by Damien Lewis
‘The Gestapo had been at great pains to cover their tracks, and it was only possible to discover a little about the Germans who occupied the chateau and who buried the bodies,’ Sadler and Poat concluded. They’d uncovered three names – ‘Captain Hans Carling, Sous-Officier Hans Zool, Oberfeldwebel Gall’ – all of whom served with the Luftwaffe signals squadron. But the very most any of them could be charged with was being an accessory to the crime of murder, and they could very reasonably argue that they’d believed the dead men they had buried were French saboteurs.
Still there were clamours at the highest level for justice to be done. The Under-Secretary of State for War was one Henry Page Croft – Baron Croft – a decorated veteran of the First World War who had been appointed to his present post directly by Churchill. A respected politician from the inter-war years and an unofficial leader of the House of Commons, Croft had been a die-hard proponent of resisting Nazi Germany’s ascendancy under Hitler. Commenting on the Blitz, he’d observed: ‘Every class of Londoner responded defiantly to the long, long period of attack and from the Royal Family to the . . . dustman all vied in showing contempt of danger . . . London is a grand city with a big heart.’
Like Churchill, a long-standing critic of German rearmament prior to the war and of Britain’s comparative military weakness, Croft was a champion of the rank and file. In his view, Nazi war crimes were an abomination, especially when perpetrated against soldiers serving in uniform. The Noailles Wood case was exceptional in that two witnesses had survived to tell their tale. Two of those whom Hitler had ordered to be gunned down and sucked into the Nacht und Nebel – the night and fog – had got away from their executioners. That made the case unique.
The full title of the hearing in London that November was something of a mouthful: ‘Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force Court of Inquiry re Shooting of Allied Prisoners of War by the Germans near Noailles, Oise, France, on 9th August, 1944’. However, it lacked for nothing in terms of scope, power and reach. The court’s mandate had come from the very top: it was convened ‘by Command of General Eisenhower’ himself – General Dwight D. Eisenhower was then serving as the Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe.
Both Captain Sadler and Major Poat appeared in person at the court, to give evidence. Describing the murder scene, Poat related how ‘Captain Garstin said: “Make a break.” He could hardly stand up at all . . . He was far too ill to move . . . The Germans began to spray the men with bullets.’ Major Poat then pointed to Vaculik and Jones, the star witnesses in the courtroom: ‘These two corporals had a most amazing escape, in spite of their handcuffs, they managed to get away.’
The execution spot had been carefully chosen, Poat explained: ‘the wooded ground went right up . . . almost like a wall, so that if you stood men halfway up the bullets, if missing them or whizzing past . . . would go into the ground behind.’ Glancing around the courtroom, he added: ‘I should say the clearing was the size of this floor. It was just comfortable enough to line up seven men with a good space between so that there would be no chance of them sort of making a leap behind the nearest tree.’
On the orders of the court, a military pathologist, Lieutenant Colonel Robert MacKeen, of the Canadian Armed Forces First Canadian Base Laboratory, had carried out post-mortems on the Noailles Wood massacre victims. MacKeen, a pathologist of twenty years’ standing, had carried out sixty post-mortems on behalf of the Canadian Army, so was well versed in such work. His testimony before the court proved utterly sobering.
On examining Captain Garstin’s clothing, he’d found seven bullet holes in the SAS commander’s jacket. Garstin had taken a veritable fusillade of fire, suffering wounds to his stomach, back and limbs. The one consoling factor was that death would have been ‘almost instantaneous’, MacKeen concluded. But at some stage Garstin’s right jaw had suffered a powerful blow from ‘a blunt instrument’, and was found to be missing all of its teeth. It looked as if efforts had been made by the Gestapo killers to smash in their victims’ features, to further hide any evidence of their crimes.
There were no signs that any of Garstin’s original injuries suffered at the La Ferté-Alais DZ had been treated. Indeed, a 9mm round was still lodged in his arm, where it had fractured his humerus, the long bone in the upper arm, during the ambush on 5 July. When asked about the appearance of that bullet, MacKeen described how it was ‘almost untouched. I have it here.’ He proceeded to show to the court the 9mm round. ‘Bullet produced by witness is marked Exhibit “A,”’ the court recorder noted.
