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NUMBER 165© Copyright After the Battle 2014Editor: Karel MargryEditor-in-Chief: Winston G. RamseyPublished byBattle of Britain International Ltd.,The Mews, Hobbs Cross House,Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow,Essex CM17 0NN, EnglandTelephone: 01279 41 8833Fax: 01279 41 9386E-mail: hq@afterthebattle.comWebsite: www.afterthebattle.comPrinted in Great Britain byWarners Group Publications PLC,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH.After the Battle is published on the 15thof February, May, August and November.LONDON STOCKIST for the After the Battle range:Foyles Limited, 113-119 Charing Cross Road,London WC2H 0EB. Telephone: 020 7437 5660.Fax: 020 7434 1574. E-mail: orders@foyles.co.uk.Web site: www.foyles.co.ukUnited Kingdom Newsagent Distribution:Warners Group Publications PLC,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PHAustralian Subscriptions and Back Issues:Renniks Publications Pty LimitedUnit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. Fax: 61 2 9695 7355E-mail: info@renniks.com. Website: www.renniks.comCanadian Distribution and Subscriptions:Vanwell Publishing Ltd.,622 Welland Avenue, St. Catharines, OntarioTelephone: (905) 937 3100. Fax: (905) 937 1760Toll Free: 1-800-661-6136E-mail: sales@vanwell.comNew Zealand Distribution:Dal McGuirk’s “MILITARY ARCHIVE”, PO Box 24486,Royal Oak, Auckland 1345, New ZealandTelephone: 021 627 870. Fax: 9-6252817E-mail: milrchiv@mist.co.nzUnited States Distribution and Subscriptions:RZM Imports Inc, 184 North Ave., Stamford, CT 06901Telephone: 1-203-324-5100. Fax: 1-203-324-5106E-mail: info@rzm.com Website: www.rzm.comItalian Distribution:Milistoria s.r.l. Via Sofia, 12-Interporto,1-43010 Fontevivo (PR), ItalyTelephone: ++390521 651910. Fax: ++390521 619204Dutch Language Edition:SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 188,6860 AD OosterbeekTelephone: 026-4462834. E-mail: si@sipublicaties.nl

CONTENTSOPERATION ‘RÖSSELSPRUNG’The Airborne Raid on Tito’s Headquarters2

UNITED KINGDOMBritain’s First World War Defences 39

IT HAPPENED HEREThe Exploits of an Aussie Bomber Crew 50

Front Cover: On May 25, 1944, GermanFallschirmjäger carried out a surprise airborneassault on the town of Drvar in northernBosnia with mission to capture Field-MarshalTito (inset top right), whose command postwas in a cave just outside the town(arrowed). They failed to catch Tito but did hitupon one of his uniforms (bottom right).Back Cover: Denis Kelly with his son Denis Jrat the Bomber Command Memorial in London(see story page 50). Denis went on 30operations over Europe before being shot downon the night of July 18/19, 1944. See also:www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4019723.htmAcknowledgements: For assistance with the‘Rösselsprung’ story, the Editor would like tothank Brigadier-General Wayne D. Eyre of theCanadian Army; Charles D. Melson, chief histo-rian at the US Marine Corps University; Lui-tenant-Kolonel Erik Jellema of the Dutch Army;Indira Rapi of the Bosnia-Herzegovina MineAction Center; Helmuth Schultz, glider pilotveteran of LLG1; Dieter Heckmann and RobertHeeren. For their invaluable help during hisstay in Drvar, he would like to thank Mayor Ste-vica Lukac of Drvar; local historian NikolaBosnic; Teresa Rowan; Zeljko Djilas, and IvanaBosnic. For her help with the Britain’s FirstWorld War Defences story, he thanks AmyAdams of the Royal Engineers Library andMuseum at Chatham.Photo Credit Abbreviations: IWM —ImperialWar Museum; SMCH —Slovenian Museumof Contemporary History, Ljubljana.

Tito’s headquarters was located at Drvar, a small wood-logging town in northernBosnia. With a pre-war population of 3,000 most people worked in the town’s cellulose factory.

Josip Broz-Tito was born in 1892 in the village of Kumrovec in Croatia. A metal worker bytraining, at an early age he joined the labour movement and the socialist party. Con-scripted into the Austrian-Hungarian Army in 1913, he served with distinction during theFirst World War but was seriously wounded and captured by the Imperial Russians in1915. He spent a year in a Russian hospital before being transferred to a work camp in theUral Mountains. Making his way to St Petersburg, he participated in the 1917 BolshevistRevolution and later joined a Red Guard unit in Omsk. Upon his return home in 1920,Broz found himself in the newly established Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where he joined theCommunist Party of Yugoslavia. In 1928, by then secretary of the party’s Zagreb branch,he was arrested for illegal communist activities and sentenced to five years in prison.After his release, he lived incognito and assumed a number of noms de guerre, amongthem ‘Walter’ and ‘Tito’. In 1934 he went to Vienna, where the party’s Central Committeehad sought refuge, and was appointed to become a member. The following year he wentto the Soviet Union to work for the Comintern, also joining the Soviet Communist Partyand the NKVD secret police. Sent back to Yugoslavia in 1937 to purge the still-outlawedCommunist Party there, he became its Secretary-General. When the Axis countriesinvaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Communists initially kept a low profile but in June1941, after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Tito took to the hills, organising the partisan movement and engaging in guerrilla warfare against the occupying forces.By 1944, his Army of National Liberation had grown to well over 300,000.

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In April 1941, Nazi Germany togetherwith its allies Italy, Hungary and Bulgariainvaded and occupied the Kingdom ofYugoslavia. The country was then parti-tioned amongst the victors: an extremelyFascist puppet regime, the Ustashe underAnte Pavelic, was set up in Croatia, and Ger-man, Italian and Rumanian troops were sta-tioned in the rest of the country.Resistance against foreign occupation soon

sprang up in the form of two guerrilla move-ments. One were the Chetniks, the Royalistand mostly Serbian guerrillas under ColonelDraza Mihailovic, an officer of the pre-warYugoslav Army. The other were the Parti-sans, the Communist and pan-Slavic fightersunder their charismatic leader Josip Broz-Tito, the secretary-general of the YugoslavCommunist Party. The two movements hadcompletely different strategies and aims.Mihailovic’s approach was to mostly abide histime in the mountains to await an Allied inva-sion after which his troops would come out torestore the Serb monarchy. Tito’s strategywas to strike at the Germans whenever andwherever he could, regardless of the risks orthe inevitable reprisals, and, once victorious,to create a Communist-led people’s republicof Yugoslavia. The political divergencequickly led to internal strife. The Chetniks,who had initially been fighting the Germans,

soon changed their focus to destroying thePartisans and the struggle quickly devolvedinto a state of civil war. In their fervour toannihilate the Partisans, the Chetniks evenengaged in secret or open collaboration withthe Germans and Italians and with the CroatUstashe.The Western Allies, notably Britain, ini-

tially supported Mihailovic, sending inweapons, supplies and money to the Chet-niks. However, after agents of the SpecialOperations Executive (SOE) parachutedinto Yugoslavia reported in early 1943 thatTito’s partisans were doing most of the fight-ing against the Germans, Britain changedsides and the bulk of the support thereafterwent to the Communists.In the three years since 1941, the Axis

armies launched six big offensives aimed atencircling and destroying the growing parti-san army. However, each time Tito, his staffand large bodies of partisans managed toescape from every trap and all efforts toannihilate them came to nothing. On thecontrary, when Italy capitulated in Septem-ber 1943, the partisans captured hugeamounts of arms and equipment from theItalian divisions stranded in Yugoslavia,enabling them to set up several new divisionsof what was by then known as the NationalLiberation Army of Yugoslavia (NOVJ).

By the spring of 1944 the NOVJ hadgrown to more than 300,000 men, organisedin 11 army corps with 39 divisions and several independent brigades. While theGerman forces held the towns and cities withstrong garrisons and guarded the majorroads and railways, the partisans were masters of large tracts of the rugged andmountainous countryside, which in effectcould be seen as ‘liberated territory’.With the faltering of Unternehmen

‘Schwarz’ (the Sixth Offensive, as the parti-sans called it) during the winter of 1943-44,the German High Command began to realisethat it was losing the initiative in Yugoslavia.The Anglo-American advance in Italy andthe Soviet advance in the East were forcingthe Wehrmacht to withdraw divisions fromthe Balkans: two had already gone to Italy inearly spring and four had been sent tooccupy Hungary in March. Since furtherattempts to annihilate the partisans by large-scale attacks were clearly out of the question,an alternative plan was devised: a bold strokeat its centre might paralyse the partisan lead-ership, thus restoring the initiative to theGermans, and might even kill or capture Titoand his staff as well.

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On May 25, 1944, the German army in Nazi-occupied Yugo -slavia launched Operation ‘Rösselsprung’ (Knight’s Move inchess), a major offensive against the elusive partisan army innorthern Bosnia. As part of this undertaking, SS-Fallschirm -jäger-Bataillon 500 executed a surprise airborne attack by para-chute and glider on the town of Drvar in an attempt to captureor kill Field-Marshal Tito and wipe out his Supreme Headquar-

ters. Although the SS paratroop battalion made a successfulassault landing and captured the town, they failed to find Tito,who narrowly managed to make good his escape from hiscommand post. Soon encircled by superior partisan forces whorushed to the scene in fierce counter-attack, the German air-borne force had to fight for its life before being finally rescuedby ground units the following morning.

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OPERATION ‘RÖSSELSPRUNG’THE AIRBORNE RAID ON TITO’S HEADQUARTERS

By Karel Margry

THE SEARCH FOR TITOThe idea for an action against Tito’s head-

quarters had been the subject of several ear-lier plans, notably with the Division Bran-denburg, the special forces division formedby the German Abwehr (military intelli-gence) for commando and covert operations.

In the late summer of 1943, the divisionhad set up a small special unit in Vienna.Known as Einheit Kirchner, after its com-mander, Oberleutnant Wolfram Kirchner, itsspecial purpose was to gather intelligenceand develop plans for an operation againstTito’s headquarters. In October, having com-pleted its training, the platoon-size unit wassent to Banja Luka in northern Bosnia,beginning operations under direct commandof division headquarters. When in Decemberanother, similar Brandenburg unit underHauptmann Boeckl arrived in Banja Lukafrom Greece, the two were merged into one,

with Boeckl taking command. He divided theunit into two platoons, one under himself,the other under Kirchner.

In gathering intelligence, the unit madegood use of the local Chetnik leaders, UrosDrenovic and Lazo Tesanovic, whose menknew how to move through partisan-con-trolled areas relatively freely, had good con-tacts with anti-Communist peasants, andcould investigate the whereabouts of Tito’scommand centre relatively unnoticed.

In late 1943, after the unit learned thatTito had moved his headquarters to the townof Jajce in central Bosnia, they developedtwo plans for an action against it. One calledfor a nightly surprise raid, to be carried outby men of the unit together with Chetnikfighters, all dressed up in partisan uniforms,with the idea to kidnap or eliminate Tito.Another called for two corpses (murderedprisoners of war), dressed in British military

uniforms and fitted out with parachutes, tobe dropped from an aircraft near Jajce.Ostensibly killed by malfunctioning chutes,one was to carry a letter addressed to Titopersonally, which on opening would explodeand, hopefully, kill the partisan leader. Nei-ther plan materialised because, before theycould be carried out, counter-partisan actionby regular German forces under Operation‘Schwarz’ forced Tito to move his headquar-ters in early January 1944.

At the end of February, HauptmannBoeckl was relieved of his post and suc-ceeded by Major Ernst Benesch. He rapidlyexpanded the unit to one of battalion size.Einheit Benesch, as it was now known, con-tinued its search for Tito’s headquarters.About this time, they learned that Tito hadmoved his command post to Drvar, a smallrural industrial town in western Bosnia about90 kilometres south-west of Banja Luka.

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Left: Tito’s command post at Drvar was in a natural cave justoutside the town. It lay well hidden up in a cleft in the rockface. Right: A wooden cabin had been built directly in front of

the cave entrance. This served as workspace for Tito and themembers of his General Staff, the cavern itself being mainlyused as shelter during the frequent Axis air attacks on Drvar.

Armed sentries from the Supreme Headquarters’ Escort Battal-ion guarded the command post.

The same view today. The cabin is not the original but a post-war replica.

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Soon after, this location was confirmed bywireless intelligence. In early 1942, the Ober-befehlshaber Süd-Ost (German Comman-der-in-Chief South-East) had assigned theGerman commander in Bosnia a specialwireless monitoring platoon. Commanded byHauptmann Wollny, and made up of expertpersonnel from Nachrichten-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 4 stationed at Saloniki in northernGreece, its task was to intercept and decryptenemy radio traffic. In the summer of 1943the whole Abteilung, including Wollny’s pla-toon, was sent to Belgrade and within a fewmonths they were able to listen in on themajority of the partisans’ radio traffic. Deci-phering the enemy messages was not so diffi-cult but identifying the location of theirheadquarters was more problematic due tothe extreme mobility of the guerrillas. How-ever, in late February 1944, using cross-bear-ings from several receiving stations, Wollny’sunit managed to pinpoint Tito’s headquar-ters to the town of Drvar.A decisive role in the search for Tito’s HQ

was played by the Abwehr’s regular sub-branches, notably its Abteilung I (espionage)and Abteilung II (counter-espionage). Sincea re-organisation in August 1943, bothdepartments had representing agencies atall levels of army command on the Balkans:at Heeresgruppe F there were Front- Aufklärungs-Kommandos 111 and 201; subordinate to them on army level, attachedto 2. Panzer-Armee headquarters, were Führender Front-Aufklärungs-Trupp 176and Front-Aufklärungs-Trupp 216, the latterstationed at Sisak. Working together with theIc (chief intelligence officer) at their respec-tive headquarters, these units assembled andcollated all the intelligence on enemy troopstrength and locations gathered from espionage, wireless monitoring and Sicher-heitsdienst, Geheime Feldpolizei and Feld-kommandantur sources. It was they whofinally determined in early March that Tito’sHQ was definitely at Drvar.Final confirmation came in mid-May,

when the Abwehr intercepted a cable fromthe Yugoslav military attaché in Washingtonto his Royal Army counterpart in Cairo giving the location of Tito’s HQ at Drvar.SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, the

man who had snatched Italian Duce BenitoMussolini from the Gran Sasso in September

1943 (see After the Battle No. 22), was for ashort time also involved in the search forTito. Ordered by Hitler and the Oberkom-mando der Wehrmacht (OKW — GermanArmed Forces High Command) to find andcapture Tito, he flew to Belgrade in mid-April but found Abwehr intelligence reportsthere inaccurate and contradictory. Decidingto find out for himself, he drove to Zagreband, with the help of men from his SS-Jagdverband Süd-Ost (the section of his spe-cial forces unit stationed in Bosnia), eventu-ally learned around mid-May that Tito was inDrvar. Skorzeny wanted to kidnap or kill Titoin a small, stealthy commando-type operationand sent his adjutant, SS-HauptsturmführerAdrian von Fölkersam, to headquarters ofthe XV. Gebirgs-Armeekorps in Banja Lukato inform General der Infanterie Ernst vonLeyser of his scheme. The latter was alreadydeveloping his own plans, and probably didnot like SS interference anyway, and gaveFölkersam a cold shoulder. Skorzeny, whothought any large-scale operation in Bosniastood no chance of success because its secu-rity would always be compromised by loosetalking, thereupon withdrew from the missionand had no further part in it.

THE PARTISAN FORCES IN DRVARThe small town of Drvar had been chosen

as partisan headquarters for the excellenttactical reason that approach to it was diffi-cult. The town, which earned a living from alarge saw-mill and cellulose factory, lay in awide green valley with the Jasenovac Moun-tains rising steeply to the north and highsteep wooded hills surrounding it on all othersides. Entry was limited to three roadsthrough defiles that could be easily blocked.The Unac river flowed just north of the town,forming a further barrier where a strongdefence could be put up. Of an original pre-war population of 3,000, by early 1944 onlysome 200 remained, most others having fledfrom the German bombings of the town.When Tito and his staff arrived in Drvar

on January 22, they initially set up headquar-ters in a house in the town. However, fearinga German air attack, they soon moved to asafer place, a natural cave located in a cleft inthe escarpment just north of the town. It wasjust across the Unac river from the town,some 15 metres high up in a wooded ravine,with a narrow flight of stone steps cut outfrom the rock leading up to it. The cave hada narrow entrance but there were wider

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Right:On May 4, 1944, a party of four Alliedwar reporters had arrived in Drvar to publi-cise Tito and the little-known struggle ofthe partisans to the Western world. Theyhad been flown in to the partisan airstripat Bosanski Petrovac. Here three of them— (L-R) John Talbot of Reuters, represent-ing the combined British Press (leaningagainst the tree); Stoyan Pribichevich ofFortune and Timemagazines (a Croat-bornAmerican citizen) for the American Press,and Chief Petty Officer ‘Gene’ Fowler (a USArmy cine cameraman) — are interviewingVladislav Ribnikar, Tito’s Minister of Infor-mation, with the help of a female inter-preter. The picture was taken by the fourthman, photographer Sergeant Max Slade ofthe British Army Film and Photo Unit.

