Hitler's Atrocities Against Allied PoWs: War Crimes of the Third Reich

Chapter 1

The Murders Begin

We will never know whether the pilots of the Luftwaffe Stuka dive-bombers checked their watches before they threw their planes into a near-vertical dive, sirens screaming, before releasing their bombs over the Polish airfields and communication centres on that fateful first day of September 1939. For the record, it was 4.36 am.

The Poles knew that the attack was coming; indeed, it was Polish intelligence that first broke the German Enigma codes. They moved their old, slow aircraft away to subsidiary airfields and prepared to do battle with the 1 million German troops deployed along their borders.

In order to persuade world opinion that the Poles had started the war, SS men dressed in Polish uniforms staged an ‘attack’ on a radio station, customs post and forestry camp near Gleiwitz in the far south-eastern corner of Germany. Murdered concentration camp inmates were used to provide the ‘casualties’ of the Polish incursion and the captured radio station was soon broadcasting a call to the Poles living in the border region to take up arms against the Nazis. On the following day Poland was invaded from three different directions by forty-one infantry and fourteen panzer and motorized divisions.

The German army had adopted the blitzkrieg or ‘lightning war’ tactics of fighting that had been developed as an alternative to the trench warfare stalemate of the First World War. Armoured columns would pierce the enemy lines, bypass their strongpoints and penetrate deep behind their defences, cutting the defenders into separate pockets. They would be aided by dive-bombers of the Luftwaffe and followed by slower-moving infantry and artillery tasked with crushing the pockets of resistance.

The Polish army was no match for Hitler’s generals and their new mechanized divisions. The bulk of the army was thinly spread along the border and there were not enough reserves to successfully counter-attack. Poland’s twelve cavalry brigades were mainly equipped with horses and the troopers, armed with lance, sabre and carbine, were shot down in their hundreds.

Far away in England, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his advisers studied the documents laid before them. The agreement was quite clear and titled the ‘Agreement of Mutual Assistance between the United Kingdom and Poland’, signed in London on 25 August 1939. Article One read: ‘Should one of the Contracting Parties become engaged in hostilities with a European Power in consequence of aggression by the latter against that Contracting Party, the other Contracting Party will at once give the Contracting Party engaged in hostilities all the support and assistance in its power.’ Accordingly, at 11.15 am on 3 September, the prime minister announced over the wireless that England was sending her sons to war again. However, the unfortunate fact of life was that England was a long way from Poland and when the invasion finally came, that country was overrun before England could do anything to help.

What could not be known at the time, although the signs were there if you looked hard enough, was that Adolf Hitler was about to launch his legions on a campaign of murder and plunder that had not been seen since the days of Attila the Hun. No one would be spared; neither civilians nor soldiers and especially not prisoners of war.

The murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war began even before the last Polish resistance was crushed in early October 1939. To make matters worse, the day after Warsaw fell on 17 September, Russian troops invaded from the east. Four days later they had reached the Bug River, the demarcation line having been agreed in secret with the Germans.

As the fighting petered out, many Polish troops began the long trek south through Slovakia and Hungary to France where they came under the command of the Polish general Wladyslaw Sikorski. The number of Polish dead was unknown, but around 694,000 Polish servicemen were taken prisoner including some 30,000 officers. A further 217,000 were captured by the Russians.

The land to the east of the Bug River was annexed by the USSR and the large-scale deportation of the Polish upper classes and intelligentsia began. Many of the Poles taken to the East would never see their homeland again. When Russia changed sides and became an ally of the West following the German invasion of 22 June 1941, the Polish Provisional Government in London demanded the release of the prisoners of war taken by the Russians in 1939. Few officers returned and their fate was shrouded in mystery until the discovery of seven mass graves in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in 1943. Eventually, more than 4,500 corpses were dug out of the ground, most having been shot in the back of the head while their hands were tied. A further 11,000 were still missing.

To the west of the Bug River, a six-year reign of terror began as the SS and Gestapo turned their attention to Poland’s civilians and large Jewish population. As for the Polish prisoners of war who were entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention, they were soon to experience the murderous nature of their captors.

On 5 September a massacre took place near the village of Serock, in Swiecie district. Several thousand prisoners were being held overnight in a field. Around midnight the German guards suddenly began shouting that a tank was approaching and that the prisoners should take cover. As the men began to get up and seek cover, a shot was fired to signal the start of the massacre of the ‘escaping prisoners’. Sixty-six prisoners were killed and buried in a common grave the following morning. Their remains would be exhumed in 1947.