MacKeen was unable to identify the next four bodies, but with each he described the means of death, distinguishing them by their grave numbers. Body 326 had been killed by a single shot to the neck, causing ‘fracture of mandible and vertebrae’. Body 327 had also been killed by a shot to the neck, after which ‘the missile track continued upwards, penetrating the palatal bone’ – the top of the mouth. Body 328 had suffered two bullet wounds to the side of the head, causing ‘massive fracture and fragmentation’. Body 329 had been killed by ‘a bullet wound of the skull and brain from below’. All the men had been buried fully dressed, but minus their footwear.
After MacKeen, two French witnesses were called, a Madame Simone Vignes, who had worked as a cook for the Luftwaffe squadron stationed at the Château de Parisis-Fontaine, and a Monsieur Félix Duband, the mayor of Noailles. They were able to give a little more information about the Luftwaffe unit, but that was all. The chateau’s caretaker and his wife, the Cléments, also gave evidence. ‘My wife and I discovered the little hillock,’ Monsieur Clément related, ‘and rumours had been going on that soldiers had been buried there.’ But they had little more of any substance to add.
The final witness was Commander de Chauvigny, the Resistance leader who had shown Vaculik and Jones, and then Sadler and Poat, around the sites of the killings. He was crystal clear about how Garstin and his men had been captured: ‘The Germans had been warned of the expedition (indiscretion from London) and were waiting for the parachutists, upon whom they opened fire.’ He also gave evidence that four of the dead men had had their faces ‘crushed, so as to render them unidentifiable’.
‘I put his body in the coffin,’ de Chauvigny told the court, of Captain Garstin’s reburial. ‘He had a Military Cross and his name was in the coffin . . . I took the body in the lorry and the lorry followed my car which arrived at the cemetery. There was an attachment of American and British soldiers and French FFI and an American chaplain . . . Military honours were rendered and a religious ceremony was performed.’
With that, the witness evidence was complete. The court’s findings were unequivocal. Issued on 19 April 1945 – the delay had been caused by the court visiting the site of the crimes – they listed the five dead men as follows:
P. B. Garstin, MC Captain 95531 SAS Regiment
T. Varey Sergeant 811752 1 SAS Regiment
T. Barker Trooper 6986237 1 SAS Regiment
J. Walker Trooper 7019954 1 SAS Regiment
W Young Trooper 7018947 1 SAS Regiment
The court concluded that ‘the killing of the . . . five British soldiers .. . was in violation of the well-recognised laws and usages of war and the terms of the Geneva Convention . . . and was murder.’ The court refused to accept ‘the reading of the so-called sentence as authorising a shooting, which was in fact murder. All five victims were British subjects wearing British uniforms at the time of their capture and were engaged upon a legitimate military action. They had been brought before no court and given no trial.’
Vaculik and Jones had been able to provide detailed physical descriptions of the killers: ‘smaller than I am . . . round face with a childish look, about twenty, and . . . spoke affectedly. Perfect English’ – their description of von Kapri. ‘Silver braid with silver button on shoulder, smart grey uniform, tie and white collar, big light grey cap, breeches with line down side, high boots’ –their description of Schnur. Vaculik vowed of his tormenters and killers: ‘If I
saw them, I could recognise them. My description will not be very good, but I could recognise them.’
No one doubted that he could. But while the court was certain that those ‘who ordered and are responsible for the said murders were members of the German Gestapo at Paris’, they were equally clear that ‘the identities of the individuals who ordered and/or carried out the said murders are not known’. With no names and no identities, the court had next to nothing to go on. It was pretty much back to square one.
The court’s recommendations were that the three known members of the Luftwaffe signals squadron should be sought, in the hope that might lead in turn to the Gestapo killers. At the same time the French authorities should be approached, to check any records of the Gestapo who had served in Paris, to see if they answered the descriptions given to the court. The final recommendation was that if any ‘members of the German Gestapo are identified and come into Allied hands, and are shown to be implicated in the killings, they be brought to trial . . . on charges of murder’.
