The British Free Corps
In World War
II, the British Free Corps (BFC) or Britisches Freikorps
was a unit of the Waffen-SS consisting of British and Dominion prisoners of war who had been recruited
by the Nazis.
Despite the notoriety of this unit, it was tiny: Adrian
Weale's research has identified about 59 men who belonged
to this unit at one time or another, some for only a
few days, and at no time did it reach more than 27 men
in strength — smaller than a contemporary German platoon.
- Early Plans
- German Recruit Efforts
- Later Recruits
- Formation
- After D-Day
- Deployment
- Aftermatch
Early Plans
The German Waffen-SS "British Free Corps"
was the creation of John Amery, the son of Conservative
cabinet minister Leo
Amery. Amery lived under the shadow of his father,
and strove to prove his own worth; however, these endeavours
led to him being declared bankrupt in 1936.
Amery was a staunch anti-Communist and came to embrace
the fascist doctrines of Nazi Germany. Confronted with
money problems, he left Britain and joined Franco's Nationalists during the Spanish
Civil War in 1936. Here, he was awarded a medal
of honour while serving as an intelligence officer with Italian "volunteer"
forces. It was in Spain that he met the French fascist leader Jacques Doriot. Following the Civil War,
Amery and Doriot travelled together to Austria, Czechoslovakia,
Italy and Germany before residing in Vichy
France. Displeased with their mindset, Amery ran
afoul of the Vichy government. He made several attempts
to leave France, but was unsuccessful until September 1942, when Hauptmann Werner Plack brought Amery to Berlin to speak to the German English Committee. It was at
this meeting that Amery suggested that the Germans form
a British anti-Bolshevik legion. Adolf
Hitler was impressed by Amery and allowed him to
remain in Germany as a guest of the Reich, where he
made a series of pro-German radio broadcasts to Britain.
The idea of a British force to fight the Communists
languished until Amery met with two Frenchmen, who were
part of the LVF (Légion des Volontaires Français)
in January 1943. The two LVF men lamented the situation
on the Eastern Front, where only Germany was battling
the Soviet Union.
They felt that they should lend support with their LVF
service. Amery rekindled his idea of a British unit
and aimed to recruit fifty to a hundred men for propaganda
purposes. He wanted to seek out a core of men with which
to gain additional members from British POWs. He also
suggested that such a unit could provide more recruits
for the other military units made up of foreign nationals.
(However, the Germans had already raised a number of
such units, which were operating under the command of
the Waffen-SS.)
So Amery began his recruiting drive for a unit he named
"The British Legion of St. George". He made
the rounds of POW camps, addressing 40 to 50 inmates
from Britain and various Commonwealth countries, and
handed out recruiting material. His first efforts at
recruitment were complete failures, but he persisted
and eventually was rewarded with four recruits: an elderly
academic named Logio, Maurice Tanner, Oswald Job, and
Kenneth Berry (a 17 year old deckhand on the SS Cymbeline,
which was sunk). Logio was released, while Job was recruited
by German intelligence, trained as a spy, caught while
trying to get into England and hanged March 1944. Thus,
Amery ended up with two men, of which only Berry would
actually join what was later called the BFC. Amery's
link to what became the BFC ended in October 1943 when
the Waffen-SS decided Amery's services were no longer
needed.
German Recruit Efforts
With the failure of Amery's recruiting efforts, another
idea was tried in an attempt to woo POWs into joining
the BFC. Given the harsh conditions of POW camps in
Germany and the occupied areas, it was decided to form
a "holiday camp" for likely recruits from
POW camps. Two holiday camps were set up, Special Detachment
999 and Special Detachment 517, both under the umbrella
of Stalag IIId, near Berlin. English-speaking guards
were used, overseen by a German intelligence officer,
who would use the guards as information gatherers. But
a Briton was needed as a possible conduit for volunteers
and for this duty, Battery Quartermaster Sergeant John
Henry Owen Brown of the Royal Artillery was selected.