Right:On May 14, 1944, Slade pictured Titowith his Cabinet Ministers and SupremeStaff at the cabin. In the front row (L-R) areVladislav Ribnikar (Minister of Informa-tion), Colonel Filipovic, Edvard Kardelj(member of the Central Committee of theYugoslav Communist Party and one ofTito’s closest confidants) and Tito. In theback row (L-R) are Major-General ArsoJovanovic (Chief-of-Staff), Radonja (Tito’ssecretary), Rodoljub Colakovic (Secretaryof the Anti-Fascist Council for the NationalLiberation of Yugoslavia), Edvard Kocbek(Minister of Education, a non-Communist)and Lieutenant-General Sreten Zujovic.Tito’s dog Tiger in the foreground. IW

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spaces deeper inside, providing enough roomfor the whole staff. Men of the EngineerBrigade attached to the Partisan HQ erecteda wooden hut in front of the cave, with averanda that commanded a fine view of thetown across the river, the whole valley and itsapproaches. This cabin served as Tito’s quar-ters and office when there was no air raidalarm.When German aerial attacks on the town

and villages in the region increased in theearly spring, Tito took into use a secondcave, this one located at the village of Bas-tasi, six kilometres to the west. This is wherehe stayed during the day, every evening trav-elling by Jeep to the Drvar cave, where therest of his command staff remained asbefore.The partisans were both a military and a

political movement and with the arrival ofTito’s Supreme Headquarters (which itselfcombined the High Command of the parti-san army and the Politburo of the Commu-nist Party all in one) several national andregional political bodies had also settleddown in Drvar. Prime among them were theAnti-Fascist Council for the National Libera-tion of Yugoslavia (Antifasisticko VijeceNarodnog Oslobodenja Jugoslavije —AVNOJ), the provisional parliament set upby the partisans in November 1942; the Cen-tral Committee of the Communist Party ofYugoslavia; the Central Committee of theYoung Communist League of Yugoslavia(Savez komunisticke omladine Jugoslavije —SKOJ); and the District Committee of theSKOJ.As part of the political activity, the Unified

League of Anti-Fascist Youth of Yugoslavia

(Ujedinjeni savez antifasisticke omladineJugoslavije — USAOJ), an offspring ofSKOJ, was assembling for its second nationalcongress, to be held in Drvar on May 2-4,and so several hundred young delegates fromall over the country were arriving in the townin late April. The congress assembled in oneof the big halls of the cellulose factory withTito delivering the opening address to the816 attendants.Also stationed in Drvar were members of

Allied military missions that had been sent toTito’s headquarters by their respective gov-ernments. The British Military Mission —the senior of the three, as it originated fromthe SOE agents infiltrated into Yugoslavia asearly as May 1943 — was led by BrigadierFitzroy Maclean, a confidant of British PrimeMinister Churchill. A prominent member ofhis 18-man team was Randolph Churchill,son of the Prime Minister. (When the air-borne raid came on May 25, both Macleanand Churchill would be absent from Drvar,the former having returned to London inearly April for an interim report and the lat-ter having left the town with one of the parti-san units, and command of the mission wasexercised by Lieutenant-Colonel VivianStreet.) The American Military Mission, sentout by the Office of Strategic Service (OSS)in August 1943 and including since Februarya three-man USAAF meteorological unitunder Captain Cecil E. Drew, was com-manded by Major Linn M. Farish. (TheAmerican team was subordinated to theBritish Mission, a truly independent US mis-sion not being created until September1944.) The Soviet Military Mission, whichhad arrived in three American-towed Waco

gliders at the snow-covered partisan airfieldat Bosanski Petrovac on February 23, was ledby Lieutenant-General Nikita Korneyev.With Tito rapidly becoming one of the

heroes of Allied propaganda, the WesternAllied missions had recently been joined byfour Allied war correspondents: John Talbotof Reuters, Stoyan Pribichevich of Fortuneand Time magazines and two official photo -graphers, Chief Petty Officer G. E. Fowler ofthe US Navy and Sergeant Max Slade of theBritish Army Film and Photo Unit.Protection of the partisan command centre

was the task of the Headquarters Escort Battalion. About 350 men and women strong,it comprised four companies, three of theminfantry and one anti-aircraft. The 1st Company was stationed at Drvar; the 2nd atBastasi; the 3rd was manning the anti-aircraftdefences — seven captured Italian AAmachine guns — on high ground just northand south of Drvar, and the 4th was protectingthe Allied missions. There was also a smalltank platoon from the I Proletarian Corps,which had three captured Italian CV-35 lighttanks, and was leaguered near the hamlet ofTrninic Brijeg, one kilometre to the south.Immediate protection of the HQ cave con-sisted of five sentries armed with machine pis-tols, three immediately in front of the caveand two at their billet buildings nearby.There were few partisan units in the town

itself, the Luftwaffe raids having forced themto disperse in the hills around the townwhere they formed a loose perimeter. Apartfrom the Escort Battalion and the EngineersBrigade, the latter about 300 strong but notvery well armed, the only other military unitin the near neighbourhood was the Officers’School at the hamlet of Zavade (Sipovljani),three kilometres south-east of Drvar, whichin May had some 130 cadets. So altogetherthere were perhaps 800 men and women par-tisan fighters in or near Drvar. Field defenceswere limited to slit trenches for air attackand gun-pits for the AA machine guns.Partisan forces in the wider area amounted

to six divisions of the National LiberationArmy: the 1st and 6th Divisions of the I Pro-letarian Corps (Major-General KocaPopovic) to the east and west of Drvarrespectively; the 4th, 10th and 39th Divisionsof the V Corps (Major-General SlavkoRodic) to the north and north-east, and the9th Division of the VIII Dalmatian Corps(Major-General Vladimir Cetkovic) to thesouth-east. As signs of a possible attack onDrvar increased in early March, Tito’s staffdecided to reinforce the garrison andordered the 2nd Brigade of the 6th Divisionto Drvar. This increased the number oftroops considerably. On April 28, this unitwas replaced by the 3rd Lika Brigade of thesame division. However, on May 15, as thethreat of an attack seemed to have subsided,this brigade was assigned to division reserveand transferred to Trubar, 13 kilometreswest of Drvar.

OPERATION ‘RÖSSELSPRUNG’In late April, Generalfeldmarschall Maxi-

milian von Weichs, the OberbefehlshaberSüd-Ost and also commander of Heeres-gruppe F, instructed Generaloberst LotharRendulic, the commander of the 2. Panzer-Armee, to plan an offensive operation againstTito’s headquarters. Rendulic was to launch asurprise attack with strong forces in the areadelineated by the towns of Bugojno — Jajce— Banja Luka — Prijedor — Bihac — Knin,an area of over 750 square kilo metres, withthe intention to disrupt Tito’s High Com-mand, break up the partisan formations andsubsequently hunt down and destroy them.The operation was to be carried out by

forces from two of the army’s four corps, theV. SS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Korps and theXV. Gebirgs-Armeekorps. In order to assem-ble enough forces for the new offensive, Ren-dulic was to denude other operational areas of

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Operation ‘Rösselsprung’ envisaged eight strong motorised Kampfgruppen — 16,000men in all — launching a concentric attack towards Drvar. The two main formationsinvolved were the 373. (kroatische) Infanterie-Division attacking from the west andthe 7. SS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Division ‘Prinz Eugen’ coming in from the east.

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the two corps, and enlist as many formationsof the collaborationist Croat Army as securitywould allow. From Heeresgruppe reserve hewould get Panzer-Abteilung 202, the 4. Regi-ment ‘Brandenburg’ and Grenadier-Regi-ment 92 (mot.).On May 5, von Weichs forwarded Ren-

dulic’s draft plan to the OKW, asking for therelease of Gebirgs-Aufklärungs-Abteilung54 (the reconnaissance unit of the 1. Gebirgs-Division), which was in OKW reserve, andmore units from the Brandenburg Division.At the same time he requested to be giventhe use of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon 500.While approving the request for the moun-

tain reconnaissance battalion, the OKW atfirst turned down the request for the SS para-chute battalion, in view of the fact thatReichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had ear-marked it for anti-partisan operations in themountains of upper Slovenia. However, onbeing contacted by the OKW, Himmleragreed to release the unit and the OKWcabled Weichs on May 7 that it was availablefor Rendulic’s offensive. By then, Hitler hadalso reviewed the plan, the OKW informingWeichs that the Führer judged it paramountthat the offensive attempt to target Tito’sheadquarters and, if possible, destroy it; andthat Weichs investigate whether SS-Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon 500 could not beused for this special purpose.

On May 13, the OKW cabled Weichs fur-ther instructions. In view of the fact that inmost previous offensives the partisan forceshad been able to escape in mass from theGerman attacks, the surprise element musthave top priority. Therefore, the offensivewas to kick off with a surprise attack by theSS paratroop battalion on the enemy’s com-mand centre. This was to be carried out withstrong Luftwaffe support, in conjunctionwith covert units of the Brandenburg Divi-sion (operating disguised as partisans), andwithout any regard for the risks involved.Next, strong mobile Kampfgruppen (if possi-ble, also disguised) were to be pushed for-ward via the main highways in a concentricattack on the partisan centre, clearing theseroads in combat, destroying the partisans’road-bound heavy weapons and supplycolumns, wiping out partisan camps, andfinally linking up with and relieving the air-borne troops. Only then were the troops tobegin a systematic mopping-up of the mainpartisan-held areas.With these considerations in mind, Ren-

dulic set about making his final plans and onMay 21 the order was ready.The operation — code-named ‘Rössel-

sprung’ (Knight’s Move) — was to be underoperational control of the XV. Gebirgs-Armeekorps, commanded by General derInfanterie Ernst von Leyser. From his head-

quarters at Bihac, Leyser would control allthe SS, Army, Luftwaffe and Croat troops.On ‘X-Tag’ (set for May 25), SS-Fallschirm -

jäger-Bataillon 500 would make a surprise air-borne assault on Drvar with the task of com-pletely destroying Tito’s main headquarters.At the same time eight strong motorisedKampfgruppen — 16,000 men in all — wouldlaunch a concentric attack towards Drvar:From the east, 70 kilometres from Drvar,

the 7. SS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Division‘Prinz Eugen’ (SS-Oberführer Otto Kumm),with Panzergrenadier-Sturm-Bataillon AOK2 (an army troops unit from 2. Panzer-Armee) and Panzer-Abteilung 202 undercommand, was to smash through enemyresistance east of the Sana river and advanceon a broad front towards the Unac, their taskbeing to take out enemy supply bases as wellas to prevent the escape eastwards of thebeaten enemy groups and headquarters.Specifically from the north-east, the Sturm-Bataillon and a company from Panzer-Abteilung 202 were to drive from BanjaLuka towards Kljuc; and from the south-eastSS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 13was to advance from Jajce along the railwaysand roads to Savici and Mliniste.From the south-east, SS-Aufklärungs-

Abteilung 105 (a reconnaissance unit fromcorps troops of the V. SS-Gebirgs-Korps)was to drive out from Livno, 80 kilometres

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The plan for the airborne attack on Drvar called for SS-Fallschirm -jäger-Bataillon 500 to drop three parachute groups — Grün(Green), Blau (Bleu) and Rot (Red) — on drop zones north, east andsouth of the town. Simultaneously, six glider-borne groups wereto land close to specific objectives: Gruppe ‘Panther’ was to takethe suspected site of Tito’s headquarters (‘Zitadelle’); ‘Draufgänger’

to take the crossroads at the western end of town (‘Westkreuz’)and capture several buildings around it that were assumed tohouse the partisans’ communications centre; ‘Greifer’ to capturethe British Military Mission (‘London’), ‘Stürmer’ the Soviet Mili-tary Mission (‘Moskau’); ‘Brecher’ the US Military Mission(‘Amerika’) and ‘Beisser’ an outpost wireless position (‘Warschau’).

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from Drvar, and advance to Glamoc on theright and in the direction of Bosansko Gra-hovo on the left, its mission being to take outenemy supply bases in that area and preventany southward escape of the ‘bandit’ groups,headquarters and military missions.Also from the south-east, Aufklärungs-

Abteilung 369 (the recce unit of the 369.(kroatische) Infanterie-Division) was todrive from Livno to Glamocko Polje andthen to Drvar to intercept the withdrawingenemy. Livno was to be securely occupied.From the south, the 1. Regiment ‘Bran-

denburg’ with subordinate mixed Croatianelements was to start out from Knin, 70 kilo-metres from Drvar, and advance via Bosan-sko Grahovo to Drvar.From the west, the 373. (kroatische) Infan-

terie-Division (Generalleutnant EduardAldrian) was to launch a regimental combatgroup — Kampfgruppe Willam under OberstWillam — from the town of Srb on the Unariver, 25 kilometres from Drvar, with ordersto advance at best speed via Trubar to Drvarand there relieve, at whatever cost and onthe same day, the SS paratroop battalion.For this vital mission, Kampfgruppe Willamwas to be made a strong as possible. It con-sisted of the II. and III. Bataillon ofGrenadier-Regiment 384 (kroatisch) rein-forced with artillery, heavy weapons andengineers. Further north in the divisionalzone, Aufklärungs-Abteilung 373 was toadvance on the left flank from Lapac viaKulen Vakuf to Vrtoce.From the north, Grenadier-Regiment 92

(mot.) was to advance south-east from thetown of Bihac, 75 kilometres from Drvar,while Gebirgs-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 54,supported by the Kroatische Jäger-Regiment1, was to do the same from Bosanska Krupa.After meeting up at Vrtoce, they were toproceed south-east and capture the town ofBosanski Petrovac, a known enemy supply

and communications centre. Here they wereto destroy partisan headquarters and capturethe enemy airstrip and supply base there.Grenadier-Regiment 92 was then to drivethe remaining 25 kilometres to Drvar inorder to link up with the SS paratroop battal-ion and Kampfgruppe Willam.The offensive would receive considerable

air support. This would be provided by Ju 87Stuka dive-bombers from I./Schlacht-Geschwader 2 and II./Schlacht-Geschwader151; Heinkel He 46 and Fiat CR.42 nightbombers from I./Nachtschlacht-Geschwader7; Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters fromII./Jagd-Geschwader 51 and IV./Jagd-Geschwader 27, and Macchi C.202 fightersand Dornier Do 17 bombers from the Croat-ian Air Force Legion — most of them oper-ating from airfields around Zagreb with others at Bihac and Banja Luka. The Stukasand night bombers would bomb Drvar justbefore the airborne landings and carry out aheavy bombing raid on Bosanski Petrovacpreceding the attack. The fighters wouldescort the glider and parachute serials andstrafe partisan positions in and aroundDrvar. All Luftwaffe operations were to becontrolled by the Fliegerführer Kroatien(Luftwaffe Commander in Croatia), OberstWolter Hagen.On May 21, OB Süd-Ost submitted the

‘Rösselsprung‘ plan to the OKW for finalendorsement. Hitler approved the plan.There were slight hesitations over the pro-posed strength of the airborne force, whichappeared too weak, and the OKW advisedthat the heavy bombing raid on BosanskiPetrovac take place simultaneously with theairborne landing rather than before it.All German commanders realised that

success of the operation depended on theplan being kept totally secret. However,guarding a military secret in occupiedYugoslavia was no sinecure. For one, there

was close collaboration with the Chetnikforces; more importantly, except for the SSparatroop battalion and Grenadier-Regi-ment 92, all the units in the operation’s orderof battle were made up of soldiers withstrong roots in the Balkans: the 373. (kroa -tische) Infanterie-Division and KroatischeJäger-Regiment 1 and other units were madeup of Croatians; and the 7. SS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Division ‘Prinz Eugen’ consistedalmost wholly of ethnic Germans from Ser-bia, Rumania and Croatia. These troops stillmaintained daily contacts with the locals andit was unavoidable that they would talk. Inan attempt to maintain secrecy, divisionorders were only issued during the night ofMay 23/24 and the motorised units of theXV. Gebirgs-Armeekorps only moved intotheir jump-off positions at the last moment.

PLANS FOR THE AIRBORNE ATTACKOn May 19, an aerial observation aircraft

from Banja Luka airfield carried out a photoreconnaissance mission to Drvar, takingnumerous vertical aerials of the town andsurroundings. Analysis of the photographsproduced information on partisan trench sys-tems and other defensive works in andaround the town. However, the photo inter-preters had difficulty identifying the actuallocations of headquarters and commandposts. From the presence of three anti-air-craft weapon pits near the town cemeterythey deduced that this was the most likelysite of Tito’s command post — this thenbecame the prime objective of the airborneattack. The presence of what looked likeradio aerials near a large building at the maincrossroads at the western end of town ledthem to identify this as the enemy HQ’s com-munications centre — this then became thesecond most important objective to be cap-tured. Tito’s cave did not show up on the aer-ial photos and it is clear that German intelli-

8

On May 19, six days before the raid, a Henschel Hs 126 recon-naissance aircraft from Nah-Aufklärungs-Staffel Kroatien operating from Bihac airfield took a series of vertical aerial photographs of Drvar and the surrounding area. They formedthe basis for this annotated mosaic photo, identifying targets,

objectives and possible landing areas for gliders for ‘Rössel-sprung’. In spite of the photographic coverage, the Germanphoto interpreters failed to identify Tito’s command cave asthey were unaware of its existence. (The full mosaic covered awider area — we show only the main part.)

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gence knew nothing about it. Nor, for thatmatter, of the second cave near Bastasi thatwas Tito’s daytime quarters and where henormally should have been. This lack of pre-cise intelligence proved to be the major, andultimately fatal, flaw in the German plan.Had they known about the cave, the Ger-mans would no doubt have planned part oftheir airborne unit to land on top of theplateau above it, thus encircling the objectiveand cutting off any escape routes from it.The unit assigned to carry out the raid, SS-

Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon 500 — the onlyparachute unit to be formed within the Waf-fen-SS — had a quite unusual personnelcomposition. Although it had a cadre of offi-cers and NCOs, many of whom had earnedtheir parachute wings as volunteers at theLuftwaffe parachute school at Stendal in1937, the majority of the other ranks con-sisted of Waffen-SS soldiers on probation. Itwas not a Straf-Bataillon (penal battalion), inthe sense that it was made up of convictedcriminals, but a Bewährungs-Bataillon (pro-bationary battalion) consisting of soldierswho had been court-martialled for graveoffences against military regulations and hadto serve time in special combat units in orderto redeem themselves. They were no volun-teers but had been induced into the unitwithout being given a choice. However,although relative newcomers to parachuting,many of the men were seasoned veteranswith a great deal of front-line combat experi-ence and representing all arms and servicesof the Waffen-SS.Formed in September 1943 in Chlum near

Prague, under the command of SS-Sturm-bannführer Herbert Gilhofer, the battalionwas moved to Mataruska-Banja near Kral-jevo in central Serbia for parachute trainingat the Luftwaffe-Fallschirm-Schule III, latertransferring with the school to Papa in west-ern Hungary. On completion of training, thebattalion had a strength of 1,140 men,divided over a battalion HQ and HQ com-pany, three rifle companies, one heavyweapons company and a replacement train-ing company. The unit had its own motortransport, 100 trucks and 38 motorcycles.Placed under direct command of the

OKW, the battalion was deployed in anti-partisan operations in various areas ofYugoslavia, near Usice, Tuzla and in Mace-donia and Montenegro. From March 18 to31, it stood by as reserve unit during Opera-tion ‘Margarethe’, the German occupation ofHungary (see After the Battle No. 40) andfrom April 26 to May 10 — by now under anew commander, SS-Hauptsturmführer KurtRybka — it participated in Operation‘Maibaum’, a large-scale anti-partisan under-taking in southern Bosnia, but by May 20 itwas back at its training-ground billets nearKraljevo.Having been given a meagre outline of the

role his battalion was to play in Operation‘Rösselsprung’, Rybka began to draw up aprovisional battle plan. He estimated heneeded to land at least 850 men to do the job.The bottleneck here was the availability ofairborne transport capability: there were notenough gliders and tugs available to air-landsuch a force but neither were there sufficienttroop-carrying aircraft to drop the whole bat-talion by parachute and in a single lift. Hetherefore decided for a combination of gliderand parachute landings, to be carried out intwo waves. The first wave would bring in atotal of 654 men, partly in gliders, partly byparachute: 340 men would land in DFS 230assault gliders; 314 paratroopers would dropfrom Ju 52 transport planes.The glider-borne element was split up in

six combat groups, each with its own objec-tive:Gruppe ‘Panther’ (110 men in 11 gliders):

to take the ‘Zitadelle’ (i.e. the town ceme-tery), the suspected site of Tito’s headquar-ters.

Gruppe ‘Draufgänger’ (70 men in sevengliders): to take the so-called ‘Westkreuz’,the main crossroads at the western end of thetown, and capture a large building there thatwas suspected to be the partisans’ HQ com-munications centre.Gruppe ‘Greifer’ (40 men in four gliders):

to capture ‘London’, the British MilitaryMission near the village of Prnjavor, half akilometre south-west of Drvar.Gruppe ‘Stürmer’ (50 men in five gliders):

to capture ‘Moskau’, the Soviet Military Mis-sion on the north-western edge of town.Gruppe ‘Brecher’ (50 men in five gliders):

to capture ‘Amerika’, the US Military Mis-sion at the hamlet of Trninic Brijeg, one kilo-metre south of the town.Gruppe ‘Beisser’ (20 men in two gliders):

to take ‘Warschau’, an outpost radio position(actually the US meteorological station) twokilometres south of the town — and thenassist the nearby ‘Greifer’ group in capturingthe British Mission.The 34 gliders were to take off from two

airfields near Zagreb, 170 kilometres north-west of Drvar: Lucko and Cerklje (the Ger-mans knew it as Zirkle). Tugs, gliders and

glider pilots were to be provided by severaldifferent glider units (ten squadrons in all):1./Schleppgruppe 1, with five DFS 230

gliders and five Hs 126 tugs;2./Schleppgruppe 1, with three DFS 230

gliders and three Ju 87 tugs;II./Luftlande-Geschwader 1, with nine

DFS 230 gliders and nine Ju 87 tugs;III./Luftlande-Geschwader 1, with 17 DFS

230 gliders and 12 Hs 126 and five Avia 534tugs.The first wave’s parachute element was to

take off from Nagy Betskersk (Gross-Betschkerek, today Zrenjanin), 70 kilo -metres north of Belgrade and 240 kilometresnorth-east of Drvar, in 35 Ju 52s provided byII./Transport-Geschwader 4. This force wasdivided into three combat groups:Gruppe ‘Rot’ (85 men) to land on a drop

zone immediately south of the town, close toGruppe ‘Panther’;Gruppe ‘Grün’ (95 men) to land on a DZ

just north of the town, between it and theUnac river;Gruppe ‘Blau’ (100 men) to land on a DZ

immediately east of the town, close behindthe cellulose factory complex.

9

SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt Rybka, the commander of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon500, instructing his men at Zrenjanin airfield outside Nagy Betskersk, the departurefield for the paratroopers of the first wave. This picture was probably taken on theafternoon of May 24 — ‘X-Tag’ minus one. Rybka delivered another send-off speechto his men immediately before take-off on the 25th but that occurred before sunrise.

