The Nazi Hunters (32 page)

Having secured Buck’s testimony, Barkworth’s intention now was to search far and wide for the suspects: the trigger-man, ‘Stuka’ Neuschwanger;
Hauptscharführer
Peter Straub, the Natzweiler executioner; Max Kessler, the Gestapo officer and Vosges killer;
Sturmbannführer
Hans Dietrich Ernst, the SS officer and Vosges murder squad commander; Julius Gehrum, Issel-horst’s brutal enforcer; and chiefly, of course, Isselhorst himself.

He would need to search scores of private addresses and scour the POW camps across four zones of occupation, each with its own set of rules and regulations. War criminals had even sought to hide themselves amongst the ranks of the ‘liberated armies’, claiming to be French, Czech or Polish soldiers. Where necessary, their numbers would need to be checked. Barkworth’s refusal to be daunted by red tape would yield swift results, but it would also earn him any number of enemies.

The coming search would take his men into some of the most horrific places on earth – ones that few could ever have imagined possible. One of the first, and perhaps the worst, was a building set beneath the prison in nearby Strasbourg. The place needed to be crossed off Barkworth’s list, so Sergeant Dusty Rhodes was sent to check that none of the Op Loyton missing were there.

‘A lot of experiments had been carried out on human bodies,’ Rhodes recalled. ‘There was . . . an enormous room that was absolutely full of human body parts, all preserved in formalin, in tanks. Now . . . it was our job to go around and look at each one . . . There were heads and faces and arms and legs; if one saw possibly a tattoo on an arm which one knew from regimental badges or English sayings . . . There was a possibility that some of our people could have been there.’

Thankfully, as far as Rhodes could tell, none of the Op Loyton missing had been chopped up by the Nazis and preserved in vats of formaldehyde.

Amongst other excursions that Barkworth had planned was a return visit to Moussey. New leads from the Gaggenau investigation needed to be pursued in the Rabodeau Valley and surroundings. Moreover, he and Sykes were keen to deliver in person a formal letter of thanks from the SAS Regiment. Entitled ‘Letter . . . to the citizens of Moussey as a form of thank you for their help’, it read:

I wish to express to you something of the gratitude which all the officers and men of the Special Air Service Brigade . . . feel towards you for the selfless devotion and memorable courage with which you aided them in the accomplishment of their tasks. The help you gave contributed in a large measure to any success we achieved, and we are full of admiration for the disregard of danger and generosity of spirit with which that help was given.

All men who were involved in the bitter conflict of 1939–1945 grew to recognize the importance to victory of civilian loyalty, steadfastness and determination. We realize that in no country and at no time did the practice of those virtues demand greater firmness than in France under German occupation, and that nowhere was that firmness more abundantly forthcoming.

It continued in a similar vein. Signed by Brigadier Calvert, it wished ‘all good fortune’ to the Moussey villagers and to France and offered the Regiment’s ‘most sincere thanks’. It was a fitting tribute to the villagers, and one that Barkworth and Sykes wished to deliver in person to several of their most valued Moussey friends.

But even as they prepared to head west into the Vosges, the work of this barely nascent manhunting unit was about to be brought to a premature and dramatic end.

Increasingly that summer, the SAS Regiment had been forced to wage an unanticipated war – a battle for its very survival. As the Second World War had drawn to a close, so Winston Churchill had been voted out of power, the weary minds of the British public turning away from the grim years of conflict. Two months after VE Day the first election since the start of the war was held, for democracy itself had been put on hold during the conflict. It resulted in a shock defeat for Churchill, and a landslide victory bringing Labour’s Clement Attlee to power.

Churchill had been the earliest and most outspoken advocate of Special Forces operations and irregular warfare. In the earliest stages of the war he’d challenged his military commanders to think the unthinkable, using guerrilla warfare, hit-and-run tactics and sabotage as a means to take the fight to the enemy in the most unexpected of ways. He’d challenged his military to ‘prepare hunter troops for a butcher-and-bolt reign of terror’, calling for ‘volunteers for special duties’ to man the ranks of the raiders.

