Churchill's Band of Brothers

by Damien Lewis

  Under Barkworth’s unflinching interrogation the full story began to emerge. After evacuating Paris – and having sent all of their prisoners, SOE agent Captain John Starr included, to all but certain death in the concentration camps – Kieffer had relocated his team to Strasbourg, just a few dozen miles east of the Vosges. From there, Gruppe Kieffer had done its bit on Operation Waldfest, before retreating further into Germany itself. In Rosenfeld, a town in southern Germany, Kieffer was reunited with his wife and four children, who had been bombed out of their Karlsruhe home.

  But with the collapse of the Reich, Kieffer had confronted his family one morning, telling them that this was goodbye. He’d left no clue as to where he was going, but was obviously running from the Allies and from justice. Together with Haug he’d headed for Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a quaint-looking ski town in southern Bavaria, right on the border with Austria. There they’d endeavoured to lie low, taking casual work as cleaners in hotels and the like. But eventually Haug, who had six children, felt compelled to return to his family, even though Kieffer warned him of the risk of being caught and forced to talk.

  Sure enough, Haug was arrested at his home address, Horneburgerstrasse 110, in the town of Oer-Erkenschwick in northwest Germany, in the British zone of occupation. Haug’s capture electrified London, or at least those charged by General Eisenhower and the Under-Secretary of State for War, Baron Croft, with bringing the Noailles Wood killers to justice.

  ‘It is not unlikely that Haug will be able to give full details about the Gestapo,’ declared a letter from the Judge Advocate General’s office (JAG), the British military’s dedicated legal service in London, ‘and that his careful interrogation may throw some light on the murder at Noailles . . . These murders were particularly brutal and cold-blooded and so far all inquiries have produced a blank result, and much is hoped of the interrogation of Haug.’

  In the spring of 1946 Haug underwent several interrogations, the results of which did not disappoint. He’d been a reluctant member of the Noailles Wood execution squad, and his words read more like a series of confessions, or a serial unburdening of his guilt. They would disclose ‘fully the circumstances of the murders at Noailles, his own participation therein, and the names of other Germans who were implicated’.

  Haug’s testimony was the proverbial smoking gun.

  Chapter 24

  Haug began by explaining how he had ended up in the Gestapo, having been retired from the German armed forces in 1942, when he reached the ‘age limit’ for such service (forty-seven). A man of Haug’s experience wouldn’t be allowed to rest. He was soon called for a medical examination and ‘was entered as “fit” for service with the police troops’. Haug was then given a choice of being posted either to a Gestapo team serving on the Eastern Front, or to the Paris unit run by his childhood friend, Kieffer. Unsurprisingly he chose the latter, taking up his post there on 28 July 1942.

  Having detailed his route into the Gestapo, Haug described his role at Avenue Foch with disarming honesty as being a jack of all trades, ‘but I greatly preferred it to lying in the muck somewhere on the Eastern Front’. He then proceeded to give the lowdown on the key players, including ‘SS Standartenführer Dr Knochen . . . SS Hauptsturmführer Dr Schmidt . . . SS Hauptsturmführer Schnur . . . SS Untersturmführer Dr Goetz . . . SS Unterscharführer von Kapri . . . SS Obersturmführer Ilgenfritz and SS Sturmbannführer Kieffer . . . to whom I was directly subordinate’.

  ‘During 1943 the Resistance movement in France grew stronger and stronger,’ Haug recounted, which had led to more work for the Avenue Foch Gestapo. The Funskspiel teams ‘listened daily to the wireless reports in French, and when there was an announcement that weapons were to be dropped at some place indicated, a number of men was immediately sent . . . I myself was very often detailed to do this.’ As the amount of captured SOE equipment kept growing, ‘the administration of the store of weapons, sabotage materials, radios, clothes . . . etc. which had been brought in, was entrusted to me by SS Sturmbannführer Kieffer’.

  Turning to the capture of SAS Captain Garstin and his men on 5 July ’44, Haug explained how ‘we showed our lights repeatedly .. . the guide lights for the pilot, to let him know at which point he was to drop the drums. For this purpose three men each had a white or a red lamp (pocket lamp or torch).’ Of course, it wasn’t just supplies that would plummet out of the heavens from the belly of the Stirling. ‘Late in the night a plane came and circled around the lights and then dropped something. We saw at once that there were not only drums hanging from the parachutes, but also men.’