Rows of SC 50 bombs being fitted with fuses at Zulazani airfield outside Banja Lukain preparation for ‘Rösselsprung’. This was the base of I./Nachtschlacht-Geschwader7, equipped with Heinkel He 46 and Fiat CR.42 night bombers, one of the unitsassigned to bomb Drvar prior to the airborne landing.

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The three groups were to capture andoccupy the town and, together with theglider-borne units, prevent any enemyattempts to break out from the encirclement.Rybka and the battalion command group (34men) were to jump with Gruppe ‘Rot’, mak-ing up for the total of 314 paratroopers.In case the initial attack by Gruppe ‘Pan-

ther’ did not succeed in capturing ‘Zitadelle’,Rybka would fire a red flare signal whichmeant that Gruppen ‘Rot’, ‘Grün’ and‘Stürmer’ were to immediately abandon theiroriginal tasks and assemble to attack thismain objective. As soon as this was taken,the battalion was to display a big sign in theform of a swastika to inform observers flyingoverhead of the successful outcome, and tosend a similar message by wireless to rearheadquarters in Zagreb and Bihac.Three to four hours after the initial land-

ings, the second wave would come in, con-sisting of 220 paratroopers and two DFS 230gliders. The paratroops were to take off fromZaluzani airfield at Banja Luka, 90 kilo -metres north-east of Drvar, in 20 Ju 52s againprovided by Transport-Geschwader 4. Thetwo gliders, from II./LLG1 and taking offfrom Cerklje, were to bring in ammunitionand supplies.When the order for Operation ‘Rössel-

sprung’ arrived, the paratroop battalion was

still at Kraljevo, well south of its proposedtake-off airfields. At 0545 on May 20, Rybkaissued his first preliminary order, announcinga move to the airfields at Nagy Betskersk,Zagreb and Banja Luka. He did not discloseany details of the upcoming operation, onlythe name of the departure airfields. In a sub-sequent order, issued at 2355 that night,Rybka gave out his marching orders. Thebattalion was to leave in three groups, eachwith a different destination and travellingaccording to a strict time schedule. Secrecywas of the utmost importance, so the troopswere instructed to travel in ordinary Waffen-SS infantry uniform, without the distinctiveparachute helmets, airborne smocks or jump-ing boots that would give away that theywere Fallschirmjäger. For the same reason,they were not to be camped on the airfieldsthemselves but be billeted in the near sur-roundings. This second order still did not dis-close the purpose of the upcoming operation,nor its target.Group 1 — the paratroopers scheduled for

the first wave (Battalion HQ; the 2. Kom-panie minus one platoon; the 3. Kompanie,and one platoon of the 4. Kompanie) — leftKraljevo in its own trucks early on the 21st,the convoy being commanded by SS-Unter-sturmführer Johann Haselwanter. Theymotored north to Belgrade, which they

reached at noon on the 22nd, and from theretook the train, travelling 70 kilometres northto Nagy Betskersk, where they were quar-tered in billets some eight kilometres fromthe airfield. Here they would be kept sealedin until the afternoon of the 24th.The other two groups departed from Kral-

jevo by train transport at 1400 hours on the21st. Group 2 — the men slated to land byglider (the 1. Kompanie and the 4. Kompanieminus one platoon) — under SS-Untersturm-führer Witzemann, travelled to Zagreb, ajourney of 460 kilometres, and on arrivalthere divided over billets near their two take-off airfields, Lucko and Cerklje.Group 3 — the paratroopers slated for the

second wave (one platoon of the 2. Kom-panie and the Ersatz- und Ausbildungs-Kom-panie) under SS-Hauptsturmführer JosefObermaier, the battalion second-in-com-mand — did not travel all the way to Zagrebbut got off at Nova Gradiska, 100 kilometresnorth of Banja Luka. They unloaded theirmotor transport plus the weapons, ammuni-tion and supplies for all the three groups.Obermaier found billets for the men in theneighbourhood; his orders were to only trans-fer to Zaluzani, their take-off airfield nearBanja Luka, on ‘X-Tag’ minus one.During the night of May 23/24, Rybka

issued his operational order. Only now did

10

Right: The DFS 230 combat glider couldcarry a pilot and nine fully-armed men. Tocover the airborne attack on Tito’s head-quarters, the Germans assigned no lessthan 13 official war correspondents. FromLuftwaffe-Kriegsberichter-Zug 19 came ateam of eight: Leutnant Viktor Schullerand Leutnant Hans Jochen Karnath, bothphotographers, were to go in with thegliders, the other six were to cover theaction from one of the supporting aircraft:Leutnants Heinz Schwitzke (reporter) andKrempl (photographer) aboard a Ca 314;Leutnants Mücke (reporter) and Borgstädt(cine cameraman) aboard a Ju 87 Stuka;Feldwebel Brieke (photographer) in a He46 and Unteroffizier Eichler (radioreporter) from a Do 17. From the SS-PK-Standarte came four men: Adolf Kunz-mann (photographer) and Adalbert Calle-waert (reporter) were to jump with theparatroopers and Walter Henisch (photo -grapher) and Fritz Blume (reporter) wereto go in by glider. Finally, from Luftwaffe-Kriegsberichter-Zug XI. Flieger-Korpscame Leutnant Wilhelm Baitz (graphicartist), who also landed by glider.

Left: Final briefing before take-off. Right: Loading up the gliders. The pilot and the nine men sat closely packed together,

one behind the other, inside the narrow fuselage. The DFS 230C-1 had four doors, two on each side.

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he disclose the operational target — Drvar— and named Tito as its objective: ‘Thefocus of action of all units of the battalion isTito’s command staff. As soon as it is pre-cisely known where the staff is located, allparts of the battalion that have landed nearto this objective are, without hesitation andregardless, to eliminate Tito’s commandstaff. Important personalities are if possibleto be captured alive. Valuable written mater-ial is to be kept safe. Fires in the staff build-ings are absolutely to be avoided so that themen of the Abwehr can secure valuablematerial.’However, as this order shows, the Ger-

mans lacked one crucial piece of informa-tion: they did not know precisely where inDrvar Tito’s command post was.

‘X-TAG’ MINUS ONEOn the morning of the 24th there was a

planning conference at the headquarters ofthe Fliegerführer Kroatien in Belgradeattended by the commanders of all the unitsinvolved: Rybka of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon 500; Hauptmann Walter Dittmar ofSG1, Eberhard Jahnke of II./LLG1 and JosefKarl of III./LLG1; Major Emil Herbst ofII./TG4; the Chetnik and Croat commanders,etc. Using aerial photographs, the opera-tional plan was explained and discussed andoperational orders were handed out.During the day, there arrived at the glider

airfields several specialist teams that hadbeen assigned to take part in the operation.The largest was a detachment of 40 men

from Einheit Benesch, the Brandenburgerintelligence unit that had instigated the huntfor Tito. Commanded by Leutnant GerhardDowe, it was their task to interrogate anyprisoners taken, be they partisan officers ormembers of the Allied military missions.Included in this team were several Chetnikswith local knowledge of the Drvar area andCroats who could act as interpreters. (Tosafeguard security, the latter would only betold about the target and purpose of theoperation during the glider flight to Drvar.)Next was a small six-man team from

Front-Aufklärungs-Trupp 216, the Abwehrcounter-intelligence unit attached to 2.Panzer-Armee. Commanded by LeutnantWalter Zawadil, they were to look for andseize any important documents, codes andlogbooks found at Drvar.Also arriving were four specialist signallers

from the SS-Nachrichten-Schule Metz underSS-Untersturmführer Peter Renold. Theyhad travelled overnight from France, theirspecial mission being to attempt to block allenemy telephone and wireless communica-tion emanating from Drvar during the land-ings, thus preventing any warnings going outto partisan units in the area.

Another attachment was a Luftwaffe-Nachrichten-Verbindungs-Trupp, a smallteam of four Luftwaffe signallers with a wire-less whose task it was to co-ordinate air-to-ground support from fighters and dive-bombers and to organise parachute re-supplydrops.Finally there arrived a team of 13 official

war correspondents, eight from Luftwaffe-Kriegsberichter-Zug 19; four from the Kom-mando Süd-Ost of the SS-Standarte ‘KurtEggers’ (the PK unit of the SS), and onefrom XI. Fliegerkorps. With ‘Rösselsprung’promising to be a glorious coup for Nazi pro-paganda, comparable to the liberation ofMussolini from the Gran Sasso, the militarywanted make sure that is was well coveredfor the German newsreels and press. In allthe team included five writers, five photo -graphers, one cine cameraman, one graphicartist and one radio reporter.By now Untersturmführer Witzemann, in

consultation with the glider commanders,had worked out the loading tables for the 34available gliders. A DFS 230 glider couldcarry a pilot and nine fully-armed men so,with the pilots taking up 34 of the 340 placesin the gliders, this left room for 306 othertroops. These were divided as follows: 247men from SS-Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon 500(the entire 1. Kompanie plus the 4. Kom-panie minus one Zug); 40 men from EinheitBenesch; six men from Einheit Zawadil; thefour signallers from the SS-Nachrichten-schule; the four signallers from the Luft-waffe-Nachrichten-Verbindungs-Trupp, and

five of the 13 PK reporters (two of the 13would parachute in; the other six wouldcover the operation from escorting aircraft).That afternoon, back from the conference,

the glider unit commanders briefed their tugcrews and glider pilots on take-off times, fly-ing routes, altitudes, etc. The tow aircraft andgliders were positioned on the runway duringthe early evening, ready to take off on themorrow. At Zrenjanin airfield, the para-troopers for the first wave packed parachutesand arms containers, loading each of the Ju52s with four of the latter. At NovaGradiska, the men scheduled for the second-wave jump motored 100 kilometres south toZaluzani, their take-off airfield near BanjaLuka. At 1700 hours, HauptsturmführerObermaier radioed Rybka a coded messagethat his force had reached its destination andwas ready for action.Until then, only battalion staff officers and

company commanders had been in the knowbut now, a few hours before departure, thedetails of the upcoming operation were dis-closed to the men. Using stereoscopic aerialphotos of the attack area, every group andplatoon was briefed of its specific objectiveand task. The men were told the principaltarget of the whole operation was Tito — hehad to be captured, dead or alive. A portraitpicture of him in field-marshal’s uniform washanded around, each man having a closelook so that he could recognise him. (Somehistorians claim each trooper on the missionwas issued with a picture of Tito but thisappears not to have been the case.)

11

Henschel Hs 126 tugs and transport gliders approaching Drvar.

Left: One of the PK photographers sitting right behind the pilottook this shot of the constricted cockpit. Right: A close-up ofglider LC + 1-189. The gliders on ‘Rösselsprung’ came from two different units, Schleppgruppe 1 and Luftlande-Geschwader 1.

The proper identification code for these units was F7 and H4respectively but aircraft codes on German gliders were notori-ously muddled and by this time of the war few carried the correct unit code.

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PARTISAN INTELLIGENCE BEFORE THERAIDLike with the Germans, the partisans too

had their intelligence apparatus and tried tofathom the enemy’s intentions. Their firstclue that the Germans might consider anattack on Tito’s command centre came onMarch 27 when partisan intelligence interro-gated a man called Tetaric. Originally a par-tisan fighter with the I Proletarian Corps, hehad deserted and gone over to the Germans,but had now been captured by his formercomrades. He told his interrogators that, upuntil mid-March, he had informed the Ger-mans about Tito, the Escort Battalion andthe strength of outpost and partisan units inthe Drvar area.Then, on May 4, a brigade of the 4th Prole-

tarian Division during a raid on a Germanunit captured a document that included asketch map of Drvar. This gave precisedetails of all the military and civil organisa-tions in the town plus details about theAllied military missions, defence measures,and indications of suitable bombing targets.That an attack by land forces was immi-

nent seemed confirmed by other intelligence.On May 18, the partisan V Corps informedits 39th Division of German troops fromBihac moving towards the partisan airfield atBosanski Petrovac. Three days later, the 4thDivision warned its sub-units that the enemymight move from Knin and Bihac towardsDrvar and Petrovac. These reports of Ger-man troop movements were cause for worryat Tito’s HQ but nobody interpreted them aspreparations for a large-scale concentricattack.Finally, on May 19 partisans in Drvar spot-

ted a single German light aircraft flying overthe valley at high altitude, cruising slowly upand down for about half an hour — obvi-ously an observation aircraft reconnoitringthe area or taking aerial photographs.These snippets of information made it

likely that the Germans were planning anattack against the partisan command centre

but opinions were divided over when it wouldoccur and what kind it would be. The possibil-ity of a surprise airborne attack was discussedbut dismissed as unlikely, mainly becauseparachute troops and gliders had never beenused against the partisans before. Most peopleat Tito’s headquarters expected that theattack would come in the form of an aerialattack by bombers or a ground offensive.Nonetheless, on May 22, worried by the

German observation aircraft, which he inter-preted as heralding a heavy bombing raid,Lieutenant-Colonel Vivian Street, the com-mander of the British Mission, decided it wassafer to move his men a little farther out oftown. They transferred to the hamlet of Prnjavor, one kilometre south-west of Drvar,and the attached Americans to Trninic Brijeg, one kilometre east of there. The Russians stayed in place.That week, Drvar enjoyed a gay and busy

atmosphere. Many of the young partisansthat had attended the Anti-Fascist Youthcongress were still in town. Also, prepara-tions were underway to celebrate Tito’s 52ndbirthday on May 25. At dusk on the 24th, asthe streets of Drvar came to life, Tito camedriving up to his command post from Bastasito have a festive meal with his staff and themembers of the Allied missions. Afterwards,they all sat down to watch a movie. As hewas expected to be in town for the birthdaycelebrations next morning, Tito decided tobreak his usual routine and stay for the nightat the Drvar cave, sleeping in the woodencabin. Thus, it was by pure coincidence thathe was present there when the airborneattack came the following morning. (SomeYugoslav historians have claimed that theGermans planned ‘Rösselsprung’ to coincidewith Tito’s birthday. This is not true, themore so since the Germans did not evenknow the correct date of the partisan leader’sbirth. An ID card in the files of the Belgradepolice had it as March 12, 1892, and ItalianInterior Ministry intelligence thought he wasborn on May 7.)

In the week before May 25, Britishdecoders at Bletchley Park decrypted severalGerman ‘Ultra‘ signals relating to an opera-tion named ‘Rösselsprung’, mostly fromLuftwaffe sources, but none of these sufficedto built up a clear picture of what it entailedor hinted at any connection with Tito. First,on the 18th, a decrypt disclosed an order forthe gliders of II./LLG1 to move from Sara-jevo-Butmir to Zagreb-Zirkle on the 19th.Then, on the 21st, a signal disclosed thatStuka group I./SG2 was to move from an air-field in Rumania to Zagreb-Pleso by May 23‘for temporary employment from May 25’.That same day, another message showedGerman Airfield Regional Control inZagreb ordering Banja Luka airfield to‘arrange accommodation for 200 men’. Thenon the 22nd, a signal to the FliegerführerKroatien actually mentioned ‘Rösselsprung’but without a clue to what it meant. Also thatday, Jagdführer Balkan ordered the transferof II./JG51 to Zagreb for ‘a special opera-tion’ that would last for five days. Finally, onthe 24th, there was a decrypt of an earliermessage ordering IV./JG27 to Zagreb-Luckoby the evening of May 23 ‘to be at the dis-posal for temporary operations’.This remained the sum of Ultra knowledge

about ‘Rösselsprung’ but it was not enoughto disclose its scope or target: no referencehad been made to infantry or parachutistsand there had not been a single word aboutTito or the location of his headquarters. Still,even if Bletchley had figured out correctly, itwould have been irrelevant for the safe-guarding of ‘Ultra’ prevented such know -ledge to be distributed to headquarters lowerthan armies, let alone to British Missionsoperating behind enemy lines. (During theCold War, and again in the mid-1970s whenthe Ultra secret was unveiled, there wereaccusations from Communist Yugoslaviathat the Allies had had advance knowledgeof the raid on Drvar but had deliberatelyfailed to warn Tito. However there is no sub-stance to this.)

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SS-PK photographer Kunzmann pictured the members of hisstick during the two-hour flight to Drvar. In the early phase ofthe war, German paratroopers jumped without arms, all their

weapons being dropped in containers released from the sameaircraft on separate parachutes, but by 1944 the men jumpedclutching rifles and machine pistols.

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‘X-TAG’ (MAY 25)In the early hours of May 25, when it was

still dark, the German airborne troops closedin on the airfields. At Nagy Betskersk, themen slated for the parachute jump hadreveille at 0330 and were on parade at Zren-janin airfield an hour later, where the Ju 52sof Transport-Geschwader 4 already stoodlined up on the runway. Battalion comman-der Rybka delivered a final encouragingspeech, the men came to attention and sangthe parachute song, then boarded their air-craft. Having the longest way to fly, the para-trooper aircraft already took off at 0450, wellbefore dawn, setting course to the south-westfor the two-hour flight.At Lucko and Cerklje the men for the

glider mission on arrival were divided up ingroups of nine and assigned to their respec-tive gliders, meeting up with their gliderpilots. At 0555, just after first light, engineswere started and, one by one, the tugs andgliders took off, the latter jettisoning theirundercarriage at the end of the runway.Climbing to 10,000 feet they set course to thesouth-east, following the valley of the Saveriver, then that of the Unac river.Meanwhile, starting at 0635, the Stukas,

night-bombers and fighters had begun theirattack on Drvar, releasing their bombs onpre-determined targets and machine-gun-ning against only slight opposition. Soongiant clouds of dust and smoke rose from thetown. Among the buildings hit were the par-tisan telephone exchange which knocked outlines to all headquarters except that of the VCorps and the 1st Division. Meanwhile, 25kilometres to the north-east, other bombershit Bosanski Petrovac, knocking out the par-tisan airstrip there. In all, the Luftwaffe dis-patched 440 sorties in support of ‘Rössel-sprung’ that day.At 0700 the Ju 52 troop carriers arrived

from the east and began dropping their para-troopers on the three assigned landing zonesnorth, east and south of the town. Bombswere still falling and some of the jumperswere wounded by ‘friendly’ shrapnel. Dis-carding their parachutes and collecting theirheavy weapons and equipment from the can-isters dropped alongside them, the menassembled and rapidly moved off towardstheir objectives.Virtually simultaneous with the last para-

chutes coming down, the lead gliders arrivedfrom the north-east, emerging from the val-ley of the Unac into the wide hill-surroundedbasin in which lay Drvar. Thick smoke rosefrom the bombed buildings, obscuring visionfor the pilots. Releasing their tow rope, the

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Left: Stuka dive-bombers from Schlacht-Geschwader 151 ontheir way to Drvar, pictured by PK Borgstädt. The unit’s 13.Staffel, flying out from Bihac, was to bomb Target Area C (thecellulose factory and the railway station) from 0640 to 0650and the II. Gruppe, based at Velika Gorica, Target Area D (the‘Westkreuz’) from 0650 to 0655. The 13. Staffel was then toclimb to 2,000 metres and provide overhead cover during the

airborne landings, while the II. Gruppe was to return to baseand prepare for an attack on Bosanski Petrovac from 1105 to1110. Right: A Heinkel He 46 bomber from I./Nachtschlacht-Geschwader 7 climbing up from Drvar after dropping its bombson Target Area A (the workshop area just east of the cellulosefactory), pictured by Feldwebel Brieke. The view is to thesouth-east, with Drvar’s main street running from left to right.

The same view today, the shape of the hill line and the chimneys of the cellulose factory helping Karel Margry to line up the comparison.

At 0700 the paratroopers of the first wave began landing. This is Gruppe ‘Grün’ beingdropped on its DZ just north of the town. The Ju 52 transport aircraft are coming infrom the south-east, having followed the valley of the Unac river to reach their target. This sequence of pictures was taken by Kunzmann immediately after he himself had landed with Gruppe ‘Rot’ on its drop zone south of the town.

