The Wormhoudt Massacre

The dark side of the Waffen SS
Pas-de-Calais, May 27/28 , 1940

As the British Army made a fighting retreat to the everdecreasing foothold at Dunkirk, around 100 men of the 2nd Royal Warwickshire Regiment, the Cheshire Regiment and the Royal Artillery, were taken prisoner by the No 7 Company, 2nd Battalion of the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. At Esquelbecq, near the town of Wormhoudt, about twelve miles from Dunkirk, the prisoners were marched across fields to a nearby farm and there confined in a barn with not enough room for the wounded to lie down. There the massacre began. About five stick grenades were lobbed in amongst the defenceless prisoners who died in agony as shrapnel tore into their flesh. When the last grenade had been thrown, those still standing were then ordered outside, five at a time, there to be mown down under a hail of bullets from the rifles of the executioners. Fifteen men survived the atrocity in the barn only to give themselves up later to other German units to serve out the war as POWs. Bodies of the murdered victims were buried in a mass grave dug up near the barn. A year later, the SS, in an attempt to cover up the crime, disinterred the bodies and buried them in various cemeteries in Esquelbecq and Wormhoudt. In 1947, the War Graves Commission erected headstones over the graves but as most of the bodies bore no identification, their ID tags and pay books being destroyed by the SS prior to the shootings, the names carved on the headstones bear no relation to the bodies buried underneath. Unlike a similar massacre at Le Paradis, whish took place the previous day, the victims of Wormhoudt were never avenged - after the war no survivor could positively identify any of the SS soldiers involved.

Arnhem

Operation Market Garden
A Bridge Too Far?

In May 1945 it was the Russians who hoisted their flag over the ruins of the Reichstag building in Berlin. In this way World War Two, in Europe, was signalled as being effectively over. However, the troops who captured Berlin could easily have been British or American, if events around a small town in Holland had turned out differently.

If Operation Market Garden, planned to take place in the area near Arnhem, in Holland, had succeeded, the western Allies could have punched their way across one of the last great natural barriers between them and the German fatherland.

Their tanks and troops might have reached Berlin weeks before the Russians, ending the war by Christmas 1944. The fate of post-war Europe might have been very different.

Market Garden was one of the boldest plans of World War Two. Thirty thousand British and American airborne troops were to be flown behind enemy lines to capture the eight bridges that spanned the network of canals and rivers on the Dutch/German border.

At the same time, British tanks and infantry were to push up a narrow road leading from the Allied front line to these key bridges. They would relieve the airborne troops, and then cross the intact bridges.

The plan was conceived by General Bernard Montgomery, commander of the British forces in Europe. The glittering triumph of the D-Day landings in France had become bogged down in the slow and costly progress through the Normandy fields and hedgerows, which the Germans defended with skill and tenacity.

Despite this, after weeks of heavy fighting, the Allies had finally broken through. For the next three weeks they rolled through France and Belgium, liberating Paris and Brussels. Victory for the Allies seemed close.

But Hitler's forces were regrouping, and as the Allies pushed nearer to Germany's borders, German resistance stiffened. Montgomery believed that a powerful, narrow thrust deep into German lines would be more effective than an advance on a broad front, which had become difficult to supply from the few ports controlled by the Allies, and this was why he devised Operation Market Garden.

The soldiers who would carry out the operation were those of the First Allied Airborne Army, including one British and two American divisions. They had been kept in reserve in England since D-Day. Operation after operation had been cancelled. Now their skills and training could be used at last. Tony Hibbert was brigade Major of the 1st Parachute Brigade:

'My first reaction was one of enormous enthusiasm and excitement, because this was the first time that anyone on our side, had contemplated the proper strategic use of airborne forces en masse.'
Dropping by parachute and in gliders these divisions would land near the Dutch towns of Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem, to take the eight key bridges. The planners called this an 'airborne carpet', along which the advancing British armour of XXX corps could push through to Germany.