The following day, 6 September, nineteen officers of the Polish 76th Infantry Regiment were shot in the fields around the village of Moryca. Some of the captured other ranks were herded into two buildings that were then set on fire. This massacre was probably in reprisal for the heavy losses inflicted by the unit on a German panzer formation.

On 8 September two German soldiers led a captured Polish major into a field near Nadarzyn, Blonie district and ordered him to dig his own grave. As he was digging, the major suddenly turned around and struck one German with his shovel, killing him. The second German began to stab him with his bayonet while other Germans from the 4th Panzer Division ran over and kicked the prisoner to death.

Another massacre in a field took place on 13 September at Zambrów. Around 4,000 men from the defeated Polish 18th Infantry Division were assembled on the training grounds of the Zambrów garrison. They were guarded by a Waffen SS unit with machine guns mounted on lorries trained on the prisoners. When night fell the Germans illuminated the area with searchlights and warned the prisoners that anybody who got up during the night would be shot. However, a number of Polish horses from a captured transport unit were being kept just outside and during the night they suddenly burst into the enclosure. To avoid being trampled by the horses, many prisoners got up to flee and were immediately fired upon by the German guards. The firing only stopped when the Germans hit some of their own men by mistake.

The prisoners were told to remain on the ground until morning and all through the night the cries of the wounded and dying could be heard. At daybreak the extent of the slaughter was revealed when more than 200 dead and 100 wounded were removed from the enclosure. The survivors claimed that the stampede had been part of a deliberate German plan to exterminate some of the prisoners, while others believed that the searchlights had scared the horses.

Another massacre that occurred during September 1939 happened in a barn and was one of many such incidents to take place in barns over the next two years. The unfortunate soldiers were men from the Polish 4th Regiment of Podhale Fusiliers whose battalion was overrun on the River San near Przemyśl. Around 100 prisoners were marched in the direction of Drohobycz and herded into a barn in the village of Urocze, where they were told they would spend the night. When all the prisoners were inside, the Germans closed the door, poured petrol around the barn and set fire to it with hand grenades. There were only two survivors, Privates Jan Marek and Antoni Dobija. Dobija later testified at the trial of General von Manstein, chief of staff of Army Group South (transcript, vol. VI, pp.435–436):

It was about 3pm. When all the Polish soldiers were already in the barn and the loft, the German soldiers shut the entrance door. I heard explosions and the barn became ablaze. I was injured by a splinter on my right hand and right temple. I fell from the loft onto the floor and noticed a loose board in the wall of the barn and I got outside through the hole. I crawled between two haystacks and from there along the fence towards the lavatory, by which I lay down in a potato clamp. In the meantime the fire extended to the stacks and so I could easily have been burnt alive. I got up, jumped over the fence, and ran. The German soldiers who were standing around the barn saw me and shot after me. I was not hit and managed to reach the wood.

Along with other senior Wehrmacht commanders, von Manstein knew from the very beginning of the Polish campaign that ill-treatment and murder of prisoners of war was rife. His own intelligence officer submitted a report to him on 8 September in which he drew von Manstein’s attention to the treatment of prisoners and suggested that the report be forwarded to the Army Group South commander General von Rundstedt. Manstein rejected the proposal.

Two of von Rundstedt’s subordinates – General von Reichenau, commander of the Tenth Army, and General List, commander of the Fourteenth Army – became well-known for the atrocities committed in their area of operations. They would continue the practice of murdering prisoners of war on an even larger scale, both in the Soviet Union and in Yugoslavia.

According to German figures, 694,000 Polish soldiers became prisoners of war. From this total 10,000 died soon after capture and around 140,000 were released and allowed to return home. The remaining 540,000 were eventually transferred to Germany where they were divided into three categories. The first category was agricultural workers, who were underfed and overworked. However, working on farms meant that there was always the opportunity to supplement their diet, a possibility not often available to the other categories. The second category was those employed on public works such as road, bridge and rail repairs. They also endured long hours and heavy work and the constant brutality of their guards. Food was scarce and usually comprised acorn ‘coffee’ and small amounts of black bread and watery soup. It was estimated in August 1940 that there were 236,000 former prisoners of war in these two categories, now regarded as civilian workers.