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glider pilots put their craft into its steep land-ing dive, most of them using their brakeparachute to shorten their descent.The glider force had already incurred its

first losses. Ten kilometres before reachingthe landing zone, the glider flown by Ober-leutnant Friedrich Bredenbeck fromIII./LLG1, carrying the commander of the‘Beisser’ assault group, SS-ObersturmführerRichard Schäfer, and eight of his men, wentdown for reasons unknown. It landed nearBastasi close to where a company of theEscort Battalion was guarding Tito’s daytimecave and all occupants of the glider wereimmediately killed by concentrated partisanfire.Three other gliders — including the sec-

ond and last remaining one of Gruppe‘Beisser’ — released too early, coming downin the narrow valley of the Unac betweenBastasi and Drvar, five kilometres away fromtheir intended landing points. They came to astop close to another group of surprised par-tisans and a short clash with small arms andhand-grenades ensued, ending with the SSmen taking about 70 prisoners. Taking thesein tow, the 30 glidermen set out for Drvar onfoot, which they finally reached two hourslater.The remaining 30 or so gliders landed in

their allocated positions. Glider pilot Leut-nant Hans Sieg from II./LLG1 carried menfrom Gruppe ‘Panther’, the team assigned totake the ‘Zitadelle’, the town cemetery andTito’s suspected command post. Jettisoninghis brake parachute just before touchingground, his glider shot forward and came to astop just a few metres from the cemeterywall. The men aboard threw open the doorsand jumped out, storming over the wall.However, not all landings went as well.

Unteroffizier Werner Schubert, pilotinganother glider from Gruppe ‘Panther’, wasfatally hit as he was making his landing diveand the glider crashed on the LZ, killing allaboard. One of the ‘Stürmer’ gliders nosedover on landing, also killing most of its occu-pants. Obergefreiter Kielmann fromIII./LLG1, carrying men from Gruppe‘Draufgänger’, landed his glider in goodorder, only to be killed near it by enemy firea few seconds later.The partisan forces in Drvar appear to

have initially been completely paralysed bythe surprise enemy landings. Some men evencheered at the glider landings, thinking them

to be aircraft shot down by their anti-aircraftweapons. However, the partisans quickly gottheir act together. From the hill slopes theyopened fire on the landing zone, causingcasualties and forcing the airborne troops totake cover.Despite the losses incurred during the run-

in and landing, the glider troops hurried offto carry out their missions. Somewhat totheir dismay, the men of ‘Panther’ forcestorming the ‘Zitadelle’ found it was notTito’s command post but just an ordinarytown cemetery on a hill. All they foundnearby were some of the light anti-aircraftmachine guns, abandoned by their crews dur-ing the air attacks.The ‘Draufgänger’ group had landed

almost on top of its objective — the buildingsat the ‘Westkreuz’ crossroads that were sus-pected to be the partisan communicationscentre (they indeed housed a telephoneexchange and several wireless stations) —and the assault went in immediately. About20 Fallschirmjäger and the intelligence spe-

cialists of teams Benesch and Zawadilattacked the main building. Satchel chargeswere placed and the doors blown in. How-ever, inside were about 100 partisan men andwomen who offered fierce resistance and theGermans were forced to withdraw. Otherteams from ‘Draufgänger’ were called andanother assault was put in. The partisansfought back bravely but the Germans hadestablished a cordon around the building andkilled anyone trying to escape. Usinggrenades, satchel charges, armour-piercingbullets and mouse-holing techniques, thebuilding was finally taken. However, little ofintelligence value was discovered inside.Nor did the glider troops capture any

members of the Allied military missions. TheBritish and American teams, although theyhad gliders landing quite close to their newquarters south of the town, managed to makegood their escape. Taking their wireless setand anything else they could carry, theyheaded south to the hills that ringed Drvar.The Allied war correspondents were not so

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More sticks of Gruppe ‘Grün’ being dropped. The transports slowed to 150 kilometresand the troops jumped from altitudes ranging between 120 and 150 metres.

As the last Ju 52s disappear over the horizon, the parachute troops of Gruppe ‘Rot’ assemble and form up for attack.

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fortunate. All four of them were roused outof a nearby slit trench with their guide andtaken prisoner. The Germans had no mercywith the families found in the houses vacatedby the Anglo-Americans and they were sum-marily shot as ‘bandit helpers’.The gliders of the ‘Stürmer’ group tasked

with capturing the Soviet Mission wereimmediately pinned down by heavy enemyfire coming from the nearby mountainside —they had in fact, quite unknowingly, landedvirtually in front of Tito’s cave, which wasdirectly across the river from their landingzone. This gave the Soviet team time toescape up the slope.However, the situation was completely dif-

ferent for the people in the cave. Inside, hav-ing taken cover from the bombing, wereTito, several members of his General Staff(Arso Jovanovic, Edvard Kardelj, IvanMilutinovic, Sreten Zujovic and AleksandarRankovic), his two girl secretaries ZdenkaPaunovic (who was also his mistress) andOlga Humo, and several others — in all 12men and eight women. As soon as they sawthe gliders landing, Zujovic and Rankovic

went out and organised some sort of defencewith about 100 men from the Escort Battal-ion. They also sent a runner to the Officers’School three kilometres to the east and tele-phoned those headquarters that could still bereached — V Corps and the 1st Division —with urgent orders to come to their aid.While one of the ‘Stürmer’ gliders had

overturned on the landing zone in front ofthe cave, the occupants of the group’s otherfour gliders quickly redeployed, launching an

immediate assault towards what was obvi-ously an enemy strongpoint. Soon they hadgained a position from which they kept themouth of the cave under heavy fire.Tito’s position was precarious, for to use

the ordinary way down would have meantalmost certain death. One of the sentrieswent forward to reconnoitre but was imme-diately killed by a bullet in the head. Severaltimes Zujovic and Rankovic came back tothe cave to talk Tito into getting out but hewould not go. His mistress Zdenka had falleninto hysterics and kept pulling at him bawl-ing ‘They’ll kill us! They’ll kill us!’Meanwhile, the various parachute detach-

ments were carrying out their missions.Groups ‘Blau’ and ‘Grün’ first secured therailway station and the rail and road bridgesover the Unac at the eastern of town, thenadvanced on the town centre. Movingthrough the empty streets on the double, theSS men met only minimal resistance, the onlyopposition coming from lightly-armed head-quarters personnel, delegates from the youthcongress and civilians.The District Committee of the Communist

Youth League of Yugoslavia, consisting ofthree young men and three girls, was sur-rounded in its office building along the mainstreet in the centre of town. They refused theGerman appeals for surrender and fought tothe last round, returning German hand-grenades through the window. They battleduntil the last one fell.By 0900, the Fallschirmjäger had all of

Drvar under control. They had taken some200 partisans prisoner and captured consid-erable amounts of weapons and equipment.The 200 or so civilians that remained in thetown — men, women and children — werealso rounded up, being herded together inthe cellulose factory, the Dom Kulture (cul-tural assembly hall) beside the Serbian

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The distinctive flat top of the hill on the left and the straight line of the track runninghalfway up the hillside link past with present.

Taking comparisons in present-day Bosnia brings with it an unusual hazard, notencountered in any of our previous projects. One cruel inheritance of the grim andviolent civil war that raged over former Yugoslavia in 1992-95 is the serious contami-nation by land mines. All combatants laid mines — an estimated two million in total— and as a result Bosnia has one of the most serious problems in the world. Since1996 over 500 people have been killed and 1,200 wounded by mine accidents. Amulti-national effort, co-ordinated by the Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Centre(BHMAC), is underway to clear the mines but it will still take many years before thecountry is free of them. As we prepare our stories in the field, we were naturally con-cerned and inquired with the BHMAC in Sarajevo about the situation in Drvar.Although the town itself was reported as safe, the advice was to always tread carefully on dirt roads and in the countryside. Fortunately, once in Drvar, Karel foundthat the areas where he had to photograph were generally safe. Below: Looking westfrom the fields that once were the drop zone for Gruppe ‘Rot’.

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Orthodox church on main street and in sev-eral other places. However, despite a franticdoor-to-door search and brutal interrogationof prisoners by the Serbian-speaking mem-bers of Einheit Benesch, the Germans failedto find Tito or any of his staff. All they cap-tured was one of his field-marshal’s uniforms(which they found at a tailor’s shop in thetown) and his Jeep.The Abwehr interrogators tried to sift out

partisans from civilians but it was difficult totell the difference and the Germans had littlemercy. Many of the prisoners were ques-tioned and then summarily shot. The Ger-mans also shot all patients found in theDrvar hospital. Buildings holding partisanstores of arms or supplies were set on fire.By now, Rybka had set up his battalion

headquarters in the cemetery. Located onhigh ground overlooking the town (locallyknown as Sobica Glavica) it was an idealplace to oversee the battle. The battalionradio was set up here and the heavy com-pany’s four 8cm mortars were dug in just out-side. The battalion first aid post was estab-lished in the south-west corner of thecemetery, where the low stone wall gavesome cover. The captured war correspon-dents and some other prisoners were broughthere too. During the subsequent fighting,their captors would force them to carryammunition and carry wounded troopers tothe aid post.While groups ‘Panther’ and ‘Rot’ were

consolidating on the cemetery there wasquite a bit of fighting going on at the north-ern end of town, near where ‘Stürmer ‘hadlanded. From the intense volume of fire com-

ing from a cleft in the mountainside, Rybkadeduced that this was probably where Titohad his command post and that an assaultmust be put in. He shot up his flare calling inall forces from groups ‘Rot’, ‘Grün’ and‘Stürmer’. They reformed in the town, orderswere given, and soon the force — about 200strong — was attacking in fire and movement

across the kill zone in front of the cave. Inorder to reach the cave, the troops had eitherto wade across the Unac river or use one ofthe bridges at either end of town. However,there was little cover and the intensity ofenemy small-arms fire emanating fromabove and around the cave was so great thatthe assault soon faltered.

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Immediately in the wake of the paratroopers, the glider forcearrived, all the aircraft being fitted with parachute brakes toshorten their landings.

Exiting from his glider, PK Henisch immediately turned aroundto picture other men clearing the aircraft. The man on the left isholding an MG 42 light machine gun.

Not far away, PK Karnath pictured the machine gun teams from another rifle squademerging from his glider. The No. 2 men carry extra ammo belts and spare barrels.

Left: Most of the gliders landed safely and without problems.These two — [1] and [2] on the aerial photo opposite — belongto Gruppe ‘Panther’, the force assigned to take the ‘Zitadelle’.Right: The ‘Zitadelle’ (the town cemetery) lies on high ground

just south of the town known as Sobica Glavica, and the picture was actually taken right beside it, looking north-westtowards the ‘Westkreuz’. Today much of the ground slopingdown from the hill has been developed with new housing.

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Leutnant Hans Sieg, a glider pilot from the 8. Staffel of II./LLG1flying another of the ‘Panther’ gliders, made a perfect landing,coming to a stop almost against the ‘Zitadelle’, enabling hispassengers to immediately storm the objective. His glider [3]can be seen on the oblique aerial (right) taken by a reconnais-sance aircraft later that morning. The day after the battle, Sieghad himself photographed with his aircraft (above).

Left: A second glider [4] came to a stop virtually against thewall of the cemetery, breaking its starboard wing. This pictureof it was taken the following day, shortly after the link-up withthe ground forces, as evidenced by the Fieseler Storch lightaircraft taking off from the landing zone in the backgroundevacuating casualties. Note the anti-aircraft machine gun setup just inside the cemetery. This is one of the three AA

machine guns from the partisans’ Escort Battalion that werecaptured by the Fallschirmjäger on Sobica Glavica in the firstminutes of the landing. The Germans moved it from itsweapon pit nearby to this spot in order to reinforce theirperimeter defence around the cemetery. Right: The samenorth-east corner of the cemetery, pictured by Karel Margryseven decades later.

Left: A group of Fallschirmjäger cautiously moving along theouter wall of the cemetery. The men on the right appear to besetting up a mortar. The wing tip of the glider that landed in

this corner can just be seen on the extreme right. Right: Thesame piece of wall today, slowly crumbling under the passageof time.

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CEMETERY

To make matters worse for the Germans,the partisans began counter-attacking theirflanks and rear. The first counter-strokebegan as early as 0800 and was carried outfrom the east by the pupils of the Officers’Training School. That morning the cadets,some 130 in number, were conducting out-doors training. Immediately upon realisingthe nature of the attack, even before the run-ner sent to alert them had arrived, theymarched off to the sound of gunfire. Armedonly with pistols and rifles, they split into twogroups. The smaller one crossed to the northside of the Unac and advanced west alongthe railway line towards Tito’s cave. Thelarger group, their armoury augmented bythe retrieval of several mis-landed Germanarms containers, attacked Gruppen ‘Blau’and ‘Grün’ in the eastern part of town, dri-ving them away from the eastern bridges andfixing them in place. Although the officercadets suffered casualties, they would main-tain pressure on this flank throughout theday.Sometime during the morning, two of the

CV-35 light tanks from the partisans’ tankplatoon (the third had a mechanical break-down) came driving into town from thesouth-east, penetrating the German lines asfar as the church on main street. TheFallschirmjäger’s initial reaction was to drivethem off with one of the four flame-throwersthat had been flown in with the gliders but, as

these were being made ready, it turned outthat they had been damaged in the landingand could not be used. SS-OberscharführerWalter Hümmel thereupon took off his cam-ouflage smock, sprinted out to the rearmosttank and put the jacket over its vision slit,thus blinding the driver. The partisan tankcrew reacted by turning the vehicle sidewaysand then jerking it back and forth against thehouses lining the street, thus throwing offHümmel. Next, the tank commander openedhis hatch and fired a pistol shot at Hümmellying outstretched in the street, grazing hishead. At this, both tanks raced off andescaped out of town to the west. (Thereexists another version of this same incident.According to partisan accounts, a local girlthat had been taken prisoner and was stand-ing nearby, 16-year-old Mika Bosnic, on see-ing Hümmel blind the tank, rushed out to the

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Right: Another one of the ‘Panther’ glid-ers came down in a wheat field belowthe cemetery.

Right: The line of the road to BosanskiPetrovac climbing out of Drvar on thehillside in the background helps to iden-tify the spot where the glider ended up.The view is north-west.

Right: As recorded in the battalionafter-action report, two of the 34 glid-ers crashed on the landing zone,killing all aboard. This is one of them.From its upside-down position, itcould well be the glider from Gruppe‘Stürmer’ that nosed over right infront of Tito’s cave but the terrain inthe background would appear to rulethat out. In actual fact this is the gliderfrom Gruppe ‘Panther’ flown byUnteroffizier Werner Schubert, whowas fatally hit by fire from one of thepartisans’ anti-aircraft machine gunsas he was making his landing dive.This prevented him from deploying thebrake parachute, causing the glider tocrash on the landing zone, killingeveryone inside.

Left: Obergefreiter Kielmann fromIII./LLG1, carrying men from Gruppe‘Draufgänger’, landed his glider in goodorder, only to be killed near it by enemyfire a few seconds later.

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vehicle and tore away the blinding piece ofclothing, only to be mowed down and killedby fire from the SS soldiers.)Having been alerted by telephone of thesurprise airborne raid, the headquarters ofthe I Proletarian Corps radioed the com-mand post of the 6th Lika Division (ColonelDoko Jovanic) at 0800, ordering it to launchan immediate counter-attack. The division’s3rd Lika Brigade (Major Milan Sijan) had itsfour battalions spread out in the wooded hillsbetween Kamenica and Resanovci, south-west of Drvar and six to 15 kilometres dis-tant. Each battalion was about 240 menstrong. They were lightly armed butextremely familiar with the terrain and localinhabitants. They immediately mobilised andbegan a route march to engage the Germans.The lead unit, the 3rd Battalion, arrived onthe scene at 1100, just as the Germans wereattacking the cave. They swung around to thewest to hit the enemy in the flank; the 1stBattalion, which joined the fray at 1130,attacked directly towards the German posi-tion at the cemetery; and the 2nd Battalion,

which arrived at 1200, veered right to attackthe 50 men of Gruppe ‘Brecher’ in TrninicBrijeg. Moving close quickly to avoid Ger-man air attacks, the partisans attacked on therun, charging with hand-grenades.To meet this new threat, Rybka had to re-

deploy one battle group, the more so since heneeded to secure the drop zone for the sec-ond wave. Several paratrooper squads,armed with MG 42 machine guns, moved out

through the wheat fields toward the southand south-west. Backed up by the battalion’sfour 8cm mortars and four parachute-dropped 7.5cm recoilless light artillery guns,they tried to attack up the wooded hillsidesbut soon found all they could accomplish wasto set up defensive outposts at the base of thehills. (War correspondent Pribichevich wasforced to carry ammo for one such squadtogether with two other prisoners. Later that

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Right: All seven gliders of Gruppe‘Draufgänger’ landed in good order inthe fields north-west of the ‘West-kreuz’, the main crossroads at thewestern end of Drvar. The houses seenin the background are those standingalong the road from that crossroads(off the picture to the right) to thebridge over the Unac river (off the pic-ture to the left).

The arms and equipment found inside were collected in theyard beside the building.

There is little to link past with present in what is today thesupermarket’s car park.

Left: The task of ‘Draufgänger’ was to capture the buildingsaround the ‘Westkreuz’ that were suspected to be the partisans’HQ communications centre. In actual fact they housed variouswireless stations, the telephone exchange, a Morse-code schooland local and regional command posts. The buildings werefiercely defended by about 100 partisans and ultimately taken by

a storm assault using grenades and satchel charges. This is howthe building on the north-west corner of the crossroads lookedafter the battle. The picture’s low quality is caused by it havingbeen reproduced from the Illustrierter Beobachter newspaper ofJune 29, 1944. Right: The building was pulled down after the warand today a supermarket takes its place.

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afternoon, when a partisan attack forced theGerman squad to withdraw in some confu-sion, he managed to escape and re-join thepartisans.)The SS battalion was now engaged on all

sides in fierce combat against increasingenemy forces, trying to attack the cave andfend off counter-attacks on the flanks andrear all at the same time. Fighters and fighter-bombers provided support throughout theday, their actions directed by the ground-to-air radio operated by the attached Luftwaffesignallers, who also relayed messages toFliegerführer Kroatien HQ in Zagreb via areconnaissance aircraft flying overhead.At 1100 hours, realising he was not strong

enough, Rybka halted the attack on the caveand withdrew the assaulting troops to thesafety of the houses at the northern edge oftown. He decided that he needed his secondwave of paratroopers, due to arrive at noon,before any assault could continue.During this lull in the fighting, around

1115 hours, Tito and the rest of his partymanaged to make their escape from the cave.Strangely enough there are two different ver-sions of how they got out. One claims thatthey discovered an opening through the caveceiling, a natural cleft worn out by water.With the aid of a rope they made their wayup this channel (even Tito’s Alsatian dogTiger was tied to a rope and pulled up) andemerged on the plateau above, where theyfound Aleksandar Rankovic and a group ofpartisans from the Escort Battalion holdingoff the Germans.The other version (confirmed by Tito in

1974) says that they cut a hole in the floor ofthe wooden cabin and lowered themselvesdown a rope into the dry streambed below.They then clambered along the bedrock untilthey spotted a garden of plum trees andthere climbed up the slope to the plateauabove to join Rankovic’s group. (Althoughthis version is the most prolific, it seemsrather improbable because lowering into thenarrow ravine would still give them no safeexit from its fire-swept mouth.)Whatever their escape route, the party,

now about 80 strong and including the SovietMission, managed to make their way throughthe woods to the town of Potoci, 20 kilo -metres to the east, where the partisans had afew huts sheltered by trees. In the late after-noon the British Mission under Lieutenant-Colonel Street rejoined them there and,using their wireless, sent a message to AlliedHQ in Bari asking urgently for air support.(As a result, between May 26 and June 1,bombers and fighters of the MediterraneanAllied Air Forces from Italy flew over 1,000sorties to aid the partisans, bombing Germansupply centres and troop concentrations andattacking the German columns convergingon Drvar.)From Potoci, the group — Tito and his

staff, the Allied Missions and a force of a few

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Right:Another centre of resistance was thishouse on the town’s main street. It was theoffice of the District Committee of the Com-munist Youth League of Yugoslavia andwas defended by six young partisans —three men, Dusko Bursac, Ljubo Bosnic andDusko Bajic, and three girls, Zora Zeljkovic,Raza Omanovic and Savica Solomun —who fought to the last round, throwingback German hand-grenades and refusingall appeals for surrender until the last ofthem fell. Naturally, they became reveredheroes of the partisan revolution in post-war Communist Yugoslavia. Unfortunatelythe historic building on what is today UlicaTitova (Tito Street) was gutted by a fire inJuly 2012 and today stands boarded up.