The airborne commander, General 'Boy' Browning, had just seven days to prepare for the operation. The information he was given on the German troops in the area, however, was alarming. It suggested that there were two SS Panzer divisions around Arnhem, with many tanks and vehicles. Major Tony Hibbert recalls the bleak assessment of aerial photographs made by General Browning's intelligence officer, Major Brian Urguhart:

'He showed me photographs of German Panzer 4's; mainly I think they were tucked in underneath woods. He went to General Browning, and said that in his view the operation could not succeed, because of the presence of these two divisions.'
The deadline for cancelling the operation was now close. General Browning had to weigh up the intelligence reports, which might be wrong. He decided that the operation would go ahead. The huge risks inherent in Operation Market Garden were now undermined by a series of dangerous compromises.

There were too few aircraft to deliver all the airborne troops in one go. Therefore they would be dropped over three days. Anti-aircraft defences near Arnhem itself were thought to be too effective to land gliders near the town. The troops would be dropped at a site seven miles away, losing any element of surprise.
On Sunday 17 September, 500 gliders and 1,500 aircraft flew over the men of XXX corps, whose job was to follow beneath them in their tanks and trucks. As the aircraft flew over, the Allied guns began a huge barrage to hit the Germans guarding the road ahead. The weather that day was beautiful, with a cloudless blue sky and a warming autumn sun. Major Tony Hibbert remembers:

'... an enormous feeling of excitement, and I think everyone at that stage felt totally confident they would win. Certainly the flight over from England was absolutely beautiful. There was an absolute mass, an armada as far as the eye could see, in both directions, and about 20 planes wide, the most extraordinary sight I've ever seen.'
Moffat Burriss was a company commander in the American 82nd airborne division, charged with taking one of the crucial bridges at Grave.

'I remember standing in the door with a Sergeant, and we looked down as we flew over the bridge, and the tracer started swinging toward us and we ducked back, looked at each other and started laughing, because why were we ducking behind this little thin skin of the plane? It would not stop a bullet. And he stuck his head out and said you dirty Krauts, we'll be down there and get you in a minute.'
The sergeant's prediction was right. American and British gliders and parachutists drifted down on target, gathered up their equipment and began to move towards the bridges they had to take. The road up which XXX corps would have to travel to reach the bridges was narrow, just wide enough for two vehicles to pass. It was defended by small groups of determined German infantry.

As the XXX corps tanks approached, they picked off the leading nine vehicles, bringing the whole column to a standstill. It was 40 minutes before they moved again. The Germans were quick to organise against the airborne troops.

The British paratroopers began their advance towards Arnhem, and were soon under attack. They quickly found that their radios didn't work properly. It was impossible to co-ordinate the attack properly, because no one could communicate. However, one British battalion did find a way through the German perimeter around Arnhem, and by 8pm on the first day, they had captured the northern end of the road bridge across the Rhine. The Americans had also reached their objectives. But most of the bridges had been blown up before they could be captured.

At the end of the first day, XXX corps had advanced only seven miles from their start line, and had not reached the first in the sequence of bridges. Meanwhile the Germans were reinforcing, and their tanks were moving into Arnhem ready to take on the lightly armed British paratroopers.

On 18 September, the second day, XXX corps began to make the progress expected of them. Their tanks covered 20 miles in a few hours, hooking up with the Americans at one of the intact bridges near Grave. On the third day they reached Nijmegen, where the Americans were still fighting in the streets in their efforts to reach the bridge across the might River Waal.

Once they had taken Nijmegen bridge, only Arnhem would be left, and the north end at least was still in British hands. It seemed that Operation Market Garden might succeed.

But they could not get across the bridge. General Horrocks, XXX corps commander, ordered American troops to attack across the River Waal, so that they could capture the German end. The attack was enormously costly.

'The bullets hitting the water looked like a hailstorm, kicking up little spouts of water. When we reached about the halfway point, then the mortar and artillery fire started falling. And when a boat was hit with an artillery shell or a mortar shell, it just disintegrated, and everybody was lost.' (Moffat Burriss)
Half of Burriss's company was killed or wounded on the crossing. The survivors reached the far bank, and from there successfully stormed the Nijmegen bridge. At last the route to Arnhem was in Allied hands. However, it was too late for the British parachute battalion at the north end of the bridge. The Germans had moved their tanks into the town, and one by one they were demolishing the houses in which the British were fighting.

