THINGS HAD BEEN GOING from bad to worse for the Winnipeg Rifles since just before dawn at 0400 hours, when ‘A’ Company’s Major Fred Hodge reported hearing enemy tanks off in the far distance. The racket out to Hodge’s front was generated by a “battle-ready scouting party” of Sturmbannführer Bernhard Siebken’s 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment’s II Battalion, which was advancing in staggered formation to enable an immediate attack at the first hint of resistance. Unsure of the Canadian dispositions, Siebken opted to bull ahead with fighting teeth bared rather than try to feel out the enemy forward positions first by use of reconnaissance patrols. Siebken’s scouting party advanced so rapidly it left the rest of the battalion far behind, strung out along a narrow road running from Cristot to Putot-en-Bessin. Despite its haste, II Battalion failed to gain the battlefield in time to coordinate with I Battalion’s assault on the Regina Rifles.1 The 26th Panzer Grenadiers’ attack on 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade on June 8 thus developed piecemeal, with each battalion operating without coordination or communication with any other.
Just as a predawn light washed the eastern skyline, the German scouting party rolled through the wheat towards the bridge spanning the railroad on the Winnipegs’ extreme right flank. Heavy artillery and mortar fire saturated the ground well ahead of the advancing force. The ground shaking around them from explosions and the air overhead whirring with steel shrapnel shards, Hodge’s men crouched in their slit trenches. Taking a quick peek out of his hole, Hodge saw a cluster of infantry advancing in a tight pack around several vehicles, one of which was either an antiquated Mark iii tank or a self-propelled gun.
Hodge let the Germans almost gain the bridge before ordering his two platoons to cut into them with Bren gun and rifle fire. Adding to this weight of steel were several Vickers machine guns from a Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa platoon commanded by Lieutenant Ashman. The heavily concentrated fire “swept the enemy infantry away like a scythe to hay,” the Winnipeg regimental historian later wrote, while a six-pound antitank gun manned by Corporal Naylor’s crew knocked out the armoured vehicle and an armoured car.2 Badly blooded, the scouting party fell back and Siebken concluded he faced an enemy “ready to defend.” There would be no easy dash to the beaches. II Battalion must first put in a well-prepared attack to clear the resistance discovered at Putot-en-Bessin.3 Siebken was also painfully aware that his left flank was completely exposed to a possible counterstroke from the 50th British Infantry Division to his west. Panzer Lehr Division was to have covered that flank, but there was no sign of it and no news as to the division’s whereabouts.
Siebken summoned his company commanders to a hastily established headquarters in a château outside le Mesnil-Patry. He ordered No. 7 Company under Leutnant August Henne to strike from the right, with Obersturmführer Heinz Schmolke’s No. 6 Company on the left, while No. 5 and No. 8 companies provided supporting fire. “When should the attack begin?” Schmolke asked. “Half an hour ago,” the battalion commander growled. Dashing back to his men, Schmolke saw smoke from a direct artillery hit blowing slowly away from the position. A single shell had killed two of his officers and left a couple more badly wounded. Hurriedly reorganizing the company command structure, Schmolke led his men towards battle.4
Unbeknown to Siebken, his flank was not threatened as feared, for a strong force of Panzer Lehr Division Panther tanks was already well north of his position grinding along a ridge parallelling the woods at la Bergerie Ferme. Captain Harold Gonder and Lieutenant Gerry Blanchard apprehensively watched this line of nine tanks cross the railroad west of Putot-en-Bessin and rattle towards their position. The 62nd Anti-Tank Regiment battery commander had only two 17-pound antitank guns and two 6-pounders from the 3rd Anti-Tank Regiment’s 94th Battery capable of bringing sights to bear on the approaching Panthers.5