By the autumn of 1944, a tsunami of German prisoners had fallen into Allied hands. A report in August 1944 described just one of the POW cages springing up across liberated France: ‘The sight that greeted us will never be forgotten . . . Acres and acres of the Chosen Race were parked behind barbed wire. Their one desire in life at that time was a drink of water.’ On 9 August alone some 351 German officers and 18,109 men had been captured, during fighting around the Falaise Pocket; by November of that year, some 750,000 POWs were in Allied hands.
Searching for the three named Luftwaffe suspects was going to prove something of a needle-in-a-haystack exercise, to put it mildly – if they had even been taken captive. In the interim, there was a war to be fought and won, during which the SAS would have a seminal role to play. Of the SABU-70 survivors, some would be returning to the fight. And one, miraculously, would be returning to Britain, as if from the very grave.
After a little r&r, Jones and Vaculik would turn to offensive operations, volunteering first to drop into Arnhem, in September 1944, in an effort to help relieve those airborne troops cut off and besieged by enemy forces. Allied commanders had miscalculated, believing the fight had gone out of the Germans. Operation Market Garden, and the loss of so many courageous parachutists and glider-borne troops, would prove otherwise. Indeed, every inch of occupied Europe would have to be fought for tooth and nail, and even more so when Allied troops punched into Nazi Germany itself.
In due course Jones and Vaculik would deploy into Belgium, close to the German border, dropping into thick winter snows. Forming part of a jeep-bound force, they skirmished far behind the lines, shooting up columns of retreating enemy troops. ‘The Germans fought with courage and despair, as we ambushed their convoys along tree-lined avenues and at cross-roads,’ Vaculik reported. He would end up being wounded by a German sniper near Bremen, and he spent VE Day in hospital. As for Ginger Jones, he would fight through to the absolute bitter end.
Castelow, meanwhile – jumper number twelve of the SABU-70 stick – had endured a remarkable series of adventures to get back to Allied lines. Having fought with the Vert-le-Petit Resistance and having attempted to escape dressed as a French gendarme, Castelow had been captured and dispatched by truck towards Germany. On 9 September ’44 the lorry crossed the Moselle River, the largest tributary of the Rhine, just a few dozen miles short of the border. That night, Castelow had been locked in a room with one SS guard for company.
Realising that it was now or never – the following day they would enter Germany – at one minute to midnight Castelow ‘killed the guard and took his rifle’. Having got out of the building where he was being held, he scaled the outer wall and made his way through darkened streets towards the river, which at that point was several hundred feet across. ‘I swam the Moselle,’ Castelow recounted, in his escape report to MI9 – the British military intelligence’s so-called ‘escape factory’ – ‘and started walking back towards the Americans. I met their forward units around 1900 hrs on 10 Sept.’
Castelow’s had been a truly remarkable escape, one told with studied understatement and humility. For the SAS in the Second World War, this is just what they did. But if anything, Lieutenant Wiehe’s tale of survival – coming back from the very brink – was perhaps the most astonishing of all. The last hint any of Captain Garstin and his party had had of the SAS lieutenant was the short stopover during their journey of death, on 8 August ’44, at the Hôpital La Pitié-Salpêtrière.
The next official record of the desperately sick SAS man was a hand-scribbled note: ‘Lt Jean Hyacinthe Wiehe . . . Missing, known to be wounded, believed POW. Now located at 217 Gen Hosp HQ Sqdn Base Section USA. Shell fractures, wounds multiple .. . with spinal injuries.’ That note must have been written after the Allies liberated Paris, and once US forces had been able to establish a field hospital at La Pitié-Salpêtrière to care for their wounded – so towards the end of August, at the earliest. But what had happened between that date, and when the Gestapo murder squad had failed to collect Lieutenant Wiehe so he could join the Noailles Wood line-up, some three weeks earlier?
On 16 August, just as the forces of Nazi Germany were evacuating Paris, the enemy had come for SAS Lieutenant Wiehe. ‘Gestapo agents came to the hospital, threw me some clothes . . . and took me away,’ Wiehe would report. ‘I could not of course dress myself as I was permanently lying on my back. They took me in a Gestapo car, accompanied by an officer in uniform and a civilian who covered me with an automatic, to the Jewish hospital . . . A French doctor on the staff told me that I was to be taken away by the Gestapo shortly . . . The Gestapo never came back for me.’
