the Somme that had been launched on July 1, it was hoped that the operation would also eliminate a bulge or salient, which included a heavily fortified position called the ‘Sugarloaf’, in the German lines north of Fromelles village. The Australian force comprised the 8th Brigade (BrigadierGeneral Edwin Tivey); the 14th Brigade (Colonel Harold Pope), and the 15th Brigade (Brigadier-General Harold ‘Pompey’ Elliott).

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By the end of the war Fromelles was a total ruin, the mound of rubble being all that was left of the church.

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Right: To the Germans this was Braun Strasse. The church was rebuilt by 1927. 4

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Major-General Colin MacKenzie’s British 61st (South Midland) Division would be on their right flank. However over the previous year this territorial unit had been denuded of many of its most-experienced officers and men to reinforce other divisions. For the coming battle, its three brigades were the 182nd (Brigadier-General Alistair Gordon); the 183rd (Brigadier-General Cosmo Stewart), and the 184th (Brigadier-General Charles Carter). This sector of the German line was held by the 6. Bayerische Reserve-Infanterie-Division commanded by Generalleutnant Gustav Scanzoni von Lichtenfels. As part of the Royal Bavarian Army, it had been formed in September 1914 mainly by calling up reservists (one notable being Gefreiter Adolf Hitler, a message runner with Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment 16 ‘List’). Having been in action for two years, the division was battle-hardened compared to the Australians even though some of the latter were veterans of Gallipoli.

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In command of the British 61st (South Midland) Division was Major-General Colin MacKenzie.

Generalleutnant Gustav Scanzoni von Lichtenfels commanding the 6. Bayerische Reserve-Infanterie-Division.

The operation had been formulated by Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Haking of the British XI Corps. He had first proposed an assault using three divisions by including the 31st Division, but when he was informed that the only artillery support available would be provided by the Australians, he had to scale his plan back to just two divisions. His orders stated that: ‘Each division will attack with three brigades in line, each brigade with two assaulting battalions and each battalion on a front of about 350 yards.’

Most of Haking’s subordinate commanders were unhappy with the plan and went over his head to General Sir Charles Monro of First Army but Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig confirmed the operation on the 15th. The artillery shelling, designed to prepare the way forward by destroying the wire entanglements, began at 11 a.m. even though the infantry were not attacking until 6 p.m. Such bombardments often failed in their purpose and instead served as a warning that an assault would follow. The German guns immediately replied, battering the British

front line and obscuring observation posts so that a later British report admitted that ‘no effective destructive or neutralising of the Hun infantry, artillery or MGs took place. The total effect of our artillery preparation on the Hun resistance was nil.’ At 5.45 p.m. the infantry climbed out of their trenches to be immediately greeted by heavy machine-gun fire causing many casualties. Advancing a quarter of a mile to capture what they had been told was the German front line, in fact the ‘trenches’ turned out to be pulverised water-filled drainage ditches.

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Major-General James McCay, the commander of the newly arrived 5th Australian Division.

July 19, 1916. Down in the trenches, Charles Lorking photographed the men of the Australian 53rd Battalion, 15 minutes before the signal was given for the attack to commence.

All these men would become casualties, only three surviving wounded including Private Frederick Turvey, the soldier smoking a last cigarette (left) before going over the top. 5

FROMELLES PHEASANT WOOD

BRAUN STRASSE

GERMAN FRONT LINE

AUSTRALIAN FRONT LINE

‘SUGARLOAF’ LAIES RIVER

Looking south-east across the battlefield. At this point, the Australians had to cross some several hundred yards of no man’s land.

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A trench map from August 1916 showing the ‘Sugarloaf’ position from which enfilade fire decimated the Australian 15th Brigade.

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Closer to the German machine guns, one survivor described the air being thick with bullets, swishing in a flat, criss-cross lattice of death. ‘Hundreds were mown down in the flicker of an eyelid, like great rows of teeth knocked from a comb.’ On the left, although the Australian 8th and the 14th Brigades made good progress across the waterlogged ground, there was considerable confusion as to the actual position of the front line and the shallow Laies river was also mistaken for a trench. Consequently, many of the attacking troops advanced too far leaving their flanks vulnerable to enfilade fire. The right-hand brigade — the 15th — was badly hit by German shelling while forming up. They were then caught in the open, taking heavy casualties and finding the ‘Sugarloaf’ position an impossible objective. This left the 14th Brigade with an exposed flank and it too soon began to take heavy fire from machine guns emplaced at the ‘Sugarloaf’. As the 15th was forced to retire to its own trenches, this in turn left the flank of the 14th Brigade open to counter-attack. The British infantry was equally unsuccessful and at no stage did they come near to neutralising their primary objective which was the formidable ‘Sugarloaf’ defensive position. The Bavarian historian wrote later how a barrage of [British] cannon fire and mortars was laid down in the sector occupied by Regiments 21, 16 and 17. In spite of this, the batteries of the 6. Bayerische Reserve-Division ‘didn’t hesitate to pour demoralising fire into the English position where English stormtroops were assembled. In cold blood and filled with jubilation, the men of Regiment 16 awaited the English attack and struck it down bloodily. The strength of the three regiments succeeded in gradually freeing their position of English troops by the early morning of July 20, massacring them or cutting them off. The booty included 500 prisoners and 20 machine guns.’

The remains of it are visible on the right in this photograph taken on Armistice Day in 1918. The Laies river which crossed the battlefield can clearly be seen.

SITE OF MASS GRAVES FROMELLES

HITLER’S BUNKER

AUSTRALIAN MEMORIAL PARK VC CORNER CEMETERY TOMMY BRIDGE

LAIES RIVER

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‘SUGARLOAF’

In fact the Australian 5th Division with over 5,500 casualties had lost half its fighting strength: 1,917 men were killed, 3,146 wounded and 470 taken prisoner. The British 61st Division suffered over 1,500 casualties with 519 killed, 977 wounded and 61 taken prisoner. Nothing had been achieved and the official Australian history does not mince its words: ‘It is difficult to conceive that the operation as planned was ever likely to succeed’. Issuing their own communiqué, the Germans announced: ‘The English in considerable force attacked our positions west and

north of Fromelles (near Ypres). They were thrown back by our counter-attacks from the points penetrated. We took 300 prisoners’. This was later corrected in a following statement: ‘An English attack in the Fromelles region yesterday by two strong divisions was repulsed. We captured 481 men and counted 2,000 bodies in front of our lines’. Meanwhile a divisional ‘honour parade’ was arranged for the following week before the Bavarian crown prince. German casualties in the battle were 501 killed, 943 wounded and 146 missing or made prisoners of war.

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The disaster was compounded when the British asked the Australians to join in a renewed assault at 9 p.m. only to cancel it without informing the Australians. Consequently another abortive attempt took place causing the Australians even more losses as they retreated. Relations between the AIF and the British were further exacerbated when a communiqué was issued stating: ‘Yesterday evening, south of Armentières, we carried out some important raids on a front of two miles in which Australian troops took part. About 140 German prisoners were captured.’

Captain Keith McDonald, B Company, 59th Battalion: ‘Our company formed the first and second waves. We had about 500 yards to cover over rough country . . . barbed wire . . . ditches . . . the river (above). Our men were magnificent — they charged in a hail of shrapnel and machine-gun fire until they

were practically wiped out. I got one in the right arm before we left our trench, but it wasn’t too bad, but I got it solid when about 200 yards out, through the left shoulder and out of the back. This dropped me like a log. I was right through the Gallipoli show yet this was the severest action I’ve yet been in.’ 7

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second line which was held throughout the night by the 5th Division. Right: This spot is believed to have been a first aid post as evidenced by the bandages on the two bodies on the right which also had their boots removed.

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On the morning of July 20, Hauptmann Eckart, the intelligence officer with the 6. Reserve-Infanterie-Division, took a series of photographs showing both Australian and German dead on the battlefield. Left: This Australian is lying in the German

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This portion of the Geman second line of defence was held by the 31st Battalion AIF throughout the night.

Captain Charles Mills, had led D Company of the 31st Battalion and had been wounded and taken prisoner. After the Armistice, 8

he fortuitously met up with Hauptmann Eckart who gave him copies of the photographs.

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bodies and will collect papers and identity discs in such a way that the personal effects are removed from each body individually and placed in a sandbag, tied off and tagged. The misappropriation of even the most insignificant item of property from a body (German or English) constitutes robbery of the dead and will be severely punished. ‘Tent squares may be used to move the bodies but must not be used as burial shrouds. Detached body parts are to be wrapped in cloth and buried. Each body thus registered is to be laid immediately in one of the mass graves. The Medical Officer is to ensure that each layer of bodies is immediately covered with a layer of earth mixed with chloride of lime. The civilian population is to be prevented from loitering and staring at the bodies.’ The order also stated that mass graves for 300 German dead and 400 ‘English’, i.e. British and Australian, were to be provided, and that the dead were to be separated by unit with officers laid out in the centre. With no further attempts being made to capture the village, Fromelles remained behind German lines right up until 1918. On the morning of July 20, no man’s land was covered with the dead and dying, some of the wounded not being recovered for several days. The Germans referred to both Australians and British as ‘Englisch’, this postcard being circulated in Germany to boost morale stating: ‘Gef. Englander n. d. Angriff b. Fromelles 19.7.1916’ (Fallen Englishmen after the attack at Fromelles, July 19, 1916). On July 21, Oberst Julius von Braun commanding the Bayerische Reserve-InfanterieRegiment 21 issued an order detailing an NCO and 24 men of the Medical Company to bury the dead. They were to be based at Desprez Farm with three lorries. The German dead were to be transported for burial in a communal grave in the cemetery at Beaucamps-Ligny, six kilometres east of Fromelles, while the enemy were to be disposed of in mass graves immediately to the south of what the Germans called FasanenWäldchen (Pheasant Wood), just outside Fromelles. ‘In order to expedite the rapid removal of the bodies, the dead are to be separated by nationality and laid out at depots close to the light railway. Oberfeldwebels are to be in attendance during the laying out of the

The light railway, used to bring up ammunition and supplies to the front line, was now used to transport the bodies to eight large pits which had been prepared to dispose of the dead.

BRAUN STRASSE PHEASANT WOOD

LIGHT RAILWAY SCHÛTZEN STRASSE

RUINED CHURCH

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GRAVE PITS

The railway line can be seen cutting through the corner of Pheasant Wood. These photos were taken on glass plates by the Royal Flying Corps before (left) and after the battle (right)

as part of their normal reconnaissance missions over the Western Front. Their true significance was only realised over eight decades later. 9

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In 1924 the French government purchased the land on which the cemetery stood from Achille Descamps and the Imperial War Graves Commission appointed Sir Herbert Baker to produce a permanent design. However, as a further 180 unidentified Australian dead had by then been interred there, a decision was made to eliminate the crosses entirely and instead inscribe the names of all the Australian missing of the Fromelles battle on Right: One of those whose name was inscribed on the Memorial to the Missing at the cemetery was that of the highestranking officer to be killed on July 19 — Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Bert’ Norris, the CO of the 53rd Battalion. After his death, Father John Kennedy, chaplain to the 53rd Battalion, wrote to Mrs Norris: ‘On the morning of the battle he knelt down before his men and received Holy Communion from me. He had successfully led his men to the second line of enemy trenches when a machine-gun bullet struck him and killed him instantly. Oh, Mrs Norris, he died a hero’s death and you will be able to tell your child later how brave his father was.’ A tribute later written about Colonel Norris by a soldier in the 53rd Battalion is proof of his standing amongst his troops: ‘He was a man in a million, a gentleman to speak to, and if anyone got into “crime street”, and came before him, he got sound advice and the minimum penalty. I had a chat with him on the morning of the charge, and he might have been a private, so nice and friendly he was to me.’

tablets behind the Cross of Sacrifice. Although this list of names had been finalised early in 1925, the IWGC admitted that ‘a great number must still be in the ground and too deep to be located by ploughing or probing’. VC Corner is a unique cemetery for not only are there no individual headstones, but it is also the only all-Australian cemetery in France. Dedicated in 1925, the panels now list 1,299 missing.

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After the Armistice, the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) began the huge task of establishing cemeteries for the dead. Where possible, wartime graves were left undisturbed, these temporary burial sites being converted into permanent places of rest. However, right across France and Belgium, there were countless field graves to be dealt with. In addition, there were the burial sites created by the Germans and notified to the Red Cross in accordance with the Hague Convention. Over the following three years, over 200,000 men were exhumed and reburied but when in September 1921 the War Office in London advised the Dominions that further speculative searching was to end that month, Australia, Canada and New Zealand were up in arms. As a result, it was agreed that the costs of further recovery operations would be shared with Britain. For a considerable time after the war, the battle at Fromelles was known to the Australians as the Battle of Fleurbaix after the village a little further to the north. In the context of the Great War battles, to the British it was a fairly minor affair, but for the Australians it assumed much greater significance alongside Gallipoli. By 1920 a cemetery had been established three kilometres north of Fromelles in no man’s land some 50 yards in front of the old Australian front line. As a nearby trench was named VC Avenue after seven Victoria Crosses had been awarded for exploits in this area (although none for this battle), this cemetery had been named VC Corner. Every one of the 230 graves had been marked by the Graves Registration Unit with crosses stating: ‘Unknown Australian Soldier’.

Ligny, two kilometres to the north-east. Above: After the war, the cemetery that had been established near VC Avenue trench, which already contained several hundred graves of unidentified Australian dead, was formally established as VC Corner Cemetery. Its poignancy was enhanced by being situated virtually on the old Australian front line.

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Many of the British casualties from the battle were buried by the Germans in their cemetery at Fournes-en-Weppes, some four kilometres from where they fell. These bodies were removed in 1923 for burial elsewhere. The German dead were buried both at Fournes and in a communal grave in a cemetery which had been established beside the church in Beauchamps-

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On May 10, 1940, Hitler launched his long-expected operation in the west, code-named ‘Fall Gelb’ (Operation Yellow). At 4.35 a.m. German forces crossed the borders of the Netherlands (which had been neutral throughout the First World War), Belgium and Luxembourg. The frontier with France was crossed two days later when Heeresgruppe A with 44 divisions thrust through the Ardennes. By May 27, its 4. Panzer-Division, with the SS-Totenkopf-Division on its left and the 7. Panzer-Division on its right, were poised to attack towards Aubers from Béthune from the bridgehead at La Bassée. Below: Oberst Heinrich Eberbach, commanding Panzer-Regiment 35, was leading the advance by 4. Panzer-Division. In front of them were elements of the 2nd Division of the British Expeditionary Force with the 4th Brigade in the centre. By seven o’clock the main road from La Bassée had been crossed and Fromelles had been captured by 11 p.m. (Oberst Eberbach went on to command Panzer-Brigade 5 in the invasion of the Soviet Union, being wounded at Stalingrad and awarded the Ritterkreuz. In August 1944, he was taken prisoner by British forces near Amiens and held in Island Farm POW Camp (see After the Battle No. 67) until 1948. He died in 1992, aged 96.)

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Within 15 years, Britain and the Commonwealth were again at war with Germany which now had as its leader a veteran of the battle at Fromelles. Having experienced trench warfare first hand, this time his tactics were to be based on Blitzkrieg war led by swiftly-moving armoured columns, and within six weeks of launching his invasion of Holland, Belgium and France Adolf Hitler was master of north-west Europe. On May 24, in the sector south-west of Arras, the XVI. Armeekorps turned to advance north and then swung north-east to cut off British and French forces in the Lille sector. Two days later the Germans had reached the La Bassée Canal on both sides of Béthune. Facing the 4. PanzerDivision was the British 4th Division. On May 27 two pioneer bridges were constructed across the canal and Panzer-Regiment 35 under Oberst Heinrich Eberbach led the attack on Aubers and Fromelles. By 7 p.m. the La Bassée-Estaires road had been crossed and at 11 p.m. the Germans reported that strong resistance at Fromelles had been broken. Three weeks later the French capitulated.

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Schützen-Regiment 122 of the 4. Panzer-Division made its assault of the Canal d’Aire (more commonly known as the La Bassée Canal) just north of Béthune. Here a seriously wounded soldier is brought back from the northern bank. The footbridge was built just east of the blown road bridge at Essars.