Gonder could hardly believe the cavalier manner of the German tank commanders. They were all sitting tall in their open turrets, looking straight ahead as if on a training manoeuvre. Glancing over at the antitank gunners quietly tracking the tanks with their guns, he thought it should be like shooting ducks in a row for them. The range was closing fast, down to about 1,200 yards, with the tanks approaching the farm in a tightly regimented single line. Everything was developing into a perfect ambush until one of his sergeants suddenly shouted in a panicky voice, “Fire!” Before Gonder could countermand the order, every Vickers machine gun in the line ripped off a long burst of fire. “Oh, boy, here we go,” Gonder thought, as “immediately down came the turrets and the German tanks got into action… fast.”6
The jig up, the four antitank guns cracked out an opening salvo that left four Panthers wrecked, and hastened to reload. Even as they did so, the remaining five Panthers swung towards them with long-barrelled 75-millimetre guns barking out rapid fusillades. Gonder watched in helpless horror as the crew of one antitank gun or Vickers machine gun after another was “literally slaughtered” by shells “fused to burst on impact. The uncanny skill of those tankers in finding us and getting the range was ghastly.”7
In seconds, both 17-pounders were out of action, with many gunners dead or wounded. Blanchard rushed to the rear to bring up another 17-pounder and 6-pounder that had been covering the farm’s northern flank, while Gonder shifted his machine guns to new positions not yet zeroed in by the tankers, who were now being supported by German mortar fire that was hammering the wood. “Fearing that the tanks were accompanied by infantry, [Gonder] exhorted his men to keep the guns in action,” wrote the Camerons’ regimental historian. “Sergeant Stanley and Private A.W. Bond picked up a gun whose crew had been disabled, and moving to an exposed bit of ground continued to fire at and around the tanks until the situation had been restored.” The two men were subsequently awarded Military Medals and Gonder the Military Cross for their behaviour in this action.8
The company’s casualties, however, were heavy. Although all his Vickers remained operational, Gonder lacked soldiers to man most of them. Having had their mortars wrecked by the opening salvo of German mortar fire, the surviving members of the Camerons’ No. 13 Platoon jumped in, but were still too few to bring all the guns back on line. Fortunately, a number of the Canadian Scottish troops were “old 2nd Battalion men.” This prewar battalion of the Canadian Scottish Regiment had been briefly reorganized in 1936 into a machine-gun battalion similar to the Camerons. Harkening back to their long unused training, the soldiers reacquainted themselves with the powerful, little-modified, .303-calibre workhorse that had served Commonwealth forces since before the Boer War.9
Smothered by artillery and mortar fire and raked from a distance by the Panthers, casualties among ‘E’ Troop grew to the point where Blanchard ended up “laying and firing one of the guns himself.”10 The rapid fire the British and Canadian antitank gunners kept throwing at the Panthers served to keep them at their distance, so the two sides engaged in a standoff from mid-morning to about 1630 hours. Then the tanks, undoubtedly low on ammunition, turned about and waddled home. The battle for la Bergerie Ferme was over. ‘E’ Troop’s casualties were four dead, seven wounded, and two missing. Blanchard’s cool bravery under fire earned a Military Cross.