Fallschirmjäger moving west along main street with a wheeled supply container intow. Parachute canisters weighed up to 100 kilos and could be loaded with mortars,ammunition, explosives, wireless sets or medical supplies. These men are haulingammunition for the battalion’s heavy machine guns.

Right: Karel was elated to find the samehouses still standing along the southside of Ulica Titova, the one on the rightbeing No. 20. A

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hundred partisans — was able to take a trainalong a little line through the woods. For sev-eral nights, they were almost constantly onthe move trying to evade the German forces,who were combing the district with air sup-port. Again and again they had narrowescapes. They were short of food and ammu-nition but managed to stay long enough inone place to arrange and receive a parachutedrop of RAF supplies. Throughout, Titokept calm, issuing orders to his small groupand to partisan formations in the neighbour-hood but it was rapidly becoming clear that,with only one wireless, it was impossible forhim to direct operations of his forcesthroughout Yugoslavia while being chasedthrough the woods.It was General Korneyev of the Russian

Mission who first raised the matter of depar-ture by air. He wanted his mission to be liftedout, and suggested that Tito come along. Thelatter was concerned about the damaging

21

A little further up the street, Kunzmann pictured two men fromGruppe ‘Stürmer’ taking cover behind a stone post near the Serbian Orthodox Church.

The post originally was part of the fence surrounding the garden of the Dom Kulture (cultural assembly hall and cinema).The church makes for an easy comparison.

Above: More Fallschirmjäger approachthe church, coming down the slope fromthe drop zone. The Dom Kulture, alsoknown as the Sokol building, is on theright. Right: Shortly after, a machine gunhas been set up under the church colon-nade, aimed to cover the western bridgeover the Unac river. The man in the Luft-waffe uniform on the extreme right iscarrying a camera, so he is probably oneof the Luftwaffe PK photographers, mostprobably Karnath.

Right: A timeless comparison. The yellow house in the background is theold Dom Kulture. A

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effect on partisan morale were he to aban-don Yugoslavian soil, even if only for a briefperiod. Tito hesitated for a further three

days, then at last asked Colonel Street toarrange evacuation of himself and his staff byair to Italy. A signal was dispatched to Bari

and during the night of June 3/4 a C-47 (froma Soviet transport squadron operating fromBari under British control) landed on an

22

Left: The combat photographer seen in the previous picture atthe church colonnade was almost certainly Karnath for he tookthis picture of two captured partisans being hustled to a

prisoner collection point across the green in front of thechurch. Right: The house in the background still stands alongUlica Titova.

Among the prisoners was this young woman in battledress.She has been identified as Gospe Talic, a 17-year-old partisanwho was in Drvar to follow a course in Morse-code telegraphy.Her interrogators are not Fallschirmjäger as they are wearingordinary Wehrmacht helmets. They are in fact Serb-speakingCroat members of the Abwehr teams attached to the airborneforce for the operation, either Einheit Benesch or EinheitZawadil. Talic later managed to escape her captors. (After thewar she became somewhat a celebrity heroine in Tito’s Com-munist Yugoslavia. She died in 1977, aged 50, and today liesburied at Debeljaca Cemetery in Bihac.)

Above and below: Prisoners included a mixed bag of men,women and children, some in uniform, some not. It was diffi-cult for the Germans to sort out the partisan fighters from thenon-combatants, but it did not really matter to them for anycivilian found in a locality occupied by partisans was consid-ered a franc-tireur or ‘bandit helper’. The rules of war asdefined by the Geneva Convention meant little in the Balkans.In August 1942 the OKW had issued Directive No. 46 whichauthorised German soldiers to shoot anyone who supportedthe partisans or allowed them into their homes. A later direc-tive stipulated that no German employed in war against parti-san bands could be made responsible for his actions in court.Consequently, the treatment of those captured at Drvar wasbrutal, and interrogations to find out where Tito was hidingwere carried out at gunpoint.

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A prize catch for the Germans was the capture of the four Alliedwar correspondents: (L-R) John Talbot, AFPU Sergeant MaxSlade, Stoyan Pribichevich and Chief Petty Officer Gene Fowler.

The Germans initially threatened to shoot them but this orderwas soon rescinded and the four men were taken to battalionheadquarters in the cemetery, where this picture was taken.

Above: The wall lining the eastern side of the cemetery allows us to pinpoint thespot. Today this corner is filled with new tombs and graves. Right: PK Karnath pic-tured a dejected-looking Pribichevich and Fowler. Pribichevich managed to escapelater in the day, the others would spend the rest of the war in POW camps.

Many of the prisoners, irrespective of whether they were partisans or ordinary civilians, were summarily executed by the Germans.

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improvised airstrip at Kupresko Polje nearMliniste and picked up Tito, Zdenka, hisdog, half a dozen of his staff, Colonel Streetand the Soviet Mission, and flew them toBari. The Soviet transport returned thatsame night with three C-47s from the US60th Troop Carrier Group to evacuate a fur-ther 74 persons, including the rest of Tito’sstaff and the remainder of the Allied mis-sions. In addition, over the following two

nights the Americans flew out 118 partisanwounded, the last C-47 taking off just a fewhours before the Germans captured the field.For a few days Tito stayed in a villa in Bari

where he discussed future support of the par-tisans with Air Marshal Sir John Slessor, thedeputy commander of the MediterraneanAllied Air Forces, and with BrigadierMaclean. On the night of June 8/9 RoyalNavy destroyer HMS Blackmore brought

Tito and his staff to the Dalmatian island ofVis, a secure Allied base just off the coast ofYugoslavia, from where he continued todirect his war until the liberation of Belgradein October .All this was of course not known to Rybka

and his battalion as they recuperated fromtheir initial assault on the cave, staved off thegrowing partisan counter-attacks and waitedfor the expected reinforcements.

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Above: They also captured Tito’s Jeep. This was a gift from theAmericans and had been transported to the partisans in a Wacoglider from Italy. Below: The Germans were also fascinated withthe three ‘Wellbikes’ they captured. These single-seat 98cc single-cylinder motorcycles, especially developed for the SpecialOperations Executive, fitted in parachute containers and hadbeen air-dropped to the British Mission by the RAF.

The Germans failed to capture Tito — the prime target of thewhole operation — but they did find his new field-marshal’suniform in a tailor shop in the town. Karnath pictured theFallschirmjäger posing with their trophy, but when comparedwith the pictures of Tito taken on May 14 (see pages 2 and 5),this is a different uniform.

The Germans also failed to capture the Allied Military Missionsattached to Tito’s headquarters. The British and Americansmanaged to flee in the nick of time and the Soviets were ableto join the defenders of Tito’s cave. To offset their disappoint-ment, the Fallschirmjäger posed with the British and Americanflags they had found in the town.

Karel found that the building behind the soldiers no longerexists although the house with the sloping roof remained tohelp him identify the spot. The house seen on the extreme leftis also still standing, albeit hidden in his comparison by thenew Post Office that now occupies the corner of Ulica Titovaand Ulica 13. Maj.

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With the town in their hands, the Germans concentrated theirattacks on a partisan stronghold holding out north of the Unac.Judging by the amount of fire coming from around a cavethere, they rightly guessed that this was the site of Tito’s

command post. Karnath pictured a group of Fallschirmjägerengaging the enemy with automatic weapons. The man withthe camera on the left must be one of the SS-PK photo -graphers, either Adolf Kunzmann or Walter Henisch.

Left: This looks like the same attack group, just seen from a dif-ferent angle. Right: The first partisan counter-attack waslaunched by the 130 cadets of the Officers’ School, who imme-diately marched towards the sound of battle to attack the

Germans in the flank. The building that housed the school still survives at the hamlet of Zavade (Sipovljani), three kilometressouth-east of Drvar. No longer in use, it stands abandoned tothe elements.

All German attempts to reach the cave faltered at the bridge over the Unac (left) or while wading the river (right).

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TITO’S CAVE

Shortly before noon, at 1150, the secondwave arrived. Having taken off from BanjaLuka, 85 kilometres to the north-east, butcoming in from the south, 20 Ju 52s released220 paratroopers on a drop zone immedi-ately south of the cemetery. Two glidersfrom II./LLG1 landed alongside, bringing in

urgently-needed ammunition. The para-troopers were met by concentrated partisanfire and suffered heavy casualties. One ofthose killed was the force commander, bat-talion second-in-command Hauptsturm-führer Obermaier. The two gliders crash-landed on the zone and the wrecks were

covered by such intense partisan fire that itwas impossible to retrieve any supplies fromthem. Prisoners were again used to clear thezone. The new arrivals were immediatelycommitted against the south-west ridge aswell, advancing halfway up the slope beforebeing stopped by well dug-in partisan forces.

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Just before noon, five hours after the initial landing and onehour late, the second wave of paratroopers arrived comprising220 men jumping on a landing zone south of the cemetery. The20 Ju 52s carrying them came in from the south and the various PK photographers, most of them by now concentrated

at the battalion command post on cemetery hill, had a grand-stand view of the drop. It occurred just as partisan fightersfrom the 3rd (Lika) Brigade were launching counter-attacksfrom the south and west, and the paratroops came downunder withering fire from the surrounding hills.

The spectacle of war and sounds of battle are gone, leaving just a peaceful valley in Bosnia.

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Now reinforced, Rybka planned a renewalof the assault on the cave. The battalion mor-tars on cemetery hill were ordered to con-centrate their fire on the target and theheavy machine guns teams instructed toestablish a firebase to support the assaultinfantry across the open terrain. Determinedto ensure success, Rybka decided to takepart in the assault himself.

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Above: Standing near Leutnant Sieg’sglider close by the cemetery, Karnath pic-tured the sticks landing under fire. Post-war analysts of Operation ‘Rösselsprung’have criticised battalion commanderRybka for letting the second wave dropon its original pre-planned drop zoneinstead of ordering a change to a newand better DZ. Having discovered thatTito’s command post was not in thecemetery but probably in the escarpmentjust north of the town, they argue that heshould have radioed orders to have thesecond wave jump on the plateau aboveTito’s cave, thus cutting off the partisanleader’s route of escape.

Men from the first wave watch from behind the shelter of thecemetery wall as their comrades descend.

Today young trees mask the view of the valley from this spotbut the cemetery wall helps to line up the match.

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The attack started at 1400 hours. How-ever, by now partisan defence was evenstronger than in the morning and it gotnowhere. The closest any of the Germans gotto the cave was a lone Fallschirmjäger whomade it to 30 metres from its mouth beforehe was forced to retreat.Close combat continued into the after-

noon, with heavy casualties among theFallschirmjäger. The fighting was bitter anduncompromising, with neither side givingany mercy. Wounded were left where theyfell and their weapons were taken. The parti-sans fought with a savagery that equalledthat of their opponents. Some of the Germandead were later found mutilated, with earsand noses cut off, Red Stars carved in theirforeheads or lengths of explosive cord tiedaround their limbs to blow them off.

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One of the paratroopers lands next to the radio mast which theGerman battalion signallers have erected outside the cemetery.

Since the war new houses have been built on the south-west-ern slope of Sobica Glavica.

The last of the paratroopers landed well beyond the DZ. Theywere pictured by PK Schuller from a shallow trench immedi-ately south-west of the cemetery. This was where the battalion

command group had set up, and where the signal and supplysections were operating, hence the large number of equipmentcanisters in this area.

Right: Karel could find no trace of thetrench in the area surrounding the cemetery but fortunately the hills in thebackground to the north-west helped toidentify its position.

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By now, taking care of the many woundedin the medical aid post in the cemetery wasseverely overtaxing the two battalion doctors,SS-Obersturmführer Erwin von Helmersenand SS-Untersturmführer Dr Hermann.At 1500 hours Rybka had his signallers

radio a message to rear headquarters inBihac: ‘Are lying in completely exposed posi-tion. Care of wounded insufficient. Enemyamassing strong forces.’By 1800 it was clear that the attempt to

reach the cave had failed and Rybka orderedthe battalion to retreat. During the with-drawal Rybka was gravely wounded by apartisan hand-grenade. A few men venturedout and carried him out of the firing lines.With the battalion commander out of

action, his second-in-command killed and theadjutant, SS-Obersturmführer Otto Merte-ley, gravely wounded too, command of thebattalion was getting a problem. Being thesenior officer present, one of the gliderpilots, Hauptmann Otto Bentrup fromIII./LLG1, assumed command of the unit.By now, the German situation was getting

decidedly precarious. The battalion was dan-gerously spread out and completely sur-rounded by superior and aggressive enemyforces. All chances of achieving its primarymission were gone. Casualties had beenheavy and ammunition was running low. Themen were thirsty, hungry and tired. Therewas still no sign of Kampfgruppe Willam orany other relieving force. Faced with thisrather hopeless situation, Hauptmann Ben-trup decided to concentrate his force in atight perimeter, and there await relief by theground forces. The most suitable place forsuch a defensive position would be cellulosefactory at the eastern end of town but, realis-ing that his force was too depleted to holdsuch a large complex, Bentrup decided to digin on the high ground around the cemetery.Runners were sent out to all groups with

orders to rally at the ‘Zitadelle’. Outlyingunits were ordered back by means of flaresignals. With the partisan pressure mounting,a fighting withdrawal had to be made. Oneby one, the SS platoons disengaged and with-drew to the rendezvous, some in good order,some more confused. One paratrooper sec-tion, defending a farmhouse one kilometre tothe south-west, was cut off and annihilatedby the partisans.

By 2030, the entire battalion had concen-trated at the cemetery. A rectangle not largerthan 50 by 80 metres, the graveyard slopeddown to the east in a series of low terraces. A1.5-metre-high stone wall enclosed the ceme-tery on its lower eastern side, offering thedefenders protection and cover, but theother three sides were completely open.Here the SS men occupied a continuoustrench line. Part of this trench alreadyexisted from before the landings, other sec-tions had been dug during the day by POWspressed into labour. Now the Fallschirmjägerdug to deepen the shallow trench, shelteringshoulder to shoulder and placing their riflesand machine guns on the parapet, whilethose positioned inside the cemetery dug inas deep as possible among the crosses and

headstones, some men opening tombs toserve as ready-made bunkers. From theirhilltop position, the defenders had a clearview of the surrounding terrain, at least dur-ing daylight.During the twilight hours, partisan mortars

began targeting the cemetery, the start of abombardment that would continue into thenight with increasing ferocity. The rain ofmortar bombs killed 15 to 20 men, includingseveral of the wounded in the medical aidpost. A direct mortar hit destroyed the bat-talion radio, cutting all wireless links withrear headquarters or relieving forces.As darkness approached, German air sup-

port faltered and the partisans moved infrom the surrounding hills for the kill. At2100, the 3rd Lika Brigade attacked with

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Busy at work in this trench was the Luftwaffe-Nachrichten-Verbindungs-Trupp, a smallteam of four Luftwaffe signallers attached to the battalion to co-ordinate air-to-groundsupport. Equipped with a 20-watt wireless transmitter, they had been flown in by gliderand throughout the operation called in fighter-bombers flying overhead, directing themto enemy targets. They were also in contact with a reconnaissance aircraft circlingabove, which relayed messages back to headquarters of the Fliegerführer Kroatien inZagreb, enabling them to organise supply drops by the Ju 52s.

Standing upright in the trench in thebackground of the picture on the left isSS-Obersturmführer Otto Mertely, theone-eyed battalion adjutant. He is seenhere giving instructions to a runner.Later in the day he would be seriouslywounded.

Nearby in the same trench were SS-Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon 500’s own signallers. Theirradio was a heavier 80-watt transmitter with which they could establish contact with rearand higher headquarters, notably that of the XV. Gebirgs-Korps in Bihac. However, it didnot work well and the operators had difficulty exchanging call-signs with their colleagues, so communication was haphazard. Even worse, the transmitter was knockedout by a direct mortar hit in the evening, severing all links with the rear and leaving thebattalion in the dark about the progress of the relieving ground forces.

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Above: That afternoon, a reconnaissance aircraft from Nah-Auf -klärungs-Staffel Kroatien took this vertical aerial of Drvar andthe surrounding area. The tiny annotations added by the photo-interpreters identify gliders [1], parachutes [2], defence field-

works [3] and bomb craters (circled). Tito’s cave had still notbeen identified by them. Below: The map shows a wider area toillustrate the counter-attacks that were launched by the 3rd(Lika) Brigade from the south and west that afternoon.

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three of its four battalions in an envelopingassault. The 1st Battalion attacked from thesouth, the 2nd from the south-east and the3rd from the north-west. Bullets whistledfrom every direction and tracers criss-crossed the valley. The Germans fought backwith all their weapons, holding on to theirposition and preventing breaches. Some ofthe lightly wounded helped out the fightingmen, frantically filling machine-pistol maga-zines and preparing machine-gun ammuni-tion belts for them. After every partisanassault, those manning the outer trench wererelieved by men from inside the cemetery.

At 2130, the partisan battalions were run-ning out of ammunition so a decision wastaken to commit the 3rd Brigade’s 4th Bat-talion, which so far had been held inreserve. Coming in from Kamenica in thesouth-west, it inserted between the 1st Bat-talion in the south and the 3rd Battalion inthe west. Shortly after, yet another freshunit was deployed, the 1st Battalion of the1st Lika Brigade, also from the 6th Division.Having been sent to Drvar from Cvjetic, 17kilo metres to the north-west, at 1600 hours

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Above: By evening, with the partisansgrowing stronger and more aggressiveby the minute, the Germans withdrewinto a tight perimeter centred on thecemetery, planning to dig in and awaitrelief. On the western side of the ceme-tery they occupied a trench that gavethem good observation of the slopingground over which the partisans had toadvance if they were to close in.

Above: It is not always clear whether themen lying outstretched behind thetrenches have been killed or are justasleep. Note the trooper with the headwound still occupying the front-linetrench. The two gliders seen lying in thefields below the German positions arethe same pair as can be seen in thephoto graph on page 16.

Left: The view of the Unac valley ismasked by new housing but this is thesame sight, looking north-west.A

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that afternoon, it took over the northernsector of the line, relieving the men of theEscort Battalion and Officers’ School whohad borne the heat of battle since earlymorning. By 2300 the single SS battalionwas completely surrounded by no less thanfive partisan battalions. The mere numberof units slightly distorts the picture — thedepleted German battalion was now downto perhaps 700 effectives, the five partisanbattalions added up to some 1,000 men —but it was clear the partisans had gained theupper hand.

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On the eastern side of the perimeter, thetroopers were able to find some protec-tion behind the stone wall that ran thelength of the cemetery there. From it,they had a clear view all the way to thecellulose factory in the distance.

Right: Houses and sheds still occupy thearea below the cemetery today althoughby the looks of it not the same ones thatwere there in 1944.

The men inside the cemetery had to dig in among the gravesand tombs.

Scouring the various terraces of the cemetery, Karel found thesame stone cross still standing.

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Later that night yet a sixth partisan battal-ion joined the fray: the 1st Battalion of the1st Assault (3rd Dalmatian) Brigade of the9th Dalmatian Division from the neighbour-ing VIII Corps. Having been sent to Drvarfrom Donje Peulje, 27 kilometres to thesouth-east, it occupied the north-eastern sec-tor of the partisan ring around the cemetery.

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SS-Untersturmführer Dr Hermann attending to one of the injured. Where wounded once lay . . . now rest the dead.

By now, there were several dozenwounded men in the battalion first aidpost, and the two doctors and medicalorderlies had a tough job keeping upwith the seemingly endless flow of newcasualties. Curiously, one of the battal-ion doctors, SS-Obersturmführer Erwinvon Helmersen, had previously served ascamp doctor in Auschwitz-Birkenau con-centration camp, where he reputedlyparticipated in selections for the gaschamber and medical experiments. Hewould be hanged in Poland in 1949.

