By Judy Foster
A group of HACC Athletics veterans have been to France to honour and remember courageous Midlands WW1 and WW2 troops on behalf of the Club.
The group, which included Maurice Endacott, Chris Winning, Ian MacGregor, Chris Pearce and Judy Foster, headed to Dunkirk earlier this month to see the Tour de France and also take in the wartime history and culture of a part of France and neighbouring Belgium, for the story behind the freedoms we all enjoy today.
Staying in a gite in Wormhoudt, the group had the privilege of seeing the Tour as it passed through the village just at the end of the lane where they were staying and then a second time in Cassell (pictured), cheering competitors on, which of course included our very own Ben Healy.
Wormhoudt itself is the location of the Wormhoudt massacre, the mass murder of 81 British and French POWs by Waffen-SS soldiers from the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler during the Battle of France in May 1940.
As part of the British Expeditionary Force’s (BEF) retreat to Dunkirk, the 144th Infantry Brigade of the 48th (South Midland) Infantry Division was holding the road that runs southward from Bergues through Wormhoudt, Cassel and Hazebrouck to delay the German advance.
After their surrender, a large group of soldiers including from the 2nd Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment and gunners of the 210 Battery, 53rd (The Worcestershire Yeomanry) Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery were taken to a barn in La Plaine au Bois near Wormhout and Esquelbecq on 28 May 1940.
When there were nearly 100 men inside the small barn, soldiers from the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, threw stick-grenades into the building, killing many POWs.
The grenades failed to kill everyone, and one Warwickshire soldier lived to tell the tale by escaping to, then playing dead, in a nearby lake, having been shot in the neck as he headed there.
Members of the group visited the site during the week and paid their respects on behalf of Halesowen Athletics and Cycling Club with a large poppy wreath, this being a third visit for two of the group.
The group can also visited Ypres in Belgium, location of the Menin Bridge Memorial, where every evening at 8 o’clock, two minutes silence is observed for those who fell in Ypres in World War I.
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