When Canadian Scottish Major G.T. “Tony” MacEwan visited his ‘D’ Company platoon positioned in the wood, he was “surprised to find no casualties… although they were all shaken up. The mortars [No. 13 Platoon] were in a bad way [with] their transport—about four trucks—in all… hit and brewing. The MGs had many casualties.” MacEwan’s visit was in the mid-afternoon, and he thought the worst of the fight at the farm finished for the moment. The major reported the attack against la Bergerie as part of the offensive by 12th SS (Hitlerjugend) Panzer Division, not realizing that his men had faced down a probe by Panzer Lehr Division—just beginning to establish a presence on the battlefield. He was little worried about the situation at the farm, but greatly concerned by the ever increasing intensity of fire coming from Putot-en-Bessin. It seemed that the main focus of German attention was shifting inexorably to focus directly on that village.11
MEANWHILE, THE ATTACK ON PUTOT by the 12th SS 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment’s II Battalion had not developed with great immediate force despite Siebken’s exhortations to his company commanders for haste. Not until about 1000 hours did Major Lochie Fulton spot a large force of German infantry advancing from le Mesnil-Patry towards where the railroad tracks fronted the Winnipeg Rifles’ ‘D’ Company line. Unlike most of the battalion, Fulton’s men enjoyed a good field of fire because they were dug in at a point where the railroad ran across their front at ground level. To the right of ‘D’ Company, the railroad continued to follow a ground-level grade past ‘C’ Company’s front before dropping into a deep cutting to pass ‘A’ Company’s lines. Fulton recognized that ‘A’ Company’s position was the battalion’s weakest defensive link, for the Germans could use the cutting as a deep trench from which to launch massed attacks on the two companies defending the right flank. They could also attempt, as they had earlier, to push armour across the railway bridge to support the infantry coming out of the trench.12
But, apparently unaware of the potential presented by the cutting, the Germans advanced in battle order directly towards ‘D’ Company’s front under the cover of an increasingly violent mortar and artillery barrage. Fulton ordered his mortar sergeant to reply with the three-inch mortars, while No. 17 Platoon, closest to the railway, hit them with Bren gun fire. Meanwhile, 13th Field Regiment Forward Observation Officer Captain Ben Nixon called down a devastating concentration of artillery fire. A fierce firefight ensued between the Panzer Grenadiers and No. 17 Platoon, but after a few minutes of intense shooting the Germans fell back in disorder. The platoon’s wireless operator reported to Fulton that casualties had been heavy and its commander, Lieutenant Jack Benham, was dead. But they had succeeded in staving off the German thrust.13
As Fulton had feared, a different story quickly developed on the front facing ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies. Shortly after noon, another push by No. 6 Company of the Panzer Grenadiers gained the railway cutting despite being smothered by heavy artillery concentrations. The Germans crept out of the trench by ones and twos to take up sniping positions along the railroad embankment south of the town. Hunkered down in slit trenches that faced tall stands of wheat, the Canadian riflemen found their view of the railway blocked, so they were unable to bring effective fire against either the strongpoint or the infiltrating troops. By late morning, the battalion’s war diarist observed that snipers had come “to life in the buildings throughout the town and made it increasingly difficult to move in the whole [battalion] area… there was direct enemy machine gun, mortar, and artillery fire on our light machine-gun posts and individuals in slit trenches.”14 The two companies began taking heavy casualties.
Lieutenant Colonel John Meldram had been free to roam between rifle companies on foot all morning without great fear. Now the sniper fire was so thick he was only able to venture out from battalion headquarters to the front line inside the turret of a Sherman tank used by one of the 13th Field Artillery’s FOOs. During one of their attempts to visit the companies, their tank was straddled by a concentration of 88-millimetre fire and forced to beat a hasty retreat. After this, Meldram decided it was irresponsible to continue taking the risks inherent in maintaining personal contact with his rifle companies, and depended instead on fitful and spotty wireless reports sent by the company commanders.15 He still believed that the situation was under control—sending a wireless report to brigade at 1420 hours that assured Brigadier Harry Foster the battalion should “be able to handle the situation.”16
But even as Meldram sent this report, the defensive wall held by the Royal Winnipeg Rifles started to crumble. Rifleman Robert Smellie of ‘C’ Company’s No. 15 Platoon saw some infantry moving in the grain field south of the railway cutting. As he opened up with his Bren gun, “an artillery barrage started… which gradually swept through our position. One shell landed in a slit trench about 50 feet to my left.” The two men inside were killed instantly. “As the shelling lessened and we put our heads up, I saw a rifleman from [No.] 13 Platoon climb out of his slit trench and run towards the enemy, throwing away his equipment and tearing off his clothes as he ran. He was very soon hit by fire from the other side of the rail track. We continued to fire and every time we saw a movement on the other side of the track, I would let go a short burst.”17
The shelling and probes by infantry continued, with each attempt by the Germans to advance in strength repelled by the embattled companies, but casualties mounted and ammunition ran down. It became clear that the Germans had managed to not only surround ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies, but also ‘B’ Company to their rear. Other Panzer Grenadiers had infiltrated the lines of individual companies, cutting platoons off from each other. Fighting was increasingly at close quarters, with the artillery and mortars of both sides posing a hazard to friend and foe alike. All wireless communication within the three besieged Winnipeg companies broke down completely. Meldram lost all contact with most of his battalion and was helpless to regain it.
