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In World War II, the British Free Corps (BFC) or Britisches Freikorps was a small unit of the Waffen-SS consisting of British and Commonwealth citizens who had been recruited by the Nazis.
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 a 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, being 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, where he ran afoul of the Vichy government (Amery was displeased with their mindset). He made several attempts to leave France, but was unsuccessful until September of 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 (Legion des Volontaires Francais) in January 1943. The two LVF men lamented about the situation on the Eastern Front, where only Germany was battling the Russians and that despite everything, they felt that they should still 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 base 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.)
Amery's first recruiting drive for what was initially to be called "The British Legion of St. George" took him to the St. Denis POW camp outside Paris. Amery addressed 40 to 50 inmates from various British and Commonwealth countries and handed out recruiting material. This first effort at recruitment was a complete failure, but he persisted and eventually he recruited a number of individuals to his cause, who included Professor Logio (an elderly academic), 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 in 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 would become the BFC ended in October 1943 when the Waffen-SS decided Amery's services were no longer needed and it was officially renamed the British Free Corps.
With the failure of Amery's initial 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, in the Berlin area. These camps were overseen by Arnold Hillen-Ziegfeld of the English Committee. 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 in this, 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), but was also a devout Christian. His ability to play both sides would serve him well. 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 and he also began to win the confidence of the Germans. What Brown was doing, in reality, was setting up a black market scheme, smuggling in contraband to give to his men and also to buy off the guards. Later, Brown was taught POW message codes created by MI9 of the British intelligence services and he began to operate as a "self-made spy" as he called himself. With his status, he was called upon to be the camp leader of Special Detachment 517.
At this time, another Briton, Thomas Cooper (who used the German version of Cooper - Bottcher - 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 eventually left Britain on the promise that he could get work in Germany with the Reichs Arbeits Dienst (RAD). This promise failed to be kept, and he joined the Waffen-SS (who, unlike the Army, would take British nationals). He was posted to the famous 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, staying there until February 1941. He was then moved to the Wachbattaillon Oranienburg outside Krakow in Poland. During this time, Cooper was reported (by post-war BFC men), to have participated in atrocities against Russian and Polish POWs and civilians, including Jewish prisoners. In January 1943, Cooper was transferred to the SS-Polizei-Division as a transport driver. The unit was posted to the Leningrad front in a Russian town called Schablinov, where they were told they would replace the mangled forces of the Spanish Blue Division. During a Russian 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 Briton to obtain a German combat decoration. During his recovery, Cooper came into contact with the "holiday camps", and was ordered to join the project.
Brown, being a crafty and streetwise man, correctly determined that he was in a unique position to both hinder the formation of the unit and obtain intelligence. He also made sure the men who came to the camp actually got a holiday. Brown set about winning the confidence of his German handlers and surrounded himself with trustworthy POWs but when the first batch of 200 POWs arrived in the camp, things did not turn out for the better. Brown and his men were doing 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.
However, 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. Brigadier Leonard Parrington was selected, 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, all of this 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. Others kept the BFC in mind as they were sent off. 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.
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 continued to roll into the camp once it was repaired, until December 1944 when the recruiting effort was halted. Brown stated to the Germans that the handling of the camp fostered distrust among the POWs, and was counter-productive for obtaining recruits for the BFC. The reality was Brown, as their front man, continued a dangerous game of gathering intelligence while deterring recruits from joining the BFC, which gained him after the war, the Distinguished Conduct Medal.
Oskar Lange, who was overseeing the camps, hit upon another idea to gain recruits, and, it was hoped, give him more stature. The earlier holiday camps only entertained long term POWs. Lange's idea, however, was to take newly captured prisoners, who were still in a state of confusion, and work on them while they were vulnerable. This new camp was 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, name, number, and date of birth (to which Wilson lied about his rank, saying he was a staff sergeant), 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 that 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 Fascist in leaning. At this time, Edwin Martin attempted to take advantage of the discord, (perhaps to atone for his role in the camp), 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 in turn, 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) and by December 1943, the BFC remained 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. 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, (this was telling the Germans what they 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. The BFC would be, until a suitable British officer joined the unit, 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 he 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, (which were still being carried out) and even get ahead of the line to being made the senior NCO of the BFC. Freeman's purpose for going on the recruiting drive was to gain men for his own ends. It netted three volunteers, though one left soon after, being returned to his camp.