Today a new bowstring highway bridge has been built a couple of hundred metres further to the west, leaving the original road used by the Germans a quiet backwater with a dead end at the canal. The house on the far bank still stands as a prominent landmark. 11

FLEURBAIX ESTAIRES

FROMELLES AUBERS NEUVE-CHAPELLE

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BÉTHUNE

LA BASSÉE

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Although Hitler was a citizen of AustriaHungary, he was accepted into the German armed forces when he volunteered in August 1914. He was posted to the List Regiment, being promoted to Feldwebel by November. As a despatch runner, he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class for ‘gallant conduct during the fighting at Wytschaete on December 1, 1914’. Hitler was very familiar with Fromelles, having spent 18 months in the area, and on his battlefield tour in June 1940 made his first stop at his billet in Fournes-en-Weppes (see After the Battle No. 117). Above: Driving to Fromelles, the party then stopped on the outskirts of the village to inspect the dressing station shown in his painting of 1916 (right). Above right: The building still stands largely unchanged on the road to Herlies.

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ADOLF HITLER

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Like many old soldiers, Hitler couldn’t wait to revisit the places where he had been stationed and on Saturday, June 1, four days after Belgium had signed its armistice, Hitler and his entourage flew to Brussels. From there his motorcade drove first to Ypres as he wanted to see the Menin Gate which commemorated the names of 50,000 Allied troops missing in the battlefields of Flanders where he had been awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. He then visited Langemark where the Germans had suffered a major defeat in October 1914, and on Sunday continued his tour to Mount Kemmel, Lille, Vimy, Arras and Douai, all names immortalised in the annals of the Great War. On June 21, having enjoyed putting the French through the pain of negotiating their armistice in the same railway carriage used for the Germans in 1918, Hitler went on to visit Paris (see After the Battle No. 14) before embarking on a tour to see the old battlefields in France. Accompanied by two of his comrades from Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment 16, ex-Feldwebels Ernst Schmied and Max Amann, on Wednesday, June 26 they drove into Fournes-en-Weppes where they found their old billet still standing in Rue Faidherbe. Then, motoring two kilometres further on, they arrived in Fromelles. There was much excitement when they pulled up outside the old dressing station, little changed from when Hitler painted a picture of it in 1916.

Above: Heinrich Hoffmann was photographing the tour and he pictured the group in the centre of Fromelles. Right: Today this is the Route de Verdun. They then walked out into the fields to the north, closer to the front line, where they spent some time inspecting a massive concrete shelter which obviously had a special significance to them (see After the Battle No. 117).

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Looking at Hoffmann’s sequence of photographs reproduced at the bottom of the page, it would appear that the high point of the visit was discovering that their old bunker from 1916 still existed. Below: Having driven along Schützen Strasse, they parked the Mercedes in the corner of a field. Then Hitler, with Ernst Schmied and Max Amann, walked out to excitedly inspect their old blockhouse, pointing out the large shell hits on the side facing the Australians.

It was Jean Paul Pallud who in 2001 first discovered the correct bunker, built by Bau-Pioner-Kompanie 13, which formed part of the Brandhof strong point. Before then another similar bunker in the area had always been pointed out as Hitler’s.

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Above: Photographed on November 11, 1918, these concrete shelters lay on the German front line north of Fromelles. Right: In July 1998, the Australian Memorial Park was opened on the spot where the German front line crossed the road north of the village. Its centrepiece was the statue by Peter Corlett inspired by Sergeant Simon Fraser (below) of the 57th Battalion. He was a farmer from Byaduk in Victoria’s Western District and had written home about rescuing a wounded soldier who had called out to him: ‘Don’t forget me, cobber’. Within a year, Simon had been killed but his image lives on both at Fromelles (below right) and in Australia where a duplicate statue was erected on July 19, 2008 at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne (see After the Battle No. 127).

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In 2004 Red Cross reports became available and a letter dated January 21, 1918 was most revealing as it stated that: ‘It may be assumed that possibly Lieutenant Bowden was buried in one of the five large British collective graves before the Fasanen-Wäldchen near Fromelles’. Finally in 2005 the Australian Army History Unit agreed to set up a Panel of Investigation to look into the matter but, in spite of Lambis giving a personal presentation of his findings, after deliberating for a year the panel reported that ‘field studies are not recommended unless more compelling evidence is located’. A Sydney lawyer, Chris Bryett, now joined in: ‘I didn’t think that the army would ever get to the point where they would get the job done’. Having formed a group under the banner Recovering Overseas Australia’s Missing, Vietnam veteran and mining magnate George Jones stepped in with an offer to fund a team of forensic experts headed by Professor Richard Wright who had led the UN team that had exhumed mass graves in

Bosnia. This move reportedly enraged the Army Panel and when interviewed in June 2006 Lambis openly stated on national television that ‘there has been active discouragement from a number of sources. And I’d hate to think that our missing war dead are an inconvenience.’ After more badgering of the authorities and questions to Parliament in Canberra, by December 2006 the Australian government finally relented and its army was authorised to carry out a ‘non-invasive’ investigation of the site. The archaeological department at Glasgow University under Dr Tony Pollard were employed to carry out the work. In May 2007 Lambis flew to France to make his first-ever visit to Pheasant Wood. ‘I had walked past it many times. The site was overgrown with the grass almost knee high and undulations in the growth were evident. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel walking the ground. There was some apprehension but I felt I was in good company. I felt . . . sensed if you like . . . that they were still there.’

GUARD

With so many Australians still recorded as missing from the Fromelles battle, it seemed obvious that there might be other grave locations that had been missed during the inter-war period, but it would not be until a new century was about to begin that the challenge to find them was taken up by an amateur historian 10,000 miles away in Melbourne, Australia. The Englezos family had arrived there from Greece in 1954 and, prompted by the fact that he felt deeply that ‘Fromelles was a national disaster which should never be forgotten’, their son Lambis, now a schoolteacher, began researching the battle in detail. In the early 1990s he compared notes with another likeminded historian, Robin Corfield, who was also studying the battle. Then in 1996 Lambis visited Fromelles for the 80th anniversary: ‘It was a day I had long been anticipating. The ground was littered with shrapnel, cartridge cases and spent bullets. I thought of our dear friends lying wounded . . . where there had been turmoil, terror and tragedy, there was now tranquility.’ Returning to Australia, Lambis studied every printed account but it was the publication of the first edition of Robin’s book Don’t forget me cobber — The Battle of Fromelles in 2000 which lead the two men to become close friends in the pursuance of their common interest — to trace the missing dead. They were joined by two more enthusiasts: John Fielding, a deputy headmaster at a school in New South Wales, and Ward Selby whose grandfather had fought at Fromelles. Although they were aware of the regimental history written by von Braun in 1923, his order for the burial report was unknown to them at the time. However a memoir written by William Barry in 1917 gave them an important clue. Barry had fought with the 29th Battalion and had been wounded and taken prisoner. After some pretty rough treatment he was handed over to the Red Cross: ‘When I was left to myself for about two hours I was able to look around, and to my horror, I was in the place where all the dead men were. I was sitting on the edge of a hole about 40 feet long, 20 feet wide and 15 feet deep and into this hole the dead were being thrown without any fuss or respect.’ Lambis returned to France in 2002 and later sourced aerial photos from the Imperial War Museum in London showing the area behind German lines in late-July 1916. A series of excavations on the edge of Bois Faisan (Pheasant Wood) showed up clearly so he now felt he had enough evidence pinpointing the location of the long-forgotten burial pits. Although the response from the Australian government was very lukewarm, Lambis persisted.

CHRIS MUNRO

As we have seen, several hundred of the Australian unidentified dead had been buried at VC Corner but when set against the casualty list of the 5th Division, there was still a huge discrepancy. Although it took an army of researchers, historians, archaeologists, scientists and the cooperation of three nations to lay to rest 250 of the missing, they would still be buried in graves lost to history had it not been for one man: Lambis Englezos. Following his first visit to Fromelles for the 80th anniversary, the schoolteacher from Melbourne became more and more convinced that something must be done to find the missing from the battle. As time went on it became an obsession and, even when he was faced with skepticism from the Australian authorities, he pressed on, becoming a national figure who was not prepared to be fobbed off. He gained the support of hundreds of the families who had lost loved ones and after six years his dogged persistance paid off when the Australian Army finally authorised inspection of the site in front of Pheasant Wood (right).

Dr Tony Pollard and his team from the Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD), were commissioned to carry out a ‘non-invasive’ inspection of the area using metal detectors, ground-penetrating radar, magnetometer and gradiometer equipment. Here they are pictured beginning the investigation in May 2007. At the same time, the Australian Army History Unit asked Peter Barton, the Co-Secretary of the British All Party Parliamentary War Graves and Battlefields Heritage Group, to carry out research in the Bavarian military records in the state archive in Munich where the burial order by Oberst von Braun (see page 9) was found. This not only gave added ammunition for the approval of the excavation but backed up the photographic evidence that Lambis had discovered. 15

16

GUARD

This evidence, and the discovery of a copy of the 1916 German burial report in Munich archives, was enough proof for the Australians to ask GUARD to carry out a further detailed inspection. In May 2008, Dr Tony Pollard again led the team which dug trial test pits to prove the existence of human remains.

COURSE OF RAILWAY

The test excavations shown on this schematic drawing exposed a total of 48 sets of remains spread over Pits 1 to 5. Although no remains were removed from the pits, this is an example of the detailed report prepared on each man: ‘Body BP23 lies over BP19. This body is prone and aligned north-south at the eastern side of the pit. The right arm runs under the unexcavated east section of the grave fill. The skull and the left thorax are both severely disrupted. The vertebrae are not in complete alignment or full articulation which may mean that this individual had sustained peri-mortem trauma to this region, and/or that the body was also sufficiently decomposed at the time of burial for these skeletal elements to be found out of alignment. The body from the pelvis downwards to the feet remains — due to its position — unexposed. Trouser brace straps remain on left ribs (SF182). SF177 is a groundsheet that lies to the north of B19 and B23 and its position suggested to the excavator that this groundsheet was used to deposit these two individuals together into the grave pit.’

GUARD

Using metal detectors, much battlefield debris came to light including items of Australian origin and it was at this point that the military archives in Munich came up trumps. Lambis was overjoyed to find that they had discovered a document that turned out to be a copy of Oberst von Braun’s order for the burial of the dead. With this contemporaneous evidence giving the precise location, the authorities could now no longer ignore the clamour for action. As the next stage would be to excavate the area, permission was sought from the landowner, Mme Marie-Paule Demassiet. She was very sympathetic as she had lost two family members in the Great War. She said that she had received many offers in the past to purchase the field but she turned them all down. ‘Now I understand — the soldiers were making me keep it’. Her husband Pierre added that ‘the land always refused to grow anything, just grass’. Having been asked to initially survey the site, the team from Glasgow University now had to determine the condition of the human remains. This work began on May 23, 2008 and Lambis was there on the first day. ‘The topsoil had been removed and the edges of the pit had been exposed. There was a distinct variation in the colour of the clay. The edges of the pit were clearly defined; there was an almost pencil-line straightness to the edges. The pits had not been disturbed; they were intact. ‘When I arrived at the site on the third day of the dig, I was told that remains had been found. However, the “official” announcement back home had to be made first. When the team arrived, I received absolute confirmation. The police arrived to view the remains and to determine that work could proceed. Much to the consternation of the mayor, one of the local dogs also followed them in! ‘I saw the first remains uncovered. An arm emerged from the clay — his hand had been blown off. The human tragedy and nature of the work to follow became more tangible.’ With the trial dig having established both the precise extent of the area to be excavated, and proved beyond doubt the existence of human remains, plans were now made for a full-scale operation to excavate the German burial pits. Tenders were invited for the operation and Oxford Archaelogy were commissioned to carry out the exhumations which began on May 5, 2009. This work continued throughout the summer as it took roughly a week to carefully uncover each set of remains, examine them anthropologically and take X-rays, with a further day spent recording all the data.

AWM DA 11372

GUARD

The metal detector survey uncovered these two so-called ‘sweetheart’ medalions, one being identified from the Shire of Alberton. Only one of the missing Diggers was listed as coming from that particular district of Victoria: Private Henry Willis (right) of D Company, 31st Battalion. The family always believed that he had forged his mother’s signature on his enlistment as he was still under age when he joined up.

CWGC

CWGC

The tender to carry out the actual exhumations was won by Oxford Archaelogy. A team of 30 specialists was assembled and a compound established close to the burial site which included a mortuary facility. The whole area was fenced off with 24-hour security. Excavation began on May 5, 2009 starting with reopening the GUARD pits. Using traditional

archaeological tools such as hand trowels, each set of remains took up to a week to recover and document. Some 6,500 items of kit and personal possesions were uncovered including Bibles and French/English phrase books. After 17 weeks, 247 individuals had been recovered from Pits 1-5 with just three men found in Pit 6, a total of 250. There were no remains in Pits 7 and 8.

As it had already been decided that every effort would be made to identify each individual, the names of all those missing were publicised in advance, calling for relatives to come forward to donate a sample of DNA. LGC Forensics of Runcorn, Cheshire, was then brought in to carry out the matches. In the end, with the additional help from the discovery of personal possessions, nearly a 100 soldiers were finally identified. While exhumations were continuing, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission had already begun to construct the new cemetery in the village as ground conditions and poor access ruled out the site where the soldiers had been buried. The first interments took place on a bitterly cold day in February 2010, the last man being laid to rest during the actual dedication ceremony held on the anniversary in July.

CWGC

CWGC

Now, with the certainty of human remains being recovered, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission moved ahead with plans for a new cemetery to be located within Fromelles village, the first to be constructed under their charter for 50 years.

Even before the cemetery was completed, on a bitterly cold day in February 2010, the first 21 men were laid to rest 17

Germans had laid Private Eric Wilson (left) and his brother Private Samuel Wilson (centre) of the 53rd Battalion side by side in the burial pit. Right: A younger brother, James, was wounded by a gunshot to the neck. He returned to the family in Port Macquarie, New South Wales, in January 1919.

Initially it was thought that upwards of 400 men might be found, so the cemetery had to be designed accordingly. In the end, 250 bodies were recovered of whom 94 were identified by name. The Commission had already decided that when the bodies were reburied, they would still lie in the same order that they had been found in the mass grave. So today the Wilson brothers lie beside each other in Graves 1 and 2 of Row E in Plot 2 (above). Then, with the preparations well in hand for the

dedication ceremony to be held on the 94th anniversary of the battle (and also by chance the anniversary of the ‘Peace Day’ Victory Parade held in London in 1919), an announcement was made in Canberra that two more individuals had been identified: Lieutenant-Colonel Ignatius Norris (whom we met on page 10), and Private Harold Pitt. However, work will still continue for at least another four years to try to identify more of the unidentified. If so, the headstones will be changed.

ATB

Research had already revealed that 24 sets of brothers had been killed at Fromelles: three from the 8th Brigade; six from the 14th Brigade and 15 from the 15th Brigade which also lost a father and son, Private Edward Mason, aged 45, and his 25-year-old son James. Whether by accident or design, the

18

In August 1915, a cornet was presented to the 31st Battalion at Enoggera Army Barracks in Brisbane. It was not new as it had been made in 1911 but it must have meant a lot to the person who gave it as it was engraved: ‘Solbron (Registered) Class A Trademark BOOSEY Light Valve Boosey & Co, Makers, London 90735, Guaranteed British Made Throughout. Presented to 31st Battalion A.I.F. by Mr. A. J. Cotton, “Hidden Vale”, Grandchester, August, 1915’. One presumes that the battalion would have taken it to France but what happened to it after the war is somewhat of a mystery until Peter Nelson, a member of the Families and Friends of the First Australian Imperial Force saw it advertised, of all places, on eBay! When he received it, the instrument needed repairing, so he placed it with the specialist firm of Legato in Melbourne who replaced two valves and mended a tear in one of the tubes. However they left untouched enough of the dents and wear and tear to maintain the feeling of its momentous journey as it was returned to Fromelles in 2010 to sound the Last Post at each of the burial ceremonies. Monday, July 19, 2010. As the funeral procession made its way from Pheasant Wood, at the cemetery relatives of many of the dead read extracts from the diaries and letters of loved ones who had lost their lives in 1916. The last letter from Corporal Frank Steed (left) to his wife Alice and daughter Jean was read out by his great-grandson Toby (right): ‘Dear wife and girlie. You are both very much in my thoughts lately. Perhaps this will be the last chance for a while I’ll have of writing to you so I would like to say a few things in case I get put out of action for a while. I know what the cost is to you, and how deeply you will feel, but remember we are not — and never will be — separated. We may be perhaps out of sight of one another but our spirits will always be together. And I want you to always think that, and bring up our darling to think the same. I don’t want you to point me out to her as an angel without wings — you know me better than that — but try to point out to her that I was only one of thousands who are prepared to do their duty at all costs. And if I have had to pay the great sacrifice, while my heart aches for you both, I will have done so willingly, knowing that it is only for a while and that the night will end’. 19

ATB

ATB

With all roads to Fromelles sealed off, the last soldier, still unidentified, was ceremoniously carried by the King’s Troop,

HRH The Prince of Wales and Her Excellency, the Governor-General of Australia Quentin Bryce, together with Chief of the General Staff General Sir David Richards and Lieutenant-General Ken Gillespie, Australian Chief of Army. The dedication of the new Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery (designed by the Commission’s architect Barry Edwards and the first new cemetery to be constructed under their charter for 50 years), marked the end of a lengthy project to give all those found in the mass graves a fitting and final resting place. Each serviceman has now been given an individual burial, as they would have had they been found during the post-war battlefield searches. The 96 individuals that have been identified have named headstones, and

where it has not been possible to identify the individual by name, if the army in which they served could be determined, those details have been inscribed on their headstone. If no identity or army could be confirmed, the inscription reads: ‘A soldier of the Great War. Known unto God’. Care was taken to ensure that men who lay side by side for over 90 years in the Pheasant Wood graves, still lie side by side in their final resting place. The service was attended by over 4,000 at least a thousand of whom were believed to be direct descendants of the missing men. Many other Australians had made the long pilgrimage in order to pay their respects to their countrymen and hundreds of French people joined them to honour these brave men that have long been a part of their history.