Major Fred Hodge’s situation was desperate, made even worse by the fact that ‘A’ Company was short a full platoon because that of Lieutenant Frank Battershill was positioned almost a mile distant in Brouay. For his part, Battershill was pinned down by successive assaults that made it impossible for him to move towards Putot. First, a battalion from Panzer Lehr brushed up against his front while groping its way towards that division’s planned forming-up position for a counterattack on Gold Beach. Lost and out of contact with the rest of the division, this battalion established a strongpoint on the southern edge of Brouay and started probing his position in strength. Concentrations of naval gunfire from ships standing off Juno Beach repelled the probes and inflicted heavy German casualties. Shortly after the Panzer Lehr unit had been thrown back, an attack was put in on Brouay by the 26th Panzer Grenadier’s III Battalion. On the approach march, one company from this battalion passed through the area churned up by the naval guns. “Here,” wrote Oberscharführer Hans-Georg Kesslau, “we encountered the most terrible image of the war. The enemy had virtually cut to pieces units of the Panzer Lehr Division with heavy weapons. Armoured personnel carriers and equipment had been ripped apart, next to them on the ground, and even hanging from trees, were body parts of dead comrades. A terrible silence covered all.”18
The hasty attack on Brouay by III Battalion was thrown back, but only thanks to the firepower provided by ‘F’ Battery of the 62nd Anti-Tank Regiment, which caught the German infantry by surprise. Several of Battershill’s men, however, were lost as prisoners when one section was overrun. The lieutenant reported by wireless to Meldram in the mid-afternoon that his “flank protection group remained intact” and in possession of Brouay, but was completely isolated from the rest of the battalion.19
At about the same time as Battershill was making his report, Hodge realized the rest of ‘A’ Company was surrounded and decided their only chance for survival was to break out towards Brouay by moving westwards inside the cover of the railway cutting. But just as ‘A’ Company fought through to the cutting, II Battalion’s No. 6 Company launched a counterthrust supported by several self-propelled guns and armoured half-tracks that collided head-on with Hodge’s men. Ammunition exhausted, hopelessly outgunned and outnumbered, the major decided only one option remained. “Lay down your arms and come in here,” he shouted to his still desperately resisting soldiers. As most reluctantly moved to obey, Corporal Hank Grant of No. 9 Platoon “took off, along with a few others. I didn’t go there to surrender that easy.” Grant managed to dash through to ‘B’ Company’s position, and seeing things were collapsing there as well, kept going right back to battalion headquarters.20
‘C’ Company’s perimeter was also falling apart. Rifleman Smellie could hear No. 15 Platoon’s Lieutenant Lew McQueen trying to raise Major Jimmy Jones on the wireless without success. Finally, Mc-Queen sent a runner to try to get instructions. It took the man thirty minutes to return with news that the headquarters was abandoned. Jones and his men had apparently mounted the wireless in the company jeep and attempted to reach the forward platoons, but now there was no sign of them anywhere.