The remainder of the Polish prisoners of war were sent to thirty-five prison camps in Germany, with separate camps for officers (Oflags) and soldiers (Stalags). Their treatment was much worse than that later given to French and British prisoners of war. The main reason for this was that, as the war progressed, the number of Germans in British hands steadily increased and there was always the possibility, however faint, of reprisals being carried out against prisoners in England.

The winter of 1939–40 was particularly hard for the prisoners. Most were in overcrowded, unheated accommodation where food was inadequate and medical treatment non-existent. Blankets, overcoats and boots were often removed and many parcels sent to the men from relatives in Poland were damaged or stolen by the camp authorities.

Occasionally sick and emaciated prisoners of war were returned to Poland, but had to travel in the most inhumane conditions. In January 1940 2,000 Polish prisoners were sent by train from East Prussia to Warsaw. They were crammed into cattle trucks and taken on a journey lasting thirteen days instead of the usual few hours that the journey normally required. When they finally arrived, 211 of them had frozen to death and the rest resembled walking corpses. It was a scene repeated on many occasions with Polish and later Soviet prisoners of war and was part of a plan to reduce the prisoner-of-war population by means other than a bullet in the back of the neck.

An exchange of Polish prisoners was agreed between the Germans and Russians during the winter of 1939–40, based on their place of birth or place of residence. In the first two transports of Polish soldiers captured by the Soviets, 140 men were frozen to death. They had been put in unheated rail trucks without warm clothing, food or drink. It appeared that the Russians had sent along four prisoners more than the number agreed and refused to take them back. The Germans in turn refused to accept them and simply shot the four men in front of their horrified comrades.

The ill-treatment of Polish and later Soviet prisoners of war would eventually be found by the Germans to be counter-productive. With most of the German male population now in uniform, there were not enough men available to work in the farms and factories and it eventually became apparent that prisoners of war could be used instead.

In July 1940 Hitler decreed that most Polish prisoners of war should be released from their camps and exploited as civilian workers, despite the protests of the Polish Red Cross that the men should be repatriated to their homeland. Around 40,000 men were to remain in their prisoner-of-war camps for the time being.

The German civilian population was constantly reminded by their newspapers how to treat the Polish prisoners who had now become labourers for the greater German Reich. On 20 February 1940 the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten declared that ‘The Court at Halberstadt has condemned a man 49 years of age to a month’s imprisonment for offering a box of cigarettes to a Polish prisoner’ and ‘At Papsdorf a 50-year-old man has been sentenced to four months’ imprisonment for enabling a prisoner to correspond with his family.’

On 13 January 1941 the Braunschweiger Neueste Nachrichten announced that three German women had been sentenced to fifteen to eighteen months’ imprisonment for showing generosity towards Polish prisoners. The women gave the prisoners cigarettes and food and even drank beer from the same bottle with them. The judge declared that ‘these women shamefully and boldly treated Polish prisoners as they would have treated their own fellow countrymen!’

The Völkischer Beobachter (the Nazi German newspaper) of 16 May 1941 reported that:

It sounds incredible, but unfortunately there are still Germans who feel friendly towards the Poles. Last Christmas the Nazi leader at Überlingen in Baden discovered that, with her mother’s approval, a 22-year-old girl had decorated a Christmas tree for a Polish prisoner of war at her parents’ farm. This utter shamelessness has now been punished with a sentence of 30 months’ hard labour for the daughter and 18 months for the mother.

Worse things could happen to a prisoner who fraternized with a German woman. Notices were posted in the prison camps warning that sexual intercourse between a Polish prisoner of war and a German woman was punishable by death for the prisoner and several years’ imprisonment for the woman.

Such pleasures of the flesh were the last thing on the minds of some Polish officers one dark night four years after the invasion of their country. On the night of 19 September 1943, forty-four Polish officers and three orderlies escaped from a tunnel dug under the wire at Oflag VIB at Dössel near Warburg, Westphalia. The first the camp administration knew of the escape was when they received a police report the following morning about the arrest of two fugitives at the railway station at Soest.

An alert went out to all police stations and soon several more of the escapees were in custody. They were dressed in civilian clothes made out of blankets and carried civilian identity cards. One was even disguised as a woman.