ATB

Ninety-four years to the day of that fateful battle, the small village of Fromelles was once again to experience a noticeable military presence. This time it was the combination of Australian, British and French forces all joining together in a moving service laying to rest the last of the 250 soldiers discovered in the mass graves at Pheasant Wood. The coffin of the final soldier was carried from the original location of the graves on a First World War Mk X General Service Wagon pulled by the horses of the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery. Led by soldiers from the Australian and British Armies marching as part of the cortège, it passed through the village to the salute of members of the French gendarmerie lining the streets. The procession was joined at the Mairie by

Royal Horse Artillery, on a First World War wagon through the village to his final resting place.

The coffin was escorted by members of the 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, 4th Battalion The Rifles, and a Corps of Drums from the British Army, together with Australia’s Federation Guard. And in a strange twist of fate, the cortège marched directly in Hitler’s footsteps (see page 13) 20

along the Route de Verdun to the Mairie. There it was joined by HRH The Prince of Wales; the Australian Governor-General Ms Quentin Bryce; the Chief of the General Staff of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, and the Australian Chief of Army, Lieutenant-General Ken Gillespie.

ATB ATB

ATB

ATB

In her address, the Governor-General singled out Lambis for special praise which was met by spontaneous applause from the thousands gathered at the ceremony. Afterwards Ms Bryce embraced him saying: ‘We are so grateful to you. Thank you. Thank you. I say that for all Australians’.

ATB

Lambis Englezos: ‘To be here now in this defined and blessed space, and having the families make their pilgrimage, is really what it’s all about. It is wonderful to be here and see the last of the Pheasant Wood boys reunited and, they will lie together in dignity’.

21

The adaptation of John Hersey’s best-selling novel for the screen in 1961 involved a number of problems for the Columbia Pictures team, not least of which was the ferrying of three B-17 Flying Fortresses from the USA to England. That this was successfully achieved and that the old aircraft were made to look very much like their wartime counterparts was to the credit of Film Aviation Services, which also handled the flying sequences. The result was a movie that broadly captured the conditions faced by American crews based on barely adequate UK airfields; the punishing opposition from the enemy during the early unescorted daylight raids of 1943, and also touched upon the rarely highlighted subject of psychological disturbance among flying personnel.

THE WAR LOVER Stars were Steve McQueen as the captain of a Flying Fortress named The Body with Robert Wagner as his co-pilot. The female interest was provided by Shirley Anne Field as Daphne, the girlfriend of both men, who spent most of the picture fighting her fascination for the brash Buzz Rickson (McQueen) while falling in love with Ed Bolland (Wagner).

Left: John Hersey, writer, editor, war correspondent and author of the novel on which The War Lover is based, was born in China in 1914, but his family relocated to the United States in 1924. In 1936 he studied at Clare College, Cambridge, which no doubt prompted him to include the city in the book which was published in 1959. Columbia Pictures bought the film rights and the movie was released in 1961. 22

By Jerry Scutts Despite the romantic entanglements, the overall effect of The War Lover was far from corny; the use of black and white film gave it a harsh quality and the cinemagoer was left in no doubt that flying heavy bombers from wartime England was no picnic.

Right: Two American stars were contracted to play the parts of Captain Buzz Marrow (changed to Buzz Rickson in the film) and Charles Boman whose film name was Ed Bolland. Steve McQueen and Robert Wagner were joined by the British actress Shirley Anne Field as Daphne, seen here with the director Philip Leacock, a veteran of the Army Cinematographic Service during the war.

ROGER FREEMAN ARCHIVE

Apart from The War Lover, the airfield featured in 633 Squadron in 1964 and the later sequel Mosquito Squadron. Bovingdon closed in 1972 and the technical site was later demolished for the building of the young offenders’ Category C Mount Prison in 1987.

ATB

Most of the movie flying scenes were centred on Manston in Kent and Bovingdon in Hertfordshire which had been an Eighth Air Force base during the war. As a war correspondent, John Hersey spent time at a number of B-17 bases, and the ficticious airfield in the book suggests that he was thinking of Bassingbourn in Cambridgeshire. Headed by John Crewdson, the pilots of Film Aviation Services flew the old bombers like veterans and anyone who witnessed the low-level beat up of Bovingdon when Rickson’s B-17 returns from an abortive mission will recall it as one of the highlights of film flying. John Crewdson’s organisation was also responsible for the provision of the aircraft equipment. Naturally many items were lacking when the civilianised bombers were located and turrets, machine guns and so forth had to be tracked down, although some of the guns were simply realistically-painted wooden dummies. To simulate battle damage, the B-17s had jagged pieces of metal riveted to their skins. (Captain Crewdson with over 9,000 hours to his credit, of which 3,500 were on the Alouette helicopter, was killed off the Norfolk coast on June 26, 1983. The crash of G-AWAP took place over a group of seals on Gat Sand on the Wash. The primary cause of the accident was disengagement of the main rotor retention bolt.)

Group, became a Combat Crew Replacement Centre. In this role, most combat crews arriving in the United Kingdom received theatre indoctrination at the airfield before it became the base for the European Air Transport Service. Above: September 1942 — a B-17, serial 41-9154, takes off from the main runway.

R. W. CRANHAM

Although Columbia may have used a post-war Jeep in the publicity shot, at least they made the film at a genuine USAAF airfield in Britain unlike Twentieth Century Fox which chose to make Twelve O’Clock High on airbases in Florida and Alabama in 1949 (see After the Battle No. 20). Bovingdon was USAAF Station 112 and, after a short occupation by the 92nd Bomb

Although the air traffic control block, which features so prominently in the film, is located outside the compound, a huge

30-foot-high mound of earth now obscures both the tower, which is in a sad state of repair, and the prison from view. 23

G. R. MORTIMER

Apart from the actors, the main stars were to be three B-17 Flying Fortresses and Captain John Crewdson’s company, Film Aviation Services Ltd, was contracted to supply them. The company specialised in finding aircraft and crews for movie productions and Crewdson first went to the Middle East where he was told that three ex-Israeli Air Force machines were available. However, when he arrived in Israel he discovered that they had all been scrapped although he was able to acquire the fuselage of 44-83811 which would be suitable for the studio shots. His next port of call was Arizona where Greg Board sold him a nice Fortress, then on the US civil register as N9563Z. This was 44-83563 which had been constructed in 1945. Although it had not seen war service, it was named Fuddy Duddy after the original B17 (42-97400 of the 447th Bomb Group). Fuddy Duddy became The Body in the film and this actual B-17 was claimed to have been used by Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur as VIP transport in the 1950s. (Another nice connection was that Eisenhower’s personal B-17 during the war was located in the No. 1 Hangar at Bovingdon!)

G. R. MORTIMER

Considering that two of the Forts had spent nearly ten years in the open and were near derelict when purchased for the film, their ability to fly the Atlantic after repairs says much for the soundness of the design. The flight from the US to the UK via the Azores included an unscheduled stop at Lisbon as a result of engine trouble and was a story in itself. All three B-17s eventually arrived safely at Gatwick on October 8, 1961 where they made a marked contrast to the Dakotas and Viscounts parked on the apron. Filming began on October 23 and, apart from the English weather, there were other problems facing the camera team, especially the intrusion of other aircraft into the aerial locations. A further difficulty was that standard blank cartridges were not powerful enough to operate the automatic mechanism of the machine guns and they jammed after one round had been fired. This was eventually overcome by fitting metal caps over the gun muzzles which allowed a build-up of gas pressure sufficient to operate them normally.

Board then took Crewdson to Love Field at Dallas where several Navy PB-1s had been lying there since 1957. Two were selected — N5229V, ex-44-83883, and N5232V, formerly 44-83877 — and after Board’s mechanics had made them airworthy, they were flown to his base at Ryan Field near Tucson, Arizona, to be prepared for their trans-Atlantic ferry flight. This in itself was an epic which was later written up by Martin Caidin, one of the co-pilots on Fuddy Duddy, in his book 24

Everything but the Flak. The three B-17s left Ryan Field on September 23, 1961 and arrived in Britain on October 8 after negotiating awful weather, engine breakdowns, and incidents with authorities en route. Here we see the three aircraft: The Body is in the centre with the spurious tail serial 127762 with 127741 on the left and 127749 on the right. However, because the two PB-1Ws were identical, it is difficult to distinguish between N5229V and N5232V.

Unfortunately with the technical site having been redeveloped for the prison, there is no chance of matching these shots.

GOOGLE

ROGER FREEMAN ARCHIVE

CONTROL TOWER

The airfield then and now. Note how the NW-SE runway has almost totally disappeared.

From the briefing . . . to the dispersal. To feature this Willys Jeep of the 1950s period so prominently in the shot was a trav-

esty, reminiscent of the use of a similar vehicle in Patton (see After the Battle No. 7). 25

Captain John Crewdson performed the spectacular low-level beat-up of the Bovingdon tower, flying the B-17 single-handedly. His later exploits included piloting helicopters in several Bond films: From Russia With Love in 1963, On Her Majesty’s

Secret Service in 1969 (as Draco’s pilot left), The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977 and For Your Eyes Only in 1981. Two years later he was killed, together with three passengers, in a helicopter accident while flying over the Norfolk coast in June 1983.

The trio of Fortresses that starred in the film were late production machines that had not seen wartime action. Two, 44-83883 and 44-83877, were B-17Gs which had become, respectively, Bureau of Aeronautics Nos. 77243 and 77240 on delivery to the US Navy as PB-lWs fitted with oversize, under-fuselage radomes. After retirement they became N5229V and N5232V. The third aircraft was B-17G 44-83563 which had been modified for use as a freighter with the civilian registration N9563Z. The hulk of a fourth Fortress, 44-83811, was purchased by Columbia in 1960. This machine had a most interesting history as it was scrapped at Lydda Airport in Israel as NL-5014N after being the longest surviving B-17 of the first Israeli Air Force bomber squadron which raided Cairo on July 14,1948 during the Israeli War of Independence. Anyone who saw The War Lover when it was first released in 1961 would have testified to the ‘feel’ of bomber operations captured through Howard Koch’s screenplay and Philip Leacock’s direction, for not since the 1948 classic Twelve O’Clock High (see After the Battle No. 20) starring Gregory Peck had there been an accurate portrayal on film of the men who flew B-17s in combat.

‘It was perhaps the most exhilarating flying I’ve ever done’ said Crewdson later. ‘For nearly five minutes I beat the hell out of everybody and everything on that airfield. The director said he wanted close-ups of the staff in the control tower reacting to the sight of the B-17 roaring straight at them and then screaming by at a height below the tower — with the wing only 26

inches away. I asked that old girl to give me all she had and she gave it to me in full. I pounded along inches away from the tower and nearly scraped the ball turret off on the runway. Pulling up was out of the question a few times, so I just flew between the hangars. I understood later that several people fainted.’

The War Lover was made in black and white so that wartime combat footage could be merged in, including lifting the crash sequence from Twelve O’Clock High. Paul Mantz (left) had performed the belly-landing single-handedly on May 12, 1949 at Ozark, Alabama, for a fee of $2,500. Mantz had worked on numerous flying films since he first flew a biplane through a hangar in Here Comes the Navy in 1934. He was killed on July 8, 1965 during the making of Flight of the Phoenix.

It was during the filming of the final scene, when the crippled B-17 approaches the white cliffs and McQueen orders the crew to bale out, that Robert Wagner’s stunt double was killed. Mike Reilly (right) was the British Parachuting Association chairman with four international championships to his credit but it appears that he became caught in his harness once he touched down in the sea. Although the RAF rescue launch on standby reached him within a minute, Mike was already unconscious and could not be revived.

TIMOTHY COX

John Hersey’s book is a very readable account of an imaginary Eighth Air Force bomber unit in England, chapters alternating between background narrative and the final mission flown by The Body and her crew when the aircraft and the mentally disturbed Marrow are finally destroyed. Marrow is the surname of the B-17 captain in the book, although for some reason this was changed to Rickson for the film, as was the name of the co-pilot, Charles Boman becoming Ed Bolland in the screen version of the story.

Sadly, with the number of wartime aircraft available for movie flying dwindling over the years, the making of The War Lover meant the loss of two B-17s. Both N5229V and N5232V were destined not to return to the US and were broken up in England after filming, supposedly due to heavy customs duty. However, the ex-freighter did fly again for the cameras when, painted as an early model B-17E, N9563Z made a spectacular crashlanding in Tora! Tora! Tora! (see After the

Battle No. 53), the multi-million dollar recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbor. By today’s standards, later films like the remake of The Memphis Belle (see After the Battle No. 69) have raised the bar so much that The War Lover now looks rather dated. And, as far as the flying and combat sequences are concerned, some people might consider that poor use was made of the aircraft, bearing in mind that Columbia went to so much trouble and expense to bring them to Britain. When filming was completed, the two Navy machines were scrapped at RAF Manston, from where the sequences over the English Channel had been flown. Meanwhile The Body was returned to the United States. Greg Board then piloted the plane from his base at Tucson on an 8,500-mile tour of 35 cities to promote the film. Having later been used as a camera ship on Dr Strangelove, The Body was sold to Aviation Specialities of Phoenix, Arizona, in February 1963 and she appeared in Tora! Tora! Tora! in 1967. She was sold for $250,000 to the National Warplane Museum at Geneseo, New York, in 1985 whereupon the B-17 reverted to the colour scheme of the 447th Bomb Group Fuddy Duddy. 27

In issue 90, we recounted the story — albeit briefly — concerning the massacre of the Italian garrison on the island of Cephalonia in 1943. Although the death toll was second only to the killing of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviets in the Katyn forest (see After the Battle No. 92), only the commander of the XXII. Gebirgs-Armeekorps, General Hubert Lanz, was ever brought to trial. After the war, the Italian authorities were very lukewarm in following up the massacre in spite of the details of the atrocity having been published in Italy in 1946, and even a memorial was not unveiled on Cephalonia until 1980. Although the German police made some enquiries in the 1960s, sufficient evidence was not forthcoming against any individual as basically there was no real motivation in Germany at that time to revisit the past. In May 2009, Gail Parker visited the island and, being fluent in Greek, was able to interview local historian Dionissies Arvanitakis, who has extensively researched the massacre. The Greek island of Cephalonia is only 200 miles from the Italian coast at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth. On September 8, 1943 — the day Italy’s surrender to the Allies was announced and Italy changed sides in the war — the Italian Acqui Division which was the garrison on the island greatly outnumbered the Germans, but the island is so close to the mainland of Greece that the Germans were in a position to send massive reinforcements quickly while the nearby aerodromes on the mainland gave Germany air superiority. On Cephalonia the Germans committed a crime against humanity by massacring all the large Italian garrison when they surrendered after hard fighting. Only the military chaplains were spared, and if it were not for them it would be impossible to piece together the horrific story. On September 9, the first day after the Italian Armistice, the German and Italian units remained in their positions amid a cold silence, although some German soldiers had joined in when the Italian soldiers rejoiced at the news of the Armistice that they thought was the end of the war for them. At eight in the evening Lieutenant-General Antonio Gandin commanding the Acqui Division received the order from his Italian superior General Carlo Vecchiarelli in Athens that his troops were to ‘cede’ all their weapons, including artillery, to the Germans, and would in due course be sent back to Italy by sea.