Brown had been a member of the British Union of Fascists
(BUF) before the war, but was also a devout Christian.
Captured on the beaches of Dunkirk in May 1940, Brown
eventually ended up in a camp at Blechhammer.
Given his rank, he was made a foreman of a work detail
where he successfully won the confidence of the Germans.
With his status, the Germans made him the camp leader
of Special Detachment 517.
In reality, Brown had been setting up a black market
scheme, smuggling in contraband to give to his men and
also to buy off the guards. Later Brown learned the
POW message codes created by MI9 and began to operate
as (in his words) a "self-made spy". Once
he understood his role concerning the "holiday
camps", he determined that he was in a unique position
to both hinder the formation of this unit and to obtain
intelligence — while also making sure the men
who came to the camp actually got a holiday.
At this time, another Briton, Thomas Cooper (who used
the German version of Cooper – Boettcher –
as his last name), arrived at the camp. Cooper, unable
to obtain public service employment in Britain due to
his mother's German nationality, joined the BUF and
during a visit of Germany in 1939 was trapped there
by the war, and joined the Waffen-SS. He was posted
to the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (LAH), where he
eventually was transferred to the infamous SS "Totenkopf"
infantry training battalion, and became a machine-gun
instructor with the 5th Totenkopf Regiment and was made
an NCO. Following the German invasion of the Soviet
Union, he was assigned to the Wachbattaillon Oranienburg
outside Krakow in Poland,
where he allegedly told BFC men that he committed atrocities
against Soviet and Polish POWs, civilians, and Jewish
prisoners. Later, he served as transport driver in the
SS-Polizei-Division, which was posted to Schablinov,
a town on the Leningrad front, replacing the mangled
forces of the Spanish Blue Division. The division was
subjected to a Soviet attack on February 13, 1943, Cooper
was hit in the legs by shell splinters, evacuated, and
awarded the Wound Badge in Silver, becoming the only
Englishman to obtain a German combat decoration.
Besides Cooper and the young Berry, a handful of other
Britons had drifted into this group. Most notable was
Roy Courlander, who also used the pseudonym of Reg.
The son of a Lithuanian Jew and an English woman, he was serving in the New
Zealand army in Greece when captured in 1941. He
expressed extreme anti-Russian views, and had participated
in Nazi broadcasts for England before he joined.
When the first batch of 200 POWs arrived in the camp,
Brown and his men did their best to entertain the prisoners
while Cooper and other pro-Nazi men worked the crowd,
seeking ex-BUF members or other ex-Fascist group members
as well as finding out attitudes about the Communists.
This treatment displeased many of the POWs, who demanded
to be sent back to their camps. To try and calm this,
the most senior British POW, one Major-General Fortune,
was asked to send a representative to the holiday camp
to inspect it; he selected Brigadier Leonard Parrington,
who inspected the facilities, and incorrectly reported
it was indeed a holiday camp and the POWs should not
worry. Brown did not feel safe in informing Parrington
of the purpose of the camp. While Parrington's visit
was successful in calming the POWs, this recruiting
effort gained only one confirmed recruit, Alfred Vivian
Minchin, a merchant seaman whose ship, the SS Empire
Ranger, was sunk off Norway by German bombers. Brown, following the first batch,
learned of the full scope of the project from Carl Britten,
who said he'd been forced into the BFC by Cooper and
Leonard Courlander. Brown was unable to persuade Britten
to quit the BFC, but MI9 got a very revealing transmission
from Brown.
Later Recruits
A bombing raid against Berlin damaged a good portion
of the camp prior to a second batch of POWs being brought
in. It was decided to move the men to a requisitioned
cafe in the Pankow district, overseen by Wilhelm "Bob"
Rossler, a Germany Army interpreter. Prior to the move,
the BFC gained two members, Francis George MacLardy
of the Royal Army Medical Corps, (he was captured in
Belgium) and Edwin Barnard Martin of the Canadian Essex Scottish Regiment, (Martin was captured at Dieppe
in 1942), which brought the strength of the BFC to seven.