Five days after the escape, the PoW Office of the OKW issued the following order to the camp commander of Oflag VIB:

1) The escaped Polish officers, when recaptured, are to be handed over to the SS instead of being returned to the camp.

2) The camp authorities should not apply to other camps for return of the recaptured Polish officers.

3) Those officers who have already been brought back to the camp are to be turned over to the SS for interrogation.

By that time twenty of the escapees had already been returned to the camp. They were assembled and taken away from the camp, never to return. It was later established that they were taken by train to Buchenwald concentration camp where they were summarily executed without trial.

During the second week of October the camp guard and 100 Gestapo men carried out a surprise search of the officers’ quarters at Dössel. Three more Polish officers were arrested and accused of being the organizers of the escape. They too were taken to Buchenwald and their camp records were marked ‘shot while trying to escape’. A further seventeen escapees were later recaptured and murdered by the Dortmund Gestapo. Out of the forty-seven men who escaped that night, only ten are believed to have reached safety.

CHAPTER NOTES

Books:

Datner, Szymon, Crimes Against POWs (1964)

The Black Book of Poland (Putnam, 1942)

A German motorcycle battalion advancing through Bydgoszcz on 18 September 1939.

German units march through Warsaw following the invasion of Poland.

Date: 8 September 1939. The village of Dabrowa near Ciepielów was the site of the mass murder of 300 Polish prisoners of war from the 74th Infantry Regiment of Upper Silesia. The order was given by Oberst Walter Wessel, commander of the German 15th Motorized Infantry Regiment, 29th Motorized Infantry Division after one of his officers had been killed by a sniper. The division would later be destroyed at Stalingrad.

General Wilhelm List was sentenced to life imprisonment in February 1948, principally for the reprisal killing of Serbian hostages in Yugoslavia. Released from prison in December 1952, officially because of ill health, he would live for another nineteen years, dying in August 1971 at the age of 91.

Rows of bodies of Polish officers exhumed from the Katyn Forest in 1943 by the Germans. They had been murdered by the Russian NKVD in April and May 1940. They were captured when the Russians invaded Poland from the east, while the Nazis invaded from the west.

The execution of fifty-six Polish citizens in Bochnia, near Kraków, during the German occupation of Poland, 18 December 1939, in ‘reprisal’ for an attack on a German police officer two days earlier by the underground organization ‘White Eagle’.

Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein was sentenced to eighteen years in prison, which was then reduced to twelve years. He served only four and was released in 1953. He would go on to help re-establish the German armed forces following the establishment of NATO.

Polish civilian ‘hostages’ being shot by the Nazi invaders in October 1939.

Chapter 2

The Road to Dunkirk

It was 11.15 am on Sunday, 3 September 1939 when the announcement was made that Great Britain was once again at war. An hour later, Australia and New Zealand announced their intention to stand with Britain and the French followed suit at 5.00 pm on that sunny day. South Africa had many Nazi sympathizers and Prime Minister General James Herzog wanted to keep his country out of the war. However, he resigned and was replaced by the pro-British General Jan Smuts, who declared war on 6 September. The Canadian government took longer to make up its mind and eventually declared war on 10 September. America stood on the sidelines, despite the fact that on the day war was declared the German submarine U-30 sank the British liner SS Athenia, killing 112 civilians including 28 Americans. President Roosevelt was convinced that the majority of his nation would not support the war.

During the second half of September, the Royal Navy transported a British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of initially four divisions across the Channel to France, taking with them 24,000 vehicles, fuel, ammunition and food. The Allies anticipated that the Germans would soon attack, not across the French Maginot Line of fortifications immediately across the border but rather through neutral Belgium to the north. The British moved towards the Belgian border and prepared to repel the enemy. They were due for a long wait. While Hitler reviewed his plans, the BEF spent a wet, cold winter living in barns, farms and commandeered houses.

The German high command made the most of that winter, planning for a campaign in the spring of 1940 that would last only six weeks and would end with the defeat of The Netherlands, Belgium and France and the retreat of the BEF back to England from a place known as Dunkirk.

German gliderborne troops landed on the roof of the supposedly impregnable Belgian fort of Eben-Emael on 10 May. It was one of the main obstacles on the road into Belgium as its guns could fire on targets 12 miles away. The sappers blew up the gun emplacements as the defenders retreated into the depths of the fort and on the following day 1,100 men surrendered to a force of fewer than 100.