On No. 15 Platoon’s flank, No. 13 Platoon “appeared to be overrun and without radio communications, we could not call down either mortar or artillery fire to support us. Lew McQueen ordered us to pull back to the hedgerow behind the orchard, at which time, we were to throw out some smoke bombs and make our way out by ourselves if we could. I fired about six magazines with the Bren by which time the barrel was nearly red hot. We threw out the smoke bombs and ran for our lives.”21
Smellie reached the hedgerow, and along with a few others from the platoon crept eastwards. Reaching a point where the hedgerow butted up against a road, Smellie glanced out to see if they could dash across to the opposite hedgerow. He found himself “peering down the barrel of a heavy machine gun, which the Germans were just in the process of activating. We turned around and raced down the hedgerow till we came to the stone wall around a farmyard. It was obvious we would have to cross the road there if we wanted to get out of the orchard. McQueen told us to dash across in very small groups. The group I was with all made it. I never saw Lew McQueen again.”22 The popular twenty-four-year-old officer from Winnipeg was killed covering his men’s escape.
Once ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies were overrun, the Panzer Grenadiers directed their full fury against ‘B’ Company, which was dug into an orchard. Company Sergeant Major Charles Belton, Lieutenant Don James, and Lieutenant Andrew Beiber formed a circle “wondering what to do as we were outnumbered, and we knew if this was to continue, we were going to be pushed right back to the beach again.”23 Some men from ‘C’ Company filtered into the position, including Lieutenant Douglas “Duke” Glasgow, a good friend of James. The two lieutenants had just crouched in a slit trench together when a German half-track burst into the perimeter with its heavy machine gun shrieking.
Those who could fled, but James, Glasgow, and a number of other men were forced to surrender. The Panzer Grenadiers quickly separated the officers from the men and then sent the other rankers marching up the road towards le Mesnil-Patry, while a soldier armed with a Schmeisser put James and Glasgow under guard. From the orchard, James watched the men marching up the road as a German fighter plane roared overhead, then cut a sharp turn that brought it back on a converging line of flight, and strafed the men with its machine guns. Several men were wounded, including Rifleman Albert Cook, who had his leg so badly shattered by a bullet that it had to be amputated.
The injured were piled onto a half-track and driven off for treatment. Then the rest of the prisoners were marched up the road. James had a sense of foreboding as he watched the way the Germans were acting and feared “something peculiar was going to happen down the road… because… they assembled several of our men together and made them sit down.” His fears were confirmed when the young Nazis “proceeded to shoot them.”24
WHILE THIS ATROCITY was unfolding, Company Sergeant Major Belton made to escape by taking the controls of the company’s Bren carrier, a vehicle he had never before driven. When the half-track and other German troops broke into the orchard, he realized they were surrounded and also “that our Brigade HQ had no idea what was going on up forward because the Germans had infiltrated our lines and cut all our communications. I got the foolish idea I should jump in this carrier and see what I could do.”25
Unable to figure out how to work the gearshift, Belton drove off “amid a deadly hail of fire… in low gear, the engine screaming, [at] about four miles an hour.”26 Heading along a road leading towards an intersection with the Caen-Bayeux highway, Belton kept trying to get the clutch and shifter working in concert, while looking nervously at an approaching grade that climbed sharply to the intersection. Just in time to prevent the carrier from stalling out, he forced the shifter into high gear and the vehicle lurched forward at rapidly increasing speed. As he roared into the intersection, Belton saw “two German SPs (self-propelled guns) sitting with their guns traversed in the opposite direction… I went through there so fast, and because their guns were hand traversed and couldn’t swing back fast enough, I got through. They did get a couple of shots in that hit the dirt around me. I was going through a kind of cut bank and… this dirt [was] flying around and getting into the carrier, but I got away somehow.”27
Belton drove straight to 7 CIB headquarters at Secqueville-en-Bessin, where he briefed a major standing at the gate of brigade headquarters. The CSM pulled out his map and drew exact positions of the three companies that had been eliminated. Belton said he was certain that not only his ‘B’ Company had been overrun, but that ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies had also been wiped out. When the major ran out of questions, Belton fired up the carrier again and headed back towards where the Winnipeg Rifles still held part of Putot, despite having lost almost three-quarters of their strength.28 Major Lochie Fulton’s ‘D’ Company and the Support Company were essentially all that remained of the battalion in terms of a coherent fighting force. Repeatedly, the Germans attempted to infiltrate and overrun Fulton’s lines and were thrown back each time with heavy losses.
