Krombeke - 26th-28th May 1940

Dear all,

Krombeke (or 'Crombeke' as it was mentioned on the vintage maps) is a village located between Poperinge and Stavele. In late May 1940, a great many British troops, heading towards the coast, retreated via Krombeke in order to cross the Yser in Stavele (which was one of the three possible options to cross the river).

Moreover, as you can see on the map posted hereunder, it was an important crossroad which drew lots of British and French military traffic (not to mentions scores of fleeing refugees). As a result, the village soon became a bottleneck and, of course, often drew undue attention of the Luftwaffe.



Since a lot of BEF-units transited through the village, it is mentioned every now and then in war diaries and personal memoires. Krombeke is, for example, cited in Brigadier Mark 'Honker' Hennicker's book 'An Image of War'. At the time, Henniker was OC 253rd Fd Coy, RE and his unit was temporarily billeted in Krombeke while awaiting orders from CRE 3rd Division. I also learned there must have been a large field hospital located in the village, but I failed to find out to which unit it belonged.

I was wondering if any of you could fuel my research with some more information as to what happened there during the timeframe of 26th-28th May 1940, just before the Germans arrived.

I am also curious as to what eventually happened to the field hospital.

KR,
Christian

 

Christian,

There are fifteen hits for Crombeke using the forum's simple search option. Several identify 10 CCS Casualty Clearing Station being there. Plus a several Guardsmen being taken prisoner there on 29/5/1940. 50 Division HQ was there and another division, the 4th passed through.

With Krombeke there are nineteen hits, some are duplicate, others are new.

The site is goings slow for me, so I lose access each time I try to look at a thread. Anyway onwards!

 

BEF Casualty dressing station at Krombeke vicarage

source: Cedric Odling’s Journeys – 140th (5th London) Army Field Regiment, Royal Artillery

The French 4th Armored Regiment lost an S-35 tank from the 3rd Squadron, 1st Group, on May 28 at Krombeke
source: https://www.researchgate.net/public...ttle_of_the_Sambre_and_the_defense_of_Dunkirk pg.42

 

Point taken David ! You are, of course, quite correct.

I sometimes tend to get carried away when discovering a potentially interesting lead. In this particular instance, after reading Mark Henniker's book, I was so excited (perhaps too much so) that I forgot to check the most obvious source of information.

This being said, the sheer number of hits on the forum clearly seems to warrant further research on this particular topic.
Consequently, I shall first review all the related forum threads one-by-one and bundle all the information before proceeding further (which I should have done in the first place).

Providing the weather clears up, Krombeke would seem to be an excellent destination for a weekend excursion
With a bit of luck, I might even be able to explore the vicarage.

 

Dear Christian

You might recall that Krombeke was our suggested RDV for my Lt Col Cedric Odling tour in May last year- we missed each other as my channel crossing ran late! As ltdan says it features on my website and was the site of the BEF dressing station where Odling was taken on 26th May 1940 and then captured when the field hospital (now the civic library I think) was over-run by the Germans on 29th May 1940.

I'll post some photos I took on that phase of my tour, which culminated in his POW camps including lindele's Oflag V Biberach and Oflag IX Spangenberg.

 

Let me share with you an extract from Mark Henniker's book.

May 27th 1940:

The sky began to be overcast about midday and the tall church silhouetted against the clouds in Krombeke had a Red Cross flag hanging from the steeple. Ambulances lined up in queues to discharge the wounded into a hospital nearby. Soon it started to drizzle but later it poured down in torrents, adding the sound of thunder to the noise of not very distant gunfire. A private soldier, a Gunner with a staff car, came to me in the town to say that his Major was a casualty in the hospital and that he had all his kit in the car. He wanted me to advise him what he ought to do. I told him to stay where he was, near our Company HQ, for the time being and that I would look after him. In the meantime, having nothing else to do, I walked over to the hospital to see if I could discover the Major. I found him delirious, very seriously wounded, and I told his driver to take his kit to him in the hospital. He then joined my Company and eventually got back to England with us.

About that time I heard from Bruce and Tom that they had completed their bridges and I told them to come to Krombeke with their sections, leaving a few men and an NCO on each bridge to maintain it. The NCOs must be the judges of when it was time for them to withdraw and I gave them a route to follow. They turned up two days later in good spirits. They had done very well.