POWs were brought into the camp once it was repaired,
until the recruiting effort was halted in December 1944.
Brown reported to the Germans that the handling of the
camp fostered distrust among the POWs, and was counter-productive
for obtaining recruits for the BFC. Meanwhile Brown,
as their front man, continued a dangerous game of gathering
intelligence while deterring recruits from joining the
BFC, which work gained him the Distinguished Conduct
Medal after the war. Oskar Lange, who was overseeing
the camps, hit upon another idea to gain recruits, and,
he hoped, give him more stature. While the earlier holiday
camps only entertained long term POWs, Lange propsed
that they take newly captured prisoners, who were still
in a state of confusion, and work on them while they
were vulnerable at a new camp in Luckenwalde.
The camp was commanded by Hauptmann Hellmerich of German
intelligence with his chief interrogator, Feldwebel
Scharper. Scharper was not above using blackmail to
get what he wanted and his tactics included fear, intimidation,
and threats to coerce prisoners into joining.
The first group of POWs to be taken to Luckenwalde
were mainly from the Italian theatre. One such case
was Trooper John Eric Wilson of No.3 Commando which
illustrated the techniques used by the camp. Upon arrival,
he was stripped, made to watch his uniform get ripped
to pieces, and then given a blanket to cover up with.
Placed in a cell with just the blanket and fed 250 grams
of bread and a pint of cabbage soup, he was only allowed
out to empty the waste bucket. After two days like this,
he was taken before an "American", who was
in fact Scharper. Wilson was asked his rank (about which
Wilson lied, saying he was a staff sergeant), name,
number, and date of birth, then returned to his cell.
Left alone, a "British POW" would come in
from time to time, offer cigarettes and conduct idle
chit-chat. The end result was that the isolation and
the mistreatment led to him holding on to the "POW"
who showed kindness to him. When dragged before Scharper
some days later and offered the choice of joining the
BFC or staying in solitary, it can be understood why
Wilson chose the BFC. With this initial success, it
was deemed this method would be the gateway to expanding
the BFC and in turn, 14 men were made to join. This
including men from such esteemed units as the Argyll
and Sutherland Highlanders and the Long Range Desert
Group.
However, things fell apart when these men, told they
would be joining a unit of thousands, arrived at their
billets in the cafe, and found the "unit"
amounted to a handful of men who were more interested
in the opportunity of freedom or were Fascist in their
outlook. At this time, Edwin Martin attempted to take
advantage of the discord to disrupt the BFC, but it
did not have the desired effect. Two of the men broke
away from the cafe and got into Holiday Camp 517 to
report to Brown who then complained to Cooper. Cooper
then addressed the men at the cafe billet and promised
that those who did not want to remain could leave. (To
prevent the truth about the BFC reaching the general
POW population, these men were isolated in a special
camp.) By December 1943, the BFC returned to eight men
in strength.
In spite of the tiny size of the unit, the Waffen-SS
continued to work on the BFC. The first step was to
appoint an officer. Because of the nature of the BFC,
the candidate had to be trustworthy, have a good understanding
of English, be a skilled leader and have excellent administrative
skills. This job fell to SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans
Werner Roepke. A highly educated man, Roepke's grasp
of English came from his time as an exchange student
before the war. His military service included being
a private in the Reichswehr, then as a law man with
the Allgemeine-SS, before being called up to serve as
a flak officer with the SS-"Wiking" division.
He was made the commander of the BFC in November 1943.