Churchill had promised these men little more than a short but glorious career and almost certain death, and he had backed to the hilt those who had answered his call. He had once been asked in Parliament by Simon Wingfield-Digby, the MP for West Dorset, a question about British Special Forces fighting in southern Europe.

‘Is it true, Mr Prime Minister, that there is a body of men out in the Aegean Islands, fighting under the Union Flag, that are nothing short of being a band of murderous, renegade cut-throats?’

Churchill had had an entirely apposite answer: ‘If you do not take your seat and keep quiet, I will send you out to join them.’

But in the late summer of 1945 Churchill was no longer the man in power, and it was looking as if the days of this private army of maverick rule-breakers were numbered. The SAS had been warned that it was in imminent danger of being disbanded. The wheels had been set in motion by a military establishment that had never truly warmed to the gentleman warriors, eccentrics, desperadoes and buccaneers who made up the Regiment, and which was anxious to be rid of them once and for all.

It was in full knowledge of this that Colonel Franks wrote to his commanding officer, Brigadier Calvert, in late July 1945, expressing his frustration about the war crimes issue. ‘I am sure you will understand my feelings in this matter. At present, I very much doubt whether even a small percentage of the perpetrators of these crimes will be brought to justice. I feel personally responsible, not only to the families of these officers and men, but also to the men themselves.’

Franks signed off his letter with this: ‘There are no lengths to which I would not go to ensure that action is taken.’

There are no lengths to which I would not go to ensure that action is taken
: for the man then commanding 2 SAS these were strong words indeed.

Chapter Twenty-one

Colonel Franks’ quest for justice was not simply on behalf of his own SAS men. On the same day that he had written to Brigadier Calvert, promising that there were
no lengths to which he would not go to ensure action was taken
, he’d also penned a letter to the SOE’s Baker Street headquarters, regarding their missing men.

‘I enclose copy of Major Barkworth’s [Gaggenau] report, since it contains a good deal of information regarding the fate of Captain V. Gough who was with me in the Vosges, and whose death is now proved . . . Unfortunately I do not know the address of his next of kin, and am therefore unable to write to them.’

Franks felt every loss, and every war crime, most personally. Yet how could justice be achieved for any of the victims and their families, if the SAS was about to be shut down? The issue troubled Franks mightily, but there seemed little that he or anyone else could do to stop the seemingly inevitable, much though they might try.

Colonel Franks, Brigadier Calvert and others had plenty of ideas about how the SAS could be used, now that the war was won. Franks had earned the reputation of being one of the Regiment’s most original thinkers. He had proved himself an inspirational leader and a man of courage, understanding and initiative. He was also intensely loyal, as his dogged pursuit of the war crimes issue was proving. He commanded great respect within elite forces circles.

Franks and Calvert argued that post-war Special Forces roles might include behind-the-lines deployments in any Third World War with Russia, putting down rebellions in various parts of the empire, as well as hunting down the Nazi war criminals. As Brigadier Calvert was about to be posted to the Indian Army, it would fall to Colonel Franks to try to ensure that the SAS survived in some shape or form. He was absolutely determined to see that it would.

But the British military chiefs were equally determined to see the unit go. They had been reticent about creating Special Forces in the first place, and argued there was certainly no place for them now, in peacetime. Criticism of the SAS ranged from accusations of elitism and the dangers of private armies inculcating ‘unacceptable attitudes’ amongst the rank and file, to charges that they were impossible to control or to fit into operational plans. The fact that the ranks of the Regiment were made up of so many foreigners and even the odd civilian was doubly troubling.

The top brass argued that Special Forces took up an inordinate amount of senior commanders’ time, both in terms of fitting them into operational plans and dealing with the fallout from ‘undisciplined behaviour’ and ‘unsanctioned operations’ – in other words, the men on the ground deciding to go off and do their own thing. The SAS was also accused of ‘skimming’ the regular military of its best officers and men, and likewise sucking up a disproportionate amount of resources.

