80th Anniversary of the Massacre

On the 80th anniversary of the retreat to Dunkirk by the British Expeditionary Force, the Warwick Courier gave full-page coverage to our account of the Wormhoult-Esqualecq Massacre on May 28th 1940, involving three Warwick men.

About a hundred British and French troops who had been holding back the German advance were taken prisoner. They were herded into a barn and murdered by a unit of the Waffen SS. There were six survivors whose injuries were treated by the German regular army soldiers and they were taken to a POW camp.

Our thanks to Tom White who provided valuable background to the story. His mother never knew the fate of her husband Thomas White, who had been reported killed in action a year later. Tom was 73 years old before he discovered his father had been one of those murdered in the barn. Also killed were Arthur Williams and Thomas George who both lived in Warwick; all three are commemorated on the war memorial in Church Street, and at the museum in Wormhouldt.