RETURN TO CEPHALONIA General Gandin was amazed by this order because it contradicted the order sent by the Italian War Office from Rome during the preceding night to treat the Germans as ‘enemies’. He cabled to Athens that he rejected it because it contradicted the spirit and facts of

Although the 2001 film Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, based on the best-selling novel of the same name written by Louis de Bernières and published in 1993, aroused interest in the war in Cephalonia, unfortunately it failed to portray the enormity of the crime, the execution scenes in the movie (top and above) showing just a couple of dozen soldiers being shot instead of upwards of 3,300 in over 25 different locations. Nevertheless, the publicity prompted the German authorities to re-open the investigation into one par28

By Richard Lamb the Anglo-American Armistice (also it was partly indecipherable). In vain Gandin tried to contact the Italian War Office (which was

ticular officer’s direct involvement in the execution of General Antonio Gandin, the commander of the Italian 33rd Acqui Division. However the former German lieutenant, Ottmar Mühlhauser, then 88 years old, claimed that he was only doing his duty as the Italians were considered traitors. In the end, Mühlhauser’s death in July 2009 brought that line of investigation to a close although more recently two other elderly German pensioners have come under suspicion.

During the last 500 years, Cephalonia has had a variety of masters: Venetian (1500-1797); French and Russian (17971809); and British from 1809 to 1864 at which point the island was unified with Greece. On October 28, 1940, Mussolini attempted to flex his muscles by demanding the right to occupy certain strategic positions within the country but his subsequent attack was routed by the Greek Army in three weeks. However the tables were turned five months later when Axis forces invaded Greece and Yugoslavia in April 1941. Within three weeks, the Greeks had surrendered and the 50,000-strong British force was pulled out after having lost 12,000 men killed or captured. On April 30, Italian paratroops landed on Cephalonia which was then occupied by the 33rd Acqui Division commanded by General Antonio Gandin.

CEPHALONIA

ITALIAN 33rd ACQUI MOUNTAIN INFANTRY DIVISION ON CEPHALONIA 17th ‘Acqui’ Infantry Regiment 317th Infantry Regiment 33rd Artillery Regiment 101st Machine Gun Battalion (2nd and 4th Companies) 27th CCNN Legion (Blackshirts) 18th CCNN Battalion (Blackshirts)

33rd Mortar Battalion 33rd Signal Company 31st Pioneer Company 3rd Medical Section 4th Supply Section 9th Field Bakery 7th Carabinieri Section

The division’s third regiment, the 18th Acqui Infantry Regiment, and part of the 33rd Artillery Regiment were stationed on Corfu. General Gandin (left) had a force of 11,500 men and 525 officers on Cephalonia. For two years, the island became a backwater as the war raged in North Africa but when Sicily was invaded by the Allies in July 1943, Mussolini’s days were numbered. On July 19, Mussolini met Hitler on the Austrian-Italian border but he failed to warn the Führer that Italy was in no fit state to continue the war. The Gerarchi — the senior officials of the Italian Fascist Party — were not pleased and they demanded that Mussolini summon a meeting of the Grand Council. At the so-called ‘Night of the Fascist Grand Council’ (see After the Battle No. 77), a motion was passed calling for the King, Victor Emmanuel III, to dismiss Il Duce. He was arrested on the evening of July 25 (although later rescued by German commandos — see After the Battle No. 22) and Marshal Pietro Badoglio installed as Prime Minister. en route to Brindisi from Rome), and Italian headquarters on the other Greek islands. A number of his more senior officers felt that it was ‘dishonourable’ to fight against the Germans, until the day before their allies. However, Captain Renzo Apollonio (who was strongly anti-Fascist and anti-German) and others warned Gandin that if the order was given to lay down arms, the bulk of the troops would refuse to obey. Apollonio was in touch with a band of Greek guerrillas and Greek officers, who offered the collaboration of a Greek battalion. On the morning of September 11 the Germans put Gandin on the horns of a

dilemma with an ultimatum: by seven in the evening he must make up his mind. He held a conference of senior officers, and consulted the chaplains. Both advised surrender. General Gandin agreed with them, personally; but meanwhile he had at last succeeded in setting up radio communication with the Italian War Office in its new headquarters in Brindisi; and there had been skirmishes, initiated by the Germans, in which the Italians had suffered casualties. Gandin complained bitterly to the German officer who was negotiating the surrender, Oberstleutnant Hans Barge, commander of Festungs-Grenadier-Regi-

A church parade by the Acqui Division, unfortunately undated, being held in Court House Square in Argostoli, the capital of Cephalonia.

ment 966, the German unit stationed on the island, and as a delaying tactic asked for the negotiations to be carried on in future by a German of at least the rank of General. Then came news that Colonel Luigi Lusignani, in command on the neighbouring island of Corfu, had overcome German attacks and had the island under his complete control. Lusignani also reported that on other islands the Germans were disregarding their promise to repatriate Italian soldiers, sending them instead to internment camps in Germany. Stragglers who arrived in Cephalonia from the nearby island of Santa Maura confirmed this news.

In August 1953, the town suffered a huge earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, which destroyed virtually every building and made over 100,000 people homeless. 29

GERMAN ORDER OF BATTLE ON CEPHALONIA Stationed on the island as occupation force from July 1943: Festungs-Grenadier-Regiment 966 (Oberstleutnant Hans Barge) Festungs-Bataillon 909 (Hauptmann Joachim Hans von Stoephasius) Festungs-Bataillon 910 (Major Otto Nennstiel) 2. Batterie (Oberleutnant Jakob Fauth) of StuG-Abteilung 201 Arriving as reinforcements between September 13-20:

With the fall of Mussolini, the Germans wasted no time in preparing for the inevitable capitulation and Oberstleutnant Hans Barge (above), the commander of Festungs-Grenadier-Regiment 966, arrived on the island with a force 2,000 strong the same month, ready to disarm members of the Italian military. However it was not until August 3 that the first moves were made by the Italians to change sides and, even then, negotiations with the Allies dragged on for another four weeks.

From 1. Gebirgs-Division: III. Bataillon (Major Reinhold Klebe) of Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 98 11. Kompanie (Oberleutnant Sigwart Göller) 12. Kompanie (Oberleutnant Willi Röser) 13. Kompanie (Oberleutnant Martin Hörmann) 14. Kompanie (Oberleutnant Martin Böhm) 15. Kompanie (Oberleutnant Zwack) Gebirgsjager-Bataillon 54 (Major Wilhelm Spindler) 1. Kompanie (Hauptmann Alfred Schröppel) 2. Kompanie (Oberleutnant Werner Burkhard) 3. Kompanie (Oberleutnant Dieter Humann) 4. Kompanie (Oberleutnant Reichel) Gebirgs-Artillerie-Regiment 79 From II. Abteilung: One Zug (platoon) (Leutnant Friedrich Kiessling) of 4. Batterie From III. Abteilung (Major Franz Wagner): 7. Batterie (Oberleutnant Fritz Thoma) 9. Batterie (Oberleutnant Heinz Ziegler) (III./Geb.Regt. 98 and Gebirgs-Bn 54 were formed into a Kampfgruppe under Major Klebe) From 114. Jäger-Division: I. Bataillon (Major Gerhard Hartmann) of Jäger-Regiment 724. The reinforcements were grouped in an Angriffsgruppe (Assault Group) under Major Harald von Hirschfeld (commander of II. Bataillon of Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 98). It is these units — Barge’s regiment and the reinforcements under Hirschfeld — that perpetrated the massacres.

Left: This was the German headquarters in Argostoli — another building totally destroyed by the post-war earthquake (right).

As far as the Italians were concerned, their War Office in Rome had issued conflicting orders. First their troops were to adopt almost a neutral position and not side with either the Greek partisans or the Anglo-Americans. Then on September 8 the Italian military were ordered ‘not to use their arms if the Germans do not offer armed violence’ but two days later ‘to treat 30

the Germans as enemies and fight them with all force available’. Left: Here General Gandin is pictured with LieutenantColonel Ernesto Cessari, the commander of the 17th Infantry Regiment, and Colonel Antonio Briganti, chief of the Ufficio Sanita. Right: The location was shown to Gail Parker by local historian Dionissies Arvanitakis (left).

On September 9, Barge met with General Gandin to negotiate the laying down of arms. That same day the General received an order from his superior, General Carlo Vecchiarelli in Athens, that his troops were now to hand over their weapons and in return they would be repatriated to Italy. General Gandin was perturbed because the instruction clearly conflicted with that of the previous day to treat the Germans as enemies. Consequently he delayed issuing the order pending further confirmation but on the morning of the 11th the Germans issued a deadline: his men must lay down their arms by 7 p.m. that evening. Although the General still adopted delaying tactics, matters escalated on the morning of the 13th when one of his officers ordered the shelling of a German convoy approaching Argostoli, sinking one vessel. On the morning of September 13, two motorised lighters full of armed German troops tried to enter the port of Argostoli. On the orders of Captain Apollonio, without consultation with Gandin, the Italian artillery opened fire and sank one lighter; the other put up the white flag. The artillery, inspired by Apollonio, also opened fire on German positions on the island. Gandin ordered this artillery fire to cease while he reopened negotiations with the Germans. Then a German bearing a flag of truce arrived by sea with a senior Italian air force officer who had gone over to the Fascists. They asked Gandin to leave his division on the island until it could be sent back to Italy,

while Gandin himself was asked to take over the job of Chief-of-Staff with the new Republican Army. Gandin sent messages to all his units that negotiations were in progress with the Germans and a settlement was likely in which the whole division could retain its weapons. The next morning, September 14, General der Gebirgstruppen Hubert Lanz commanding the XXII. Gebirgs-Armeekorps arrived by boat. He sent an angry telephone message to General Gandin that firing at the German lighters was ‘an act of hostility’, and by the hand of Oberstleutnant Barge a signed order that the Acqui were to lay down their arms immediately. By now, after tortuous changes

of mind, Gandin had decided to throw in his lot with Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the new prime minister, and the King, Vittorio Emanuele III. His staff told him that soundings taken among the troops revealed them to be almost 100 per cent in favour of fighting the Germans. And, finally, a written order had arrived by sea from the War Office in Brindisi that the Acqui were to fight the Germans. According to the Italian official history, ‘By now an irresistible hatred of the Germans was growing ever stronger among the soldiers and their impatience had reached a point where it could not be curbed’. Three Italian officers who tried to organise a surrender were shot by their troops.

General Hubert Lanz (left) arrived on Cephalonia on the morning of September 14 in command of the XXII. Gebirgs-Armeekorps. Reinforcements under Major Harald von Hirschfield (below left) came ashore in Aghia Kiriaki Bay (above and below).

31

During the morning of September 14 General Gandin ordered his division to occupy positions from which they could launch an attack on the Germans, and told the Germans that hostilities would begin ‘at 9 a.m. on the 15th’ unless he received ‘a favourable offer’. At that moment came the ominous news from the island of Zante that General Luigi Paderni had laid down his arms and his 400 soldiers had been sent as ‘internees’ to Germany. During the morning of the 15th, German Stukas of Fliegerkorps X from the mainland made frequent bombing raids; they also machine-gunned the Italian positions and dropped propaganda leaflets threatening that any Italians taken prisoner while fighting would never see Italy again. In their initial attacks, the Acqui captured 400 prisoners and the self-propelled guns of the 2. Batterie of StuG-Abteilung 201, but the Stukas were causing serious casualties. German seaborne reinforcements landed in the dark, and bitter fighting continued until the 19th, with the Germans gradually becoming superior in numbers and the Stukas devastating the Italian positions. Gandin asked Brindisi to send air and sea help to prevent the German landings, which were now taking place in daylight. The Italian War Office replied that this was ‘impossible’. Here lies a mystery. On September 9, over 300 Italian warplanes with pilots loyal to the Badoglio regime had landed on the aerodromes of Lecce and Brindisi behind the British Eighth Army lines. The pilots wanted to go into action immediately against the Germans. One Italian air force officer said afterwards to the author: ‘We asked for petrol and ammunition. Instead, we were told to fly our aircraft to Tunis, out of range of the hard-pressed Italian troops on Cephalonia’. Meanwhile, Gandin had sent a motor boat belonging to the Red Cross to Brindisi with details of the situation, requesting immediate help by sea and air, and more ammunition: after three days of fighting his dumps were nearly exhausted whereas plenty of German supplies were coming in by sea.

The same day that General Lanz arrived, an order came from the Italian War Office that the Acqui Division were to oppose the Germans; consequently hostilities began on the 15th. Bitter fighting continued for the next four days by which time German forces had gained the upper hand with the help of Stuka dive-bombers. In spite of General Gandin appealing for assistance and asking for further supplies of ammunition, there was no response, either from Italy or the Allies, and at 11 a.m. on September 22 he was forced to surrender. This is the moment of truth at his headquarters in the Villa Vallianos in Keramies. No Italian ships intervened. Under the terms of the Armistice they had mostly gone to Malta, far from the war zone. If some Italian destroyers had instead been sent to Augusta in Sicily, they could have intervened in Cephalonia. Allied warships were also available, but none were sent. However, on the 19th, 20th and 21st, the Allies allowed Italian fighter planes to make sorties to Cephalonia from Lecce. There were too few of them to have a real effect on the battle, but they shot down one Messerschmitt and machine-gunned German positions. One Italian air force officer told the author at the time that the Allied Command was too

When Gail visited the village of Keramies she was asonished to find the surrender house still standing. Not only had it survived the earthquake but the owners, living in a modern house 32

frightened that the pilots would transfer their allegiance to the Germans to allow strong Italian air intervention over Cephalonia, and the Italian War Office suggestion of an Italian naval force under Admiral Mario Bonetti was turned down for the same reason. Only on the 24th, a few hours after both islands had surrendered, did the Allies consent to seven Italian destroyers going to Cephalonia and Corfu. On September 20, reinforced German troops made a decisive attack supported by relays of Stuka bombers. Gandin’s troops fought until their ammunition was nearly exhausted, and at 11 a.m. on September 22 they put up the white flag.

nearby, had preserved the ruin just as it had been left . . . a unique and moving piece in the jigsaw of the tragedy which was soon to follow.

Meanwhile General Lanz had received orders that all Italian soldiers on Cephalonia were to be shot. Firing squads comprising eight men led by an officer were detailed to carry out the

executions, General Gandin being the first to die here at the Casetta Rossa — the Red House — together with his staff officers.

The XXII. Gebirgs-Armeekorps had received a special Führer order to massacre all the Italian soldiers who had fought on Cephalonia. As the German soldiers entered the positions of the surrendering Italians, they mowed them down with machine guns. General Lanz gave orders that all officers belonging to the Acqui except Fascists, those of German birth, doctors and chaplains, were to be killed. The Acqui troops not shot in cold blood in their positions were marched down to San Teodoro. There they were incarcerated in the ‘Casetta Rossa’ town hall, next to a convent. The first to be shot was General Gandin, followed by all his staff officers. Right: The Red House still stands on the promontory overlooking the Bay of Argostoli.

The bodies were thrown into two nearby pits. One has since been filled in, the other (above) preserved as a memorial. 33

It was only due to the dilligence of Father Romualdo Formato (left) that the true extent of the massacre became known. Above: Here, on October 24, 1948, Father Formato conducts Mass at the spot where the General and his officers were shot. The German orders specified that the Acqui troops were to be shot just outside the town by detachments of eight German soldiers, each under an officer. Staff officers were to be killed singly; others in groups of two or three. Inside the town hall the chaplains administered the last rites, and one, Father Romualdo Formato, has written movingly of three officers who linked arms as they walked out to be executed, saying: ‘We have been companions in life. Let us go together to paradise’. According to the official Italian history, the soil of the island became a carpet of corpses. The Germans specified that the bodies must lie where they would not be seen by other German soldiers or civilians, and were not to be buried. Instead they were to be ‘ballasted’ — put on rafts and sunk in the sea. The Germans compelled 20 Italian sailors to do this, and when they had finished they too were shot to make sure they could not give evidence of this crime to the civilised world. An official report from General Lanz to Heeresgruppe E stated that 5,000 of the Acqui Division who surrendered had been treated in accordance with the Führer’s orders, that is, shot dead. Father Romualdo Formato’s published account (L’Eccidio Cefalonia) details how 4,750 officers and men were shot dead, either at their posts under the white flag on the field of battle, or in San Teodoro.