Similar acts of subterfuge helped spearhead the attack into Holland on the same day. Paratroops from General Kurt Student’s 7th Airborne Division seized airfields and bridges and Luftwaffe bombers pounded Rotterdam and The Hague.

In response to the German attacks, the now seven divisions of the BEF and the cream of the French army hurried eastwards to face what they thought would be the main German assault, a classic flanking movement to the north to cut them off from the Channel ports. In the meantime, seven of Hitler’s ten panzer divisions equipped with more than 2,000 tanks and armoured vehicles rolled around the northern end of the French Maginot Line and through Luxembourg into the wooded hills of the Belgian Ardennes. A total of forty-five German army divisions would follow the route along narrow roads and through sleepy villages in snake-like columns stretching back 100 miles into Germany.

When the panzers emerged from the Ardennes they fought their way across the River Meuse and drove hard to outflank the BEF to their north, their infantry struggling to keep up with them. On 15 May Prime Minister Churchill was awoken at 7.30 am by a phone call from French Premier Paul Reynaud. He asked for more help, crying ‘We are beaten; we have lost the battle, the road to Paris is open.’ Four days later Lord Gort, commander of the BEF, reported that the French First Army on his right had disintegrated and he would fall back to Dunkirk and ‘fight it out with his back to the sea.’

The fight would not last long. Three battalions of the Rifle Brigade reached Calais on 23 May and with various support units kept the Germans at bay for three valuable days. Welsh and Irish Guards performed a similar heroic defence at Boulogne and the Highland Division took up positions at Saint-Valery. A defensive ring was being thrown around Dunkirk while preparations were being made to evacuate the BEF.

Between 27 May and 4 June 338,226 officers and men – 139,000 of them French – were taken off the Dunkirk beaches and back across the Channel to England. It was not done without cost, however, as a number of British army units fought a desperate rearguard action to allow their comrades the chance to get away. Their heroic sacrifice enabled most of their comrades to live to fight another day, but more than one German regiment took its revenge on the prisoners who had given them a bloody nose.

Le Paradis

The 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment was sent to France as a part of the BEF in September 1939. On 27 May 1940 they were in position near Le Paradis where they had been in action since the previous day. Their ‘B’ and ‘C’ companies, fighting to defend nearby Le Cornet Malo against heavy infantry and tank assaults, had been decimated and the remnants of ‘A’ Company had fallen back to battalion headquarters. Their attackers were the Second Infantry Regiment of the SS Death’s Head Division and they had been hit hard, losing their battalion commander and all four company commanders. NCOs were in charge of companies that had dwindled to platoon strength. The Third Infantry Regiment was ordered to support the Second in their attack against Le Paradis and the order was passed down from the German battle headquarters in the newly-subdued Le Cornet Malo that Le Paradis must fall that very day.

Battalion headquarters were in a large farmhouse about 600 yards south-east of Le Paradis. It was three storeys high and had two cellars underground to house the wounded and the signal section with its radios. A courtyard outside was flanked by outbuildings and a high wall, making it an ideal defensive position.

At around 1100 hours on that day, surrounded by the enemy, with their ammunition running low and parts of the farmhouse now on fire, the commanding officer Major Ryder called together the remnants of battalion headquarters and of ‘A’ Company and asked them to decide among themselves whether they should surrender or continue to fight.

Casualties throughout the battalion had been heavy and only two officers and seven men from ‘A’ Company, including Private Albert Pooley, had made it to HQ out of their original 184 men. During the morning ‘D’ Company came over the radio to report that they were down to a handful of men and that they would defend company headquarters to the last.

The CO joined the last of his able-bodied men in the cowshed behind the burning farmhouse. They included three men from the Royal Signals who operated the battalion wireless set and two gunners who were the last survivors of their battery. After some discussion among themselves they decided, with the approval of their commanding officer, that no further useful purpose would be served by fighting on and in order to save the wounded they would surrender to the German forces. At that time their total strength was five officers and forty-five other ranks, with an unknown number of wounded in the cellars under the care of the medical officer.

