During the retreat to Dunkirk in May 1940 certain infantry divisions were assigned positions to slow the German advance and to grant time for the evacuation at Dunkirk. The out perimeter was many miles from Dunkirk and many of these soldiers probably knew they were not going to be lucky enough to evacuate via the sea back home to Britain.
The 48th (South Midland) Infantry Division was holding the road that runs southward from Bergues through Wormhoudt, Cassell and Hazebrouck to slow down the German advance. This is just under 18 miles south of Dunkirk.
Situated at Ledringhem, was Fort Rose Farm which was Headquarters of A Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Warwickshires on the morning of the 28th May 1940 which at the end of day fell into the hands of the SS (2nd Battalion under the command of Wilhelm Monhke)
Having expended their ammunition, they were overrun by the advancing German troops, and they surrendered to SS Troops of the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler. A group of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 4th Battalion Cheshire Regiment and gunners of the 210 Battery 53rd (The Worcestershire Yeomanry) Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery were taken to a Barn in La Plaine au Bois near Wormhoudt on the 28th May 1940.
The British POWs became increasingly alarmed at the brutal tactics of the SS as wounded stragglers were shots while being marched to the Barn.
Just under 100 POWs were herded into a small cow shed after which the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, threw stick-grenades into the building. Sergeants Stanley Moore and Augustus Jennings threw themselves on top of the grenades shielding their comrades from the blast.
When the Germans realized this, they called out two groups of five to leave the barn, who were all shot. As it dawned on the impatient Germans that this was going to take some time, shooting small groups at a time, they simply fired into the crowed barn with their machine guns. Eighty soldiers were murdered and a further nine died soon afterwards from their wounds.
A few managed to escape from a small door at the back of the barn. The senior officer Captain James Lynn-Allen, already shot, managed to find a pond and dived in with Private Bert Evans, who had been dragged out of the barn by Lynn-Allen. An SS soldiers came to the pond and shot Lynn-Allen at point blank range in the head. Bert was shot twice.
After playing dead for some time, Bert managed to crawl across a field to a Bollengier farm where he found a different none SS German unit. He was sent to hospital and spent four years in a POW camp before returning home in exchange for severely injured prisoners. Bert died at the age of 92 in 2013. He returned to the site many times to pay his respects.
The body of James Lynn-Allen was never found. The Pond was drained and the contents from this form the foundations of the belvedere which is now his tomb.
We must also remember a French soldier called Robert Vanpee. Bollengier farm was a French Army depot, guarded by Robert. The SS occupied the farm on the morning of the 29th May and one of their soldiers was shot while perched on a tank. The Nazis lined up the whole Bollengier family against a wall. Robert, who was hiding in a barn, surrendered so that the family was not shot. He was taken into a field and murdered. His body was discovered with 35 British soldiers in a common grave near the barn. Identified since 1988, he rests in the British cemetery at Esquelbecq, alongside his comrades of the Warwickshire and Cheshire Regiments and the Royal Artilery.
This was May 1940, not late war with the atrocities of the Eastern Front transposing the evil into the German soldiers. It illustrates and should be a lesson to those who fight for totalitarian states and rulers who suppress freedoms and create hierarchies of supremacy; that evil is not created on the battlefield, but in the minds at home with blind faith and a lack of the rule of law. A lesson which still needs to be learned today.
Many of these German soldiers showed no remorse and denied their involvement. Some lived long lives with their families. Not so for the 89 brave men at Wormhoudt, posing no threat, with no weapons and protected by the Geneva Convention who were murdered in cold blood by fanatical fascists, licensed to murder on a huge scale for another five years.
The SS troops were led by Hauptsturmfuher Wilhelm Mohnke, who never faced trial insisting no orders not to take prisoners or to execute them was given. Survivors of the massacre confirmed that Mohnke was at the barn. Roger Cook, the TV investigative journalists made a program in the 1980s finding Mohnke living the good life in Germany until he died in 2001 aged 90.
The Memorial Meadow and a reconstructed barn were created so this evil event is not forgotten. The barn is covered in memorials, wreathes and messages. Many of which are from local schools from Birmingham.
You must visit this site, especially the young. Today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders, and they need to understand what happened here in May 1940. I have also visited another Massacre site which I will post on next.