By now the paratroops had few anti-tank weapons, they had no food, and, crucially, they had little ammunition left. Major Tony Hibbert remembers the German tanks were now devastatingly effective.

'We really had nothing we could do to them, and they drove up and down the street, firing high explosive into the side of the building, to create the gap, and then firing smoke shells through that. The phosphorus from the smoke shells burned us out. By about 8 o'clock, on Wednesday evening, the fires got out of control and of course we had by this time about 300 wounded in the cellars.'
The Allied troops were forced to abandon their positions near the bridge, and to try and fight their way out. Three miles from Arnhem British paratroops were holding a pocket of land at the village of Oosterberck. By now XXX corps, commanded by General Horrocks, was on the other side of the river from the airborne troops. They could not, however, cross.

German artillery controlled the river. Horrocks decided to evacuate the British survivors; only some 2,500 eventually made the crossing. The Parachute division had left behind nearly 1,500 dead, and more than 6,500 prisoners, many badly wounded.

Operation Market Garden had failed. It would be another four months before the Allies crossed the Rhine again and captured the German industrial heartland. The war dragged on, costing the lives of many thousands of civilians and servicemen.



Bibliography

Arnhem: A Tragedy of Errors by Peter Harclerode (Caxton Editions, 2000)

Arnhem by Christopher Hibbert (Windrush Press)

It Never Snows in September by Robert Kershaw (Ian Allen Publishing, 1994)

Arnhem 1944 by Martin Middlebrook (Penguin Books, 1995)

A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan (Wordsworth Editions, 1999)

The Battle of the Somme

The Battle of the Somme
What went wrong with the British plan for victory?



The capture of the devastated French hamlet of Beaumont Hamel on 18 November marked the end of the main British offensive on the Western Front for 1916. An offensive that was to prove as controversial as any battle in history and one which would cast a dark shadow over, not only the British Army, but also the psyche of a nation for the remainder of the 20th century.
The Battle of the Somme saw unprecedented loss of life and destruction for the British Army and also widespread condemnation for its leaders – especially its Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig. Haig has been vilified in popular rhetoric as the butcher whose incompetence lead to the senseless slaughter of thousands of his men, and the seemingly disastrous failings of the objectives set for the battle have long been levied at the feet of the austere Scot.
That the offensive failed to achieve the intended outcome cannot be disputed, but before acquiescing to the popular notion of ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ it is necessary to examine the complexities of the Battle - or series of Battles as the offensive was, to dissect the British Army’s performance and the failings it encountered during those blood soaked months of 1916.

The British Army had no alternative other than to commit her large army to a major offensive during 1916. Faced with pressure from her partners in the coalition France, Russia and Italy – Haig reluctantly agreed to a joint Franco-British offensive to take place astride the River Somme in Picardy. French plans were then thrown into turmoil by Falkenhayn’s German offensive at Verdun in February 1916 and the subsequent decision to cede no more ground – thus tying up thousands of French troops, and more importantly their heavy guns, which would have been utilized in the Somme offensive. Nonetheless, the British planning went ahead largely unchanged.

It was planned that an intensive artillery bombardment would crush the German defensive positions enabling Fourth Army to capture the enemy’s first, second and third lines. The Reserve Army, which included the Cavalry, would then exploit the open ground beyond by capturing Bapaume before rolling northwards all the way to Arras.
By any stretch of the imagination, Haig’s concept for victory was highly ambitious and his plan for a quick and decisive battle was at odds with the Commander of Fourth Army, General Sir Henry Rawlinson. Rawlinson was a strong advocate of the ‘bite and hold’ method of attack;

‘What we want to do now is what I call, ‘bite and hold’. Bite off a piece of the enemy’s line….and hold it against counter-attack. The bite can be made without much loss, and, if we choose the right place and make every preparation to put it quickly into a state of defence, there ought to be no difficulty in holding it against the enemy’s counter-attacks, and in inflicting on him at least twice the loss that we have suffered in making him bite.’[1]

Although Rawlinson did occasionally attempt to revert to his favoured tactic during the Battle, his failure to convince his superiors of the merits of this style of offensive led to him accepting Haig’s method of attack and, especially on the opening day of the battle, these were on the whole unsuccessful and costly. If Fourth Army had implemented the more realistic aims of the ‘bite and hold’ strategy, the outcome of the initial phases of the battle may have been different.