Out of 12,000 Italian troops on Cephalonia on September 8, 1,250 fell in combat and almost 5,000 were put to death by the Germans after the surrender. These included sailors and nearly 100 medical orderlies with Red Cross armlets. About 4,000 who had surrendered their arms without fighting were imprisoned in a barracks on the island; they received only starvation rations and were subjected to severe hardships. In October they were embarked on three ships destined for Greece, all three of which hit mines and sank as soon as they left port. The Italian prisoners shut up in the holds had no chance; the few who jumped into the sea were machine-gunned by the Germans to prevent them escaping. The sea became a mass of corpses. About 1,000 Italian soldiers who had managed to escape from the Germans after the surrender joined up under Captain Apollonio with the Greek guerrillas.When the British captured the island in November 1944, 1,200 Italian soldiers (some of whom had escaped from other islands), who had fought with the Greek partisans against the Germans, were repatriated together with Captain Apollonio to Bari on British and Italian ships. In Bari, they all volunteered to fight with the Italian Army of Liberation under the Royal flag. A 22-page account of the appalling events on Cephalonia was sent to Mussolini at Salò

(the document is marked ‘Seen by the Duce’). It was written by a Foreign Office official named Segenti who had stayed on the island through the fighting and he described the atrocities in lurid detail. To Mussolini’s eternal shame, he made no protests to the Germans after reading the document on January 14, 1944. Segenti was repatriated by the Germans via Berlin to Rome. His report made it clear that the Germans had no intention of treating the units who had fought against them as prisoners of war, and that after ‘forced marches, whole units were machine-gunned, together with all the divisional staff’. According to him, only 40 officers out of the 500 in the Acqui Division escaped execution, although a few more might have joined the guerrillas or disguised themselves as ordinary soldiers in the internment camps. It is a disgusting tale. The Cephalonia massacre was worse than Katyn (see After the Battle No. 92). General Lanz’s crime was worse than those of his fellow generals Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel, both of whom were sentenced to death and hanged. Lanz was sentenced by the Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to 12 years’ imprisonment, described by the official Italian war historian as ‘a mild sentence’. In 1954 an Italian attempt to have Lanz arraigned before an Italian court came to nothing, the judge ruling that the evidence was insufficient.

Dionissies points out the location of the second burial pit which lies a hundred metres further down the road. 34

Between Benito Mussolini declaring war in June 1940 and the Armistice in September 1943, more than 110,000 of his countrymen had been killed in action. At the beginning of the fighting on Cephalonia, Italian troops on the island numbered some 12,000. Of these 1,250 were killed during the battle and over The reason for Lanz’s light sentence was that the Nuremberg court, deceived by false evidence, did not believe the Cephalonia massacre ever took place. Lanz lied in his evidence to the court, stating that he had refused to obey the Führer’s order to shoot all the Italian soldiers because he had been revolted by it. He claimed the report to Heeresgruppe E that 5,000 soldiers had been executed was a blind to deceive his superiors into believing he had obeyed the Führer. He stated that only a few of Gandin’s officers had been shot with their commander after their guilt had been established by a courtmartial, and that they were those mainly responsible for organising the resistance. He claimed that fewer than a dozen staff officers had been shot, and that the remainder of the Acqui Division had been transported first to Patras and then to Piraeus. Sworn affidavits from Germans who had been with Lanz in September 1943 were produced to corroborate his prevarications; they were from Germans, apparently of extreme respectability and leading impeccable post-war lives including General Peter von Butlar of Hitler’s personal staff, who had been involved in giving the orders for the Rome

3,300 were shot by the Germans in over 25 different locations (marked by crosses on this map) after they had surrendered. Of the remainder, 4,000 men were embarked at Argostoli on three ships for mainland Greece but tragically all of them struck mines and sank soon after leaving the harbour.

Here 37 survivors meet with Father Formato on the tenth anniversary in September 1953. 35

massacre in the Ardeatine caves (see After the Battle No. 52). They all swore the massacre had not taken place. Reading the evidence of Lanz and his defence witnesses reminds one vividly of the old adage that the bigger the lie the more likely it is to be believed. It also pinpoints how dangerous it is for historians to rely on evidence produced at the Nuremberg trials in reaching conclusions. The judges accepted that Lanz had prevented the massacre and that it never took place. As a result Lanz received a lighter sentence than General Lothar Rendulic who had been responsible for executing several hundred Italian officers after bogus courtmartials in Split and Yugoslavia. Rendulic was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment. Although his behaviour in the Balkans did not approach the enormity of Lanz at Cephalonia, devastating evidence of his brutality in Norway was produced at his trial. It remains a mystery why no Italian evidence was produced at this Nuremberg trial. It began in June 1947 and sentences were passed on February 19, 1948. The terms of the Italian Peace Treaty had aroused extreme indignation, and it is possible that the Italian Government refused to co-operate. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which originally consisted of the British, the Americans, the French and the Russians, had been by now superseded by a purely American court. Details of the Cephalonia massacre were already well known in Italy as a result of books and newspaper articles by the chaplains and medical officers who had been spared, and by survivors who had escaped to the hills to join the Greek partisans. Lanz’s defence counsel made great play of the prosecution’s failure to produce any Italian evidence, and claimed that General Gandin had no orders from the War Office in Brindisi to fight, so he and his division were therefore either ‘mutineers or francstireurs’ who had no right to be treated as POWs. It was also stated that a request from Gandin, after what was alleged to be his court-martial, to speak on the telephone to General Jodl (whom he knew) was refused.

Post-war research by Giovanni Giraudi listed the number of officers and men killed at each location: Argostoli 9, Bivio Lardigò-Faraò 3, Capo Munda 44, Davgata 26, Dilinata 23, Dilinata Est 59, Dilinata Nord 63, Faraò 13, Frankata 461, Kardakata 117, Koccolata 3, Kranela 7, Kulumi 156, Kuruklata 306, Kutzuli 300, Lardigò 6, Lurdata 31, Pharsa 350, Phocata 26, Procopata 148, Santa Barbara 36, San Eufemia 15, San Giorgio 36

Kastro 32, San Teodoro 136, Spilea 37, Troianata 631, Valsamata 301 — a total of 3,339. By far the largest killing took place in this stone-walled field at Troianata. (However, Massimo Filippini, the son of Major Federico Filippini who was shot at the Casetta Rossa, claims in his book I Caduti di Cefalonia, Fine di Unmito, that the total killed in combat and those that were executed was 1,647.)

Above: Wreath-laying at the spot where the officers shot at the Red House were temporarily buried. The memorial (below)

stands nearby. After the war the remains of over 3,000 men were transferred to the Italian War Cemetery at Bari.

It is extremely unlikely that anything approaching a court-martial took place, and the defence produced no evidence of it. There was a clash between the defence counsels for Lanz and Generalfeldmarschall Maximilian von Weichs, the Oberbefehlshaber Süd-Ost (Supreme Commander South-East Europe), when it was claimed on behalf of Lanz that he was later considered ‘unreliable’ because of his failure to carry out the Führer’s order for the Cephalonia massacre; von Weichs’s counsel felt this was shifting guilt onto the General. Von Weichs was taken ill during the trial, and the case against him was dropped. All the war crimes trials before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg were unsatisfactory. When the British ran short of money and tired of the proceedings, the USA — the only nation whch could afford to do so — embarked on a further series of trials (including that of Lanz), which they were entitled to do under Control Council Law No. 10, the authority for the original Nuremberg trials. Prosecution standards were even lower than in the earlier cases. For example, Richard von Weizsacker, the West German politician, was arraigned before this Tribunal and sentenced to seven years, even though it was made clear that he was anti-Nazi, and had risked his life to stop the war. His entreaties to the Pope not to intervene over the pogrom against Roman Jews or the Ardeatine cave massacre, which were questionable, were not even raised by the prosecution. Major Harald von Hirschfeld, responsible for implementing the order, was killed in battle at Dukla Pass in Poland in 1945 (see After the Battle No. 139) but General Lanz was brought to trial in an American court in Nuremberg in June 1947. Because no evidence was produced by the Italians, Lanz’s defence was made easier and he flatly denied that any massacre had taken place. He did admit that General Gandin and some of his staff officers had been shot but said that this was only after they had been found guilty of mutiny at a courtmartial. As a result, on February 19, 1948, Lanz was sentenced to 12 years’ only to be released in 1951. He died in 1982. 37

On July 2, 1944, the 1st Special Service Battalion, one of the armoured battalions of the 6th South African Armoured Division, fought a short but sharp engagement outside the village

of Sinalunga in Italy, in which the Sherman commanded by Drum Major Daniel Steenkamp was knocked out. Steenkamp’s tank is the third one in line.

TANK FIGHT AT SINALUNGA In the first week of July 1944, the 6th South African Armoured Division (MajorGeneral W. H. Evered Poole), deployed in Italy as part of the British Eighth Army, and at that time operating on the left flank of British XIII Corps, was participating in the pursuit of the German forces retreating to the River Arno. Having re-grouped its forces west of Lake Trasimeno, Lieutenant-General Sir Sidney Kirkman’s corps resumed its advance on June 30, its objective being Route 73, the lateral highway that runs from Siena to Arezzo. The following day, July 1, moving northwards through the Chiana river valley, the 11th South African Armoured Brigade was rudely checked south of the towns of Sinalunga and Lettolle. The German forces opposing them — troops of the FallschirmPanzer-Division ‘Hermann Göring’ – were reluctant to give ground and had left sturdy rearguards and persistent snipers among farm buildings to check the South Africans’ progress. The next day, July 2, Brigadier Jan Furstenburg of the 11th Armoured Brigade ordered an infantry company from the Witwatersrand Rifles/De La Rey Regiment (detached from the 12th South African Motor Brigade) and B Squadron of the Special Service Battalion, equipped with Sherman tanks, to attack Sinalunga. Approaching from the south, the tank/infantry force moved in to a position where the town could be seen. Lieutenant Jan van Niekerk was commander of A Troop of B Squadron of the Special Service Battalion. He recorded the day’s events in his diary: ‘Four German Tiger tanks were spotted but out of range of the Sherman tanks. The problem that the Shermans encountered was the armour-piercing of the Tiger. The German tanks could penetrate our tanks’ armour up to a distance of 3,000 metres in contrast to our Sherman tanks’ range of 800 to 1,000 metres. The Tigers’ armour plating in the front of the tank was virtually impene38

trable. There came a change in the way we used our weapons. We found that a direct hit with a high-explosive grenade caused damage to their vision, tracks and to the weapons. ‘The artillery with their 5.5-inch guns fired at the Tigers and made them look for cover. B Squadron tried to move forward but the normal two-in-front formation was not possible to execute. There was a ridge that lay in front of Sinalunga. The only way for our tanks to get on top of it was from the sides. The terraces that obstructed the tank movement were about five foot high. To come into

By André Steenkamp a firing position it was found necessary to get to the point where the terrace ended and then turn to get to the higher ground. That meant danger for the crew of the tank as the armoured plating was at its the thinnest on the side of our tanks, and it would be facing directly towards the enemy. A hit from the enemy would spell disaster. The topography was such that the canons’ trajectory would not be able to hit a target on the low ground in front of Sinalunga.

SINALUNGA

Sinalunga lies some 150 kilometres north of Rome, on the road leading from Lake Trasimeno to Arezzo on the Arno river.

‘Major Edwin ‘Tubby’ Fordred, B Squadron’s commander, asked me to meet him at his tank to discuss how to get our tanks in a position to attack the Tigers. As I got out of the turret of my tank I heard an 88mm shell hurtling towards my position. I dived for cover and a piece of shrapnel hit my webbing, luckily not penetrating; another piece hit my buttocks leaving a huge bruise. I was very fortunate to escape serious injury. The driver of my tank, Corporal Paul Marx, was also struck by a piece of shrapnel that tore through his webbing belt, also leaving him with a bruise on his stomach. ‘The Tiger tanks were again spotted and No. 2 Troop was ordered by Major Fordred to attack them. To do that it would be necessary to get to the top terrace where a farmhouse was standing. ‘Tank 2A, commanded by Drum Major Daniel ‘Stoney’ Steenkamp, succeeded in getting to the top of the terrace. My tank followed and the Corporal’s tank was also trying to get to the top. It cost a lot of manoeuvring to get past the terraces. The Germans saw our movement and a few Spandaus started firing at us. A sergeant from the Wits/De La Rey Regiment returned the fire with a Bren gun and wiped out five Spandau machine-gun nests. I hear that he received the Military Medal. ‘Let me say something about the crew of tank 2A. The tanks of B Squadron had a square as a tactical marking on the sides of the tank turret for recognition purposes. The square was about 18 inch in diameter and was painted blue with a white edge of two inch and the troop number and tank letter were written in yellow, in this case 2A. (Just by the way, A Squadron was marked with a triangle, C Squadron with a circle and Regimental HQ with a diamond.) ‘The crew’s radio operator, Trooper Jurgens Swart, better known as ‘Blackie’, came to see me this morning complaining about the markings on our tanks that made such a great target for the enemy tanks, especially when seen from the side. We had a long discussion and I tried to put his mind at rest, but I could still see in his eyes that he was worried.

CLAUDIO BISCARINI

Right: Steenkamp’s Sherman was hit and brewed up as it tried to climb terraces on the hill outside the village in order to reach a better vantage point. One man, Trooper Jurgens Swart, died inside the blazing tank, the other four managed to escape, albeit all with grievous burns from which one crew member, Corporal Cornelius Schoeler, died three days later.

The same spot today, found and photographed by Claudio Biscarini, an ardent student of the operations of the 6th South African Armoured Division in Italy.

Right: A close-up of the burned-out tank, showing the damage from the impact. By the time this photo was taken, the tank had been stripped of its running gear. The 1st Special Service Battalion had an interesting history. It had originally been set up on May 1, 1933, during the years of economic depression, with the object of training youths between the age of 17 and 23 who could find no job after leaving school. As such it had provided hundreds of South African boys with employment in the civil service, South African railways and Permanent Force. After the outbreak of war in September 1939, it served to fill up army units requiring immediate reinforcement. In August 1941, the unit formed an infantry battalion, which was converted into an armoured car unit in 1942 and later to a tank battalion equipped with Sherman tanks. It became part of the 11th South African Armoured Brigade in February 1943 and two months later sailed with the 6th South African Armoured Division for Egypt, crossing over to Italy in April 1944. 39

In November 1944, having recovered from his burns after spending 108 days in the 92nd British Hospital in Naples, Major Steenkamp rejoined his unit on the Gothic Line in northern Italy. With the armour bogged down in the bad winter weather, his unit was for a time deployed as infantry but when

40

Corporal Schoeler, gravely burnt in the face, neck, hands, back, buttocks and legs succumbed to his wounds three days later, July 5. Drum Major Steenkamp, with burn wounds to face, neck, hands, arms and chest, spent 108 days in the British 92nd General Hospital in Naples. Trooper Meintjies, who had suffered burn wounds to face, neck, hands and legs and in addition had shrapnel in his buttocks, spent 90 days in the 106th (South African) General Hospital. Trooper Watson had burn wounds to his face, hands, arms, chest, shrapnel wounds and a bullet wound in his calf. He spent 188 days at the British 92nd General Hospital, the 102nd (South African) General Hospital in Bari

and the 110th General Hospital at Voortrekkerhoogte in South Africa. Questioned by his doctor on July 7, five days after the action, Watson gave a description of what he had gone through. The Medical Officer noted down: ‘Tells coherent story. Was in flaming Sherman about 30 seconds. Had collapsed and given up the struggle to get out (during which he tore off his overalls) when he saw escape hatch was open. Then ran about 1.5 miles under intermittent MG fire. At that stage did not feel much pain. Ran strongly and felt “done in” at very end.‘ Watson was discharged as unfit for military service on January 31, 1945.