In short, the SAS had made powerful enemies who in the summer of 1945 they were determined to win the day. But equally, Colonel Franks was determined to thwart them. If the SAS had to be seen to fall on its sword, so be it. Publicly, it would do so. But privately, Franks was working at every level to ensure that the Regiment would survive, albeit in a wholly secretive and stealthy way.

The SAS colonel held several cards in his hand. Firstly, he enjoyed the absolute backing of Winston Churchill. So chary had the former prime minister been of the military establishment that he had created many of his earliest butcher-and-bolt raiding units outside the military apparatus entirely. The SOE was part of the Ministry for Economic Warfare, and many of Churchill’s raiding forces were made up of SOE agents.

Secondly, Colonel Franks had as fine an ally as one could wish for within the ranks of 2 SAS: Randolph Churchill. The former prime minister’s son had served with the SAS in North Africa and in the Balkans, and was an SAS aficionado without equal. With both the father and son so intimately involved, Colonel Franks prepared to play the long game, rallying political friends to his cause and lobbying the higher echelons of the Whitehall establishment.

In the meantime, the scene was set for the SAS to go underground, and foremost amongst its clandestine units would be Barkworth’s Nazi hunters.

While Franks was fighting his high-level battles in London, Barkworth, Sykes, Rhodes et al. were busy at the coalface. Amidst the burning quest for vengeance, none of them had forgotten the one place that had suffered more than any: the village of Moussey.

In early August 1945, Barkworth led his team back to the Rabodeau Valley. They came seeking evidence, but equally they came to answer a call from the villagers to honour the fallen. They were holding a memorial service for all who had perished in the concentration camps, and to consecrate a military cemetery for those who had perished in battle.

The remembrance service was staged at the very spot where the SS had rounded up the men of the village on 24 September 1944, and where Captain Druce had shot up the SS parade the same day. As Barkworth and his men observed the solemn gathering, the true extent of the tragedy that had struck this place became clear. The last flames of hope were flickering into darkness as villagers realized that the missing were never going to return.

Not a family had escaped loss, and the neighbouring villages were likewise bereaved and bereft. Widows and orphans thronged the streets. But nowhere had suffered to the same extent as Moussey, and the villagers would not have been hit as hard had they not harboured the Operation Loyton force so actively and for such a long time.

Yet the men of the Regiment – those who had been killed in the battles in the woods, or murdered locally by the Gestapo – were buried side by side with the French victims, in Moussey’s main graveyard. There was no ill feeling here; quite the reverse. The villagers asked for a set of the SAS colours to hang in their church, and they wanted to know the names of those who had died so they could be inscribed on the Moussey war memorials and for ever remembered.

The streets were clogged with stooped, black-clad figures – women and children, burdened with their sadness and their loss. There was one surprising splash of colour. For the remembrance service the priest of Moussey, Abbé Gassman, had donned a red SAS beret, one that had been sent to him by the commander of the mission that had cost his flock so dear – Colonel Brian Franks.

Abbé Gassman knew that he had a busy time ahead of him. In Catholic tradition, a requiem mass would need to be held for each and every household that had lost someone. He figured it would take him the best part of a year to complete all those he needed to perform for the bereaved in Moussey.

One villager who had returned from Rotenfels had been locked up there along with Lieutenant David Dill. Barkworth carried with him everywhere the photos of the ‘missing’. He showed Lieutenant Dill’s photo to the villager who had shared his cell.

‘Yes, that’s him. That’s certainly him,’ the villager confirmed. ‘That’s definitely his charming smile.’

Throughout the long and terrible weeks of captivity – from 7 October to 25 November 1944 – Lieutenant Dill had refused to salute even one of his Gestapo captors. This had served to infuriate them. It was the SAS lieutenant’s sole form of resistance, but it had attracted savage beatings on a daily basis – though even those weren’t sufficient to break his spirit. On one occasion Dill was lying on a straw mattress, following an agony of torture, when a woman prisoner was thrust into his cell. Dill had levered himself to his feet and offered her his bed, taking for himself the cold stone of the floor.