Then ‘B’ Company’s reserve platoon, which had fallen back when the rest of the unit was overrun, crept out of the grain next to battalion headquarters, with Lieutenant Andy Beiber leading, and added its strength to the little battle group. With no wireless link to brigade and no idea of the fate of most of his men, Meldram clung to the hope that Brigadier Harry Foster would realize how dire circumstances were and send reinforcements.
In a slit trench nearby, Corporal G.V. McQueen of the headquarters section was worrying about his brother Lieutenant Lew Mc-Queen, whose ‘C’ Company was no longer in wireless communication with battalion headquarters. It was Lew’s twenty-fourth birthday and he had not had the chance to extend any good wishes. Now he worried that his older brother might be dead out there somewhere. “Lots of lead seemed to be flying around,” he later wrote. “I decided that if it got to hand-to-hand fighting, I would need some movement. I decided to get rid of my small pack and webbing. I tied a bandolier of ammo around my waist, fixed my bayonet on the rifle, and started to crawl along the ditch. Who do I meet crawling toward me? My pal Tanner. We shook hands and I said: ‘Tanner, if anything happens to me, tell Norma I didn’t know what hit me.’ He said: ‘G.V., you tell the girlfriend the same thing.’” The two men huddled in the ditch and anxiously watched their front, sides, and rear, because they had no idea where the Germans might be.
All around Putot, men were being taken prisoner or attempting to evade that fate. Some were rounded up, only to have an opportunity to make a break for it. Lieutenants James and Glasgow had been loaded into a half-track, but when it struck a land mine they used the explosion to take flight. Dashing to a slit trench, the two men jumped in to find Lieutenant Basil Brown lying at the bottom practically dead from a terrible wound in his back. Also in the slit trench was a Panzer Grenadier with a Schmeisser, who immediately covered them. Suddenly, a heavy concentration of artillery slammed down around them and the young German jumped up and fled in terror.
Seeing there was nothing they could do for Brown, the men moved on, but were soon fired on by another Schmeisser-toting German as they approached an orchard outside Putot. A slug punched into the right side of James’s jaw line and ripped out the other side. Blood was pumping from the wound as Glasgow dressed it as best he could with a field dressing. Then he stuck a finger into the wound to try stemming the bleeding and managed to find the point where an artery or vein had been punctured. Pressing down on it, Glasgow managed to prevent James bleeding to death and ignored his friend’s pleas to leave him to die.
The pair were lying in a two-foot-high stand of wheat. Glasgow kept assuring James they would be all right, that the Germans would never find them there. Eventually, a half-track rumbled up and put paid to this tale as the two men were again taken prisoner. There were three Panzer Grenadiers aboard—a driver, a gunner, and a radio operator. James thought the Germans would take them to the rear, but instead the half-track headed towards Putot only to blow up on a mine that killed the gunner and radio operator. Another half-track quickly appeared and picked up the two Canadians and the surviving German. This time, the vehicle drove into the German lines to a place called Château d’Audrieu—a fine estate tucked into a small forest south of the village of Audrieu. James and Glasgow were escorted to a medical aid post inside the château compound, where the medical officer was astonished that Glasgow had “managed to contact the right place with my finger and save [James’s] life.”29 Glasgow was marched off to join the uninjured prisoners, while James joined the wounded Germans in the aid post. Both men would spend the rest of the war in captivity.