Presently a dispatch rider came with a message from Desmond Harrison telling me to stay in Krombeke and await orders. There was then very little to do except watch the traffic going by. It was a singularly demoralizing process, watching this retreating rabble. Everybody who passed told hair-raising stories of how the Germans were just round the corner.

The continual stream of soldiers drifting to the rear - many of them deserters, some without arms or equipment - were in sharp contrast to the regular convoys of troops who were clearly moving under orders. I felt that perhaps I ought to collect the stragglers and form them up into some cohesive group to defend the town. It occurred to me that I might set them to dig some defensive trenches with farm implements to accommodate the disciplined infantry who would presumably withdraw on foot very soon. I accordingly decided to walk round the town to make some plans.

When I came near the hospital I saw a few men who were already digging, but they seemed to have chosen an odd place to dig trenches. They were digging inside the grounds of the hospital, without any field of fire. I stopped a moment to watch them, trying to fathom their intentions. Presently a cortège emerged from the hospital, led by a padre in a white surplice, and followed by about twenty men in pairs carrying stretchers. The cortège halted near the trenches, the stretcher-bearers tipped the corpses, tied up in army blankets, into the trenches, the padre said his prayers and the cortège departed, leaving the gravediggers to crack obscene jokes, as I suppose grave diggers often do. The padre remained standing thoughtfully, and I spoke to him. He told me that he and the medical staff of the hospital proposed to remain in Krombeke, at their posts in the hospital, when the Germans arrived. I thought they faced their fate with magnificent calm and I took the padre's home address to tell his family when - and if - I got home.

Shortly after this the French curé came along the pavement towards his church. He stopped and addressed me. He told me he had been a combatant officer in the First World War, wounded and gassed, and he had hoped never to see another war. I asked him what he proposed to do now, for the town would be in the hands of the Germans within twenty-four hours at the outside. "Nearly all my flock have fled," he said. "But my church will remain. The people will come back and they will need me. My duty is here.

I must admit these lines somewhat moved me ; they also peeked my curiosity as to the identify of the padré and the curé - as it appears, both remarkable men. The padré was undoubtably British, perhaps with 10 CCS, but the curé was probably Belgian as I doubt very much a French priest would tend to a small Flemish parish. If I can find his name, as he was an officer, there is even a chance I may get hold of his army records.

KR,
Christian

 

Apparently about 30 Chaplains were captured during the 1940 campaign. The RAChD may have a list.

BBC - WW2 People's War - Brief History of the Royal Army Chaplains' Department in World War II

 

I've had a Google-around. There seem to have been four chaplains at Krombeke. One of these was the Methodist Joseph Ellison Platt.

https://etheses.durham.ac.uk/id/eprint/14261/1/Pickering_Thesis_with_amendments.pdf

" Revd Joseph ‘Jock’, Ellison Platt was one of the thirty-three chaplains, including four Methodists,
captured in France and Belgium during 1940. He was detained when the RAMC Casualty
Clearing Station at Krombeke, to which he was attached, was overrun by the Germans on 29
May, before the evacuation from Dunkirk, an event he described ‘as the greatest rout since
Napoleon’s Moscow, perhaps the greatest in history’. Platt described the breadth of role
during the chaotic two days before capture: ‘During the past forty-eight hours I have turned
my hand to anything, nay everything. I have been stretcher-bearer, grave-digger, surgeon,
anaesthetist, nursing orderly, ambulance driver, traffic policeman, yes; everything.’ His diary
makes clear that he could have escaped but that he and three fellow chaplains decided that
it was their duty to remain ‘as long as there are wounded, dying and dead men who need
our ministry’. His first task as a POW chaplain was to find and bury several hundred British
war dead. ‘The description of that experience — the finding of bodies that have lain out in a
blistering sun for an indefinite period is best glossed over with the tag “I did my duty”.’ A
German chaplain was engaged in the same task, and they each stood side-by-side and
saluted each other’s war dead."

Perhaps his papers at the IWM will detail who the others were.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030028953

 

I think this book would make a fine addition to my library

 

Aha Rabbithole of Padres!

140 Rgt RA padre was Captain the Rev A Beale. He was injured at Cassel and relinquished his commission due to his injuries in September 1940. I don't know how he escaped from Cassel or whether he was POW and then repatriated, and so any help in my search for yet another of my father's officers much appreciated!