In April 1944, the BFC was issued its distinctive insignia, the three lion passant collar tab, the Union Flag arm badge, and the cuff title bearing "British Free Corps" in Gothic-script. Britten, who had been tasked as the unit tailor, took most of a day sewing all the items onto the BFC members' tunics. On the morning of 20 April, 1944 (which was Hitler's birthday), the BFC was paraded in full uniform and addressed by Roepke who 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 getting his NCO slot. Following the parade, the BFC members went off to various camps throughout Germany and Austria. The idea was to send the men to camps where they had been formally interned. The idea, however, was flawed and did not help recruiting in the slightest; 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, both not wanting to get involved with the war, got caught up in it when the Germans occupied the Channel Islands and put them both in camps since they were of military age. While not initially taking up the BFC offer, because they were both tired of meagre food rations, did not like being away from the company of women, disliked the camp life, they discussed the offer and decided if the BFC should return, they'd join up. In fact, Pleasants even admitted to Minchin and Berry that he "was in it to have a good time."
The recruiting drives found the BFC numbering 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 took it upon himself to stop it. He drafted a letter, signed by him and 14 other BFC men (mostly the newcomers), requesting they be returned to their camps. This threw the BFC into chaos and it took pressure from Cooper and Roepke to have Freeman and one other instigator sent to a penal stalag, both being charged with mutiny on June 20, 1944. Freeman escaped the stalag in November 1944, making it to Russian lines where he was repatriated in March 1945. Still, the BFC was rattled and tensions between members were evident, made worse by Cooper seeking to instil SS-style discipline and methods, which was alien to the Englishmen whose experience with the British army was more lenient. With Freeman gone, Wilson was made 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. However, three of the four 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 forced to join the BFC only damaged morale, and touched off lack-lustre recruiting drives.
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 quell it by allowing the badge to be worn on the right sleeve if desired. Another downturn was the addition of Lieutenant William 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. He was finally removed and returned to the mental asylum from whence he came, and later sent back to England on medical grounds. Another sour note in the BFC camp was the invasion of France by the Allies.
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. A flash in the pan involving the arrest of BFC man Tom Perkins for the theft of a pistol, became a full blown fire within the BFC culminating in eight men, including Pleasants, refusing to work setting up a football pitch and all of them were dismissed and sent to SS punishment camps. This incident led to an investigation as to why the BFC was floundering and the upshot was that recruiting had to be stepped up, assemble as many volunteers as possible, and 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, so as to position himself for possible monopolization of British recruiting and perhaps the assumption of command of the BFC. Stranders, originally a British citizen, joined the Nazi party in 1932 and took German citizenship. After the war began, he was posted to the Waffen-SS as an expert in British affairs. Stranders, however, may not have had a unit to go to as two new problems rocked the boat.
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. Britten 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, and the new quartermaster found a ready source of things to sell to those billeted at the monastery. 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. SS-Obersturmbannführer Hugo Eichhorn reviewed the now 13-strong BFC (not counting the support staff of four) and despite what, to him, might not have seemed like a fearsome lot, greeted them and introduced their two training officers. 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. All this came crashing down when news of Roepke's dismissal came through. 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. This only added another nail to the BFC coffin.
Freeman, after the war, said he had seen a list of over 1,100 British who applied to fight against the Soviets. Asked why did the BFC remain rife with problems and short of recruits, 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.
Cooper, seeing that he needed to bow out of the BFC, 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 a 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. Again, this came to naught and the whole idea crumbled, which even included faking Communist acts within Germany.
The BFC, meanwhile, found its morale taking a nose-dive once more, thanks in part to Wilson's lack of leadership and with Kuhlich almost always 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 they were talked into joining the BFC by Kuhlich. By January 1945, the BFC was up to 27 men, three shy of the magic 30. But by this time, it was seen that the whole BFC idea was a total and complete failure and many members began to concoct ways to get out. Hugh Cowie, a Gordon Highlander from Scotland, was in the middle of several scandals, including the refusal to accept six Maoris into the BFC on the grounds it was a "whites only" unit. There was also the problem of having to deal with drunkards and AWOL BFC men, notably one man who kept sneaking away to be with his girl.