AS HAD BEEN THE CASE with the 12th SS troops who had earlier overrun the North Nova Scotia Highlanders at Authie and Buron, some Panzer Grenadiers of II Battalion proved cold-blooded captors. During the action, the Winnipeg Rifles lost 256 men, of whom at least 175 were taken captive.30 The majority of the prisoners were from ‘A’ company. Treatment varied wildly, seemingly dependent on the whim of the SS officers who held their fate.
Most of the Canadians were gathered into a large group at Putot, numbering about one hundred and guarded by a section of Feldgendarmerie, or field police. They were then marched about four miles to the 26th Panzer Grenadier regimental headquarters at le Hautdu-Bosq, a cluster of houses on a rise of ground south of the village of Cheux. Another forty were initially crammed into a stable at Putot before being moved to II Battalion’s headquarters at le Mesnil-Patry and housed in the barn of a Norman farmer, George Moulin. Acting under direct orders from Siebken, the SS troops guarding these men provided water and first aid treatment to the wounded.31 Another party of twenty-four Canadians from ‘A’ Company and two 50th British Infantry Division soldiers was initially guarded by troops from the 26th Panzer Grenadier’s III Battalion, who marched their captives towards their headquarters near Cristot. When they encountered a 12th Reconnaissance Battalion patrol at a crossroads along the way, their custodians passed the prisoners into its hands. The patrol escorted the prisoners to that unit’s headquarters at the Château d’Audrieu.
Having arrived only about two hours ahead of the party escorting the Canadian prisoners, Major Gerhard Bremer had established his command post behind the large château, under the cooling shade of a huge sycamore tree. A fanatical Nazi who had joined the SS at age nineteen, Bremer was a highly decorated veteran of the invasions of Poland, France, and Russia.
Shortly after the Canadians entered the compound at about 1400 hours, Bremer summoned Major Hodge, Lance Corporal Austin Fuller, and Rifleman Frederick Smith for interrogation. Under the sycamore’s low-hanging branches, Bremer grilled the men for about fifteen minutes in flawless English without apparent success before angrily ordering the three men killed. Four SS troopers, including a lieutenant and a sergeant, escorted Hodge and the two other men into the woods and gunned them down. While this firing squad carried out its cruel work, Bremer more cursorily interrogated three more Canadians—riflemen David Gold, James McIntosh, and William Thomas. Frustrated at his inability to gain more than name, rank, and serial number, Bremer ordered the just returned firing squad detail to execute these men also. The three soldiers were ordered to lie on their stomachs with heads propped up on their arms and then were shot repeatedly in the back of the skull. Upon returning from this killing, the firing squad paused at the château kitchen for a quick snack washed down with apple cider.
Realizing he was unlikely to pry useful information from the Canadians, Bremer ordered the remaining prisoners placed under heavy guard in an orchard next to the château. At some point in the long, terrifying afternoon these prisoners endured, seven—including the two British soldiers—were marched into the woods and shot in the head, face, and chest at close range with small-calibre weapons. At 1603 hours, Bremer and several other officers strolled into the orchard and ordered the guards to bully the remaining thirteen men, all Royal Winnipeg Rifles, into a ragged line. Among the Canadians were two brothers, George and Frank Meakin. When the SS soldiers opened up on the helpless prisoners with rifles, machine pistols, and handguns, George Meakin stepped in front of his brother to shield the man’s body with his own. Consequently unwounded, Lance Corporal Frank Meakin along with Rifleman Steve Slywchuk feigned being dead, but were both shot in the skull at close range by an officer who meticulously checked each body for signs of life. Two French farmers, Leon Leseigneur and Eugese Buchart, who were walking past the orchard on a nearby road, witnessed the execution of these thirteen Canadians.32
While Bremer and his men slaughtered their prisoners, Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Mohnke was growing increasingly impatient with II Battalion commander Siebken’s insistence on sending prisoners to the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment’s headquarters. After about a hundred Canadians were escorted into the village, Mohnke demanded that no more be sent back. Stunned, Siebken interpreted this instruction as meaning that prisoners were to be shot upon capture. The officer announced with carefully phrased formality that he would send prisoners to the rear despite Mohnke’s instruction. At about 2100 hours, he accordingly dispatched the forty men gathered in the Moulin barn towards le Haut-du-Bosq under a mixed guard of about eight Feldgendarmerie and SS troops.