That the battle quickly developed into a Battle of attrition is also at odds with the character and original plans of the Commander-in-Chief. At heart Haig was a romantic whose plans to implement the cavalry to exploit any breakthrough, harked back to Napoleonic times. It can be argued that Haig was unprepared for the attritional struggle that transpired and this lack of a tangible strategy promoted a sense of disorganisation that permeated through his staff and corps commanders – making way for confusion and an inconsistency in attacks made during the offensive.

This is not to say that Haig did not embrace the mantra of modern warfare – he appreciated that artillery would have a vital role to play in any breakthrough, although the way it was utilised and its overall performance was a lesson to be learnt for future offensives – especially in 1918.
Due to the extensive defensive positions the German Army had dug into the chalk of the Somme region, the intensive British bombardment prior to 1 July 1916 had been largely ineffectual in inflicting mass casualties on a defensive force who, although traumatised by the constant inferno, were able to emerge from the safety of their dugouts to face the assault at 0730am on the opening day of battle. Add to this the failure of the shells, of which it is estimated that 1 in 3 failed to explode, to cut through the German barbed wire and it becomes apparent why 60,000 British casualties were taken on that one day alone. Worn out barrels combined with poor weather – rendering the air superiority enjoyed for ranging and observation ineffective – added to the inaccuracy and performance of the artillery.
Due to Haig’s insistence of an attack in depth, as opposed to Rawlinson’s ‘bite and hold’ tactic, there were too few artillery pieces given too much to do. Whereas Rawlinson’s plan would have allowed for a greater intensity of fire power to fall on a smaller area of attack, the Commander-in-Chief’s optimism for a major breakthrough and exploitation, in reality, lead to this firepower being too thinly spread along the whole line of attack thus actually denying the advancing troops adequate support.
The subsequent phases of battle saw smaller, localised attacks but without efficient and effective counter-battery work – the German artillery were able to concentrate murderous levels of fire in limited areas, inflicting severed losses and the attackers – as happened in the assault on Pozières where more explosive ordnance landed per square mile than anywhere else during the entire war.

The role of the troops has also to be considered. By the summer of 1916 Kitchener’s new army were in the field – in fact a number of them had already been bloodied at the disastrous Battle of Loos in September 1915. But what they made up for in morale and determination, the majority of them lacked in battle experience. The overriding image of these citizen soldiers is of wave after wave of Tommy walking to their deaths in parade ground-like discipline, lacking in any initiative and lacking in fighting ability. On the whole this argument can be discredited as there were numerous examples of determined, skilful assaults which only failed due to lack of artillery support or the indecisiveness of the senior commanders. The successes south of the Albert – Bapaume road at Mametz and Montauban on 1 July are examples of a breakthrough not being exploited, due to poor battlefield communication and indecisiveness from the commanders. German troops were seeing fleeing across open ground and small raiding parties found whole areas undefended. Despite this the troops were not moved forward and this lack of consistent continuation of attack was to prove a unfortunate theme for the rest of the battle – allowing the German’s to strengthen and consolidate defensive lines time and time again. This was never more so than following the initially successful assault on the Bazentin Ridge on 14 July.
Again on the 1 July the failure of 36th (Ulster) Division to hold the ground gained in the imposing Schwaben Redoubt near Thiepval, was due to lack of support and a contingency plan that failed to adapt to a situation that left the Ulstermen’s flanks exposed on either side. This was heightened by the ineffectiveness of British counter-battery fire prior to the assault which enabled the German artillery to swamp no-man’s land with a murderous barrage – in effect sealing the attacking troops off from any support. This scenario was typical of much of the front that day.
Troops in the majority of areas were left further exposed by the lack of an effective creeping barrage – the standard practice in later offensives. British guns on 1 July lifted their fire from the front line trenches at zero hour and started hitting the second and third lines – thus leaving the surviving German’s to take almost free aim at the advancing British with machine guns and small arms fire.



