Trench Lincs 14th December 2025
- trenchlincs
- 7 days ago
- 23 min read
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Good Morning,
It is Sunday again and Christmas really is on the near horizon. Have you completed your shopping yet?
Yesterday saw the annual Lincoln WFA lunch at the White Hart, and I am sure everyone enjoyed the lunch and the quiz. More details next week.
Below, you will find plenty of interest, I hope. I have written two pieces about my recent trip to Prague and I hope they whet your appetite to pay a visit. If it does, and you want help with map locations etc., please let me know.
Chas Parker has shared a document with us this week, that I think many of you will find of interest. You will see that it details Lincolnshire locations associated with the Great War. If you can put any further meat on the bones, please let me know and I will put you in touch with Chas.
Melvin Dobbs has been mooching around Oakham School and his findings are shared with you this week too.
Would you like to own a piece of Lincolnshire history? Sir William Robertson was born in Welbourn where his father was the village shopkeeper. Robertson is the only man to have joined the British Army as a Trooper (Private) and retired as a Field Marshal - a remarkable achievement in the Victorian era which says a lot for the meritocracy on offer for a bright and very capable soldier, given his lack of a public school education and the fact that his family were not wealthy.
As many of you know, I live in Welbourn and dog walk past his birthplace on a regular basis. Therefore, I was surprised this week to see a For Sale sign in the garden. I will buy a lottery ticket on Friday and if successful (unlikely!) I will buy it and create a Sir William Robertson museum! Fingers crossed.
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FORTHCOMING EVENTS.
Next event - Lincoln & North Lincolnshire Branch, WFA - Monday, December 15th - Doors open 7.00pm for 7.30pm start - Royal Naval Association Club, Coulson Road, Lincoln, LN6 7BG.
Dr. Scott Lindgren presents – “The Fog of Naval Warfare – The Battle of Jutland May 31st 1916.”
Naval/maritime historian Dr Scott Lindgren will be visiting us once again with another story from the annals of naval warfare. Obtaining his PhD at Salford under the late Professor Eric Grove, he specialises in 19th/20th century maritime history and is one of the few people on the lecture circuit who actually gives presentations on this subject.
The Fog of (Naval) War: The Battle of Jutland, 1916'
The Jutland engagement was the only time during the Great War that the opposing British and German battle fleets would meet. It was the largest naval battle in history up to that time and was controversial from the start with an array of differing strategies, tactics and new material being employed by its thousands of local and remote participants. It was arguably the first major engagement where truly three-dimensional warfare was considered and affected the outcome - if only by threat. This talk examines the battle and its background, along with some of the lessons, myths and controversies that have surrounded it.
Peter Garland then continues; ‘This talk will be the last of the 2025 Lincoln Branch season, and has been arranged at the request of a branch member whose relative fought in the battle. Please do attend, as it promises to be a very interesting and educational evening. You will be made very welcome.
The 2026 season of talks kicks off at Lincoln Branch on Monday, January 12th, when our old friend John Chester will be presenting a brand new talk entitled "Honour and Tradition".
Meanwhile, Spalding Branch will kick off their 2026 season on Thursday, January 22nd, when Mr Trench Lincs himself, Jonathan D'Hooghe, will be presenting his brand new talk entitled "General Horace Smith-Dorrien; his two defining battles - Isandlwana 1879 and Le Cateau 1914." More details nearer the time.
The full Lincoln and Spalding programmes for the period January 2026 to July 2026 will be published in the 20th December edition of Trench Lincs.
In the meantime, the Chairmen and Committees of the two branches would like to thank all of their members and supporters for their support during 2025, and send their best wishes for a very Happy Christmas, and a peaceful and prosperous New Year. Thank you, one and all!
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Next Meeting - Spalding & South Lincolnshire Branch, WFA - Thursday, January 22nd 2026 - Doors open 7.00pm for 7.30 pm start - Spalding Baptist Church, Swan Street, Spalding, PE11 1BT
Full details to follow shortly.
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The Leadenham Military History Group’s next meeting will be on Tuesday 27th January 2026 at 7.30pm at Leadenham village hall.
This event will be an inter-active workshop which will look at the infamous Battle of Isandlwana which took place on 22nd January 1879 at the start of the Anglo-Zulu War.
All contributions on the night are welcome, or you can just sit, listen and hopefully learn.
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Another group who meet at the Royal Naval Club, Coulson Road, Lincoln, LN6 7BG are the Lincs Aviation Society.
I now have great pleasure in advertising their forthcoming events, which take place on the third Thursday of each month - entry is £2 for members and £3 for visitors.
The final event for 2025 will take place on Thursday 18th December when the Annual General Meeting and Members Night will be held. All welcome for a 7.30pm start.
PLEASE NOTE – this event is now the 18th December, not the 11th as originally planned.
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Please click on the link below to open the latest The Tiger newsletter.