CLAUDIO BISCARINI

‘With the last movements of tank 2A getting to the top of the terrace it still was not possible for it to fire at the tanks that were spotted at 2,000 metres because of the trajectory. ‘As 2A tried again to get in a better position it again showed its side to the enemy. At 1430 hours a Tiger hit 2A with an armourpiercing shell exactly in the middle of the square marking. The radio operator, Blackie, was sitting with his back to the square and his great fear came true. He was decapitated and his body was burnt to cinders in the tank. Two more shells struck the Sherman. ‘Because of artillery fire by the Germans, the hatch in the turret was closed and with the impact of the armour-piercing shell it jammed. The tank burst into flames and some of the ammunition started exploding inside. Steenkamp and Trooper Douglas Meintjies tried to get the hatch open and, after what felt like an hour, they managed it. Three of them — Steenkamp, Meintjies and Trooper Alan Watson — managed to bale out of the tank, but Corporal Cornelius Schoeler’s webbing got stuck and when he managed to free himself he sustained horrific burn wounds. ‘With all this going on, my tank was hit by a high-explosive grenade that put it out of action. We had no injuries besides a few bumps and bruises. The biggest problem we had was that we could not give 2A any fire cover. They hid behind the tank but the intense heat and fear of the tank exploding left them no alternative but to run back to our lines about one and a half miles back. Under intermittent machine-gun fire they ran through a dry mielie field, the spikes scratching their burnt bodies. Watson was shot through his calf. Steenkamp and Meintjies helped carry and pull Watson and Schoeler back to the lines.’ That day, the Germans pulled out of Sinalunga and Lettolle, withdrawing northwards to the Arno in haste, leaving only rearguards to cover the approaches to the next town, Foiano.

the weather improved the tank regiment was re-mobilised and Steenkamp fought the rest of the war as tank commander. Sometime in the spring or summer of 1945 he managed to re-visit Sinalunga and take some pictures of his destroyed tank. Here he poses with a group of local Italians.

Daniel Steenkamp was the Drum Major at the 6th South African Armoured Division’s Victory Parade at the Monza race-track in May 1945. Early in 1946 he was recalled to South Africa to prepare for the forthcoming visit by the Royal Family. He retired from the army in March 1977 and passed away in December 1983. Six decades after the photo (top) was taken, Claudio Biscarini traced one of the boys, Angelo Bursi (above), third from left in the wartime picture, by now a retired farmer.

My parents married on March 21, 1942. This is the entire wedding party outside my mother’s family home in Huntingdon Road, Coventry. Although the major attacks had ended by this time,

people were still concerned about air raids and anti-blast tape can be seen on the windows of the house on the far left. The absence of TV aerials, telephone cables and cars is typical of the period.

COVENTRY BLITZ – NOVEMBER 1940 In 1940 my family lived in Coventry and experienced first-hand the events of the night of November 14/15 when the Luftwaffe targeted the city for a heavy raid of nearly 450 aircraft. Although the RAF had discovered from a POW shot down on November 9 that a large-scale attack against Birmingham and Coventry was to be launched in the forthcoming full moon period, this information conflicted with other intelligence obtained from Enigma decrypts that indicated that London and the South-East were to be the targets (see The Blitz Then and Now, Volume 2). I believe at the time my father, Frederick Stevenson, was away, serving ‘somewhere in England’ in the Royal Artillery; so my mother, Brenda, was living with her parents at 74 Huntingdon Road in the district of Earlsdon, a mile or so from the city centre. My paternal grandparents also lived in Coventry, the family home being 29 Dorset Road in the district of Radford, about a mile to the north of the centre. My grandmother also ran a small grocer’s shop at 17 Bishop Street which was in the central area. As a child I grew up in the early 1950s playing on the many bomb-sites in Coventry — this was part of everyday life for me and my friends. There were still a small number of burned-out houses and the city was full of temporary shops and building sites. All this was ‘routine’ for me — this was ‘my Coventry’ at that time. However, this was not ‘the Coventry’ of my parents’ younger days. My parents did not dwell on the war; there was just an occasional comment such as when I admired a sunset one evening and my mother said: ‘That’s what the sky looked like when Birmingham was burning’, which put the reality of the Blitz into a personal context. My father

also once remarked that nearly all those pupils of his year at school had been killed or injured in the war. In 1940 both my parents were on the threshold of adult life. They had just met at a dance and were to marry in 1942. My mother worked in a draper’s shop in the City Arcade, located, I believe, off Hertford Street in the city centre. Before he was ‘called up’ my father worked at the Armstrong Siddeley aero engine factory at Parkside Works, just a short distance away. On the day before the attack, my mother had just celebrated her 22nd birthday.

By Jeff Stevenson It was only after my parents passed away that I discovered a number of snapshots of Coventry taken during the early part of the war. Had I known of these during their lifetime I would have been able to find out more as to when and how they were taken. Even so the photographs themselves are fascinating. They were probably taken with my mother’s old ‘Ensign’ box camera — a devilishly hard camera to use as it had a prismatic viewfinder that displayed the image back to front.

Huntingdon Road in 2010. The houses might have been re-slated, but the distinctive shape of the roofs on the left provide a clear reference back to March 1942. 41

This was taken from the observation level in the spire of Coventry Cathedral — the most notable ‘building victim’ of the Blitz. It shows the main body and spire of Holy Trinity Church and a view over Broadgate to the then-new Owen Owen

department store. The painted sandbag protection at the front entrance of the store is clearly visible. Almost everything in this view except Holy Trinity Church was completely destroyed in the attack of November 14/15.

Modern safety railings prevent directly comparable views, but this shot taken in November 2009 shows, at the far right, the Owen Owen store (now Primark) that was built during the

post-war reconstruction. At the far left is the Doric arch of the bank that is one of the few city centre buildings to have survived the attack.

42

My parent’s 1940 view was taken to the right of the first and shows Priory Row adjacent to Holy Trinity Church and beyond that the newly-built Trinity Street ‘New Buildings’, the old Coventry Hippodrome Theatre and the central Fire Station (note the tower) to the right. This shot also shows some undeveloped land beyond the ‘Hippodrome’ and on the near side of Trinity Street created by the pre-war demolition of some of the medieval streets that once stood there. The background shows areas of Coventry which were either blitzed, or subsequently demolished after the war. It is also probable that it was my mother who took the photographs. She was quite adventurous as a young woman and had, before the war, taken herself on a trip to Newcastle upon Tyne and photographed the bridges and various ships moored at the quayside. Taking photographs was ‘in her blood’. It is tempting to imagine that these photographs were taken the day before the attack — and record that moment in time immediately before the city was changed forever — although judging from the lack of people and traffic, it is more likely they were taken on a Sunday. I took this view to the right of the photo on the opposite page. It shows on the far left-hand side the rear edge of the Owen Owen building; Holy Trinity Church, Priory Row adjacent to the church and the ‘New Buildings’ buildings in Trinity Street which lead down to the Coventry Transport Museum. The ‘New Buildings’ in Trinity Street were completed just before the war. In the middle distance, in the centre of the photograph, is a large building with five prominent horizontal levels. This is the current Royal Mail sorting office in Bishop Street. The draper’s shop where my mother worked was destroyed in the raid. As a result of this she was ‘directed’ by the Ministry of Labour to the Standard Motor Company. She worked there for the remainder of the war but the experience left her with a lifelong dislike of factories. My paternal grandmother, Maud Stevenson, ran a small general grocer’s shop at 17 Bishop Street from the late 1930s until the mid-1950s. The shop was demolished during post-war development but stood at what is now the junction of Lamb Street and Bishop Street. It was a ten-minute walk from the family home in Dorset Road, Radford.

Like many people during the war, my father’s side of the family kept pigs. The sty was built adjacent to the property next to the grocer’s shop. This photograph shows the pigs reacting to a visitor in a manner very characteristic of pigs — on hind legs demanding attention! The public house in the background fronts onto Bishop Street.

The comparison shows the appearance of the location today with the pig sty long gone. The Old Stag survived the bombing and still retains today the distinctive ‘half-timbered’ upper storey as it did in 1940. The modern Royal Mail Sorting Office, which is visible in the comparison (centre), now dominates the far side of Bishop Street. 43

THE CIVILIAN WAR DEAD ROLL OF HONOUR On the outbreak of war, the authorities in Britain expected that 3,000 persons might be killed and 12,000 wounded on a single night. Consequently plans had to be made to cater for 250,000 casualties and the Ministry of Health was put in charge of the large-scale arrangements needed for the identification and burial of victims and the registration of their graves. Although the casualties never reached the number envisaged, nevertheless peacetime regulations for the certification and registration of civilian deaths through bombing had to be modified. Basically a Mortuary Superintendent was given the power to sign the special form produced for recording civilian war deaths (CWD) providing he was satisfied that the death was as a result of war operations. This was the procedure to be followed as prescribed at the time: (a) On receipt of a body into a mortuary, Part A of form CWD was to be filled in at once and, wherever possible, was to be signed by the officer or other person who had brought the body to the mortuary. The address of the officer or other person was also to be noted on Part A. (b) The next step, after the body had been attended to and prepared for viewing, was to establish identification, if possible. If identity was established either Part B or Part C of the form had to be filled in, and the form, in either case, had to be signed by the Mortuary Superintendent at the foot of the front page. (c) Where identity could not readily be established, Part D of the form had to be filled in and signed by the Mortuary Superintendent. (d) A brief inventory of clothing and effects found on or with the body was in all cases to be entered in the space provided on the back of the form, and had to be signed by the Mortuary Superintendent. (e) When completed as far as possible by the Mortuary Superintendent, all forms were to be sent by him to the Clerk of the Local Authority, who was to arrange to transcribe or extract particulars from them to form a permanent record of all deaths thus reported. Top: Moorfields, the world-famous eye hospital on City Road, London, was struck by a V1 flying bomb on July 29, 1944. Seven people were killed in the hospital itself and another 14 in a surface shelter in Peerless Street. Right: The CWD form was the centerepiece for the recording of civilian war dead in Britain. It gave a mortuary superintendent the power to determine the cause of death without recourse to the normal peacetime procedure of a doctor’s certificate and post-mortems providing there were no suspicious circumstances. 44

The seven patients killed were Alice Adams, aged 76; Harold Blacklock, 59; Pamela Dutch, 16; David Hamilton, 47; Harriet Martin, 58; Richard Salmon, 73, and Florence Westcott, 52. (f) In any case where identity was not established at the mortuary, it was the duty of the Clerk of the Local Authority to take such steps as are possible to secure identification by an examination of the personal effects or otherwise, and to enter in Part C of the form any appropriate particulars he could obtain. In any case where the Mortuary Superintendent had reason to suspect that a death was violent or unnatural, but was not due to war operations, it was his duty to report it to the Coroner and to refuse to allow the body to be removed except with the authority of the Coroner. A note of the precise place of burial of each body buried either by the Local Authority — i.e. where no identification was possible — or by relatives, had to be kept as a permanent record. In September 1940, Sir Fabian Ware, the head of the Imperial War Graves Commission wrote to Prime Minister Winston Churchill: ‘The deliberate slaughter [of civilians by the enemy] is creating a new category of normal war casualties’. He said that the Commission could not ‘omit to commemorate these if the higher purposes inspired their work’, and he asked for approval of the principle that their deaths ‘should be counted an equal sacrifice’. Churchill had no objection although the Minister of Home Security, Herbert Morrison, was opposed to any public display of the list of names until the war had ended as there had already been cases of panic and the less the public knew about air raid losses the better. Once the Commission’s remit had been extended by a supplemental charter, Sir Fabian set about enlisting the co-operation of town mayors. Local authorities were approached to provide lists of all casualties since the outbreak of war which were to be sent to the IWGC at Wooburn House, Wooburn Green, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. The Commission was then to make contact with relatives or friends asking for further details necessary to complete their information. In cases where a local Town Clerk was noted on the Registrar General’s records as being the informant, the Commission relied on the local authority to supply where possible the name and address of the next of kin. Some councils were well organised and were able to supply the Commission with lists of the dead in their borough.

Surface shelters saved many lives but in the case of the Moorfield V1, it must have struck the one at the side of the hospital in Peerless Street. We searched everywhere for a picture of it without success, but this photo is a good illustration of the devastation caused by another flying bomb incident in the same borough.

This is Peerless Street today with the rear of the hospital on the left showing the rebuilt section. 45

However, should a body be claimed by relatives without the intervention of the local authority, as they were quite entitled to do, they then had to comply with normal peacetime procedure of producing a doctor’s certificate to the Registrar of Deaths or otherwise satisfying him as to the cause of death. The CWD form, when issued by the Mortuary and signed by the Town Clerk as evidence of death due to war operations, did not require any further evidence when the informant attended the Registrar’s Office for the purpose of registering the death. A grant of £7.10s (£7.50) was authorised by the government in December 1940 for privately arranged funerals. The Commission was anxious to list separately the names of those Civil Defence workers, including Rescue and Ambulance Services, killed by enemy action as well as regular Fire Brigade and Auxiliary Fire Service deaths. The first typed lists of those killed between the outbreak of war and September 30, 1941 comprising over 42,000 people, about half of whom had died in the London Civil Defence Region, were provisionally entered in three bound volumes, placed in the trust of the Dean of Westminster in December 1942. A further volume, added later, contained a list of the 1,005 civilians killed in Cyprus, East Africa, Gibraltar, Iran, Malta, Nigeria, Palestine and Turkey, and those who had lost their lives at sea. On February 24, 1943, King George VI inspected the bound volumes at Westminster Abbey and work started in September of that year on a Memorial Case to house the complete Roll of Honour on the west wall of St George’s Chapel, close to the tablet commemorating the million dead of the British armed forces of the First World War. In the autumn of 1945 another volume was added containing the names of the further 18,000 civilian war dead killed since the end of September 1941. As late as 1947 it was not possible to foresee when a date would be arrived at to clearly define the end of the Second World War. Men serving in the Commonwealth armed forces were still losing their lives in many parts of the world, or dying of wounds received prior to the cessation of hostilities. Others were being killed in Palestine, or in bomb and mine clearance. Following the precedent established after the First World War, the Imperial War Graves Commission (the name was changed to ‘Commonwealth’ in March 1960) sought a Supplemental Charter for the purpose of commemorating all war deaths, both military and civil, occurring prior to December 31, 1947. Nevertheless, Sir Fabian was dissatisfied with what he felt was an inadequate commemoration for the thousands of civilian dead, but he never lived to see the final printed version, having died in April 1949 before the final version went to press. Mark Dainty’s wife Isabella (aged 65) was also killed in the shelter. They lived nearby at No. 6 Peerless Buildings and had gone there for safety on hearing the warning siren. Eight other residents of the same apartment block were killed: Harriet Bown (aged 51) from No. 19; Georgina Dyer (aged 56) from No. 7; Lucy Harrigan (aged 70) from No. 40; Maud Harrison (aged 58) at No. 9; James Parsons (aged 46) from No. 13 with his 14year-old son James; Bridget Poole (aged 69) from No. 12 and Constance Winter (aged 52) who lived at No. 58. Jane Dowd, 56, and her daughter Julia, 21, were killed in their home at No. 50 Peerless Street; Sophia Parsons, 76, at No. 13 Peerless Buildings and Frederick Wright, 48, and his daughter Mary, 18, at No. 1. They were just some of nearly 30,000 Londoners who lost their lives during the Second World War. 46

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES BY BOMBING AND VARIOUS FORMS OF LONG-RANGE BOMBARDMENT (Source: The Defence of the United Kingdom (Collier) HMSO, Official War History Series) Seriously Killed Injured Total Bombing Flying bombs Rockets Cross-Channel guns

51,509 6,148 2,754 148 ______ 60,595 ______

61,423 17,981 6,523 255 ______ 86,182 ______

112,932 24,165 9,277 403 _______ 146,777 _______

Of these 146,777 casualties, 80,397 (including about nine-tenths of those caused by flying bombs and roughly the same proportion of those caused by rockets) occurred in the London Civil Defence Region, and 66,380 elsewhere. Casualties to service personnel are not included.