Right: The lower terrace of the grave-yard, still unused in 1944, is today com-pletely filled with graves.

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The stone crosses seen on the left in the wartime picture remain, allowing us to firmly pinpoint this comparison.

No photos were taken during the fierce fighting that occurredduring the night but these pictures from early the followingmorning clearly show the exhaustion of battle and the relief ofhaving survived the hours of darkness. With the coming of

daylight, air support was resumed and the troopers standingerect are watching dive-bombers attacking the withdrawingpartisans. This is the trench on the west side of the cemetery,looking south.

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MAY 26All through the night the battle raged.

Sometimes it was uncannily quiet, then sud-denly combat erupted again. At intervals theGermans fired flares to see if the enemy wasforming up for a new assault. One light hadjust gone out when, suddenly, a group of parti-sans was climbing over the wall, wildly attack-ing in an attempt to overrun the cemetery. TheSS men shot up white flares, which silhouettedthe attackers, and mowed them down withautomatic fire but the attackers kept on com-ing. From behind the wall they threw hand-grenades into the cemetery and got some lightmortars into action, while others tried toknock a hole in the wall in order to reinforcethose already inside. Finally, a German pla-toon counter-attacked and wiped out the menwho had crossed the wall.

The 3rd and 4th Lika Battalions attacked at0100, and the 1st Battalions of both the 1stLika and 3rd Lika Brigades at 0200. The finalpartisan assault went in around 0330. With theapproach of first light, the partisans, realisingthe open terrain around the cemetery offeredthem no protection from air attack, started awholesale withdrawal back to the hills.

The Fallschirmjäger greeted the first raysof light with a great sense of relief. Thoughthe fight was far from over, the worst hadpassed. At 0530 a first observation aircraftappeared in the sky, many of the men on theground waving and shouting to attract itsattention. Shortly after, German ground-sup-port aircraft returned and attacked theretreating partisans, catching many of themas they scrambled for cover. Noticing thedwindling enemy pressure, some SS menventured out to one of the glider wrecks witha group of POWs to bring in four cases ofammunition. Lying all around the cemeterywere scores of dead partisans. At 0700, 12 Ju52s dropped re-supply containers with addi-tional ammo. By now the fatigued airbornetroops were eagerly awaiting relief by theland forces.

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Above and right: With the morning suncasting hard shadows, these troopersare manning the trench in anticipation ofthe link-up with the ground forces. Thefighting seems to have died down.

The same view today, with the south-west corner of the cemetery on the left.

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THE GROUND OFFENSIVEAt 0500 on May 25 — two hours beforethe airborne landings at Drvar — themotorised forces of the XV. Gebirgs-Korpsjumped off for their concentric offensive.However, right from the start they madeslower progress than anticipated. There wasunexpected resistance from strong partisanforces along their axes of advance, and therewas very poor communication between thevarious elements which resulted in lack ofco-ordination of their movements. Blownbridges further hampered their advance.Although the plan had called for Kampf-

gruppe Willam to relieve the SS paratroopbattalion, it was a dismounted squadron fromAufklärungs-Abteilung 373 (the 373. Infan-terie-Division’s northern column), thatreached Drvar first, fighting its way intotown over the hills from the south-west andlinking up with the exhausted paratroopersat 1045. Next to arrive, at 1230, was a com-pany from Grenadier-Regiment 92 (mot.)which advanced from the north over themountain pass from Petrovac. Finally, at1600, Kampfgruppe Willam arrived from thesouth-west, firmly securing the German posi-tion in Drvar. The area around the town wascombed but little remained except dead par-tisans, propaganda material and military sup-plies. The Germans finally captured Tito’scave, finding it evacuated, emptied of all doc-uments and with all occupants gone.With the link-up achieved, SS-Fallschirm -

jäger-Bataillon was put under command ofthe 373. Division. The battalion’s manywounded were immediately evacuated, theurgent cases — including battalion comman-der Rybka — being flown out in FieselerStorch light planes that had landed on slop-ing terrain near the cemetery. Over the fol-

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Right: Relief of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Batail-lon 500 finally came at mid-morning,when the reconnaissance battalion of the373. Infanterie-Division reached Drvarfrom the south. These trucks were pic-tured entering the town from the north,so they could well be from Grenadier-Regiment 92 (mot.) which arrived at 1230,having advanced over the mountain passfrom Bosanski Petrovac. Many accountsof ‘Rösselsprung’ state that the airborneforce was relieved by troops from the7. SS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Division ‘PrinzEugen’, but this is wrong as that divisionnever reached Drvar, its advance beingdirected more towards the south-east.

The picture was taken on the ‘Westkreuz’, looking towards the bridge over the Unac.

Left: With the partisans being driven out of Drvar, the Ger-mans were finally able to inspect Tito’s cave, now abandonedand devoid of anything of intelligence value. Knowing theywould probably have to give up Drvar sooner or later, theGermans immediately destroyed the wooden cabin, in case itwas recaptured by the partisans. After the war, in CommunistYugoslavia, Tito’s cave became a site of national pilgrimage,tens of thousands visiting it every year. The wooden hut wasrebuilt and a small museum set up at the foot of the hill. How-ever, all this changed with the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991and the outbreak of the bitter civil war the following year.

In August 1995, as part of their Operation ‘Storm’, Croatianarmed forces occupied Drvar. They expelled the Serb popula-tion and destroyed the cabin, the veneration of Tito beingseen by them as a part of Serbian domination. Centre: WhenNATO peacekeeping forces visited the cave for a battlefieldtour on ‘Rösselsprung’ in January 2001, there was no sign ofthe cabin. Right: With the return of peace to the region, it wasdecided to rebuild the hut a second time, and a new replicawas completed in 2006. Close examination with the picturestaken in 1944 show that its design is similar but not identicalto the original structure.

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lowing days, the airborne dead were buriedin a plot just south of the cemetery, the Ger-mans forcing civilians to dig the graves.Wooden crosses were put on them. Theglider pilots recovered the gliders that couldstill be used, taking only the fuselages andleaving the wings, mostly broken anyway,behind on the battlefield. The gliders thatcould not be salvaged were made unusableby removing the control panel. On May 29,their own transport having reached Drvar,the battalion motored north to Petrovac andfrom there to Bihac, all traffic now takingplace at night because of the ever-presentAllied fighter-bombers during daytime. OnJune 11, the unit reached billets in Ljubljana,the capital of Slovenia, where it would stayfor 18 days to recuperate and absorb replace-ments.Heavy fighting continued around Drvar

for several more days as partisan forces triedto recapture the town and the Germanground forces tried to engage and annihilateas many of the enemy formations as theycould. On June 4, the 2. Panzer-Armee calledan end to Operation ‘Rösselsprung’.Many accounts of ‘Rösselsprung’ state

that SS-Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon 500 was‘de stroyed’ in the fighting, claiming that ofthe 874 men that had landed at Drvar onlysome 200 survived fit for service at the endof the battle, but this assertion needs to bedifferentiated. According to official Ger-man after-action figures dating from June10, the battalion had 61 killed, 114 seriouslyand 91 lightly wounded and 11 missing,making for a total of 277 casualties. An ear-lier report from June 7 quoted even lowerfigures: 50 killed, 132 wounded and six miss-ing, i.e. a total of 188. Even if one allows forthe casualties suffered by the attachments(of the 36 glider pilots five had been killedand seven wounded; of teams Zawadil andBenesch two men had been killed and 24wounded, etc) this is far from the reputed650 casualties.Overall German losses of the XV.

Gebirgs-Armeekorps for the period May 25to June 4 were 123 killed, 456 wounded and26 missing, adding up to a total of 605. However, these figures are without thelosses of the 7. SS-Division, SS-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 105 and Aufklärungs-Abteilung369. Their casualties raise the total Germanloss to an estimated 343 killed and 881wounded.Partisan losses, according to OKW com-

muniqué at the time, were 6,240. However,reliable Yugoslav records put the partisancasualties very much lower: Tito’s GeneralHeadquarters, the Escort Battalion, Officers’School and other units stationed at Drvarlost 152 killed, nine wounded and three miss-ing; the 1st, 4th, 6th, 9th and 39th Divisionstogether lost 247 killed, 470 wounded and 85missing, making for an overall total of 966casualties. However, to these military lossesmust be added the many civilians massacredby the Germans in Drvar.

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Right: The day following their relief, theGermans buried their dead in a massgrave near the cemetery, forcing cap-tured partisans and civilians to dig thepit. One German witness, WachtmeisterOrtner of Aufklärungs-Abteilung 373,recalled that some 80 men were interred,which approximates the final number ofover 65 killed recorded in the Germanafter-action reports.

The field burial site was lined with stones and a low wooden railing. Two crosseswere erected and a sign saying ‘SS-Fallschirmjäger 25.5.1944’. Beside the main plotwere four individual graves with named crosses. In this view the civilian cemetery —the site of the battalion’s final stand — can be seen in the background.

Right: None of the soldiers known to havebeen killed and buried at Drvar have beentransferred to an official German warcemetery and, according to the GermanWar Graves Commission database, theyall still lie where they were interred atDrvar. If this is true, this nondescript pieceof pasture south of the civilian cemetery isstill a mass grave! A

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Both sides claimed victory in this battle.The Germans succeeded in disrupting Tito’sheadquarters, scatter the partisans in theDrvar area, and capture large amounts ofweapons, equipment and supplies. The parti-sans saved Tito and decimated an SS para-troop unit. Each side, in its own way, wonpartial success but neither achieved an out-right victory.The 2. Panzer-Armee commented: ‘The

operation against the partisans enjoyed con-siderable success. (1) It succeeded in destroy-ing the core region of the Communist parti-sans by occupying their command andcontrol centres and their supply installations,thereby considerably weakening their supplysituation. (2) It forced the elite Communistformations to give battle and severely bat-tered them, forcing them to withdraw tiredand exhausted due to shortages of ammuni-tion and supplies and to avoid further com-bat. (3) The capture of landing fields used byAllied aircraft, administrative establishmentsand headquarters used by Allied missionsforces them, even if the terrain is abandonedagain by our own troops, to fully re-organiseand rebuild. (4) The Allies have from directobservation obtained a true picture of thecombat power of the partisans. (5) For ourown conduct of battle, important signal doc-uments, code-books, wireless equipment andintelligence material were captured. (6) Thissuccess was embattled by our own troopsunder the most difficult conditions, whichincluded supply problems caused by numer-ous trucks being knocked out by enemy airattacks.’After the operation, Generalfeldmarschall

von Weichs, the OB Süd-Ost, declared him-self ‘satisfied’ with the operation ‘although itdid not entirely conform to expectations’. TheGerman High Command was less content.Hitler believed that Tito had been warnedfrom the Croatian side and demanded thatCroat units would in future no longer beemployed in operations of this kind.However, in the final analysis, Operation

‘Rösselsprung’ was a failure for the Ger-

mans. The single main objective of the wholeundertaking, overriding all others, was toeliminate Tito, the man who personified thepartisan movement. The Germans failed todo so, hence the operation did not achieve its

purpose. The partisans quickly recoveredfrom their losses and set up in new locations.Drvar reverted to partisan control withinweeks. Within a year, the last Germans weredriven out of Yugoslavia.

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Right: Set up in the park below Tito’scave is the hulk of an Italian CV-35 lighttank, reputed to be one of the three vehi-cles of this type that equipped the tankplatoon from the I Proletarian Corps thatwas stationed at Drvar in May 1944. Twoof them engaged in a short skirmish withthe Fallschirmjäger during the airborneraid — a famous incident that hasbecome part of partisan folklore.

Also on display in the park for many years was the framework of a German DFS 230glider, said to be an original relic from the landing of 1944. It was still there when theNATO battlefield tour was held in 2001 but, with an unbelievable disregard for its historical value, it has since been scrapped!

Left: Something similar occurred with the huge partisan memo-rial that was erected in the town park on the high groundacross the road from the Orthodox Church. Designed by Croatartist Marijan Kokovic (himself a Political Commissar with the13th Proletarian Brigade during the war) and officially known asthe Spomenik Stalinisma, it was completed in the 1950s.

It was blown up by the Croat Army in early 1996 — much to thechagrin of the local Bosnians, especially because it occurredafter the Dayton Peace Agreement of December 1995 and a fewdays before the Croats were scheduled, under the treaty, to pullout of the area. Right: Today the concrete chunks of the demolished memorial still lie where they fell.

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The trenches and barbed wire of the FirstWorld War are enduringly associated withthe killing fields of Flanders and the greatbattles which were so bitterly fought along afront that stretched across the Continentallandscape from the Channel coast throughBelgium and France south towards the bor-ders of Switzerland. Yet little is known orremembered of the extensive systems ofdefensive fieldworks in Britain, with an esti-mated total of more than 60 miles in thecountry’s vulnerable south-east ‘invasioncorner’ alone. These too might have becomescenes of carnage in the event of a Germaninvasion. Only now are they starting to berevealed through research and field investi-gation begun by a number of individuals andorganisations, as part of the Defence ofSwale Project, a study co-ordinated by KentCounty Council, funded by the LondonArray offshore wind farm and supported byEnglish Heritage.

The potential for historical and archaeo-logical discovery on the Isle of Sheppey andalong the Swale (the channel separatingSheppey from the Kent mainland) is largeand challenging. This part of Kent benefitsfrom the fortuitous survival of an impressiveand extensive contemporary photographicrecord of the field defences there, held atboth the Royal Engineers Library and theImperial War Museum, as well as matchingcontemporary mapping at the NationalArchives. With the study of aerial photo -graphs, these crucial documentary sourcesoffer exciting opportunities for field investi-gation to ‘ground-truth’ the historical

records. Many stretches of the defence linesare thought to survive as buried archaeologybut there are also surface traces and remains.From this study it is hoped to gain an

improved understanding of the extent andnature of these defensive systems, consid-ered at the time to be so important fornational security and survival.

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The history of home defence works built in Britain during theSecond World War to defend against a German invasion ispretty well recorded and documented (see for example Afterthe Battle Nos. 14, 116 and 135). Far less known is that Britainalso constructed an extensive system of anti-invasion defenceworks during the First World War, especially in the country’ssouth-east corner, in Essex, Surrey and Kent and particularlyalong the Thames Estuary. The Defence of Swale archaeologi-cal research project concentrates on an important sector ofthese defences — those built on the Isle of Sheppey and theKent mainland immediately to its south. Although much work

still needs to be done, the project has uncovered remarkabletraces of a defence system that has largely been forgotten.Above: The docks and naval base of Sheerness, at the north-western tip of Sheppey, formed a focal point of the defenceworks, being fitted out with several river-facing gun batteries.These camouflaged Martello-like towers armed with 4.7-inchquick-firing guns formed Centre Bastion. The roofed buildingin between housed the fire-control centre for all the guns atSheerness. In front of the left-hand tower is a machine-gunpillbox, one of a line of pillboxes that ran the length of Sheppey’s north shore.

The two towers were modified during the Second World War but the fire-controlbuilding remains unchanged. All three positions are today located within the securityfence of Sheerness Docks.

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BRITAIN’S FIRST WORLD WAR DEFENCESBy Victor Smith, Alan Anstee and Simon Mason

THE INVASION THREATAfter the Entente with France in 1903 the

main concern of British Home Defence plan-ners centred on the perceived ambitions ofImperial Germany and that, one day, thesemight lead to war. In the same year, thedecades-old — and sometimes acrimonious— competition between the Admiralty andthe War Office for dominance in homedefence ended in victory for the Navy. Now,the naval members in the Committee ofImperial Defence assured that the fleet couldprevent invasion of England and Ireland,even if they occurred at the same time. Thisconfidence was to be short-lived however,and vanished within five years, chieflybecause of the doubts engendered by therapid and challenging rise of Imperial Ger-many’s navy, against which First Sea LordAdmiral John Fisher began to concentrate

the gradually modernising British fleet inhome waters. There was also Germany’smercantile fleet to consider, with its growingtroop-carrying capacity, ready and waiting, itwas feared, to disgorge hordes of grey-cladsoldiers onto British shores in a raid or inva-sion launched from the North Sea. By 1908an amphibious landing of 70,000 men wasthought possible, with large stretches ofcoastline considered vulnerable.As well as a sense of genuine strategic

threat, debated by the political and chatter-ing classes, war-scare fictional literatureplayed a part in moulding public opinion.Not least among the outputs from this genrehad been the imagined German plot toinvade Britain portrayed in ErskineChilders’ influential espionage novel Riddleof the Sands (1903), later made into a motionpicture. It was followed by, among others,

William Le Queux’s The Invasion of 1910(1906). Instances of popular pre-war warn-ings as well as of invasion paranoia wereinterestingly varied, for example one envis-aged enemy troops marching in triumphthrough London, having been assisted by anarmed rising of the capital’s German waiters!

PREPARING AGAINST INVASIONAfter 1914 the possible strength of an

invasion force rose in Home Defence plan-ners’ anxiety to 160,000, before settling backto the originally assumed 70,000. Behind thetraditional first line of defence formed by theRoyal Navy, home defence armies were cre-ated as speedily as available Regular andTerritorial manpower allowed. Troops weredeployed to areas necessary for respondingto a raid or invasion, most immediately aspart of port garrisons. They were accommo-

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Sheppey, separated from the Kent mainland by the Swale, gave an invader access to several main routes leading to London.

The entire northern coast of Sheppey, from Sheerness in thewest to Shellness in the east, was fortified with fieldworks

comprising trenches, redoubts, pillboxes, blockhouses and anear-continuous line of barbed-wire obstacles.

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dated either in camps or by means of localbilleting. Local forces were to be first-responders to oppose landings, with a power-ful strategic reserve, initially called the Cen-tral Force, standing by to deliver a vigorousand decisive counter-blow. Troops trainingin Britain for the Western Front or other the-atres were also to be used in case of need.Despite the continued numerical preponder-ance of the Royal Navy, such measuresseemed even more important because thefleet’s absolute maritime superiority wasbeing challenged by the new German subma-rine threat, one U-Boat having sent threeBritish cruisers to the bottom of the NorthSea in under two hours on September 22,1914. This was followed by the worryingimpunity of Admiral Franz von Hipper’s ‘tipand run’ naval attack on Hartlepool onDecember 16 as well as by other naval incur-sions, seemingly threatening worse to come.

DEFENDING LONDON AND THESOUTH-EASTSo the activation and, in varying degrees,

strengthening of the pre-existing permanentcoastal defences, with their heavy, mediumand light guns, minefields and boom obsta-cles, was urgently pursued. In the south-eastthis process embraced the ports and navalbases of the Thames, Medway, Harwich,Dover and Newhaven. Moreover, to thedesigns of Royal Engineer officers, war-emergency fieldworks were created to pro-vide prepared anti-invasion positions atsome of the landing areas, on possible axes ofadvance by an enemy cross-country andaround the rear of certain of the ports andcoastal fortresses. These offered obstacles toenemy movement, pre-planned lines ofretreat, places from which to mount counter-attacks, and flank or rear supports to themanoeuvring defending forces. As on theContinental Western Front, when occupiedfor defence these fieldworks would havebeen fought by infantry armed with rifles andmachine guns, supported by artillery. Cavalry might have been used if the situationallowed. Thanks to the toil of Regular andTerritorial troops — whether Royal Engi-neer fortress, field and works companies orinfantry formations — as well as of civilianlabour forces (later reinforced by the large

new Home Defence Volunteer Force), someparts of Britain thus began to look like mili-tary landscapes.London was the primary objective for aninvasion. Its capture would have been aknock-out blow to national resistance. Sobehind the Thames riverine and other

coastal defences, a giant shielding arc of fielddefences was formed in parts of Kent, Surreyand Essex to protect the capital against anoverland advance. Its layout was, in part,influenced by the earlier London DefenceScheme planning of 1903, which had origi-nated against a possible invasion by the

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Right: Ravelin Battery at Sheerness, withits two long-range 9.2-inch guns mountedin concrete-lined pits, formed an impor-tant part of the heavy gun defence of theThames estuary. The barrels of the gunsand their shields were painted in the stan-dard camouflage patterns of the period. Ametal Dacoit fence and barbed wiresecured the battery against the approachof an enemy landing force.

