Okla-homey
5/27/2008, 07:36 AM
May 27, 1940: British evacuation of Dunkirk turns savage as Germans commit atrocity at Paradis
68 years ago on this day in 1940, units from Germany's Waffen SS Totenkopf ("Death's Head") Division battle British troops just 50 miles from the port at Dunkirk, in northern France, as Britain's Expeditionary Force continues to fight to evacuate France. What happened next was unfortunately characteristic of what would become a horrid, inhumane and all too common pattern.
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/9886/ppppleparadisfarmhousetm3.jpg
Farmhouse where the Royal Norfolks held out as long as they could
After holding off an SS company until their ammo was almost spent, 99 Royal Norfolk Regiment soldiers retreated to a farmhouse in the village of Paradis and dug in. They were just 50 miles from the Dunkirk port. Allied ships waited there to carry home the British Expeditionary Force, which had been fighting alongside the French in its defensive war against the German invaders.
When their ammo was exhausted and with most of the men wounded, the Royal Norfolks decided further resistance was futile and agreed to surrender. The trapped regiment started to file out of the farmhouse, waving a white flag tied to a bayonet. They were met by German machine-gun fire.
They tried again and the British regiment was ordered by an English-speaking German officer (Hauptsturmfuhrer Knocklein) to the barnyard where they were searched and divested of everything from gas masks to cigarettes.
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/918/pppp250pxleparadismassanj6.jpg
Barnyard where the deed was done
They were then marched into an area where two machine guns had been placed in fixed positions with overlapping fields of fire. The Germans opened fire. Those Brits who survived the machine-gun fire were either bayoneted to death, shot dead execution-style with pistols or had their skulls bashed in with rifle butts.
Of the 99 members of the regiment, only two survived, both privates: Albert Pooley and William O'Callaghan. They lay among the dead until dark, then, in the middle of a rainstorm, they crawled to a farmhouse, where their wounds were tended by the French occupants.
An account by Private Albert Pooley, one of the only two survivors:
... we turned off the dusty French road, through a gateway and into a meadow beside the buildlings of a farm. I saw with one of the nastiest feelings I have ever had in my life two heavy machine guns inside the meadow ... pointing at the head of our column. The guns began to spit fire ... for a few seconds the cries and shrieks of our stricken men drowned the crackling of the guns. Men fell like grass before a scythe ... I felt a searing pain and pitched forward ... my scream of pain mingled with the cries of my mates, but even before I fell into the heap of dying men, the thought stabbed my brain 'If I ever get out of here, the swine that did this will pay for it.
With nowhere else to go, the pair surrendered again to the Germans. This time, to regular Wehrmacht troops, who made them POWs. Pooley's leg was so badly wounded he was repatriated to England in April 1943 in exchange for some wounded German soldiers. Upon his return to Britain, his story was not believed.
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1220/pppknochleintrialhm9.jpg
Pooley and O'Callaghan in Hamburg in 1948 for the trial.
Only when O'Callaghan returned home and verified the story was a formal investigation made. Finally, after the war, a British military tribunal in Hamburg found the German officer who gave the "Fire" order, Hauptsturmfuhrer (Captain) Fritz Knochlein, guilty of a war crime. Knochlein was hanged on Jan. 28, 1949.
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/3152/ppppfritzknoechleinah5.jpg
Knochlein during the war when he was a big ol' tough SS officer
Knochlein's charge:
The accused Fritz Knoechlein, a German national, in the charge of the Hamburg Garrison Unit, pursuant to Regulation 4 of the Regulations for the Trial of War Criminals, is charged with committing a war crime in that he in the vicinity of Paradis, Pas-de-Calais, France, on or about 27 May 1940, in violation of the laws and usages of war, was concerned in the killing of about ninety prisoners-of-war, members of The Royal Norfolk Regiment and other British Units.
68 years ago on this day in 1940, units from Germany's Waffen SS Totenkopf ("Death's Head") Division battle British troops just 50 miles from the port at Dunkirk, in northern France, as Britain's Expeditionary Force continues to fight to evacuate France. What happened next was unfortunately characteristic of what would become a horrid, inhumane and all too common pattern.
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/9886/ppppleparadisfarmhousetm3.jpg
Farmhouse where the Royal Norfolks held out as long as they could
After holding off an SS company until their ammo was almost spent, 99 Royal Norfolk Regiment soldiers retreated to a farmhouse in the village of Paradis and dug in. They were just 50 miles from the Dunkirk port. Allied ships waited there to carry home the British Expeditionary Force, which had been fighting alongside the French in its defensive war against the German invaders.
When their ammo was exhausted and with most of the men wounded, the Royal Norfolks decided further resistance was futile and agreed to surrender. The trapped regiment started to file out of the farmhouse, waving a white flag tied to a bayonet. They were met by German machine-gun fire.
They tried again and the British regiment was ordered by an English-speaking German officer (Hauptsturmfuhrer Knocklein) to the barnyard where they were searched and divested of everything from gas masks to cigarettes.
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/918/pppp250pxleparadismassanj6.jpg
Barnyard where the deed was done
They were then marched into an area where two machine guns had been placed in fixed positions with overlapping fields of fire. The Germans opened fire. Those Brits who survived the machine-gun fire were either bayoneted to death, shot dead execution-style with pistols or had their skulls bashed in with rifle butts.
Of the 99 members of the regiment, only two survived, both privates: Albert Pooley and William O'Callaghan. They lay among the dead until dark, then, in the middle of a rainstorm, they crawled to a farmhouse, where their wounds were tended by the French occupants.
An account by Private Albert Pooley, one of the only two survivors:
... we turned off the dusty French road, through a gateway and into a meadow beside the buildlings of a farm. I saw with one of the nastiest feelings I have ever had in my life two heavy machine guns inside the meadow ... pointing at the head of our column. The guns began to spit fire ... for a few seconds the cries and shrieks of our stricken men drowned the crackling of the guns. Men fell like grass before a scythe ... I felt a searing pain and pitched forward ... my scream of pain mingled with the cries of my mates, but even before I fell into the heap of dying men, the thought stabbed my brain 'If I ever get out of here, the swine that did this will pay for it.
With nowhere else to go, the pair surrendered again to the Germans. This time, to regular Wehrmacht troops, who made them POWs. Pooley's leg was so badly wounded he was repatriated to England in April 1943 in exchange for some wounded German soldiers. Upon his return to Britain, his story was not believed.
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1220/pppknochleintrialhm9.jpg
Pooley and O'Callaghan in Hamburg in 1948 for the trial.
Only when O'Callaghan returned home and verified the story was a formal investigation made. Finally, after the war, a British military tribunal in Hamburg found the German officer who gave the "Fire" order, Hauptsturmfuhrer (Captain) Fritz Knochlein, guilty of a war crime. Knochlein was hanged on Jan. 28, 1949.
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/3152/ppppfritzknoechleinah5.jpg
Knochlein during the war when he was a big ol' tough SS officer
Knochlein's charge:
The accused Fritz Knoechlein, a German national, in the charge of the Hamburg Garrison Unit, pursuant to Regulation 4 of the Regulations for the Trial of War Criminals, is charged with committing a war crime in that he in the vicinity of Paradis, Pas-de-Calais, France, on or about 27 May 1940, in violation of the laws and usages of war, was concerned in the killing of about ninety prisoners-of-war, members of The Royal Norfolk Regiment and other British Units.