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES — MINISTRY OF HOME SECURITY STATISTICS (COMPILED FROM POLICE AND MEDICAL REPORTS) (Source: Civil Defence (O’Brien), HMSO, Official War History Series) KILLED London 3.9.39-6.9.40 257 7.9.40-31.12.40 13,339 1941 6,487 1942 27 1943 542 1944 7,533 1.1.45-9.5.45 1,705 Major-General Sir Fabian Ware was the founding father of the Imperial War Graves Commission, granted a Royal Charter in 1917 for recording and maintaining the graves of the fallen. In January 1941 the Commission also became responsible for compiling a Roll of Honour of all those civilians who had lost their lives through enemy action. After the checking and correction of the temporary wartime lists had been finalised, arrangements were made for the complete record of names to be printed and bound. On February 21, 1956, the Duke of Gloucester, as President of the Imperial War

Northern Ireland

–

Elsewhere 1,441 8,730 13,431 3,209 1,830 942 155

ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL (Mostly Seriously Injured) Total 1,698 22,069 19,918 3,236 2,372 8,475 1,860

London 441 17,937 7,641 52 989 19,611 3,836 –

Elsewhere 1,848 10,303 13,524 4,096 2,461 2,378 387

Total 2,289 28,240 21,165 4,148 3,450 21,989 4,223

967

967

678

678

______

______

______

______

______

______

29,890 ______

30,705 ______

60,595 ______

50,507 ______

35,675 ______

86,182 ______

Note: In addition 150,833 civilians were slightly injured. Graves Commission, handed over the Roll of Honour to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster in the Jerusalem Chamber. One volume, over which a light is kept burning, lies open in the Memorial Case, and every day a single page is turned.

By November 1941, over 18,000 names had been collated and to confirm the particulars about each casualty, a sympathetic personal letter, drafted with the utmost care, was sent by the Commission to the next of kin. Sir Fabian suggested to the Dean of Westminster that the names be inscribed on a Roll of Honour which could be placed in the Warrior’s Chapel in the Abbey near the grave of the Unknown Soldier. This is an extract from the printed version covering the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury which includes the names of Mark and

Further to the computerisation of the records of the Commission for Service deaths which was completed in November 1995 (see After the Battle No. 92, page 38), the database was extended to cover the names on the Civilian War Dead Roll of Honour.

Isabella Dainty. For over 60 years following the end of the war, there was no memorial in London to commemorate the capital’s civilian victims of the Blitz, but now a Memorial Park has been established on Hermitage Wharf in Wapping (see back cover). Over 13,000 people were killed during the first three months of the war following the first attack on London on September 7, 1940. The building which can be seen through the dove memorial now occupies the site of the Dead End Kids headquarters (see page 55). 47

TERRY ECKERT

Representative of the many readers who use After the Battle to guide them on their travels is Terry Eckert from Las Vegas and he likes to spend his holidays touring the battlegrounds of Europe by motorbike and exploring islands of the Pacific War.

He regularly sends us pictures of his findings as in issue 119 where we showed him on top of Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima in 2001. This year he visited Tarawa and inspected the drowned Sherman on Red Beach featured on page 16 of issue 15.

From the Editor . . . This, the 150th issue of After the Battle, is also a jubilee number for me, for it is the 50th issue of the magazine that I have had the honour to sit in the Editor’s chair. It is now 12½ years since I took over the baton from Winston Ramsey and to my mind it is still the most-interesting job imaginable. I have had the privilege to work with numerous authors from all over the world, many of them renowned experts in their field, and to edit a amazingly varied series of war stories, one as fascinating as the other. At the same time I have had the opportunity to research and write my own stories, ranging from the battles for Kharkov (issue 112) and Leningrad (issue 123) in Russia, to that for Le Havre in France (issue 139) and those for Cologne (issue 104), Leipzig (issue 130), Bremen (issue 135) and Geilenkirchen (issue 140) in Germany; from the concentration camps of Nordhausen (issue 101) and Flossenbürg (issue 131) to the Milag-Marlag POW camp at Westertimke (issue 137); from the National D-Day Memorial at Bedford, Virginia, (issue 128) and the National World War II Memorial at Washington, DC, (issue 129), both in the United States, to the story of the Dönitz Government in Flensburg (issue 128) and the arrest of William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, on the German-Danish border (issue 136); from the Polish SOE Training School at Audley End (issue 146) and the crash of an SOE Hudson in the IJsselmeer in the Netherlands (issue 106) to the discovery of HMAS Sydney in the Pacific ocean off Australia (issue 141) — and this is just listing the larger stories. My personal interest in Operation ‘Market-Garden’ and the Battle of Arnhem — solidified in our two-volume book on the subject — was reflected in smaller stories, such as The Odyssey of Private Bachenheimer (issue 117) and The MWO for the Polish Para Brigade (issue 134). An essential ingredient of all this work are the expedi48

tions to all these places and many others — from Saint-Lô to Warsaw and from Vaagso to Florence — in order to take the comparison photos and do research on the spot. I suppose what I am trying to say is that being Editor of After the Battle is the best thing that can happen to a World War II historian. Over the years I have tried to maintain the standard of quality set by Winston in the first 100 issues and we have been careful to uphold the style and format of the magazine. Undoubtedly the biggest change during all this time has been the switch to colour from issue 144. Winston and I brooded a long time over this because we both looked on the Second World War as black and white. However, we decided to follow the progress of time and technology, and putting the comparisons in colour has certainly added a new dimension to the ‘then and now’ theme. To our surprise, we have had remarkably few reactions to the transformation. Most readers who did voice their opinion heartily applauded the innovation although we still had the odd person preferring the good old B&W! As before, our stories attract an exciting array of feedback and follow-ups. In June 2009 we were happily surprised to receive a phone call from the Reverend F. Hugh Magee, who introduced himself as the brother of Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, the author of the famous sonnet High Flight (issue 63). We sent him a copy of the issue with Andy Saunders’ article and Hugh replied by return post: ‘Thank you for sending me a copy of No. 63 of After the Battle. I would like to compliment you and Mr Saunders for this excellent article which contains about the fullest account of John’s writing and flying career that I have seen. ‘There is one small correction I might make. On page 44 it is stated that in 1939 our father “decided to send [John] to America, where he placed him at Avon School”. The

implication here is that the choice of Avon was planned in advance. In reality, this was an expedient necessitated by the outbreak of the war in Europe. John (who was an American citizen) had planned to return to Rugby for his final year but was prevented from doing so by the fact that in the new situation brought about by the war, he was unable to obtain a visa. ‘One might also note in passing the claim made on the same page that: “Comparatively little has been written about John”. In this context your readers might be interested to know of the following books: Sunward I’ve climbed. The Story of John Magee, Poet and Soldier, 1922-1941 by Hermann Hagedorn (New York, 1944); The Complete Works of John Magee, the Pilot Poet by Stephen Garnett (Cheltenham, 1989); Salute to Soldier Poets, also by Stephen Garnett (Cheltenham, 1990) and High Flight: A Story of World War II, an illustrated book for young children by Linda Granfield and Michael Martchenko (New York, 1999).’ Magee’s Spitfire crashed on December 11, 1941, after a collision with an Airspeed Oxford training aircraft over the circuit of RAF Cranwell, then the RAF College Flying Training School. Rod Smith, who was a Pilot Officer and friend of Magee in No. 412 Squadron, sent us a strange sequel to John’s accident that happened about a month later: ‘We were detailed to do another wing formation practice with Kirton in Lindsey. There was an overcast identical to that on the day of John’s accident. As we lined up to take off, Jack Morrison suddenly climbed out of his aircraft, ran over to mine, and told me his receiver/transmitter was not working and that I was to lead the squadron (our two flight commanders being away). ‘We took off, climbed through the overcast, and completed the wing practice. When we returned to within a few miles of Wellingore I saw a single hole in the cloud layer below us, as Phil Archer had done on John’s last flight. I thought the chances of a hole being over the Cranwell circuit again were remote, so I led the squadron down

LEX SCHMIDT

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Lex Schmidt of De Bilt in the Netherlands is member of a group of military vehicle collectors and re-enactors, and on May 26, 2010, he and his friends recreated some pictures of the first British troops entering Belgium on May 10, 1940. Lex has spent ten years restoring two 633cc Norton Big Four sidecar combi-

was told that Hugh considered himself American but that this was known to only a few close friends. Under the 1907 Act of Congress, having an American as his father would automatically give him US nationality. Chris Ransted, who authored the story on the death of Charles Howard, the Earl of Suffolk, (issue 146) pointed out a small error in the caption on page 18. He writes: ‘Fred Hards was buried in a different cemetery to Miss Morden. She was laid to rest in Erith cemetery as you have stated, but Fred Hards’ grave is in Beckenham Cemetery — otherwise all the info as to grave and section number is correct.’ And he added: ‘I’m pleased the team that supported the Earl have their names in print now — they always seemed to me to be overshadowed and never named.’ In our previous ‘From the Editor’ (issue 144) we included a picture of the unveiling in September 2008 of the plaque to commemorate the victims of the SS-Lager Sylt on Alderney. We thereupon received a letter from Luc Vanacker of Koksijde in Belgium, who had been the driving force behind the memorial: ‘A friend of mine, who recently went to Britain, gave me a copy of issue 144. I thank you for giving attention to the inauguration of the plaque, an event that reached the Alderney Press but nothing much beyond. The SS-camp Sylt at Alderney was not only the only Nazi concentration camp

on British soil, it was also the only SS camp where the sea was used as an alternative for gas chamber and crematorium. There has been some discussion about this because Major Theodore Pantcheff, a local historian who led the investigation after the war, as well as a recent German postgraduate thesis by Karola Fings, suggest that only some ‘one hundred’ members of SS-Bau-Brigade 1 did not survive their stay on the island. Testimony of survivors before court in Germany, in memoirs and even of surviving prisoners all say about ‘four hundred’. Some 150 prisoners ill with TB were sent back to Neuengamme to be gassed. The same number must have disappeared in the harbour or in pits on the wet beaches. ‘This case is a sound example of how official documents can falsify history and how important it is to collect the testimonies of the remaining survivors. Thanks to the testimony of Sylwester Kukula, we know that the SS gave the striped uniforms of dead prisoners of Camp Sylt to newcomers from one of the Organisation Todt camps on the island. In this way their numbers remained intact.’ Mr Vanacker has put down his findings in a 31-page brochure titled The Striped at Alderney, available from the author at [email protected] at 5.00 euros (excluding P & P).

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through it in line astern. As we were coming out the bottom of it an Oxford passed underneath it. We were in Cranwell’s northern circuit again. ‘The outer part of the Oxford’s wing hit the wing root of one of our Spitfires at a 90degree angle. The wing of the Oxford was torn right off and an instructor and a student in it were killed. Unbelievably, the wing of the Spitfire held, though it was sliced back cleanly to the mainspar between its engine and its starboard canon. The pilot, Sergeant Charlesworth, was able to land the aircraft on its belly in a farmer’s field fairly close to the one John had crashed in. He was unharmed for which I thank heaven. ‘A few days later the squadron got a letter from Sector Operations telling us to call up and get a radio fix before bringing a squadron down through an overcast, but I don’t think we ever complied. It is a sad truth that for every six airmen killed in action in the war, one was killed in an accident — an ever-rolling stream.’ Chris Reilley, the son of Hugh Reilley who was shot down by the German ace Werner Mölders of JG51 on October 17, 1940, has written to say that his father was Canadian, not American as we stated on page 513 of The Battle of Britain Then and Now as he was born in London, Ontario, not Detroit. The late Wilf Nicoll who wrote that caption

nations and these were used to admirably re-enact the 4th Northumberland Fusiliers, the motorcycle battalion of the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division, passing through the little Belgian village of Herseaux, just north of Roubaix in France (see Blitzkrieg in the West Then and Now, pages 94-95).

The 50th Division had 98 of these outfits but most of these were lost during the ill-fated counter-attack at Arras of May 21. By the time the division reached Dunkirk they had only six

combinations remaining, which were handed over to the French troops that stayed behind. These pictures were taken on Rue du Petit Audenaerde. 49

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‘Saturday, September 7, 1940. I wonder how many people are shaken when that day is mentioned. I wonder about the bereaved who mourn for relatives and friends departed as a result of that day; of the feelings of people torn apart from their friends as a result of that day; of the small homes wiped out mercilessly; of the great buildings hurled to the ground or split asunder. I wonder at the depraved creature who could sanction such happenings and, most wonderful of all, the incredibly short space of time in which these things happened. ‘It was a grand day for air fighting. The sirens had sounded three or four times during the morning. “There goes the siren again, I wonder how many he’s lost so far.” These words describe the attitude of the average Londoner. Came the afternoon and workers put down their tools and went home. Office books were put tidily away and locked up to await the ceaseless routine of the coming week. ‘My own work was in St Andrew’s Hospital in the East End of London. Feeling tired and harassed after the usual hectic Saturday morning, I wended my way homewards to Meath Road during the inevitable raid warning. When I arrived at No. 76 there were the usual odd things to do and five o’clock soon came with the usual tea-time alert. I woke up my father and everyone settled down to tea. ‘“Gunfire!” said father and we hustled mother into the family shelter in the garden but he and I stayed outside to watch the “fun”. A flight of planes appeared. I focussed my very weak binoculars on them and counted 13 flying in perfect wedge formation. Three or four flights appeared and suddenly the sky seemed full of aircraft. White puffs of smoke from the guns burst in and around them, whilst a hopelessly small group of our fighters ceaselessly nipped at the tails of the German armada. They came on, heedless of all defensive measures and I saw at least five of them scream down to earth in trails of smoke and fire. But shrapnel then began falling with its peculiar “whizz” and I hurriedly leapt into the safety of the shelter as a large piece hurtled down quite close to my body. ‘We crouched down, feeling terribly excited and also comforting mother. Suddenly there came the whine of an approaching plane. “Ah, that’s got one of the bastards”, said my father. The whine rose to a 50

groan and this rose to a crescendo of noise. “My God, lie flat!” The noise grew unendurably loud to our tortured ears until it seemed as though the world was going mad. Suddenly there was a terrific crash. An ominous silence followed. For the space of two or three seconds we lay bewildered. Then came a sudden roar and a fierce crackling. I leapt out of the shelter and saw to my horror a burning ‘plane in the next garden but one. ‘There was no time to lose as the wreckage was already burning furiously. I had little realised to what use our much-maligned stirrup-pump would be put. However I was soon mounted on the remains of a garden shed, playing the jet on the fire as if I had been in the London Fire Brigade all my life. My methods of fire-fighting were no doubt rather unorthodox, but by this time many other neighbours had arrived and at least a dozen pumps were belching a dozen streams of water into the heart of the smoking, flaming mass which had once been a proud German fighter plane.

‘The ammunition began to explode with remarkable effects. Spent cartridges began flying in every direction, and other neighbours in shelters actually thought that we were being machine-gunned from the air by the raiders overhead. After a moment of hesitation, it was found that the spent bullets were not particularly dangerous, thus we carried on with the task of putting out the fire. ‘One of the amateur firemen shouted: “Here son!” and I ran over to him to find that sparks had penetrated into the bedroom of the house opposite. In a matter of seconds, all bedding was heaved from the room and several jets directed therein. And now came the AFS men with a monster of a hose, who were soon applying their training in good stead. Although the wartime censor did not permit the location of this photo to be published, it shows aircraft wreckage being cleared after having crashed on an Anderson shelter.

ANDY SAUNDERS ARCHIVE

FREDDIE BURGESS

In 1996 we finally put paid to a 50-year-old mystery as to the identity of the German aircraft which crashed in London’s East End (see After the Battle No. 94). However, it was not until January 2010 that Freddie Burgess wrote to us from Matlock, Derbyshire. Left: In 1940, he was a member of the Local Defence Volunteers and was living at 76 Meath Road (right). During his off-duty hours at St Andrew’s Hospital, Bow, he kept a diary and this is how he described the events of that day — known throughout West Ham as ‘Black Saturday’.

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Flashback to August 1996 when the ATB team unearthed the remains of Leutnant Günther Genske’s Messerschmitt 109 from 1/JG27.

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two houses about 200 yards away had become literally non-existent, ‘I saw three or four shapes like large black pears hurtling through the air on their way to

June 2010 — Freddie returns to the back garden of 75 Ranelagh Road where the Anderson shelter once stood.