The battery was demolished in 1993 and its site is now the car park and grassy surround of a Tesco superstore.

Left: Sheerness promenade was defended by several machine-gun pillboxes and long bands of concertina barbed wire. Thispillbox was erected in front of the town’s indoor swimmingbath. The tower in the background was the directing station

for the nearby Defence Electric Lights which were to illuminatethe river and allow the engagement of offshore targets atnight. Right: A century on, the modern indoor swimming poolof the Sheerness Leisure Complex helps to pinpoint the spot.

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French. These fieldworks were not, however,intended as a ‘Chinese Wall’ but rather toprovide security and a focus for the concen-tration of forces to fight back. A pontoonbridge at Gravesend provided tactical com-munications across the Thames. A diver-gence from the main London defence linealso strode south-east to Wrotham Hill, andthen ran along a ridgeline towards the Med-way. Just to the south-east of yet another cir-cuit joining the later 19th-century fortsaround the land approaches to ChathamDockyard and garrison, the line resumed atBoxley, then Detling. It then proceedednorth-east to the country just south of theSwale, not far from Sittingbourne. A furtherpowerful system ran along the north coast ofthe Isle of Sheppey from the naval base atSheerness. Yet more defences were providedaround the land side of the Port of Dover.Elsewhere in the south-east, further field-works systems were created both along thecoast and inland.

THE THAMES AND THE ISLE OFSHEPPEY

As part of the defences of the Thamesestuary and the Medway, the ten-mile-longSheppey coastal line defended against anenemy landing on the isle with the capture ofSheerness dockyard as its intended prize.The wider system of defence for the Thamesestuary involved powerful cross-firingcoastal defence guns at Sheerness, Grain andAllhallows, with others on the Essex shore ofthe river at Shoeburyness. There were twoinner-line batteries at the eastern end ofGravesend Reach. There, on opposite sidesof the river, Coalhouse and Cliffe Fortscrossed their fire to block enemy penetrationupstream. These various batteries defendedthe approaches to London and vital riverinesupply routes. There were further fieldworksat other riverside locations in both theThames and Medway, together with a localdefence flotilla and offshore minefields. Mili-tary aircraft based at Eastchurch, Grain andelsewhere, as well as a network of anti-air-craft guns, were positioned to fight off raidsby German Zeppelins and bomber aircraft.The tactical use of fighters and bombers toattack invasion ships and enemy troops onceashore was planned. Still later in the war,tank forces were to be deployed to helpdefeat an invasion.The military and naval defences of the

Thames estuary, together with designatedelements of the air force, constituted thedefensive power of Nore Command, whosearea of responsibility extended from theNorth Sea to the English Channel. With theflanking naval anchorages of Harwich andDover (under different commands) the southeast corner of England became a nexus of

naval activity vital to the war effort.Throughout the war the Thames was, ineffect, a battle zone, suffering bombing raidson ground installations, and witnessing notonly air-to-air combats and ground-to-air fir-ing but also the vision of aircraft friendly andhostile crashing from the sky and the sinkingof ships by mines in the estuary.

DEFENCE WORKS IN SHEPPEYA pre-war defence plan for the Thames

and Medway of February 1914 had empha-sised the liability of the dockyards at Sheer-ness and Chatham to various types of navaland air attack as well as the vulnerability ofthe nearby fuel oil stores at Port Victoria andThames Haven. It set out the means to

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Barbed-wire entanglements blocked off Cheyney Rock Pier atthe eastern end of the promenade.

The barbed wire has long gone, as has the small pier with itsmobile crane that projected into the river at this point.

The pillbox has been demolished but Cheyney House remains intact.

A short distance on, right beside Cheyney House, stood yet another machine-gun pillbox.

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defend them. The heavy coastal artillery wasalready in place from earlier modernisationof the defences, as were arrangements for thedeployment of offshore minefields. The localdefence flotilla consisted of destroyers, tor-pedo boats and coastal defence submarines,sometimes reinforced by battleships. Trailedby proposals as early as 1904, in the event ofwar, the pre-existing Queenborough Lines(built in the 1860s) to landward of Sheernesswere to be supplemented as part of a wideranti-invasion plan with fieldworks. Thesecame to consist of lines of barbed wire andstrong points, along the river front betweenGarrison and Barton’s Points, and othersaround Minster to the east. There were alsoto be some inland positions, including adap-tation of civilian buildings for defence. Thestrategic Kingsferry Bridge carrying theimportant road and rail route over the Swalewas to be especially protected. The field-works were to be formed in two stages: firstin the Precautionary Period immediatelypreceding war and second in the days imme-diately following the opening of hostilities.In October 1914, the capture of Ostend by

Germany, whose forces seemed poised tooccupy the French channel ports, perilouslyclose to England, seemed to greatly increasethe possibility of invasion. So, in a number ofstages (with additions as late as 1917-18), thefieldworks were greatly extended, forming acontinuous coastal line of barbed wire joinedto redoubts (enclosed with further barbedwire) and with intervening trenched strongpoints, from Scrapsgate east to WardenPoint. From there they descended to Leys-down and resumed along the beach as abarbed-wire line to Shellness, where therewas a strong point centred on the pre-exist-ing coastguard cottages. At intervalsthroughout the coastal line, concrete or brickmachine-gun emplacements or pillboxeswere added. Their introduction might havebeen stimulated by the shock effect of theappearance of this new defensive device asfaced by the British attackers at the Battle ofLangemark in April 1917. Blockhouses simi-lar to those used by the British during theBoer War were, however, a feature of thefieldworks from the outset, as were closedand open-air machine-gun emplacements.There were several projections running

inland from the coastal line: a short one atMinster (with additional trenches for bayo-net practice), a longer one at Barnland toShurland and thence to Eastchurch aero-drome from a very strong complex at War-den Point, with successive lines of wire andtrenches, machine-gun emplacements andstrong points. There was another similarinland-projecting line from Leysdown toNewhouse, with front-line and second-linetrenches.

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East of Sheerness, at Scrapsgate near Minster-on-Sea, stoodthis pillbox.

Although the pillbox itself no longer exists, the comparisonshows the wide command it had of the beach.

Sandbagged breastworks and barbed-wire entanglements on the Scrapsgate seafront.

Because of the modern-day flood defence work our comparison is taken from ahigher standpoint but the two buildings seen on the right in the 1919 picture remain.The left one with the timber-framed roof is the building in mid-distance sticking outfrom the row of houses; the one on the right has since been modified and enlarged isnow the White House restaurant.

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Then there were 15-pdr field gun batteriesat Merryman’s Hill, Foxenden, WardenPoint and Barnland, with associated observa-tion posts. These batteries were casemated,those at Merryman’s Hill camouflaged tolook like civilian huts. A major insertion in1918, and surrounded by additional field-works, was Fletcher Battery at SwanleyFarm. This was built to enhance the power ofthe anti-shipping defences and mounted twoheavy 9.2-inch guns, sited to fire out at longrange and in a wide sweep over the Thamesestuary.

There were inland positions at NorwoodManor and Cockles Farm, as well as at Wal-lend and Minster Marshes, the latter twoclose to the road to Kingsferry Bridge acrossthe Swale, near to which was also a pontoonbridge. Both of these river spans were strictlycontrolled and, in pursuance of this, in 1916Sheppey became designated as a Special Mil-itary Area.

Depending on the terrain, the placementof Sheppey’s fieldworks exploited or coun-tered the advantages and vulnerability of theground. The occupation of the hills betweenBarton’s and Warden Points and the siting ofpositions at the top of the nearby, rampart-like clay cliffs blocked an enemy inlandadvance and commanded the routes toSheerness that an enemy would have to takefrom a landing to the east or south-east ofthe island, say at Harty Ferry. The barbed-wire lines were to halt the advance of troopsand, therefore, place them in the killing zoneof the defenders. The wire and pillbox line toShellness was an obstacle against a rushashore from the low coastal terrain there,where there was no defensible rising groundbehind. With the spurs of the defencesinland, these systems, with their command-ing views over the low and marshy ground ofthe interior and southern part of the island,could easily have been connected, enclosedand elaborated upon in just days during anemergency to produce, in effect, anentrenched camp and a tactical pivot for thedefending formations to act against anenemy landing force.

The design of individual works reflectedboth recent fieldwork manuals and laterpractice on the Continental Western Front.Barbed wire was arranged in a similar wayand trenches were revetted in corrugatediron, hurdlework or timber boards. Breast-works were made of sandbags. The redoubtsmainly had overhead protection and wereprovided with timber-boarded loopholes.The machine-gun emplacements were rec-tangular or near-rectangular concrete pill-boxes. The blockhouses consisted of infilledinner and outer sheets of corrugated iron.

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Above and below: Half a mile further east, at Merryman’s Hill, was a 15-pdr coastal battery, one of four on Sheppey. Its two guns were set up in casemates camouflagedto look like beach huts with an observation post in between.

Today modern beach bungalows mark the spot.

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Among the Local Forces to be used todefeat an invader were several battalions ofthe Rifle Brigade and the King’s Royal RifleCorps which, with Royal Engineer units, hadprovided significant parts of the manpowerfor the incremental construction of the field-works on Sheppey. Elements of these regi-ments were present on the isle in camps formuch of the war.

To help defend against an enemy move-ment across Sheppey, the coastal guns (vary-ing from 9.2-inch and 6-inch to smaller cali-bres) at Sheerness and Swanley Farm, as wellas the long-range guns at Grain, could beturned to any angle necessary to fire over thewhole of the island. Some could even reachbeyond the south side of the Swale. Therewas also an inland 6-inch battery at PumpHill, not far from Eastchurch. To a preparedbattle plan, the guns were to saturate inva-sion beaches with fire. In the event of a suc-cessful enemy lodgement, they were also toobliterate nearby roads and railway lines toprevent their use by the invader. All thisrequired effective forward observation andcommunication back to the batteries, chieflyto be achieved through use of newly-laidtelephone lines with, in reserve, other alter-native methods. Perhaps aircraft or airshipspotting, with air-to-ground signalling, wasalso to be used.

Among the surviving coastal defences onSheppey used during the Great War there isthe brooding and monumental presence ofGarrison Point Fort at Sheerness; the river-facing lines and the flowerpot-like towers ofCentre Bastion built in 1912; the gash of the1860s Queenborough Lines to landward ofSheerness and, at Swanley Farm, the squatconcrete solidity of Fletcher Battery (1918).Along the line of the cliffs and inland, espe-cially visible from the air, are tell-tale groundoutlines of filled-in trenches, occasional pill-boxes and at least one battery for field guns.The journey of discovery is continuing.

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At Warden Point, six miles east of Sheerness, lay a complex ofdefences comprising another 15-pdr coastal battery, severalpillboxes, a position finder, an anti-aircraft listening post and

an electric light emplacement. Most of the installations wereconnected by an extensive system of trenches and defended bylines of barbed-wire entanglements.

The pillbox at Mud Row, located at the inland western end of the Warden Point defences.

The same pillbox remains completely intact, one of the few surviving on Sheppey today.

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SWALE TO DETLING AND BOXLEYBefore the outbreak of war it had long

been recognised that even a small-scale land-ing on the North Kent Coast would be athreat to the naval and military installationsat Sheerness and Chatham. Moreover, froma successful invasion of the Isle of Sheppey, aGerman break-out could have threatenedthe mainland. Whether from either of thesepossible landing points or from a larger oneon the Channel Coast of East Kent, if aninvader were to reach Sittingbourne a directroute to London, not more than 40 milesaway, could have been open. Thus, with

back-stopping works at Chatham, the field-works to the south of the Swale were built tocheck an advance from any invasion; to pro-vide time for the field army to arrive, andthen to act as a jumping-off point to drive theinvader back into the sea. Three fortresscompanies of the Royal Engineers — the1/6th, 2/6th and 2/4th Kent (Fortress) Com-panies RE (later the 246th Field Companyand the 579th (Kent) and 598th (Kent)

Works Companies respectively) — areknown to have built fieldworks in Kent.Labour was supplied by locally basedinfantry units. In Newington, for example,when work started in 1915 the infantry wereTerritorials from the West Kent Regimentbrought in daily by train.Although the works around Newington

protected the important junction of the Lon-don and Maidstone Roads, these defences

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There were further defence works on the Kent mainland south of the Swale, notablyalong the Stockbury Valley above the Maidstone Road that connected Sheppey withthe main road network leading direct to London.

Left: A series of Advanced Posts were constructed east of theSittingbourne to Maidstone Road, roughly located from aboveChestnut Street to below Oad Street. This is the first one,which overlooks Chestnut Street. Its field of fire was called

Salisbury Plain by the Royal Engineers. Right: The same sitetoday, looking down on an enlarged Chestnut Street and thesites of the defences which once ran from Tunnel Hill to theLondon Road.

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must not be thought of in isolation or evensolely as part of the Swale defences but aspart of the larger works around London andin the south-east. Neither were they hur-riedly thrown together but were an in-depthintegrated and well-planned complex,designed and built over time by the RoyalEngineers, incorporating lessons learnt onthe Western Front. The line around Detlingvillage and on to Boxley Hill, for example,consisted of Machine Gun Emplacements(MGEs), often a single line, linked by com-munication trenches and tunnels reminiscentof a type of German defence system of thelatter part of the war, whilst Detling Airfield,in places only 100 yards away, was stronglydefended in depth by fire trenches, redoubtsand MGEs.The importance of these defences is shown

in the letters and reports written by LordFrench, the Commander-in-Chief, HomeForces, in 1916. In these he stressed theimportance of trenches as close to the land-ing points as possible, especially given hisopinion at that time of the inadequate train-ing and lack of rifles of the men allocated forHome Defence. Poor troops such as thesewould have given a much better account ofthemselves fighting behind these strongfieldworks.The works of the line south of the Swale

consisted of fire and communicationtrenches, both open and covered, redoubts,strong points, pillboxes, dugouts, sheltersand barbed-wire entanglements. Preparedfield gun batteries, initially for naval 12-pdrs,were built in the first and second lines atCromas Wood, Church Wood, Standard Hill— all near Newington — and at ‘Church Bat-tery’, Stockbury. The batteries were pro-

tected by fire trenches and MGEs, the latteroften entered through or placed inside tun-nels.Work appears to have started soon after

the commencement of hostilities, thosearound Newington in the first week of 1915,it is believed by the 2/6th Kent (Fortress)Company. The line ran from near Kemsley,about a mile from the Swale, south-west toDetling and Boxley Hill, passing through thevillages and hamlets along the StockburyValley above the Maidstone Road (now theA249), utilising the best defensive positions.In all, the fieldworks totalled about 12 miles,with vulnerable areas being strengthened.For example the area off Binbury Lanebetween Stockbury and Detling was giventhe four ‘Le Feaux Redoubts’, believed to benamed after a Captain in the 2/6th FortressCompany, forming a second line. The ovalpillboxes just north of these further strength-ened this area.Several areas show the quality of the posi-

tions chosen and the versatility of the works.‘Tunnel Hill’ overlooking Chestnut Streetand Danaway enfiladed the junction ofWorm dale Hill with the Maidstone Road,with its MGEs in a system of tunnels, two ofwhich were close to 100 yards in length, andalso protected ‘Cromas Battery’. The strongpoints on ‘Observation Hill’ and the nearby‘Griffith Redoubt’ were not only the first ofthree lines of defence but also controlled theartillery covering this line and the advancedposts near Chestnut Street. Their MGEscould also sweep the ground around theseadvanced posts. Observation posts werebuilt, mainly in the front line such as ‘ChurchBattery’ at Stockbury, the battery itself utilis-ing a superb position; although its OP in a

tree might seem rather exposed, it was notunique as shown by the contemporary REphotographs.Locations were designated as artillery

assembly points, one, Callum Hill, beingselected as early as the defence proposals of1904. Batteries with gun platforms were builtfor 6-inch naval guns some distance to therear, at Matts Hill Farm, Gore House, HarpFarm and Queendown Warren. (Only oneplatform of the latter was thought to be stillextant. However, recently information hascome to light that the platforms at GoreHouse were not destroyed but covered to adepth of 15 feet by a landfill scheme.) Posi-tions for mobile batteries of various calibresand types of gun were identified for use invarious stages of the battle.Command and communication operated

via four sites, at Polly Fields Farm, Yelsted,Nunfield House and Newington, designatedas brigade headquarters and linked to thetrenches by an extensive telephone system,which ran underground at vulnerable points.Although the Royal Engineers built the bulkof the system, they utilised the civil networkwhere possible. Little remains of the systemtoday but one truncated Royal Engineerspole can still be seen alongside the path run-ning into Wardell Wood, Newington.The 13 pillboxes of two designs shown on

the military maps indicate that work contin-ued into late 1917, almost certainly by the579th (Kent) Works Company RE, whichdocumentary evidence showed was in thearea in August 1917 and March 1918.This is still an on-going research project and

the sites of at least four camps known to havebeen used by the Royal Engineers betweenthe Swale and Detling have yet to be found.

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Left: The main defences of the Swale area were fire trenches,supported by redoubts and pillboxes. This is Tippet Trench atKeycol Hill near Newington, just south of the Sittingbourne to

London road, looking down towards a camouflaged square pill-box. Right: The line of Tippet Trench today, with the pillboxstill there but covered in natural camouflage.

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LATER DEVELOPMENTSAs the war progressed, so the organisation

of Home Defence was modified andstrengthened. This included a well-worked-out system for transporting defending forcesby train to where they were needed close toinvasion coasts. Sheppey was reached bylines to Sheerness which continued behindthe coastline, east to Leysdown and beyond.The north and south extremities of the Swaleto Detling and Boxley line were also servedby railways. There was, besides, a network ofroads allowing rapid reinforcement by motorbuses.

At sea — including within Nore Command— there were now more and better-arrangednaval resources, including the availability ofsupporting gun-fire from warships to supple-ment the land defences and provision ofmore extensive minefields, anti-submarinenets and airship observation patrols.

Against air targets there had been both anenlargement of the air force and the estab-lishment of an array of anti-aircraft guns andsearchlights on Sheppey and on the adjacentmainland as part of national defensive cover.This was ultimately exemplified by the cre-ation of the London Air Defence Area(LADA) which protected the capital withconcentric rings of fighter interceptor sta-tions, guns, searchlights and barrage bal-loons, having a limb extending north throughSheppey to the Blackwater. There wereouter shields running through Swale fromFaversham south to Romney Marsh and, fur-ther to the east, along the Kent coastbetween Margate and Folkestone.

In addition to military defence, extensiveand detailed arrangements were put in placeby local committees and authorities to pre-pare the civilian population for invasion andclearing them from the area of this potentialfront. Evacuation routes that did not impingeon the military priorities were identified forthe civilian population, their livestock andmachinery. Members of the community were

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Above: Three miles further south, at Stockbury, was Church Battery, armed with apair of 12-pdr field guns. The battery occupied the site of what once was a mediaevalmotte-and- bailey castle, proving that a good tactical position is always a good tactical position. This is one of its Machine Gun Emplacements, pictured in 1919.Below: The emplacement stood on the top left of the earthwork.

Left: Pillboxes in the Swale area came in square and oval form.This is Oval Pillbox No. 3 at Little Beaux Aires Farm, one of fiveshown on the contemporary Royal Engineers maps. They are

believed to be a design unique to this area. Right: Pillbox No. 3is today all but covered in building rubble to keep people outbut No. 4 remains to be seen in a field at Stockbury.

