Were German Prisoners of War killed near Arras, May 1940?

6th and 8th DLI only caught up with the tanks at 4pm...and 8th DLI propmtly got into a "Blue on Blue" firefight with some French tanks! Then the proverbial began to hit the fan...

It looks as if C Company, 8 DLI along with these french tanks - AFTER peace was declared between them! - attacked a german strongpoint in a cemetery near Duisans. According to Harman, citing the DLI official History word for word...

Quote:
"When they occupied it (the cemetary - my note) they found only eighteen alive and the French stripped them to the skin and made them lie down on the road until it was time to take them away."
First breach of the Hague AND Geneva Conventions, with the DLI present and participating.



Similarly, the war diary of 6 DLI reports...

Quote:
"Large numbers of prisoners were taken"
According to Harman, there's only ONE surviving copy of this DLI war diary, in the PRO at Kew at that time...but it DOES address the number of POWs handed over to the DLI in this second occurance...

Or rather it WOULD do, but someone punching the Diary pages for putting into a file has punched out the digit at the start of the number of POWS! But that's JUST the FIRST digit - the diary entry STILL retains...the following TWO ZEROS. So what CAN at least be definitely said that the DLI were in receipt of AT LEAST 100 Totenkopf prisoners of war, and going by the RTR report, probably several hundred taken surrendering after thir convoy was shot up. As Harman then says -

Quote:
"There is no subsequent trace of these prisoners."

Harman continues, to sum up the event he's reporting -

Quote:
The distasteful truth is that men of the Durham Light Infantry did murder an unknown number of Germans who had surrendered, and were legitimate prisoners of war. The DLI advanced, took prisoners and were then forced to retreat. They could not take the prisoners back with them. so they killed the SS men rather than set them free to fight again. That, at least, is how some surviving members of the DLI describe the event.
More to follow.
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Knowing how you chaps like to see original documents, I thought that it might not be a bad idea to post some extracts from the relevant War diaries.

First of all 8th DLI referring to the incident with the French tanks and the cemetery. No mention of the prisoners being stripped so if Mr. Harman is quoting word for word then he needs to look at his (now missing) notes again.



6th DLI's diary does indeed have the infamous hole punch top right. Damn ! No mention of whether these prisoners were SS or not but it does say that they were "sent back" so they were no longer in the hands of the units that captured them. If there were prisoner deaths then I don't see how they could have been from the prisoners documented in any of the diaries.



None of this of course proves anything (nor was it likely to). My reading of the rest of the diaries does not indicate units which considered themselves short of resources (and there certainly are some of those). Is this thread the proper place to post further extracts or would they be better on their own ?

 

No mention of whether these prisoners were SS or not but it does say that they were "sent back" so they were no longer in the hands of the units that captured them


Rich, isn't that a non sequitor? I mean - they were hardly pointed down the road to Dunkirk and told to leg it on their own They'd still be under the charge of the 6 DLI, and have an escort from same until they were turned over to the provost-marshall or whoever inside the Perimeter...

First of all 8th DLI referring to the incident with the French tanks and the cemetery. No mention of the prisoners being stripped so if Mr. Harman is quoting word for word then he needs to look at his (now missing) notes again


The entry for the cemetery action seems to break at the bottom of the page posted. Rich, is there any chance we can see the top of the NEXT page of the 8 DLI's diary???

 

... they were hardly pointed down the road to Dunkirk and told to leg it on their own...
They might very well have been - if they were going to be 'shot while attempting to escape'

... They'd still be under the charge of the 6 DLI, and have an escort from same until they were turned over to the provost-marshall or whoever inside the Perimeter...

It's very unlikely that a battalion would provide POW escorts all the way back from Arras to Dunkirk. Bear in mind that 5 & 50 Divs eventually withdrew NE from Arras to the Carvin area, i.e. away from Dunkirk.

50 Div HQ seemed to be operating as a subordinate HQ under Frankforce (5 Div HQ). POWs could have gone from bn to bde to 50 Div's provost, presumably lurking somewhere in the Vimy area. Alternatively, they could have been passed to 5 Div (6 DLI were on the inside of the sweep) and banged up in Arras. In either case, the POWs could have been sent further back - but opportunities to do this may have been limited - or simply secured in Vimy/Arras and left behind (alive, I'm thinking) when the British troops withdrew as e.g. Arnhem.

Given that 6 DLI were heavily bombed a few times, it's possible that POWs, had they not been sent back, could have been massacred by the Luftwaffe, but you'd have thought the histories would have mentioned such an own goal.

This is where I'd look next:

WO 167/312 50 Div Provost Coy
WO 167/253 5 Div Provost Coy

Both imply the May war diaries are missing but there could be information in the June ones.

 

Rich, isn't that a non sequitor? I mean - they were hardly pointed down the road to Dunkirk and told to leg it on their own They'd still be under the charge of the 6 DLI, and have an escort from same until they were turned over to the provost-marshall or whoever inside the Perimeter...