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‘I had now time to look around and I saw for the first time that an Anderson shelter had been crushed as the plane had reached the climax of the hell-dive to earth. All helped to loosen the many bolts and at last the steel sides, still very hot from the nearby flames, were laboriously bent back. The combined strength of all five of us was necessary to bend back the shelter. Someone exclaimed: “Can you see anyone in there?” As I looked down I felt really like vomiting for the first time since it all began for the wretched man was standing full on the face of one of the unfortunate occupants of the shelter. He also looked down and, rather shamefacedly, drew an old sack over the face. It was useless to search any further. The force of the impact had heaved the earth and the occupants almost to the roof of the shelter that was itself bent to a width of about three feet. It was my first sight of air raid victims and I felt sick with horror. ‘We were not given long to ponder over the dreadful end of the poor folk whom we knew as neighbours for the fire suddenly leapt into a fierce flash as another of the petrol tanks caught fire. All hands were again busy. My father then suddenly clutched me by the waist and threw me to the ground beside the fire. A screaming sound followed and an explosion which seemed to burst my very eardrums. I looked round amidst the smoke and saw that

complete the tale of horror and destruction. The whistling of the bombs; the drone of the planes above; the screams of frightened women, all contributed to the general uproar. ‘Meanwhile I was absolutely embracing the earth beneath me and my father was so heavy on my back that I thought it would crack. More bombs came but suddenly the day seemed bright again as the raiders passed over the district. My father and I picked ourselves up, dirty but unhurt, and we climbed over the fence back to our own back garden, not saying a single word. ‘Whilst we were persuading mother that we had not been killed or wounded, a warden poked his dusty face into the shelter entrance and shouted: “You’ll have to clear out — time bomb”. Gathering any possessions of value which were at hand we passed through the house into the street and joined the ever-increasing throng of refugees. All round was smoke and noise. Whither were we to go? To the park and off we streamed, most people too bewildered to care about the raid still in progress. ‘I found myself in a public shelter separated from my family. I then found a good gash in my knee which I had not previously noticed. While I was administering first aid to myself, the heavenly sound of the “Raiders Passed” came bellowing through the entrance of the shelter and I stepped outside into the sunlight again.’

There Agnes Rapley, Ada Goldspink and their neighbours from No. 73, Alice and Michael Redman together with their six-year-old daughter Audrey, all lost their lives. Left: We recovered part of the shelter together with personal possesions (above), many bearing evidence of the intense heat as burning fuel ran inside the shelter. 51

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In the UK during the summer of 2010, there were numerous events commemoratiing the Battle of Britain, one in particular being the public reading in London of Churchill’s memorable words at the exact time he delivered them to the Houses of Parliament on August 20, 1940. Robert Hardy, the actor, read extracts from the speech at 3.52 p.m., the time Churchill told Parliament that ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’. At the same time, a Spitfire and Hurricane flew low over the capital. On Saturday, August 24, 1940, in their ongoing attempt to knock out the RAF and its bases, the Luftwaffe targeted RAF North Weald for a major attack. At 3.40 p.m No. 151 Squadron were scrambled to intercept the raid approaching the airfield from the east. The enemy formation consisted of over 150 aircraft comprising Dornier 17 and Heinkel 111 bombers, escorted by Messerschmitt 109 and 110 fighters, stacked in layers from 15,000 feet upwards. The 7th Battalion of the Essex Regiment had the task of guarding the aerodrome against ground attack, their quarters being the MT hangar on the eastern end of the technical site. When the air raid warning sounded, the Tannoy ordered: ‘All army and air force personnel man your aerodrome action stations!’ The soldiers of C Company, all young recruits aged between 17 and 19 years old, ran out of the hangar towards the shelter which stood near the end of the nearest Hblock barrack. A stick of bombs began falling parallel to the main road, the thundering explosions rocking the ground. Just as the last man reached the shelter, a bomb scored a direct hit, blowing Private Nathaniel Miles into the overhanging oak tree, killing him and eight of his mates. Nine wounded were taken to St Margaret’s Hospital, the most serious being Private John Smith who was extracted with a severe head wound and his ankle almost severed. The nine dead soldiers were buried on August 28, eight in St Andrew’s Churchyard and Private Stephen Shuster in the Jewish cemetery at Rainham. Right: Karl Pitwon of Marchainville in France sent us a few wartime pictures in the posession of his late father. He writes: ‘Although I am an Englishman now living in France, my father was Polish and served in the Luftwaffe attached to airfield defences. He was captured by the Canadians, then transported over to England. When he died a few years ago some photos appeared of him taken whilst he was serving in France or Belgium. One photo has in the background a row of houses that are just so typical of French seaside architecture. I wonder if any of your readers is able to recognise the location. My father is the one on the left.’ 52

Left: North Weald 1979. Survivor John Smith stands beside the spot where the shelter suffered a direct hit, killing nine of his company. The blast also destroyed the ends of the barrack blocks. Right: North Weald 2010. The oak tree with its wartime scars now stands in a small car park off Hampden Close. John having since passed away, his widow Vera unveils the plaque on the 70th anniversary. Reverend Rayner Harries, MBE, ex-RAF Chaplain-in-Chief, conducted the dedication service.

The rubble from the demolished shelter was cleared away and grassed over, with only blast marks on the tree left as a reminder of what had taken place. The RAF left North Weald in 1964 and by 1982 the airfield had been sold to Epping Forest District Council. The old barrack block area was redeveloped the following year by McLean Homes for residential housing, the oak tree, still bearing its wartime scars, now standing in the corner of a small car park off Hampden Close.

In 1979, we were very fortunate to receive a visit from the most seriously injured survivor, John Smith. Winston took him back to the airfield and asked him to describe what had taken place for inclusion in The Battle of Britain Then and Now. We felt strongly the deaths of these young soldiers should not be forgotten so on the 70th anniversary of the raid in 2010, a memorial plaque mounted on a railing surrounding the blasted tree was dedicated by John’s widow Vera at the precise time that the shelter was hit.

DOVEHOUSE FARM

GOOGLE

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‘X’ marks the spot on Dovehouse farm where Leutnant Josef Jakobs landed by parachute on January 31, 1941.

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In January 1941, Josef Jakobs parachuted into Britain, only to be captured and shot as a spy in the Tower of London (see issue 11). It was in 1991 that his granddaughter Giselle contacted us from Canada (see issue 72, page 36), Winston later escorting her around the various locations in London relevant to Jakob’s trial and execution. Giselle continued to research her grandfather’s career and was exceptionally given a transcript of his court-martial from which we learn that his leg was broken as he exited the aircraft. We had thought he broke it on landing (consequently he had to be shot sitting in a chair), but in actual fact he landed on his broken leg! No wonder he was crying out for help for as soon as it was light he fired a couple of shots to attract the attention of two farm-workers. In May 2010, Giselle returned to the UK as she wanted to visit the spot in Huntingdonshire where her grandfather had landed. The MI5 documents she had been given stated that he had come down 500 yards on a bearing of 135 degrees from Dovehouse Farm near Ramsey. At the farm we were made welcome by Mr Jackson and his family who led us to the spot. After taking photos we drove into the town to picture the police station where Jakobs had been taken before being transferred to Camp 020, MI5’s interrogation centre at Ham Common, Richmond (see issue 74).

GISELLE JAKOBS

After visiting the farm, Giselle Jakobs went to Ramsey police station where her grandfather had been taken after his arrest.

Giselle had contacted several Government departments in Britain during her research and in August 1993 she was informed that a copy of the court-martial transcript would be made available to her. This in itself was exceptional but the accompanying letter from the Departmental Record Officer at the Lord Chancellor’s Office (which took over from the Judge Advocate General in 1948) was even more so: ‘A number of people in other Government departments here know that we have been in correspondence about this case. As a result, I have been asked to ensure that you receive the farewell letter written in 1941 by your grandfather addressed to Margaret Jakobs. This letter was intended for delivery after the cessation of hostilities but has only just come to light, and in view of the interest taken by both you and your father in Josef’s case, we should very much like you to have the letter now.’

Quite understandably, Giselle’s father does not want the contents of the letter published but he kindly supplied us with a scan of the envelope (left). In June 2010, Giselle went to Berlin to visit No. 124 Rudolstädterstrasse (above). ‘When looking at the photo that I took’, writes Giselle, ‘my Dad says the building appears to have been rebuilt after it was bombed but it still looks very similar to how it did before the war.’ 53

ROBERT D. CAMPBELL

Robert Campbell’s scale model of the Führerbunker in Berlin. 16-year-old Hitler Youth ran messages to and from the bunker during the last days of the war. Wounded twice and awarded the Iron Cross, he featured in several documentaries. He sent me a copy of his book Hitler’s Last Courier. ‘Post-war experts that I consulted include R. J. Adams from California, who produced a series of videos called Ruins of the Reich and in 1987 filmed a walk-through of the upper bunker; Erhard Schreier, a Berlin photographer and water-colorist who in 1989 went to the bunker destruction site and photographed and drew many renderings of what the interior looked like at that time; Dietmar Arnold of the Berliner Unterwelten (Berlin Underground) Association who was a consultant to the 2005 movie Der Unter-

gang (see After the Battle No. 128); Christopher Neubauer, whose company created a DVD on Hitler’s Chancellery and the “upper” bunker and is currently creating a DVD about the “lower” bunker; and Dr. Pietro Guido from Milan in Italy, who has written four editions to his book Führerbunker-Discovered its Mysteries and with whom I have corresponded many times over the past several years. To my knowledge, I am the only person who has contacted all of these people in an effort to obtain a wide base of information about the bunker, thereby dispelling many long-held beliefs. Additionally I have obtained four photos that were taken in 1945 of the stairway that led up to the garden exit. My stairway model design is based on those photos.’

ANNE DELANEY

We received an unusual sequel to our coverage on the Berlin Führerbunker (issue 61 and Berlin Then and Now) from Robert D. Campbell of Purcellville, Virginia: ‘I built a scale model of the Führerbunker in 1974 and I am updating it with the information that has come to light over the past 15 years. A great deal of that information came from your magazine’s excellent coverage during the destruction phase, which included one photo that showed beyond any doubt that the thickness of the concrete protective roof could not have been more than ten feet. ‘The model was constructed in 1: 32 scale and required over 200 hours to complete. The construction materials are pine wood, balsa wood, plaster and plastic. The overall dimensions are 31 inches wide and 45 inches long. The interior walls are 5/8 inch thick. There are 20 rooms, each approximately 3 inches by 3½ divided by a central corridor that is 3-3/8 inches wide and 8-7/8 inches long. The room height is 3½ inches. The bunker had two restrooms, one for general use and the other for Eva Braun and Hitler. The “concrete” protective cover is 5 inches thick with 1¾ inches of “dirt” over that. There are 44 steps leading up to the garden exit divided with four landings. The roof protecting the stairway is 1-7/8 inch thick and the dome tower is 9 inches away and is 9 inches tall and almost 18 inches around. There was an additional dome tower attached to the garden exit however, it was unfinished at war’s end (These towers provided ventilation for the bunker and were well into construction long before Speer claimed at the Nuremberg Trial they were constructed to thwart his plan to introduce poison gas into the system in an attempt to kill Hitler.) ‘In an effort to obtain exact information about the bunker I have, over the years, corresponded with several individuals, including Albert Speer, then resident in Heidelberg, who claimed he knew nothing about the construction of the bunker (although, as Hitler’s personal architect, he would have been well aware of this project if not the actual designer); Percy Knauth of Connecticut, USA, the Life magazine writer who was in Hitler’s bunker in July 1945 and published the article that month in Life magazine. He confirmed the colour of the walls, in addition to the rug types and artwork; and Armin Lehmann, today living in Oregon, who as a

On May 21, 2010, a new memorial to the 26 sappers killed by the accidental explosion at the Kapooka Training Grounds in Australia (issue 145) was formally dedicated. Until 2007, the site of the explosion was marked by an inconspicuous plaque on a surviving concrete blast wall, located on private land well away from the nearest road. It was then moved to a temporary position on San Isadore Road, which we illustrated at the end of 54

David Mitchelhill-Green’s article. The new memorial across the road is in an area accessible to the general public. It was unveiled by Major-General Steve Day, Australian Army Senior Engineer, and Major-General Craig Williams, the commander of the Australian 2nd Division. The ceremony, which also marked the 65th anniversary of the accident, was attended by more than 40 family members of the men who perished.

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At the dedication ceremony at Fromelles, Winston Ramsey (right) was very pleased to meet Tim Whitfield (left) as it was his great-uncle’s medalion (see page 16) found by Tony Pollard (centre) which gave the first positive clue that Australians lay buried at Pheasant Wood. Lambis Englezos has since told us that while he is very happy that the Australian missing have been recovered, the British must lie elsewhere, perhaps closer to where they were fighting. This would appear to have been borne out as only three of the bodies recovered from Pheasant Wood were identified as British although they could not be individually named. It was Robin S. Corfield’s research for his book Don’t forget me, cobber — The Battle of Fromelles (Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2009) which first highlighted the Australian missing. (Robin sadly passed away on October 9, 2010.) Interested readers are also recommended to consult Patrick Lindsay’s Fromelles (Hardie Grant Books, 2008). In issue 145 we published the story of the two forgotten graves in Huelva cemetery in Spain, told by Tom Dooley. The article generated an interesting response from John A. Williams of Sydney: ‘After seeing the story on the ‘War Grave Mysteries in Spain’ and that the article did not have a photo of the Australian pilot, Geoff Avern, I thought a little investigation was in order. A check of his service record held by the National Archives of Australia showed that it did not contain a photo of him. In fact most Australians who joined the RAAF before 1942 have no photo in their files. ‘The pilot had an unusual surname of Avern and as he was born in New South Wales and enlisted from there, it seemed most likely any relatives he had would still

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Several readers wrote in to say that the armoured vehicle shown at bottom right on page 27 of Jean Paul Pallud’s story on FHQ Wolfsschlucht 2 (issue 149) is not an M7 howitzer motor carriage but an M5 Stuart light tank. Jean Paul is the first to admit his mistake. He explains: ‘They are of course right! I had two photos of the same scene of American armour crossing the Aisne bridge at Soissons, one showing an M7 and the other an M5. I originally had decided for the M7 picture but then changed my mind because the comparison photo was better with the M5 shot. I changed the photo at the last minute but failed to change the caption accordingly. Shame on me!’ To ease Jean Paul’s conscience, I take part of the blame because I should have spotted it while checking the page proofs. While at it, Jean Paul would like to correct the location of FHQ ‘Bährenhöhle’ as given in the table on pages 38-39 of his story. This headquarters was not ‘at Gniesdoba, nine kilometres north of Smolensk’, but at Gniezdovo, ten kilometres west of Smolensk. Jean Paul had found the name Gniesdoba in original German documents of the Organisation Todt department responsible for building the Führer Headquarters. However, it is always difficult to translate names in Latin alphabet into Russian Cyrillic spelling and Jean Paul was misled when finding Gedeonovka on the modern map, in mistake for Gnyozdovo further to the south-west. Gniezdovo by the way was also the location of the railway station where the Polish prisoners of war murdered by the Russians in the nearby forest of Katyn were unloaded in April-May 1940 (see After the Battle No. 92). Later in the war (1943), it was also the location of the headquarters of Heeresgruppe Mitte, so one might assume that the latter used the facility originally foreseen for FHQ ‘Bährenhöhle’.

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The M7 HMC crossing the Aisne bridge.

Putting a face to a name: pilot trainee Geoffrey Avern (fourth from left) and other Australian airmen in Sydney Harbour on December 10, 1942, about to embark for Rhodesia to complete their training under the Empire Air Training Scheme.

live in NSW. A check of the white pages revealed eight Averns living in NSW, so I thought that I would, start ringing them. The first two there was no answer but on the third a lady answered the phone, Mary Avern. She informed me that Geoffrey Avern was her late husband’s uncle and that she had a photo of him. She lived about 20 minutes from my place, so I arranged to meet her. She gave me a photo of Geoffrey, which I had copied, which shows Geoffrey and a number of other Australian airmen about to board the passenger ship Largs Bay to sail to southern Rhodesia. I also did a second copy of the photo to send to the Australian War Memorial who have an ongoing project of getting a copy of every Australian killed in World War II.’ In issue 96 we described the campaign by Civilians Remembered to establish a Memorial Park on the derelict Hermitage Wharf to commemorate the 30,000 Londoners who lost their lives in the Blitz. Situated in the heart of the old Port of London docks at Wapping, the site proposed was even more significant as it was close to where the ‘Dead End Kids’ had set up their firewatching HQ in 1940. We left the story in 1997 when, at the end of a Public Inquiry, the Inspector ruled that ‘all or part of the application site would be suitable and appropriate for a Civilian Memorial’. However more wranglings took place over the following years, centered mainly on the form that the memorial should take. Civilians Remembered wanted it combined with a resource centre describing the Blitz, but in the end a sculpture by Wendy Taylor, commissioned by the Hermitage Environment Group, won the day. The garden and memorial were funded by the developer of the eastern part of the site, Berkeley Group Holdings PLC (their apartments being erected on the ‘Dead End Kids’ former shelter headquarters on Watson’s Wharf); the Williams Charitable Trust; the Garfield Weston Foundation, together with many other individuals and businesses. It was unveiled in July 2008 (see back cover). 55