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designated to organise evacuation, collectand requisition provisions and other portableassets and to carry out acts of sabotage thatdenied goods and facilities to an advancingenemy. Volunteer forces were in place toprovide immediate labour for trench diggingand other works as soon as the emergency ofan invasion became real.Despite these various improvements, mili-

tary manpower in Britain itself becamestressed by the increasing demands of theWestern Front, a deadly theatre of attritionwhich constantly required new players tomake good large numbers of casualties. Con-versely, although the Kaiser was initiallyenthusiastic about invading Britain, the sametrench warfare in France and Belgiumabsorbed too much of the German armedforces’ energies for the emergence of a realis-tic and resourced intention to do so. Thiswould, in any event, have required navalsuperiority that Germany did not possess.The last time British supremacy at sea waschallenged by a surface fleet was at the Battleof Jutland in 1916. Grossadmiral Alfred vonTirpitz, the influential naval strategist, pre-ferred continuing with commerce raiding to

try to starve Britain into surrender through aU-Boat campaign designed to cut off Britainfrom the import of supplies and foodstuffs.However, as late as 1918, the initial success ofthe German Ludendorff offensive in Francegave rise to a period of British and Alliedanxiousness — but not to an invasion scare.A judgement of how well the measures for

Home Defence might have performed in theevent of an invasion is difficult to make. How-ever, the evidence about Sheppey and Swale,uncovered both on the ground and in docu-ments, show that the Royal Engineers, aidedby infantry labour, produced defences thatwould have severely challenged any invader.Fortunately for Britain, Allied victoryensured that they were not put to the test.Soon after the end of the war many ele-

ments of the war-contingency expanded fleetbecame decommissioned and laid up, whileanti-aircraft guns were withdrawn into stor-age. At the same time, the air force wasreduced to a tiny residue and the coastaldefences were once again limited to theirpeacetime core sites. The vast HomeDefence trench systems of Sheppey andsouth of the Swale were filled in and barbed

wire removed by German prisoners of war in1919, the ground returning to nature. Now, acentury later, they are scarcely known aboutor remembered.This brief overview is but a curtain-raiser

for many exciting new discoveries expectedto be made during the centenary years of theFirst World War, not only in the regionunder study but nationally. Already theDefence of Swale Project has discovered anoutstanding First World War landscape thathas escaped attention for so long and thatcan do much to explain the often overlookedaspects of Home Defence in Britain. A fur-ther project is in the planning (in co-opera-tion with a number of partners, includingEnglish Heritage) that will see more detailedresearch, survey and investigation of thedefences, the strategy behind their locationand the way in which the local populationwas organised to meet the threat of invasionon their doorstep. Involving and explainingto the local community the discoveries willgive pause for thought as to ‘what if’ an inva-sion had taken place and how different thelandscape would have inevitably lookedafterwards.

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Left: The square pillbox at Westfield Shaw (part of WormdaleFarm) was built into the end of Westfield Shaw Trench.Right: Although the trench has been filled in, the top of the

entrance to the pillbox’s remains open and it is still possible tocrawl inside. It has become known locally as the ‘Golf Coursepillbox’.

Left: Four miles further south, at Detling, the ‘Old Chalk Pit’was modified for use as part of the defences of Broader Lane.Right: Although the pit has long been filled in, amazingly

approximately 50 yards of the fire trench running to it still survive in very good condition, albeit full of leaves when thiscomparison was taken.

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In June 1942, as much of Europe lay underGerman domination, across the world inMelbourne, Australia, 18-year-old DenisVaughan Kelly joined up to fight for Kingand Country.In March 1943, leaving behind his young

wife and son, Flight Sergeant Kelly com-menced the long journey that would see himjoin No. 467 Squadron of RAF BomberCommand at Waddington, Lincolnshire. Lit-tle did he know then that in the squadron’sLancasters, he would fly over 251 opera-tional hours, including successful sorties onD-Day; be shot down behind enemy lines . . .survive injury . . . evade capture . . . and joinup with a French resistance group, all beforehis 21st birthday.In May 2014, as his 91st birthday

approached, Denis once again took on theepic 10,000-mile journey from his home inAustralia to Europe, but this time to paytribute to fallen comrades, revisit RAFWaddington, and travel to France to thankthe villagers who helped save his life 70 yearsbefore.Kelly trained as a member of the Empire

Air Training Scheme (EATS). This wasestablished in 1939 by Australia and otherDominions (see After the Battle No. 151) totrain large numbers of men for service in theRoyal Air Force. The scheme successfullytrained nearly 28,000 Australians for servicewith British and other Dominion squadrons.However, the nominally ‘Australian’ squad -rons were not under RAAF control; neitherdid Australians necessarily make up a major-ity of their aircrews. RAAF airmen trainedthrough EATS represented about nine percent of all aircrew who fought as part of theRAF in Europe and made an important con-tribution to Allied operations. Remarkably30 per cent of all Australians killed in actionduring the Second World War were servingwith the Royal Australian Air Force inEurope.

As a wireless operator serving with No.467 Squadron (which had been resident atWaddington since November 1943), betweenApril 20 and July 18, 1944 Flight SergeantDenis Kelly took part in 28 bombing raidsagainst heavily defended targets includingcritical railway and road infastructure onroutes between Germany and France.On the night of June 5/6, 1944, as part of

the operations for D-Day, Kelly was theWireless Op on Lancaster PO-F (DV372),one of 14 Lancasters on the strength ofNo. 467 Squadron. That night a total of

1,012 aircraft, comprising 551 Lancasters,412 Halifaxes and 49 Mosquitos, bombedcoastal batteries and radar installations atFontenay, Houlgate, La Pernelle, Longues,Maisy, Merville, Mont-Fleury, Pointe-du-Hoc, Ouistre ham, St Martin-de-Varrevilleand St Pierre-du-Mont. At least 5,000 tonsof bombs were dropped, the most in onenight so far in the war.This pattern was to continue for Kelly and

the crew of ‘F’ for Freddie over the next fewnights. On June 6/7, 1,065 aircraft bombedrail and road centres behind the Normandy

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On September 3, 1939, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies spoke on the radio: ‘Fellow Australians, it is my melan-choly duty to inform you officially, that in consequence of a per-sistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britainhas declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is alsoat war. No harder task can fall to the lot of a democratic leaderthan to make such an announcement.’ Denis Kelly and fellowfootball players heard the news when returning to Melbournefrom having played in a winning Grand Final. The whole coach

immediately declared that they would volunteer, only too anxious that it might all be over before they could join up. Eventhen, Denis had to wait several months before a letter arrived tobegin training with the Royal Australian Air Force. Left: InMarch 1943, he arrived at the No. 5 Group heavy bomberbase of RAF Bomber Command at Waddington, Lincolnshire.Right: Now the last man standing from his former crew, in May2014 Denis journeyed to Europe with his son Denis Junior toretrace his footsteps . . . and remember.

Having finished his training on Wellingtons, Stirlings, and Lancasters, Denis wasposted to No. 467 Squadron which had been formed from Australian volunteers onNovember 7, 1942. There he was teamed up with his RAAF crew (L-R): Flying OfficerMark Edgerley, navigator; Warrant Officer Bill McGowen, bomb aimer; Pilot OfficerTom Davis, pilot; Flight Sergeant Denis Kelly, wireless operator; Sergeant Peter Marshall, flight engineer (the only RAF crewman); Sergeant Jim Kluver, mid-uppergunner, and Flight Sergeant Colin Allen, rear gunner.

THE EXPLOITS OF AN AUSSIE BOMBER CREW

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battle area and disrupted the enemy’s vitalsupply lines, and the following night BomberCommand sent 483 aircraft to attack rail-ways to try to prevent German reinforce-ments reaching Normandy from the south.On June 10/11, 432 aircraft hit railway tar-gets at Achères, Dreux, Orléans and Ver-sailles. Bombing the marshalling yards atOrléans was to be Freddie’s final operationhaving completed a total of 49 sorties sinceits manufacture by Vickers in October 1943.Having served the squadron well, she wasretired and her mighty fuselage now standsproudly as an exhibit in the Imperial WarMuseum, London.

In July 1944, Bomber Command launchedthree raids on the railway junction and mar-shalling yards at Revigny-sur-Ornain, some50 miles south-east of Reims. The raids tookplace on the nights of July 12/13, 14/15 and18/19. Revigny was a strategically importanttarget, and one for which many BomberCommand air crew would make the ultimatesacrifice. Forty-three Lancasters were lostattempting to cut the main railway line 150miles east of Paris which was vital to Ger-man supply operations in the West. Thedestruction of the Revigny railway linealong the southern side of the town was partof the greater ‘Transportation Plan’ that

included raids on key rail, road, bridge andcanal targets.By July 16, although heavily bombed over

two nights, the Revigny railway junction hadstill not been put out of action. Anotheroperation planned for that night had to becancelled due to bad weather but on the18th, with the weather having improved, thego-ahead was given for a third attack. How-ever, by now the attacks on Revigny hadalerted the Luftwaffe which positioned fight-ers to intercept any future raids.The replacement for ‘Freddie’ was Lan-

caster R5485, which also bore the code-lettersPO-F. She took off from Waddington at 2300

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Right: Lancaster Mk I, DV372, one of abatch of 200 built by Metropolitan Vickerscame off the production line in October1943 and was allocated to No. 467Squadron on November 5, coded PO-F(for Freddie). As one of over a thousandaircraft despatched by Bomber Com-mand, Denis’s crew took it to Normandyon the night of June 5/6 to bomb gunemplacements at Saint-Pierre-du-Mont.The following night they attacked theroad junction at Argentan followed bymarshalling yards at Rennes on June 8/9.Their last operation in DV372 was anattack on the rail complex at Orléans onJune 10/11 after which the Lancaster wastaken off the active roll and retired. Alltold it had taken part in 49 missions, thefirst being to Berlin on the night ofNovember 18/19, 1943. DV372 carried out11 more operations to the German capitalbefore taking part in the pre-D-Day raidsto prepare for the invasion of Normandy.Denis found the forward section of thefuselage of his aircraft preserved today atthe Imperial War Museum in London.

They were then allocated another Lancaster, R5485, which wasalso coded F-Freddie and it was in this aircraft that Denis’s crewended their war. In July 1944 the Allies were still fighting to breakout of Normandy and an intensive operation was being carriedout by the air forces to attack lines of communication, transporta-tion targets and rail centres, one such being located 150 miles eastof Paris near Saint-Dizier and on July 8 Bomber Command weredetailed to bomb the marshalling yards at Revigny-sur-Ornain.However, the raid was postponed due to bad weather, as weretwo subsequent missions scheduled for July 10 and 11. Over 100Lancasters were detailed to take part in the operation on July12/13 while additional aircraft carried out diversionary raids.Unfortunately the attack was a failure leaving the targetunscathed at a cost of 12 Lancasters lost and 69 airmen killed.

A second attempt on the night of July 14/15 had to be abortedover the target when Revigny was found to be covered with cloudbut, nevertheless, German night fighters were ready and claimedanother seven aircraft with the loss of 46 crewmen. With the railyards still operational, a third raid was mounted on the night ofJuly 18/19 but the Luftwaffe was again ready and the formationwas spotted as soon as it reached France and seen to be oncourse again for Saint-Dizier. This time the result was even worsewith 24 Lancasters failing to return and 123 crewmen dead.The target was photographed on July 25 revealing that the marshalling yard itself was still virtually unscathed with themajority of the bombs landing to the south. The three attacks onRevigny were among the most costly mounted by Bomber Com-mand ending with a total loss of 43 aircraft and 238 personnel.

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hours with seven crew aboard: pilot FlyingOfficer T. E. W. Davis, RAAF; navigator Fly-ing Officer M. W. Edgerley, RAAF; flightengineer Sergeant W. F. Marshall, RAF;bomb aimer Flight Sergeant L. W. McGowen,RAAF; mid-upper gunner Flying Officer E. F.Haddlesey, RCAF; rear gunner FlightSergeant C. F. Allen, RAAF, and wirelessoperator D. V. Kelly, RAAF.

Having reached the target and droppedtheir bombs, it was now two hours past mid-night. They had just turned for home and trav-elled less than eight miles when the Lanc wassuddenly attacked by a night fighter. Set alight

and crippled by cannon fire with the rear gun-ner dead, the pilot gave the order to bale outbut Flying Officer Davis had the misfortune tojump with his helmet still on and was strangledby the attached intercom lead. His body wasfound near the crash site at Pargny-sur-Saulx,a few miles to the south-west of Revigny. Hewas buried in the local churchyard.

The rear gunner, Flight Sergeant Allen, isalso buried nearby in the French NationalCemetery at Pargny, his body having beenrecovered half a mile from the crash.

Flying Officer Haddlesey, the mid-uppergunner, managed to release himself from his

turret but he collided with the tailplanewhich severed his right leg above the knee.His parachute deployed and he had the pres-ence of mind to inflate his Mae West to helpcushion his landing. He applied a roughtourniquet to his leg and then shelteredunder some trees for the rest of the night. Inthe morning he crawled to a farm house and,although a doctor, Henri Fritsch, tried tohelp, he could do very little so there was noalternative but to hand him over to the Germans so that he could receive propermedical attention. (Later in the war he wasrepatriated to Canada.)

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Of the 43 Lancasters that failed to return, one was R5485 whichwas attacked shortly after leaving the target, probably byHauptmann Hubert Rauh of Stab II./NJG 4, who reported having shot down a bomber at 1.55 a.m. The rear gunner waskilled, the aircraft immediately caught fire and the crew baledout. The pilot, Flying Officer Davis, failed to remove his flying

helmet and was strangled by the intercom lead. The body of therear gunner, Flight Sergeant Allen, who had been shot throughthe head, lay not far away from the crash site (left), a few hundred yards outside the village of Pargny-sur-Saulx. Right:When Denis Kelly visited Heiltz-le-Maurupt, he was presentedwith a piece of the Lancaster by the Mayor, Claudine Dubechot.

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The navigator, Flying Officer Edgerley,landed safely near Heiltz-le-Maurupt. Heburied his parachute and Mae West and setoff walking west along the River Ornain,away from Revigny. A day later (July 20), hemet a Frenchman who agreed to help himand took him to his home in Jussecourt-Minecourt (back towards Revigny) where hestayed hidden for the next four weeks. OnAugust 19 he was taken to La Neuve-Grangein the Forêt de Trois-Fontaines where hemet a patrol from the SAS. There he stayedwith other evaders until American forcesfrom the Third Army reached the area onSeptember 1. He was in Paris the next dayand arrived back in the UK shortly after.Sergeant Marshall, the flight engineer, also

landed safely and after remaining hidden inthe woods for three days was found by the FFIon July 22. For five weeks he lived at thehome of Eugène Blanchard in Jussecourt-Minecourt, until August 26 when he was toldhe would be taken to an aircraft that wouldreturn him to England. When this did notmaterialise, he spent the next six days atanother farm before joining the Resistance inthe woods, save for one day when he met theSAS patrol and his fellow evaders. On August30, Marshall decided to look for US troopswhom he knew were not far away so he set offalone towards St Dizier. Walking southwardsacross country, he met up with US armourand was taken to Paris on September 2 fromwhere he was returned to the UK.Flight Sergeant McGowen, the bomb-

aimer, baled out at 6,000 feet and landed in afield near Jussecourt-Minecourt and, havinghidden his parachute and Mae West, hestarted out walking in the direction for Paris.Having travelled less than five miles, he met amember of the Resistance at Ponthion whotook him to his camp which was located atSermaize-les-Bains (back towards Revigny!)where he remained for about a month. OnAugust 18 he met an SAS paratrooper whosaid he would try and arrange for an aircraftto take him back to England but when thishad to be aborted he decided to walk to theAllied lines. Fortunately he made contact withMark Edgerley at the Resistance camp so hereturned with him and Denis Kelly, reachingEngland on September 6.

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Local schoolchildren were given the day off to greet Denis atthe grave of Tom Davis, buried in the local churchyard.

Denis and Denis Junior pay their respects to Colin Allen who wasburied in the French National Cemetery at Pargny-sur-Saulx.

Right: When the aircraft failed to return,telegrams were sent to the next of kinand each airman was posted as ‘missingin action’. This was followed by a per-sonal letter from Wing CommanderWilliam Brill to Denis’s wife. (His motherreceived a similar letter with slightly different wording.)

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The wireless operator, Flight SergeantKelly, managed to land ‘in a field near somewoods not far from the village of Pargny-sur-Saulx, five miles south of Revigny. I hid myparachute and Mae West under some scruband crawled to the woods as I had broken myankle. I slept in the woods until daylight. Icrawled for about three miles and was even-tually picked up by a Frenchman, who tookme to his house, where I received food andshelter until 26 July.’Kelly had been found by a lock-keeper

and a garde-champêtre (a rural policeman)who knew of a trustworthy doctor in nearbySermaize-les-Bains. Dr Henri Fritsch (whowas killed later by the Germans) treated hisankle and on July 26 a French Resistanceguide took him to be hidden in a hospital,possibly at Vitry-le-Francois.Kelly was even visited by the other sur-

viving crew on his 21st birthday but withthe Germans retreating, it was too risky tostay in the house any longer so on August18 he joined the others in the camp inTrois-Fontaines forest. He was liberated,together with Edgerley and McGowen, onSeptember 1 by the 4th Armored Divisionof the US Third Army.

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Although Denis had managed to bale out safely from the burn-ing Lancaster, he broke his ankle and injured his back on land-ing. So, after disposing of his parachute, he hid up in somewoods for the rest of the night. He then crawled — he believesabout three miles — until he was discovered by a Frenchman.The man turned out to be the lock-keeper, Victor Lang, atPargny and he sheltered Denis there (left) until July 26. Right:He was then taken by a member of the Resistance to a hospital

(most probably at Vitry-le-Francois), being hidden there in thecaretaker’s house for several days before returning to Pargny.Meanwhile, the French underground had made arrangementsto get a plane to pick up Denis and other evaders and fly themhome. Pierre and Eugène Blanchard took them to the field inthe Trois-Fontaines forest hidden in a horse and cart but, forsome reason, possibly because the alarm had been raised dueto another air raid, the plan had to be cancelled.

And it was while he was there that he celebrated his 21st birthday. Denis thinks thatthe French underground found out the date and organised a party at the home of theOsouf family in Heiltz-le-Maurupt with two other evaders in their care: Mark, the nav-igator, and Peter, the flight engineer. L-R: Monique Blanchard (now Mrs Guionnet);Mark Edgerley; Suzanne Blanchard with her baby Marie-Ange; Mrs Gisèle Osouf;Peter Marshall and Denis Kelly.

Left: From 1944 to 2014. Denis with Marie-Ange Gérard (née Blan-chard) outside the house where his birthday party was held. Right:

Denis found the garden virtually unchanged, still with the duck-pond in which he, Peter and Mark had an impromptu ‘swim’!

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However, as no news had reached Britainabout Denis’s survival, on September 1 theRAF casualty branch wrote to his wife con-cerning the disposal of his motor car. It wasexplained that ‘in view of the difficultyexperienced in storing articles of thisnature, and of the fact that it is not practica-ble to return them to Australia, the practiceis to hold them for approximately threemonths from the date on which the mem-ber became missing. If he is then stillposted as missing, such articles are soldand the proceeds are held on his behalf.’However, before she could reply, a wonder-ful telegram reached Australia informingher that Denis was not only safe but back inthe United Kingdom. What had happenedwas that the US Third Army had reachedthe area and he had been liberated by the4th Armored Division. He reached Londonvia Paris. Denis was discharged from theRAAF in August 1945 on medical groundswith the rank of Flying Officer. He is nowthe sole surviving member of the crew whoexperienced so much in such a short timeand at such a young age. These dayshe often reflects upon the fact that theextreme circumstances in which BomberCommand crews like his had to go throughon each operation, forged friendshipsstronger even than most families’ experi-ence . . . friendships forged in adversity . . . memories which last a lifetime.

In memory of fallen comrades — Denis pays his respects atWaddington. Over 125,00 aircrew served in RAF Bomber Com-mand, of whom more than 55,000 lost their lives. Of these,38,462 were members of the Royal Air Force; 9,919 of the RoyalCanadian Air Force; 4,050 the Royal Australian Air Force;1,679 Royal New Zealand Air Force; 929 Polish Air Force;

and 534 from other Allied and Dominion air forces. In total,nearly 60 per cent of aircrews of Bomber Command becamecasualties, either killed, missing or prisoners of war. All -together, Waddington lost more bombers on operations thanany other Bomber Command station, a total of 345. Of these103 were Hampdens, 15 were Manchesters and 227 Lancasters.

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