Formation
Roepke's first order of business was the name. "The
Legion of St. George" was rejected as being too
religious and the "British Legion" was also
not acceptable since it was in use by a UK World War
I veterans group. It was Alfred Minchin who suggested
"British Free Corps" after reading about the
"Freikorps Danmark" in the English version
of Signal magazine. Thus, it was accepted that (though,
in correspondence, the unit was sometimes called the
"Britisches Freikorps"), officially the name
was the "British Free Corps". That settled,
Roepke moved on to the purpose of the unit. All the
current members told Roepke they wanted to fight the
Russians, (which was what the Germans wanted to hear),
and so, with that settled, it was ordered that the BFC
must swell to create at least a single infantry platoon
of 30 men. It was also decreed that no BFC member could
be part of any action against British and Commonwealth
forces nor could any BFC member be used for intelligence
gathering. Until a suitable British officer joined the
unit, the BFC would be under German command. Other things
worked out included BFC members not having to get the
SS blood tattoo, not having to swear an oath of loyalty
to Hitler, and not being subject to German military
law. They would receive pay equal to the German soldiers
of their rank. Finally, it was decided to equip the
unit with standard SS uniforms with appropriate insignia.
Roepke ordered the BFC to be moved to the St. Michaeli
Kloster in Hildesheim and also put in an order for 800
sets of the special BFC insignia to the SS clothing
department.
Officially, the BFC came into existence on January
1, 1944. By February 1944, the BFC made the move to
Hildesheim and the Kloster, which was a converted monastery,
now the SS Nordic Study Centre and also the barracks
for foreign workers labouring for the SS. Prior to the
move, things for the BFC men were pretty idle but after
the move, recruiting was to be stepped up. Of the group
who left the BFC in December, the rumour that they would
be sent to a SS run stalag, caused some of them to rethink
their decision and three of them returned to their POW
camps. Two new recruits were gained, including Private
Thomas Freeman of No 7 Commando of Layforce. (Freeman
was to be the only BFC man who did not receive any punishment
post-war for his membership.) MI5 stated his only purpose
for joining the BFC was to escape and also to sabotage
the unit. At this time, Roepke ordered the BFC men to
assume false names for official documents but not all
did so. The BFC were also issued their first SS field
uniforms, but without any insignia. Tasks were now assigned
to the BFC members as well, which led to some factionalism.
Despite having duties, the majority of the time was
spent being idle once simple chores such as cleaning
the billets were done.
This idleness gave Freeman a chance to ruin the BFC
by going after those who weren't Fascist or strong anti-Communist.
By getting them on his side, especially since the main
pro-Nazi BFC men were often away from the barracks,
Freeman sought to form a rift in the unit. He was able
to go on one of the recruiting drives, with the purpose
to gain men for his own ends. It netted three volunteers,
though one returned to his camp soon after.
In April 1944, the BFC was issued its distinctive
insignia, the three lion passant collar tab, the Union
Jack arm badge, and the cuff title bearing "British
Free Corps" in Gothic script. On the morning of
20 April, Roepke said that the BFC was now fully-fledged
(by being issued uniforms, weapons, and pay books),
and recruiting could begin in earnest. Promotions were
also handed out at this time, with Freeman becoming
senior NCO. Following the parade, the BFC members went
off to various camps throughout Germany and Austria
where they had been interned. The idea, however, was
flawed and this recruiting drive netted just six new
members. During one such drive, Berry confided to a
camp leader his predicament, the leader saying he should
seek out the Swiss embassy in Berlin, which Berry did
not follow up. Two of these recruits, John Leister and
Eric Pleasants, who had been caught up in the war when
the Germans occupied the Channel Islands and put them
both in camps, were mostly motivated by the opportunity
to better food, alcohol and access to women. Pleasants
frankly admitted to Minchin and Berry that he "was
in it to have a good time."
The recruiting drives brought the BFC to a strength
of 23 men. This worried Freeman because if the unit
reached 30, then the BFC would be incorporated into
the SS Wiking Division and sent into action. To prevent
this, Freeman drafted a letter, signed by him and 14
other BFC men (mostly newcomers), requesting they be
returned to their camps. Freeman and one other instigator
sent to a penal stalag on the charge of mutiny on June
20, 1944. Freeman escaped the stalag in November 1944,
and reached Soviet lines where he was repatriated in
March 1945. Still, the BFC was rattled and tensions
between members were evident, made worse by Cooper's
intent to instil SS-style discipline and methods, which
was alien to the Englishmen. With Freeman gone, Wilson
became senior NCO, which was a mistake given Wilson
had lied upon his capture about his rank, and thus had
little experience leading men.