 

https://www.myprimitivemethodists.o...isters/p/platt-joseph-ellison-m-b-e-1900-1973

Platt, Joseph Ellison M.B.E. (1900-1973)
Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference
JOSEPH ELLISON PLATT, M.B.E.: born at Winsford, Cheshire, in 1900, he entered the ministry in 1929 after training at Hartley College. He subsequently served in the following circuits: Brough, Clitheroe Nantwich, Kingston-on-Thames (Richmond Road), and London (Tooting). After a brief period of service with the South African Conference he returned to Dover in 1939, soon to commence six years service as an Army Chaplain.
This was the beginning of the outstanding features of his ministry during which he was made an M.B.E. for special and courageous service. He was directly involved in the Dunkirk experience and here began the revelation of his indomitable spirit of fortitude, courage and persistent caring for others in need. He and many of his men were taken into captivity, several of them badly wounded, and Joseph revealed his pastoral heart in his caring concern for them. So persistent were his demands on their behalf, and so fearless his defence of their interests, that eventually the German authorities sought to destroy his Christian influence by way of imprisonment in Colditz Castle. There his deep Christian faith and living fellowship with his Lord and Master lit up his way with a radiant certainty and hope which nothing could destroy. At last the glad day of release from Colditz came and his remaining years in the active ministry were spent in the St. Leonard’s, Bromley Common and Orpington circuits, and finally in the Somerset Mission, whence he retired into the Dorchester Circuit.
A man of deep faith who could never be turned away from his convictions, a careful administrator, wise counsellor and loving pastor, he was known as a real follower of Christ. No one who visited him during the years of his retirement could fail to be impressed by the courage and patience with which he accepted a heavy burden of physical pain and disability. He died on 17th June, 1973 in the seventy-third year of his age and the forty-fourth of his ministry.
Family
Joseph was born on 21 February 1900 at Over, nr Winsford, Cheshire, to parents Thomas Platt, a greengrocer (1901) and Edith Ellison.
He married Annie May Grainger (1908-1950) in the summer of 1908 in the Birkenhead Registration District, Cheshire.
Joseph died on 17 June 1973 at Charminster, Dorset.
Circuits
Hartley
1929 Brough
1930 Clitheroe
1932 Nantwich &c
1933 Kingston Rich
1934 Tooting
1937 South African Conf
1939 Dover
1940 Chaplain H.M. Forces
1946 St Leonards &c
1949 Bromley Com &c
1956 Somerset S Mission
1960 Dorchester (S)

__________________________________________________

Denis Swinney – Army Captain
Denis Swinney – Army Captain | SWWEC

Detailing him blowing the bridge at Krombeke

__________________________________________________

Peter Smailes Ingham (1917-2003) [67407, Captain, 7th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment]
Peter Smailes Ingham (1917-2003) [67407, Captain, 7th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment] – Huddersfield Exposed Forums

___________________________________________________
Dentist captured at Krombeke
Captain John David Hooper LDS RCS (7 Apr 1916[18] - 2008[19]) in 1945 in Haddington, East Lothian.[20]
John qualified as a Dentist in 1938 receiving Licence in Dental Surgery (LDS) and becoming a member of Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) in England.[21]
Captain John David Hooper served in the Army Dental Corps during World War II[22]
Enlisted: 11 Dec 1939[22]
He was a Prisoner of War:[22]
Captured: 30 May 1940 at Krombeke, Belgium[22]
Wounded upon Capture: No[22]
Camp 1: Oflag IX A Spangen Berg from 20 Jul 1940 to Nov 1940[22]
Camp 2: Stalag XXI B Schubin and Thure from Nov 1940 to Sept 1941[22]
Camp 3: Stalag XXI A Schildberg from Sept 1941 to Nov 1942[22]
Camp 4: Oflag XXI B Schubin from Nov 1942 to Apr 1943[22]
Camp 5: Staag Luft 3 Sagan from Apr 1943 to 28 Jan 1945[22]
Camp 6: Marlag Milag (Nord) Westertimke from 5 Feb 1945 to 27 Apr 1945[22]
Worked as a Dental Surgeon while in Stalag XXI A and Stalag XXI B[22]
Died: before 30 June 2007 in Dorset, England aged 80 years.[23]

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Morrison-3061


Kyle