With Wilson away, Cowie hatched a plan to use his temporary position to get access to travel documentation for him and five others, join a train to the Eastern Front, lay low somewhere and let the Soviets overtake them, using the pretext of going on a recruiting drive. Once on the train, all the men (save one who didn't show), removed their BFC insignia, but it went downhill from there, the end result being all of them were picked up by the Gestapo. After harsh tongue lashings by their armed escort and Kuhlich, half of the escapees were sent off to isolation camps while the other three agreed to remain with the BFC. The major blow fell 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. However, they were betrayed to the Gestapo by the Norwegian nurse girlfriend of one of the plotters, who had the entire BFC arrested, except for two members who managed to mingle with POWs being sent west and make their escape.
This was the straw that broke the camel's back. After the BFC men were released from jail, it was time to make some use of the unit. The BFC was taken to Berlin and billeted in a school on the Schonhauser Allee, to wait there until the required steps were taken to put them into the line. It was here that the last "volunteer" came forward, Frank Axon who was captured in Greece in 1941. Accused of hitting a cow which caused it to give birth to its calf too early, he could either join the BFC or be severely punished and so, he chose the BFC. 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 while Pleasants went to the "Peace Camp", participating in exhibition-boxing 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 of them 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, which put Douglas Mardon in charge of the unit and in shaping up what he had, he was left with eight men in all, (two men he refused to take and Minchin had scabies). Mardon had to move the unit to a training camp in Niemeck, to get a crash course in anti-tank, close-combat tactics. Here, 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 smoked aspirin until he became ill, getting transferred. With the hurried training completed, the BFC was given two days leave before moving up to the front.
On March 1 1945, a truck loaded with the tiny BFC travelled to the headquarters of III (Germanisches) SS-Panzer-Korps. During the journey, most members removed their BFC insignia. Upon arrival, the HQ staff was rather shocked at getting a British unit and so they put the BFC in billets on the western edge of Stettin pending orders on what to do with them. 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 portion of the SS-"Nordland" division, located at Angermunde. From there, they would be placed with the divisional armoured reconnaissance battalion (11.SS-Panzer-Aufklarungs-Abteilung) which was stationed in Grussow. The commander there was Sturmbannführer Rudolf Saalbach and when the BFC arrived, he gave them a quick welcome and assigned them to the 3rd. Company, commanded by the Swede Obersturmführer Hano-Goesta Perrson. Perrson issued the BFC with a single Sd.Kfz.251 half-track and a "Schwimmwagen", giving them orders to prepare trench lines within the company's perimeter. The "Nordland" division was currently being held in reserve but the BFC, from their positions, could clearly see the Soviets. The BFC remained in the line for a month, but the threat of attack by the Russians 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 Germanic Panzer Corps, Cooper burned his SS papers, packed a suitcase with civilian clothing and went to the Corps HQ located in Steinhoeffel on the Oder, where he learned, to his surprise, that "ten Britons were somewhere near the front." He was then ordered to report to Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner, who took Cooper to inspect the BFC troops. During the journey, Cooper informed Steiner about the BFC, and advised that it was unwise to have them at the front. Steiner agreed, minaly over post-war legalities of his use of such men at the front. After inspecting the BFC, Steiner ordered that the BFC be used as medical orderlies. Cooper, after catching up on the news, spoke with Mardon and then the two of them approached Brigadeführer Ziegler at his Nordland headquarters. They gave Ziegler a rundown on the unit, pointing out that many were forced into joining the BFC and thus, were of dubious combat value. Ziegler agreed, met withconvinced him to issued orders to pull the BFC out of the line and utilize them as truck drivers in the rear.
The next day, the BFC left the front and reported to Corps headquarters and from there, they were issued with travel orders, rations, and were to go 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 recived the parcels), chose to horde 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 DAK units 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 the time of his removal 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 Russia 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 turned themselves in. "Bob" Rossler remained with the Nordland division when it went into battle in Berlin, fighting alongside the Volkssturm, Hitlerjugend, and all the other mixed bag units which remained to fight it out.
The BFC, however, remained true to their orders, following Steiner's headquarter unit to Neustrelitz. 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 Russians and make for the western lines to surrender to the US or British. From this point on, the BFC men sought ways to get to the Allied lines and avoid capture by the Soviets. Those who were turned over to the British, among other British traitors, stood trial. Amery was hanged, Cooper went to jail (being released in 1953), Britten got ten years (reduced to two months when he was released for medical reasons), Wilson got ten years, Freeman got ten years, and other members got from 15 years to no punishment at all.
This article is based on information written by Edwin Dyer, used with permission.
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