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N0KFQ > TODAY 27.05.13 17:09l 48 Lines 2122 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 40457_KB0WSA
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - May 27
Path: IZ3LSV<IK6ZDE<VE3UIL<N0KFQ<KB0WSA
Sent: 130527/1417Z 40457@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.54
.
May 27, 1940:
British evacuation of Dunkirk turns savage as Germans commit
atrocity
On this day in 1940, units from Germany's SS 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.
After holding off an SS company until their ammo was spent, 99
Royal Norfolk Regiment soldiers retreated to a farmhouse in the
village of Paradis, just 50 miles from the Dunkirk port. 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. Agreeing 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 to an open field where they were
searched and divested of everything from gas masks to cigarettes.
They were then marched into a pit where machine guns had been
placed in fixed positions. The German order came: "Fire!" Those
Brits who survived the machine-gun fire were either stabbed to
death with bayonets or shot dead with pistols.
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. With
nowhere else to go, they surrendered again to the Germans, 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. 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, Captain Fritz Knochlein, guilty of a war
crime. He was hanged.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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