About a mile and a half before le Haut-du-Bosq, this party was intercepted by a staff car bearing a high-ranking SS officer, who was overheard by a German-speaking Canadian to demand that the prisoners be eliminated. Soon after his departure, the prisoners were ordered off the road into a field and “bunched together in several rows, with the stretcher cases in the middle” while a convoy of tanks and half-tracks passed. As the last half-track rolled by, it abruptly turned into the field. Several SS soldiers jumped out and handed submachine guns to the prison detail in exchange for their rifles. When everyone was fully armed with automatic weapons, the guards and troops from the half-track advanced on the Canadians sitting on the ground. Realizing the inevitability of what was about to happen, Lieutenant Reg Barker of the 3rd Anti-Tank Regiment said in a calm, clear voice, “Whoever is left after they fire the first round, go to the left.”
The Germans stomped to a halt thirty yards from the Canadians and one shouted in heavily accented English, “Now you die.” Renewing their advance, the SS soldiers fired a fusillade of bullets from the hip that ripped into the still seated men. Most were either wounded or killed as the Germans burned off their first magazine of ammunition. As the SS troops calmly reloaded and moved in among the dead and dying to finish off any survivors, several men in the back row, who had been either only lightly wounded or unscathed, made a break for it. Only five managed to escape into the gathering night, the others gunned down and murdered with the rest. Those who escaped were Corporal Hector McLean, riflemen Gordon Ferris, John MacDougall, and Arthur Desjarlais of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and Gunner Weldon Clark of the 3rd Anti-Tank Regiment. All were captured by other German units and imprisoned until war’s end.33
While the identity of the SS officer in the staff car was never confirmed, McLean later described him in a way that bore a remarkable likeness to Mohnke. And there was no doubt that the unstable commander was out looking for blood on the night of June 8–9. Upon learning that three more Canadians had been rounded up at Siebken’s headquarters, Mohnke demanded by phone that they be shot immediately. Siebken refused and a bitter argument ensued, during which Mohnke accused the II Battalion commander of insubordination. The moment Mohnke hung up, Siebken called 12th SS divisional headquarters and reported the matter to Major Hubert Meyer. The division’s chief-of-staff assured him there was no standing order to murder prisoners. In fact, he said, prisoners were valuable sources of information and as many as possible should be captured and treated in accordance with the rules of the Geneva Convention.
A relieved Siebken left his headquarters for the still raging battlefront, fully expecting that Mohnke would be reined in by a promised instruction from Meyer. However, Meyer was unable to contact Mohnke directly because the regimental commander was already en route by staff car to Siebken’s headquarters.
Sometime in the early morning hours of June 9, Mohnke burst into II Battalion’s headquarters at le Mesnil-Patry and confronted Untersturmführer Dietrich Schnabel, Siebken’s special missions officer. Drawing his pistol, Mohnke ordered the junior officer to execute the three prisoners. Shaken and afraid to refuse a direct order, Schnabel drove to Moulin farm where the three Canadians were being held. Accompanied by three soldiers, two of whom were medical orderlies, Schnabel had the prisoners taken out into a garden behind the barn. The Canadians were Private Harold Angel of the Cameron Highlanders and riflemen Frederick Holness and Ernest Baskerville of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles. Suffering a painful foot wound, Angel had to be supported by Holness, while Baskerville limped along behind because of a knee injury. Schnabel told the men to face away from the Germans, and then on his command the three accompanying soldiers fired a long burst of submachine-gun fire into their backs. To ensure the Canadians were dead, Schnabel then stepped forward and delivered a single pistol shot into the back of each man’s head.34