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24th April 2022, saw a service at Norwich Cathedral to the memory of the 97 Service men murdered at a farm in the village of Le Paradis, Normandy, France in 1940.
Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment along with Royal Scots and a mixture of other regiments, were told to hold a rear-guard action to help to delay the Germans and give more troops time to get off the beaches at Dunkirk, so they occupied and defended a farmhouse.
The incident took place on the 27th May 1940, where at the time troops of the BEF (British Expedition Force) were trying to retreat through the Pas-de-Calais.
The German forces turned out to be the 14th Company 3rd Waffen-SS Division Totenkopf lead by SS Haupstumfuher Fritz Knochlein, who were fanatical Nazis.
When the British troops run out of ammunition, they were ordered by their commander Major Lisle Ryder to surrender to the German troops, where they expected to be treated as Prisoners of War.
Instead they were marched out of the farm, lined up against a wall and were executed by machine gun fire.
There were 99 troops which were machined gunned, but two, who were badly injured, survived.
They were later captured by other German troops, who did take them as POW’s and sent to a Military Hospital.
The incident was kept quiet, but after the War, Knochlein was tried by a War Crimes Court in Rotherbaum, Hamburg, Germany, with the two survivors giving evidence against him.
For his part in, what had become known as the Le Paradis Massacre, he received the death penalty and was executed by hanging in 1949.
Lest We Forget.
Thanks to the Le Paradis Commemoration Group Memorial Appeal and Diss Family History Group for the invitation to the Service.
Also in Attendance Mike Garnham, Standard Bearer, Diss and District RBL.
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