There were also strategic mistakes in timings – not least in the somewhat misguided decision to fire the great mine under the Hawthorn Redoubt at 07.20am – ten minutes before zero hour and eight minutes before the other detonations further south. That the surviving German troops managed to re-group and consolidate the resulting crater before the British attackers, lead to great loss of life in that area and also the loss of any surprise and confusion that may have been gained by firing the explosive immediately before going over the top.

That the offensive was a traumatic and costly experience for the citizen soldiers of Kitchener’s new army cannot be denied but historian Paddy Griffith argues that the British Army which emerged from the battle was a more professional and solid unit which was now battle trained and in a position to launch a successful campaign in the following years.[2] This argument has some relevance but it is also relevant that the British suffered 432,000 casualties of which 150,000 were killed and a further 100,000 were severely wounded. In retrospect the battle destroyed the fighting capabilities of 250,000 men – of the men who fought on the Somme, one out of every two never fought again. The suggestion that Haig was now carrying out a battle of attrition and success was judged by inflicting greater losses on the enemy that were received does not stand up to closer scrutiny. Although figures were never officially published, it has long been quoted that the German Army suffered over 600,000 casualties. Following extensive research, Prior and Wilson give a rather smaller figure of 230,000 German casualties.[3] This startling statistic supports the theory that the aims of an attritional battle were now also failing for the British.
It can be said that the British Army’s lack of experience did play a role in the early weeks of the offensive but it was the inability of the commanders to formulate a consistent strategy for which their men could be utilised that contributed to the failure of the battle plan.

Whether the effectiveness of the attack would have been greater if the French had been involved to the extent as previously planned is also interesting. Their commanders were more experienced than the British and the French artillery were greater equipped than their British counter-parts – this is somewhat evident by the success of the British units who fought adjacent to the French Army near Montauban and who benefited from their artillery support.
But the fact that Falkenhayn launched the offensive at Verdun in February and the subsequent battle of attrition makes this viewpoint irrelevant.

In retrospect the simple fact is, the British Army of 1916 were not up to the task of achieving the over-ambitious plans set it by its Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig.
Inexperienced troops, inadequate artillery, poor communications and an inconsistency within army command were all underlying factors in the failure of the British battle plan.
The lack of any serious breakthrough by either side during the previous two years of war on the Western Front, despite numerous bloody offensives, is a stark testament to the difficulties the commanders had in breaking the stalemate.
It was a steep learning curve but lessons were indeed learnt by the British Army on the Somme, albeit at a heavy cost, and the development of new battlefield weapons such as the tank – first seen unsuccessfully at Flers in September – along with the complete restructuring of Infantry/Artillery cooperation lead to the eventual victory by the allied forces in 1918.

The Somme, as has been noted by many historians, is the battleground where the British Army lost its innocence.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Prior & Wilson, The Somme (London, 2005)
Middlebrook, M, The First Day on the Somme (London, 1984)
Sheffield, G, The Somme (London, 2003)
Edmonds, Brig-Gen J.E, The Official History of the Great War, Military Operations France and Belgium December 1915 – July 1 1916 (Woking, 1986)
Brown, M, The IWM Book of the Somme (London, 1997)
McCarthy, C, The Somme – The Day by Day Account (London, 1995)
Charlton, P, Pozieres 1916 – Australians on the Somme (London, 1986)



[1] Maurice, F, The Life of Lord Rawlinson of Trent (London, 1928)
[2] Griffith, Paddy, Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army’s Art of Attack 1916-1918 (London, 1994)
[3] Prior & Wilson, The Somme (London, 2005)