In August 1944, four more recruits joined the BFC,
including Lieutenant William Shearer. However, three
of these recruits were blackmailed into enlisting. Two
of them were made to join as they had relationships
with local women: one had made his girlfriend pregnant,
which was an offence punishable by death; the other
man's liaison with a woman was discovered by the Gestapo.
This addition of men corced into joining the BFC only
damaged morale, and touched off lack-lustre recruiting
drives.
Morale continued to decline. A flap over the wearing
of the Union Flag arm badge below the German eagle flared
up at this time. By this time, many other units wore
their national flag on the right sleeve, and some of
the BFC men thought the position of the badge was disrespectful
to Britain. It took a direct order from Heinrich
Himmler to settle the matter by allowing the badge
to be worn on the right sleeve if desired. Then there
was the addition of Lieutenant Shearer, the first, and
only British officer to accept a position in the unit.
It was hoped that, at the least, Shearer would provide
a token officer presence: however, Shearer was a schizophrenic
and refused to put on his BFC uniform or even leave
his room. After several weeks, he was returned to the
mental asylum from whence he came, and later sent back
to England on medical grounds. A last blow was the invasion
of France by the Allies.
After D-Day
With the success of the D-Day landings, some of the
BFC men saw the writing on the wall and began to look
for ways out. An incident involving the arrest of a
BFC man for the theft of a pistol blew up, culminating
in eight men, including Pleasants, refusing to work
setting up a football pitch; all of them were sent to
SS punishment camps. Despite this, recruitment was stepped
up, with the intent assemble as many volunteers as possible,
get them trained for combat, and sent off to the front
whether as a unit or as replacements for other units.
It was here that Vivian Stranders, a SS-Sturmbannführer,
sought to make a bid for power by making a move against
Cooper and Roepke, intending to monopolize British recruiting,
and perhaps assume command of the BFC. Stranders, originally
a British subject, joined the Nazi party in 1932 and
took German nationality. After the war began, he was
posted to the Waffen-SS as an expert in British affairs.
MacLardy abandoned the BFC, volunteering to join a
Waffen-SS medical service unit. Two other men, one of
them Courlander, could read the tealeaves and left the
BFC by volunteering for service with the war correspondent
unit "Kurt Eggers", which was operating on
the Western Front. Their ultimate goal was to make for
the Allied lines at the first chance. Courlander removed
all of the BFC insignia from their uniforms, replacing
them with the standard SS patches and rank. The two
men boarded a train for Brussels in the company of a
Flemish Waffen-SS unit. Once there, they turned themselves
over to the British, becoming the first two BFC men
to return to their homeland. Still, problems reigned.
Two more recruits were gained, again blackmailed into
joining over sexual contact with German women. With
all these problems, the commander of the barracks went
to Roepke to request the BFC be sent elsewhere. As it
turned out, the BFC were indeed going to be moved.
On October 11, 1944, the BFC arrived at Dresden, to
begin training as assault pioneers at the Waffen-SS
Pioneer School at the Wildermann Kaserne. Here, they
would receive instruction in clearing obstacles, removing
minefields, use of heavy weapons, demolition, and other
tasks required of combat engineers. The BFC was issued
with rifles, steel helmets, camouflage uniforms, and
gas masks, then set about getting back into physical
shape, and given courses in the use of machineguns,
flamethrowers, and explosives. Picket and guard duty
were assigned to the BFC as well. This attempt to turn
the BFC into an actual combat unit came to a stop with
the news of Roepke's dismissal. Stranders had been successful
in ousting Roepke, replacing him with SS-Obersturmführer
Dr. Walther Kuhlich, who was wounded during his stint
with SS-"Das Reich", and was unfit for active
frontline duty.
Cooper saw no future for himself in the BFC, and asked
Wilson, who said he was in a similar frame of mind,
to meet in Berlin to request a return to the stalags.