That move courtesy of the Gestapo had taken Wiehe from the left bank of the Seine, across the Pont de Bercy to the Hôpital de Rothschild – ‘the Jewish Hospital’ – on the right bank. Though it was no more than a fifteen-minute drive, to transport a man in Wiehe’s delicate condition had been a high risk indeed. It remained a total mystery as to why the Gestapo had orchestrated such a move, after which they seemingly abandoned the SAS lieutenant to his fate.
Either way, once Paris was liberated, Wiehe was shifted back to the Hôpital La Pitié-Salpêtrière. His own entries in his pocket notebook – the same as had survived all the calamities so far –provide a record of sorts. On 16 August he noted: ‘Transit from German hospital to Rothschild French Hospital.’ And then, on 9 September: ‘Transferred to 217 American General Hospital La Pitié.’ Six days later, another entry simply noted: ‘Flew over from Le Bourget. Admitted Wroughton RAF Hospital.’ Paris Le Bourget is an airport just to the north of the city centre, while RAF Hospital Wroughton was a thousand-bed facility set up on the Wiltshire airbase of that name in 1941.
On 15 September 1944 Lieutenant Wiehe finally made it back to Britain. On 22 October he was able to send a short telegram to Mauritius, giving his family the news: ‘My dearest mum, I write to send you my most affectionate best wishes. I’m getting better. I’ll try to write more soon. I kiss you all very affectionately.’ The Wiehe family had their proof of life. Their son/brother/uncle/fiancé was alive. As he lay in his hospital bed in Britain, the SAS lieutenant marvelled at how he had survived the initial ambush and the terrible treatment in the Paris hospital, and then evaded two Gestapo round-ups. Truly, his life had been blessed.
Against all odds, Lieutenant Wiehe had cheated death many times over. Discounting those five men buried at the Château de Parisis-Fontaine, and Corporal Howard Lutton, who had been pronounced dead upon arrival at the Paris hospital, the last of the SABU-70 raiders had been brought home. Six out of twelve had survived a cunning Funkspiel entrapment, a carefully set ambush, deliberate neglect in hospital, interrogations and torture, and a murder sentence delivered on behalf of the Führer.
Now all that remained was to find and nail the culprits: Kopkow, the dark lord ruling out of Berlin; Kieffer, the cunning Paris ringmaster; Dr Goetz, the myopic Funkspiel virtuoso; Schnur, the cold-hearted Avenue Foch interrogator; von
Kapri, his die-hard Nazi sidekick; plus Schmidt, Haug, Ilgenfritz and Hildemann –those who had done the Noailles Wood killings. Right then, none of their identities was known to the Allies, but by an incredible stroke of good fortune all of that was about to change.
Against all odds, in January 1945 a man would step out of the shadows with one of the most controversial and divisive records of the war. After his capture, SOE agent Captain John Ashford Renshaw Starr had spent eleven months living at 84 Avenue Foch, and was either an outstanding SOE double agent or a stand-out traitor, depending on who one tended to listen to. Either way, Starr knew the Gestapo’s Paris operations inside out and back to front by the time he was dispatched to Mauthausen concentration camp, for ‘final disposal’. As he had many times before, Starr miraculously survived.
And in his interrogations back in Britain, Starr would deliver chapter and verse on the Noailles Wood killers.
Chapter 21
A graphic artist before the war, Captain John Starr – aliases Emile, Bob and Bobby, amongst other cover names – had deployed twice for the SOE, and being a clandestine operative in France had become something of a Starr family pastime. His older brother, George – codename Hilaire – ran one of the most successful ever French circuits, with twenty SOE agents under his command. But three months into his second mission, John Starr was arrested by the SS in Dijon, in July 1943, being shot in the thigh while trying to escape.
Following standard practice, Starr was dispatched to 84 Avenue Foch as a guest of Kieffer and his cronies. But before that, his Dijon captors subjected the wounded SOE agent to a horrific beating and interrogation – ‘the full treatment’. Once he arrived in Paris, Starr reached some kind of an accommodation with Kieffer, which had enabled him to take up residence at the Avenue Foch, where he became the subject of one of the Paris Gestapo’s greatest ever Funkspiel. In short, for months on end no one in London would have the slightest idea that their star agent had been captured.