Private Albert Pooley later described what happened next:

The first attempt to surrender was made by three men who walked into the open displaying a white cloth. They immediately came under heavy machine-gun fire. The second attempt was then made by all of us running out into the open with our hands in the air. We were lined up and searched, our helmets were struck from our heads and our equipment and gas masks were forcibly removed. We had no weapons with us as these had been destroyed before we surrendered. Not one of us to my knowledge still possessed a weapon when we were searched by the Germans. We were told by an English-speaking German NCO that any wounded could sit down, whereupon some of us did. I was one of those (I had been hit in the left arm and right hip, but not seriously wounded), but no sooner had I sat down than I received a brutal kick in the ribs from a German soldier and was ordered to stand up. During the search which then took place several of us were struck because we did not answer questions or were not quick enough in obeying the orders of the Germans which naturally were unintelligible to us. During this time our wounded were being brought out of the farmhouse by our own stretcher-bearers, but I do not know where they were taken.

After some fifteen minutes we were ordered to form up on the road with our hands clasped behind the backs of our heads. During this process some of us were struck with rifle butts while standing in the ranks. The guards who did this were not reprimanded by their officers or NCOs. While we were standing there our numbers must have swollen by the addition of other prisoners because when I turned round I could see that the column had lengthened. I do not know where these additional men came from. At this time I estimate the number of prisoners in the column to have been sixty-five at the very least. We were then ordered to march along the road, all the time being struck and cuffed by the guards and any other Germans passing us. Our direction at this time appeared to be westerly across the road leading to Le Paradis until we came to the vicinity of another farmhouse with a field adjoining it on the western side.

We halted on the road for two or three minutes. During this time a German took from my pocket a packet of cigarettes and when I turned to look at him he struck me with his rifle, knocking me through the ranks. An unbroken line of German transport was standing on the right-hand side of the road facing us.

Unbeknown to the prisoners, a conference was taking place to discuss their fate. All five German company commanders were present, together with Sturmbannführer Fortenbacher, the 1st Battalion commander. When it had finished, orders were given and the weary prisoners resumed their journey.

The column was ordered to continue marching and the head of the column turned into the field and began to march alongside the wall of the farmhouse. As Pooley looked to his right he could see what fate was about to befall them.

Hauptscharführer Theodor Emke was a 27-year-old SS trooper at the time of the massacre. He was an agricultural worker until he joined the State Police (Landespolizei) in 1934. The next year they were incorporated into the SS. He was sent to Dachau in October 1939 for the formation of the SS Division Totenkopf and became a section commander in the 4th Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment.

The division had moved from Belgium into France in mid-May and the 4th Company had its baptism of fire at La Bassée Canal, which they crossed on the evening of 26 May 1940. Emke’s machine-gun section was one of two that formed the machine-gun platoon. The platoon spent much of 27 May supporting the 2nd Company and moving positions as the Germans advanced and by the mid-afternoon they were in the vicinity of Le Paradis. The surrender of Major Ryan and his men was actually taken by the 2nd Company. Emke later recalled:

Petri himself took over command of the section, since he gave orders direct to the section, bypassing me, a method to which I was used to from previous occasions. We crossed an open field for approximately 300 paces in the same direction and reached a small meadow, at the far end of which we passed a corner with three or four trees and we halted at a hedge.

Petri ordered the guns into position behind the hedge and to aim at a house front facing us, located to the north-east, right limit being the right corner of the house and left limit the left corner. At the same time he remarked that some were going to be shot. I did not hear any mention of the identity and number of persons to be shot. Further events at the guns escaped my notice, since I went towards two comrades I saw coming from the road.

It did not escape my notice that a group of prisoners was standing on the road, hands behind their heads, guarded by soldiers whose unit I do not know. I noticed the officers Obersturmbannführer Fritz Knöchlein, the 3rd Company commander and the 4th Company commander Hauptsturmführer Schrödel, both of whom I know by name and also personally, between me and the prisoners, partly on the road and partly on the footpath.

After a few minutes I saw the prisoners being marched in column on to the meadow in the direction of and subsequently above the house front. Knöchlein, the senior company commander, was obviously in command, and was conspicuous by his especially dominating behaviour and orders. As the prisoners reached the house front, Knöchlein and Schrödel and the guards remained behind, leaving a clear distance between them and the marching column. As the column was within four to five paces of the right corner of the house and the last prisoners had just reached the left corner, Knöchlein suddenly shouted ‘Fire!’ Schrödel and Petri almost simultaneously gave the order ‘Open fire!’