  Following the SAS patrol’s capture, Haug’s next contact with the prisoners wasn’t until 8 August, when he was ordered to ride on the truck as one of their escorts. And it wasn’t until marching the prisoners towards their place of execution that Haug had realised he was there to kill them. As Jones and Vaculik had broken away, ‘everyone began to shoot; we each had a sub-machine-gun’, Haug recounted. ‘I found it impossible to shoot at these men with whom I had formerly been on such friendly terms. Three of the prisoners fell where they stood. The next two ran about 30 metres into the wood and they too crumpled up. Searching and swearing now began on a grand scale.’

  Haug listed all those who had been involved in the killings and their roles, describing how Schnur, the commander of the murder squad, had had a ‘hysterical crying fit from sheer anger’, fearing the coming wrath from Berlin for the botched executions. But of course, the retreat from Paris had rapidly taken precedence, rendering Schnur’s fears immaterial. On 7 March 1946 Haug scribbled his signature beneath the final, telling phrase: ‘I have made the above statement voluntarily and without compulsion.’

  Things began to move very quickly, now that the guilty parties had been exposed. Ilgenfritz was found to be in Allied custody. As a former member of the SS, he’d been arrested on 10 November 1945, at his home in Glashütte, a town in eastern Germany. In his initial interrogation report, Ilgenfritz had revealed nothing about his role in the Noailles Wood killings, stating only that he was ‘in Paris and in charge of all SD and Gestapo transport’. But following Haug’s bombshell statement, Ilgenfritz’s file was marked in red ‘For Special Interrogation’, and orders were issued for his ‘immediate removal to London District Cage’.

  The London Cage was a top-secret detention centre run by MI9, housed in numbers 6–8 Kensington Palace Gardens. By March 1946 Haug was already there, and that opened up a whole world of possibilities. That month, Serge Vaculik received a letter from the JAG’s office, inviting him to London. It came as a bolt from the blue, especially since Vaculik had spent the last several months recovering from his wartime injuries, and rebutting an unfortunate attempt by the French authorities to charge him with fighting on the side of the enemy.

  When Vaculik had escaped from German captivity, following his capture at Dunkirk, he’d spent various periods in (Vichy) French, Spanish, Portuguese and British custody, as he endeavoured to get to somewhere where he could continue the good fight. Those stretches of imprisonment had come back to bite him. Called before a French court martial and accused of serving in a Waffengattung – a German military unit – Vaculik had to produce his British service records, and a note on his ‘subsequent services in the Resistance’, to prove how things had been very much the opposite. It was all explained away as being a case of mistaken identity.

  When the JAG’s bulky envelope had popped into his letterbox, it had come as a wholly unexpected – but very welcome – surprise. The letter explained how ‘diligently pursued’ had been the ‘murder of Captain Garstin and 4 other members of 1 SAS’, and suggested that ‘the circumstances of the brutal murder of your 5 comrades will still be fresh in your mind’. It went on to explain that Haug had been arrested. A copy of his statement was enclosed. There were also photos of Kieffer and Schnur, together with this note: ‘Do you recognise either of the men depicted in these photographs?’

  The letter stressed how important it was for the suspects
to be positively identified, and how Vaculik and Jones, as the sole survivors of the massacre, were the only ones who might do so. ‘I sincerely hope that you will be willing to assist in bringing those responsible for the murder or your comrades to justice,’ wrote the JAG, inviting Vaculik to London with that in mind. ‘I may say I have had some difficulty in tracing you and I trust you will receive this letter. I should be grateful for an early reply.’

  Vaculik’s response reflected the relief and elation he felt at learning that somehow, life had been breathed back into the Noailles Wood case. ‘I will never forget those frightful days, and I am at your obligation because I want [to ensure] that justice is done against those criminals.’ He pointed out how ‘Captain Garstin was my friend and I liked the other boys, and sometimes when I am thinking about it I shiver and must say that I am lucky and grateful to be alive.’ Vaculik confirmed that he recognised Kieffer and Schnur from the photos, adding: ‘I still have the handcuffs. Must I bring them too?’

  A similar JAG letter had also been sent to Ginger Jones, at his address at 3 Pagefield Street, Wigan. It stressed that with Vaculik in France, it was urgent that the former SAS man should go to London to identify Haug, so ‘that justice may be done in this cold-blooded case of murder’. Jones replied that he was more than willing to do as asked, and he was duly issued with a slip of paper, giving him access to the London Cage: ‘The bearer of this letter is Mr T Jones who I think will be in a position to identify Haug. Would you kindly allow Mr. Jones to see Haug for this purpose.’