The entry for the cemetery action seems to break at the bottom of the page posted. Rich, is there any chance we can see the top of the NEXT page of the 8 DLI's diary???

As I read the entry regarding the handing over of 6th DLI's prisoners, they were at least known to the adjutant when he compiled the battalion war diary which suggests that they moved at least one administrative step down the line. There is also the clear implication that they were no longer in the hands of C and D Companies and I can't see therefore the relevance of the condition of these companies.

Some of the May 1940 BEF diaries (2nd Division GS for example) include the clear statement that the original was destroyed and the new copy was made from various sources (including memory). The DLI diaries look too tidy to me to have been contempraneous. I'm in two minds on this. On the one hand it means that 'regrettable' details could be omitted but on the other, the mention of the prisoners being taken has been included and it would have been all too easy to leave this out altogether if battalion HQ had not wanted it known.

I didn't have time in the NA to look at higher formations in 50th and 5th Div and I didn't see anything to indicate who was responsible for operating the POW cage for the Arras counter-attack. It is clear from looking at other Provost diaries that the setting up of such a holding facility was normally the first action of the Provost companies on entering a new area.

No great mystery re the 8th DLI diary. Subsequent page simply deals with placing of 18 Pdr. and A/T batteries.



Rich.

 

Well, it DOES provide something of interest indeed

IF the diaries can be relied on - given your caveat that they may have been reconstructed from memory - then the 50th Div. GOC (and I presume his staff) arrived in Duisans fifteen minutes after any monkey business in the cemetery!

That to me would preclude anything being too dodgy about the 8 DLI actions there...except for the strange anecdotes about exactly WHO "took" the 18 POWs there.

 

I got a french book today (translated in English) on the Wormhout Massacre and it contains a brief mention of this incident:

In a recent account of the Dunkirk campaign, it was described how, in a British counter-attack at Arras on May 21st 1940, 400 prisoners from the 'Totenkopf' Division were killed by men of the Durham Light Infantry and that these murders was followed by a week later by a reprisal, the killing of prisoners from the Norfolk Regiment at Le Paradis.

This is patently false, since an inquirey undertaken in 1981 showed that the German prisoners were taken on to Dunkirk via the 151st Infantry Brigade Headquarters, then via the 50th Northumbrian Divisional Headquarters.


The Forgotten Massacre - Guy Rommelaere

 

I got a french book today (translated in English) on the Wormhout Massacre and it contains a brief mention of this incident:



The Forgotten Massacre - Guy Rommelaere

Does M. Rommelaere reference his sources or indicate which enquiry and by whom ? If all the donkey work has been done, it would be nice to see the original report.

Could this enquiry have been the reason that Harman's paperwork went for a ball of chalk ?

 

Does M. Rommelaere reference his sources or indicate which enquiry and by whom ? If all the donkey work has been done, it would be nice to see the original report.

Could this enquiry have been the reason that Harman's paperwork went for a ball of chalk ?


Various sources are given in the back of the book but they all tend to point to the books main theme I'm affraid.

 

I take it you've already found his house on Google street view and will be knocking on his door first thing ?

 

Stumbled on this chap looking for something else in Blitzkreig in the West.

.....I continued into Dainville and handed over the prisoner to a Captain of the Durham Light Infantry. The troops displyed great animosity towards the prisoner and I was compelled to draw my revolver and ordered them off before I could reach their officer.....


Page 348

 

Stumbled on this chap looking for something else in Blitzkreig in the West.



Page 348


Like to see the original Andy?:p
.... in hepple's own handwriting (it's a handwritten report/letter to the OC of 7/RTR concerning the events of 21st May)...

Interestingly - while the 7RTR war diary mentions that incident....its Official History DOESN'T :wink:

not intentially being picky here, but actually, the 7RTR war diary doesn't mention the incident at all... it's only mentioned in Hepple's account (which happens to be stored with the diary along with several other interesting pieces)

 

An unfortunate turn of phrase in A Short History of 7th Armoured Division: June 1943 - July 1945 brought this thread to mind. 9 DLI on 4 April 1945, Ibbenburen, Germany:

But, despite this resistance, the Durhams took about thirty prisoners and killed many more.

 

I've been doing some cross checking for another post I'm typing up and came across this in Robert Jackson's Dunkirk-The British Evacuation 1940. Sadly he does not quote a source but I suspect it maybe recorded/taken from within 50 Div's War Diaries.

To the east 50th Division also marched down to the beaches, still herding along the four hundred German prisoners captured at Arras ten days earlier. These were lifted off early that night, to face the barbed wire of a POW compound for the next five years.

 

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I've copied WO 167/312 50 Division Provost Company and it only runs from Jan to Apr. So nothing in that one.

This is from the 50 Div General Staff War Diary:

 

It seems the Infantry are doing a 1940 'What If'

 

The last two entries are from The May section of the diary that was missing until I found it a few weeks ago

 

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