Both guns opened fire immediately. I involuntarily looked towards the guns and noticed Mai and Pollak on the gun nearest to me. I could not see the other gun because of the hedge. My attention was, however, naturally taken up by the prisoners, who collapsed from right to left and fell forward. The whole business was over in a few seconds.

When the column of prisoners turned into the meadow, Pooley noticed a group of German officers standing just inside the gate, talking among themselves. One of the men was clearly an officer. He had a silver cord on his peaked cap and was about 5ft 10in tall, slim, with a dark face and prominent hooked nose. He had dark piercing eyes and appeared to be about 35 to 40 years old.

As the column continued to march into the field Pooley noticed that there was a large hole at the foot of the wall of the farmhouse. It was at least 5ft deep, 8ft wide and 15 to 20ft long. As the head of the column reached the far end of the hole the German officer barked out the command to ‘Open fire’.

Both machine guns opened fire at the same time and began to traverse from right to left. Men began to fall into the hole and Pooley recalled one of his comrades crying out ‘I’m not going to die like this’ as the hail of bullets swept towards them. Marching next to Pooley, Private Ward was hit and at the same time Pooley felt a sharp pain in his left knee. He fell into the hole on top of some others who were already lying there and more men fell on top of him.

The firing continued for a few more seconds and Pooley looked up to see Major Ryder sitting inside the hole with his back to the wall. He was very badly injured and signalled to the Germans to finish him off. Three of them jumped down into the hole and began to plunge their bayonets into those still living. The men were ordered out again as others stood at the edge of the hole and fired at anyone still moving. The man underneath Pooley groaned and two shots were fired towards them, both striking Pooley in the left leg. Suddenly a whistle was blown and the sound of firing ceased. The Germans began to move away from the carnage. It was then 1530 hours.

Pooley drifted in and out of consciousness for three or four hours. When he awoke it was dark and raining hard. Finally he gathered his strength and dragged himself to the rim of the hole. As he slowly peered over the top he heard the sound of snoring nearby. He reached out and shook the man and asked him if he was alright. Signaller Bill O’Callaghan replied ‘Yes, how are you?’ Despite a wound in his leg, O’Callaghan was so exhausted from the recent lack of rest that he could not stop himself from going back to sleep.

Pooley told him that his leg was smashed and suggested that they clear out as quickly as they could. He had to move two of his dead comrades to get clear of the charnel pit and was weak due to loss of blood. In the distance they could hear Germans celebrating in the courtyard of the farmhouse.

While O’Callaghan crept away to seek shelter for the pair, Pooley noticed the body of his friend Nobby lying nearby. He was filled with grief as he reached out and touched his friend’s tunic. In a pocket he found Nobby’s lighter and he clasped it as he made a silent pledge to Nobby and the others that he would do what he could to bring to justice those responsible for the crime.

O’Callaghan returned and carried Pooley for a couple of hundred yards across the meadow and through a ditch to a cornfield. The men were exhausted, but knew they had to get away from that terrible place. They crawled through the cornfield to the farm of Monsieur Duquenne-Creton, brother of Louis Creton who owned the farm where the massacre had taken place.

O’Callaghan evicted two pigs from the pigsty and dragged Pooley into the small building. Exhausted, they fell asleep. Unknown to them, the king of Belgium had ordered his army to surrender and at midnight they lay down their arms, thus exposing the northern flank of the Allied armies.

The two wounded soldiers remained in their shelter for the next few days, tended by Madame Duquenne-Creton, the wife of the owner, and her son Victor. Eventually the local villagers became concerned about reprisals if they were found to be harbouring British soldiers and an ambulance was sent to convey them to the nearest hospital where they were taken prisoner again. Madame Creton waved as the ambulance took Pooley away. Thirteen years would pass before he saw the brave woman again.

After a spell in Béthune hospital the two men were taken to prisoner-of-war camps. In 1943, Pooley was included in an exchange of seriously-wounded prisoners and returned to Britain. At Richmond Convalescent Camp he reported the war crime to the interrogating officer, who took the news too casually for Pooley’s liking. He declined to name O’Callaghan as the other survivor. He was still in enemy hands and if his name leaked out he would be killed without mercy. In the event, the report was filed away and forgotten.

In May 1945 O’Callaghan returned home and filled out a report on the atrocity. It must have found its way to the same place as Pooley’s because nothing