  Issued with a rail pass, Jones travelled to London to be the first of the Noailles Wood survivors to come face to face with his would-be executioner. A month later, Vaculik also made it to the London Cage, by which time Ilgenfritz was incarcerated there, alongside Haug. Vaculik recognised Haug instantly as the man who had given them cigarettes during the ride to their place of execution. As for Ilgenfritz, while he had conveniently ‘grown a heavy beard and moustache’, he had already confessed to his role in the shooting, his defence being that he’d only been obeying orders. Ilgenfritz also revealed the name of the death truck’s driver, SS Oberscharführer Fritz Hildemann – meaning that the last of the execution squad had finally been identified.

  Of course, the one other surviving eyewitness to Operation Marbois – Kieffer’s codename for the 5 July capture and all that had followed – was Lieutenant Wiehe, but he was no longer on hand to help. In September 1945 the War Office had cleared the final hurdle to his return to Mauritius. A British nurse, sister Kathleen Ruscoe, who had lost all her family during the Blitz, was given permission to accompany Wiehe on the long sea journey, to provide medical care.

  In December ’45, she and Wiehe had sailed for Mauritius via South Africa. The Johannesburg Star newspaper reported: ‘Parachutist’s Return. Lieut. Hyacinthe Wiehe . . . was dropped into Paris the day the Allies landed in France and was completely paralysed when he received a burst of machine-gun fire in the back . . . Lieut. Wiehe, who is 29 years of age . . . was serving with the First Special Air Service when he was dropped into France. Although he had received grave injuries . . . he was questioned by the Gestapo and badly handled by them.’

  Not long after Wiehe’s return to Mauritius, the SAS Association published its second ever newsletter, on the front page of which was a report about the Secret Hunters, under the heading ‘War Crimes Trial’. ‘It had been hoped that Major Barkworth would have been able to write a short summary,’ but ‘a trial is proceeding at present and Major Barkworth has not had time’. Barkworth was indeed extremely busy. With the SAS having been disbanded for months now, the newsletter also detailed the fortunes of many members, including this: ‘Lieut. Wiehe should now be safely installed at his home address which is Floreal, Mauritius, and would be glad to hear from old friends.’

  Amongst the first to write would be Ginger Jones. His letter of 25 August 1946 began: ‘I read in the News Letter of how you wished to hear from old friends – I do hope I’m included as one of those.’ After providing a little personal news, Jones continued: ‘Remember the watch you lent me for our operation – I tried to tell you when I came to hospital (at Leatherhead) to see you . . . I kept that watch hidden until the very last day of our imprisonment, then when changing from uniform into civvies one of the guards saw it and took it away from me, that was the one thing I hated to lose and believe me I’m ever so sorry. I tried my best to keep it out of sight.’

  Having apologised for the loss of that precious watch, Jones ended the letter with this: ‘I’m expecting to go over to Germany on the trials, to give evidence.’

  It was a poignant last line. It wasn’t just a wristwatch that Kieffer’s Gestapo had taken: it was Lieutenant Wiehe’s youth and his physical abilities. Wheelchair-bound for life, he would die prematurely from the effects of his injuries. The Gestapo had also ended the lives of Captain Patrick Garstin, MC, Sergeant Varey and Troopers Paddy Barker, Young and Walker, and the many other victims that Kieffer and his team had dispatched into the Nacht und Nebel, SAS Major Reynolds and Captain Whately-Smith amongst them. For all, the time for a reckoning was long overdue. And while Lieutenant Wiehe would be absent from the trial, the very fact of his survival would prove key to its findings.

  By now, the summer of 1946, Barkworth and his team were closing in on the last suspects. In July, they’d got one of their most-wanted – Schnur, the Avenue Foch interrogator-in-chief and the commander of the Noailles Wood execution party. In contrast to Haug, he seemed to show not a shred of guilt or remorse upon his capture. For Schnur, it had all been about following orders. Under interrogation by Barkworth, he complained that even as he’d read out the death sentence ‘from the Führer and Commander-in-Chief ’, Garstin and his men ‘undertook, in my opinion, a previously agreed upon attempt to escape’. Schnur had ‘sent off a blaze of fire after the escaping [men]’.