The gig was up when Wilson, whose sole reason for going
to Berlin was to go womanising, left Cooper high and
dry and under arrest, the charge being sabotage of the
BFC. Brought before Stranders and Kuhlich, Cooper was
shown signed statements by several BFC men accusing
him of anti-Nazi acts. A day later, he was formally
charged by a SS prosecutor and sent to the LAH, working
as a military policeman. Wilson, now in charge of recruiting,
had no real intention of working hard to get new blood.
Instead, he set about getting ex-BFC men who'd been
kicked out back into the fold, notably Pleasants. In
this, Wilson was successful. In the winter of 1944 and
1945, several new BFC recruits arrived, and the BFC
returned to its training, all the while trying to put
up a front to the other soldiers who felt the BFC led
a soft life. Pleasants even managed to woo the secretary
who worked for Kuhlich, marrying her in February 1945.
Plans were afoot, however, to use the BFC in one last-ditch
propaganda ploy. An attempt was made to cause a rift
between Josef Stalin and
the allied leaders, namely Winston
Churchill and Franklin
Roosevelt. The main effort, called "Operation
Koniggratz", attempted to sway British POWs being
evacuated from the Polish stalags as the Soviets advanced.
The plan was an abject failure and it was pondered how
the BFC might be used to play a role in the effort,
especially as they were training for combat on the Eastern
Front.
The BFC, meanwhile, found its morale taking a nose-dive
once more, thanks in part to Wilson's lack of leadership
and with Kuhlich absent in Berlin. Still, recruits for
the BFC arrived, near the close of 1944, including two
South Africans. Of these five, three turned out to be
genuinely anti-Communist, one of them being swayed by
BFC literature, the other two having wanted to initially
join the SS Totenkopf Division until Kuhlich talked
them into joining the BFC instead. By January 1945,
the BFC was up to 27 men, three shy of the magic 30,
but by this time the whole BFC idea was considered a
total and complete failure. It did not help that six
Maoris who had applied to the BFC were rejected by the
men on the grounds it was a "whites only"
unit. There was also the ongoing problem of having to
deal with drunken and AWOL BFC men, notably one man
who kept sneaking away to be with his girl.
With Wilson away, Hugh Cowie, a Gordon Highlander,
hatched a plan to use his temporary position as senior
NCO to escape. Captured in France in 1940, Cowie once
tried to escape, was punished, and had been arrested
for having a radio. Instead of a court-martial, he agreed
to join the BFC the previous June. Cowie's plan was
to use the pretext of going on a recruiting drive to
obtain documentation for him and five others, join a
train to the Eastern Front, lay low somewhere and let
the Soviets overtake them. Once on the train, all the
men (save one who didn't show), removed their BFC insignia,
but were reported to the Gestapo by an innskeeper once
they left the train at Olomouc. Cowie and one of the
escapees were sent off to isolation camps while the
other three agreed to remain with the BFC. The major
blow to the aleady questionable value of this unit came
when the Allies bombed Dresden on February 12, 1945,
killing some 40,000 people. Some of the members took
advantage of this to attempt an escape, but were betrayed
to the Gestapo by the girlfriend of one of the plotters;
the entire BFC was arrested, except for two members
who managed to mingle with POWs being sent west and
make their escape.
Still, the Gemans attempted to make some use of the
unit. After the BFC men were released from jail, they
were transferred to Berlin and billeted in a school
on the Schonhauser Allee, to wait there while the required
steps were taken to put them into the line. It was here
that the last "volunteer" came forward, Frank
Axon who had been captured in Greece in 1941. Accused
of causing a cow to prematurely calf by hitting it,
Axon chose service with the BFC over severe punishment.
With the prospects of combat looming for a lost cause,
the BFC men sought ways out once more. Three men were
provided with British army uniforms by a sympathetic
officer who sent them off to escape. Another man, who
had a girlfriend with connections to the "Kurt
Eggers" Regiment, managed to get transferred there.
Pleasants, who had travelled to Prague the previous
November to box against the SS police boxing team in
the final round of the SS championship, went to the
"Peace Camp" to participate in exhibition-bouts
with Max Schmeling to the delight of German officers.
On March 8, 1945, the remaining BFC men were brought
before Kuhlich who gave each a choice: fight at the
front or be sent to an isolation camp. All of them chose
to fight. Wilson, in no hurry to go into battle, managed
to get himself a slot as liaison between the BFC and
Kuhlichs' Berlin office. This left Douglas Mardon, a
South African POW who had joined in January, in charge
of the unit and in shaping up what he had: a grand total
of eight men -- he refused to take two men, and Minchin
had scabies. Mardon had to move the unit to a training
camp in Niemeck, where the BFC men were given training
in the use of the Panzerfaust and other tank killing
methods. They were also issued with the StG44 (MP44)
assault rifle and given training in its use. The unit
strength was cut down to seven when one member was transferred
after smoking aspirin until he became ill. At last,
the Germans would get some use from the BFC.
Deployment
On March 1, 1945, a truck loaded with the tiny BFC
travelled to the headquarters of III.(gemanisches) SS-Panzerkorps.
During the journey, most members removed their BFC insignia.
Upon arrival, the HQ staff was rather shocked at getting
a British unit. Being unsure of how to employ the new
force, they put the BFC in billets on the western edge
of Stettin pending orders on their deployment. While
waiting, the BFC came under some brief Soviet mortar
and artillery fire but no injuries were reported. However,
the manpower was again reduced when one man came down
with a severe case of gonorrhoea and was sent away to
a military hospital.
On March 22, 1945, orders came in from the HQ that
the BFC should move to the headquarters unit of the
11.SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Division Nordland,
located at Angermunde. From there, they would be placed
with the divisional armoured reconnaissance battalion
(11.SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung) which was
stationed in Grussow. Once there, the BFC were assigned
to the 3rd Company, equipped with a single Sd.Kfz.251
half-track and a "Schwimmwagen", and received
orders to prepare trench lines within the company's
perimeter. While the "Nordland" division was
currently being held in reserve, the BFC, from their
positions, could clearly see the Soviets. The BFC remained
in the line for a month, but this shared combat experience
failed to unify them and discord was so rampant that
Mardon was pressured into seeing if the BFC could be
pulled out.
About this time Cooper returns to the story. Having
being told he was being transferred to the III.(gemanisches)
SS-Panzerkorps, Cooper packed a suitcase with civilian
clothing and reported to the Corps HQ in Steinhoeffel
on the Oder. There he learned to his surprise, that
"ten Britons were somewhere near the front."
SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner, commander of
IX.SS-Panzer-Armee, then took Cooper to inspect the
BFC troops. During the journey, Cooper informed Steiner
about the BFC, and advised that this tiny unit had little
combat worth, was morally unstable and thus possessed
dubious combat value. Steiner agreed, mainly over the
post-war legalities of using POWs in combat. After inspecting
the BFC, Steiner ordered that the BFC be pulled from
the line.
The next day, the BFC left the front and reported
to Corps headquarters, where they were issued with rations
and travel orders to Templin. There, they would join
the transport company of Steiner's headquarters staff.
They arrived on April 16, 1945. In the meantime, Wilson,
who was supposed to be sending the BFC men their Red
Cross parcels (the BFC were still classified as POWs,
and thus still received the parcels), chose to hoard
them instead and deserted to Berlin on April 9, 1945.
To calm the rumblings, Cooper and four BFC men travelled
to Berlin on the 17th, to try and locate the parcels.
Returning after two days, they found a Hauptsturmführer,
in SS panzer uniform, sporting BFC insignia, waiting
to take them back to the front.