  With Haug, Ilgenfritz and Schnur in the bag, Barkworth turned to tracking the last of the SS men. Unfortunately, Alfred von Kapri would never stand trial. Though Barkworth had been sent an arrest report for a twenty-five-year-old SS Rottenführer Kapri, working as a ‘kitchen helper’ in the German town of Würzburg, that man had since disappeared. Instead, Barkworth discovered that von Kapri was believed ‘to have been murdered and thrown into the Tegernsee’, a lake in Bavaria, not so far from Garmisch-Partenkirchen where Kieffer and Haug had gone to ground. It was unclear exactly who had murdered von Kapri, or seen fit to dump his corpse in the depths of the lake. Hauptsturmführer Schmidt, the chief executioner at the Noailles Wood, was also believed to be dead, killed on the Eastern Front in the final months of the war.

  With Kieffer, the number one most wanted, the Secret Hunters had precious few leads to go on. One of the reasons Kieffer had proved so hard to track down was that none of his subordinates appeared willing to help. Kieffer seemed to inspire such intense loyalty that even when facing a Barkworth interrogation, no one would shop him or even incriminate him. Yes, they argued, Kieffer had sent dozens to the concentration camps, but he never imagined they would face terrible torture and death there. It was Haug who finally let slip the vital clue: as he had gone to ground in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, possibly Kieffer might also be found there, he suggested.

  In October 1946 the Secret Hunters fired up their ageing jeeps and set off on the drive south to the Bavarian ski resort. It was a long shot, but it was the only lead they had. Through snow-capped craggy mountains and dense pine forests they headed, until they reached the town itself, where they found chocolate-box streets dusted with snow. With his good friend Haug long departed, Kieffer had felt certain that sooner or later, the Allies would catch up with him. Maybe a part of him had wanted to get caught. Either way, he’d made little real effort to hide. He’d even registered with the town hall under his real name, except that he’d removed one ‘f’, so as ‘Hans Kiefer’. The Secret Hunters could barely believe it: the former Gestapo chief might as well have walked around the streets with a huge pair of ‘SS’ runes pinned
to his back.

  From the town hall they traced ‘Kiefer’ to one of Garmisch-Partenkirchen’s many hotels, where he was working as a caretaker. Upon his capture and unmasking, Kieffer seemed quite sanguine about it all: relaxed, almost. There was not much about him to suggest a man who was a fugitive from justice. The reason for this soon became clear: Kieffer did not believe himself guilty of any crimes. After all, he was only following orders from Berlin. With the dozens of SOE agents that he had dispatched to the concentration camps, how was he to know what dark fate they would face? He had sent no one directly to their deaths. No one had died at Kieffer’s own hand.

  But of course there was the one, glaring exception: the murder of SAS Captain Garstin and his men. It said much that it was Barkworth and his team – an SAS war crimes unit – that had resolutely kept on his trail and cornered him. As Kieffer knew well, there was a living witness to those botched executions – the SAS man who had broken free. (Kieffer believed that only one man had escaped, as that was what Schnur had told him.) If Kieffer had to face him in the witness box, what chance did he – and his Gestapo brethren – stand? For those murders in the Noailles Wood on 9 August 1944, a part of Kieffer feared very much that he would hang.

  On 29 November 1946 Kieffer sat facing Barkworth for his full interrogation. The SAS major had left the man to ‘stew’ for several weeks in the Villa Degler basement, to help convince him to talk. In his statement, Kieffer would certify that ‘I have put down the events in the “Marbois” case as they have come back to my memory after several weeks of reflection.’ As he did with all his captives, Barkworth began by warning the former Gestapo chief that he was ‘not compelled’ to talk ‘and that any statement he might wish to make would be taken down in writing and might be used in evidence’.

  Whatever qualms Kieffer may have had about speaking, he would learn that in Barkworth he had truly met his match. He could be ‘quite fearsome – verbally – when in full flight,’ Amy Crossland would remark of her father. ‘His skill in German language was a huge factor in obtaining information/securing confessions – not only his fluency . . . but also because he could sound like a German, and I think those he interrogated may well have found this very unsettling and unnerving. And because Pa didn’t need to use an interpreter, this would have made his questioning much more effective and direct and relentless . . . the person being questioned hadn’t got extra time . . . to think and plan his answers.’