The officer, Douglas Berneville-Claye, had a penchant
for fraud, theft, embellishment and the ability to pass
himself off as something he wasn't. Having been booted
out of the RAF, he ended up as a commander with the
SAS in the Middle East where he was branded as "useless"
and "dangerous" by his comrades, and eventually
refused to conduct operations with him. He was captured
in 1942 by units of the Deutsches Afrikakorps and taken
to an Italian POW camp, which he claimed to have broken
out of four times. He was then sent to Oflag 79 in Brunswick
until removed for his own safety since the POWs had
correctly identified him as a German informer. From
that point until his appearance in Templin in March
1945, his record is a blank. Standing before the BFC,
Berneville-Claye launched into a speech saying he was
an earl's son, a captain in the Coldstream Guards, and
would collect two armoured cars to take the BFC into
battle — even making the claim that the BFC would
have no problems with the British authorities and that
Great Britain was going to declare war on the Soviet
Union in a few days. Cooper called Berneville-Claye's
bluff; the officer took one of the BFC men with him
as a driver and drove away. Berneville-Claye eventually
changed into a SAS uniform while the driver took up
farmers clothing, and they surrendered to the Allies.
There is a persistent rumor that one BFC member, Reg
Courlander, took part in the Battle of Berlin, and destroyed
a Soviet tank. By this time, Roy Courlander was far
behind Allied lines, and the movements of the other
members of this unit are clearly known. The only person
who can be proved to have seen combat in the uniform
of the BFC was their translator "Bob" Rossler,
who remained with the Nordland division when it went
into battle in Berlin, to fight alongside the Volkssturm,
Hitlerjugend, and the other mixed bag units defending
the city.
The few remaining BFC members followed Steiner's headquarter
unit to Neustrelitz. There they drove trucks, directed
traffic, and assisted the evacuations of civilians from
the Neustrelitz and Reinershagen area until, on April
29, 1945, Steiner ordered his forces to break contact
with the Soviets and make for the western lines to surrender
to the US or British. On May 2, Cooper and the men with
him surrendered to unit of the US Ninth Army near Schwerin.
Meanwhile Hugh Cowie had organized other former BFC
men and seized control of their isolation camp. Heavily
armed, they made their way west and also surrendered
to the Ninth Army at Schwerin.
Aftermath
While British intelligence had been aware of this unit
since Brown's first reports, and had the names of all
of its members, it took several weeks for MI5 and Special
Branch to track down and detain those involved. Cowie
had begun training as a military policeman in Britain
when he was arrested. Amery was arrested in northern
Italy. Pleasants ended up in the Soviet Occupation Zone
of Germany, and was arrested by the Soviets in 1946
on espionage charges, and spent seven years in a prison
camp, then returned home to boast of his dubious status
as the reigning middle-weight boxing champion of the
Waffen-SS until his death in 1997.
Amery and Cooper were tried for high treason alongside
William Joyce (also known as "Lord Haw Haw")
and Walter Purdy, and sentenced to death; however Cooper's
and Purdy's sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.
Cooper was released from prison in 1953, and lived in
the Far East for a number of years. he returned to the
UK in the 1970s and died in 1987. The rest were dealt
with under military law: MacLardy was sentenced to life,
reduced on appeal to 15; Cowie was sentenced to 15 years,
but was released after seven; Wilson got ten years;
and Berry, the first recruit, served nine months. Courland
was court-martialled by the New Zealand military, sentenced
to 15 years, also served only seven. Freeman successfully
defended himself on all charges, and was acquitted;
MI5 stated his only purpose for joining the BFC was
to escape and also to sabotage this unit. Berneville-Claye
was acquitted due to lack of evidence, served another
year in the army before being discharged for theft,
and left the UK to eventually end his days in Australia.
In the middle of 1946, it was learned that three former
BFC members had somehow been demobilised and escaped
punishment; rather than recalling them to service to
face a court-martial, they were merely summoned to an
MI5 office, and given a severe warning concerning their
future conduct.
Freeman, after the war, said he had seen a list of
over 1,100 British who applied to fight against the
Soviets. Asked why the BFC remained rife with problems
and short of recruits despite opportunities like this,
he summed it up that the core base of the BFC were "poor
types", which contributed to a lack of any respect
for the BFC from the start.
Sources: Wikipedia
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