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In recent weeks thanks to Paul Berry, Peter Garland and others, there has been a raft of new subscribers to Trench Lincs. Thank you all for your ongoing support.
One of the new subscribers, Neil Bell, has entered into the spirit of Trench Lincs by sending me the following IWM link to a 15-minute film set in Lincoln at the William Foster works.
The IWM description is:
Tanks, Medium C Hornet and prototype tank "Little Willie" - Trials of the Medium C Hornet tank at the William Foster Works, Lincoln, autumn 1918. Two Hornet tanks (one of them marked "Hornet") move in parallel over Foster's testing grounds in Lincoln, with a third just behind. They climb slopes and drive through water filled holes in speed and stability tests. "Little Willie" makes a couple of cameo appearances in the background, clearly marked on its side as "Little Willie, built September 1916". Inside the workshops Hornets are being built (one of these interior shots is speeded up).
Civilian observers continue to watch the trials. A goods train can be seen passing by in the background on the embankment of the now closed and demolished Lincoln Avoiding Line (Network Rail, Lincoln City Council and Lincoln folk now probably wish it had never been closed and demolished); behind the embankment the three towers of Lincoln Cathedral can be briefly glimpsed.’
This really is a snapshot of old Lincoln, and for those of you who live near Lincoln, I do hope that you will click on the link and watch the film.
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In recent editions of Trench Lincs we have seen some very serious ongoing research from both Jonty Wild and Charles Anderson. This week, Chas Parker gets in on the act and he writes; ‘This might be of interest. The original document was forwarded to me from the Society for History & Archaeology and the word document [Shown in full below – Ed] gives the background, etc. It is a working document so I would welcome additions or corrections and it is a resource for anyone to use.’
Chas’s word.doc reads as follows; ‘Military Sites in Lincolnshire in the Great War
This document was initially based on ‘War Office: Land and Buildings Reconstruction Committee, 1918’ which was produced by the Army [TNA RECO 1/759] on 1st June 1918. Additional information on airfields came from ‘Forgotten Aerodromes of World War 1’ by Martyn Chorlton published 2014 by Crecy Publishing Ltd ISBN 9780859 791816 and on the Humber defences from ‘Guardians of the Humber’ by Jeffery E Dorman published by Humberside Leisure Services in 1990 ISBN 0 904451 44 5. The anti-Zeppelin Home Defence sites are also shown on the map ‘Aeroplane Barrage Line – December 1916’ page 13 in ‘Works and Bricks’ by Paul Francis published by the Airfields Research Group ISBN 978-1-8382133-0-5. The Ministry of Munitions entries for Lincoln come from the Ministries ‘Index of Places’ (NAO).
Information on the Royal Navy’s shore establishments has proved more difficult to trace so at the moment it currently comes from an unpublished paper entitled ‘The Admiralty and the Immingham Area – 1907 to 1920’ which is in preparation for the annual Journal of the Society for Lincolnshire History & Archaeology.
The TNA list covers North Killingholme and Immingham fairly comprehensively but only yields ‘Old Custom House, Grimsby Docks’ for Grimsby which seems flimsy as a large portion of the fishing fleet was taken over for minesweeping by 1918. Also, there is nothing under ‘Navy’ for Boston but we have ‘P.D.O.S.’ on the Army list?
Quite a few anomalies have been turned up –
Caistor landing ground. On the TNA list but not found on other reliable sources. (Caistor in Norfolk perhaps?)
East Cowick Light Station – Yorkshire?
The entry for an Observer Post at Gamston is questionable; I only found two ‘Gamstons’ – both in Nottinghamshire.
Chas Parker November 2025’
Please do click on this link to see the full document of 1914-18 sites associated with Lincolnshire.
I replied to Chas to ask if I could share his work with the TL readers. Chas replied; ‘Yes - please share this with our readers. It started life as a query about military buildings at North Greetwell (near me). Local legend has it that the Canadians were based there late in the war but we can't find any evidence and this document tends to suggest that that is correct. We know that Canadian airmen trained at South Carlton and there are quite a few ex-military buildings in Cherry Willingham and surrounding areas but I think that most of these were purchased in the post-war sales and moved to their current (or former) sites so it looks like a corruption of the facts. If you include this as well some of our readers may know more?’
If you have any comments or thoughts, please let me know.
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One of the TL’s most prolific roving reporters is Melvin Dobbs, and this last week he has been in Oakham. As he mentions, we have looked at the town’s memorials before, but this piece concerns the Old Oakhamians of Oakham school.
Melvin writes; ‘A sunny Sunday saw me take a road trip to Oakham in Rutland.
The Town Memorial has been featured before in TL as has some memorials within All Saints Church. But from the Churchyard, I noticed another religious building within the grounds of Oakham School so I thought I would have a closer look.
I went to the school reception and rang the bell, but got no-answer! So I went to investigate the building which was indeed a Chapel for the School.
What took my eye was the impressive entrance with a frieze above the porch depicting panels with Classical figures and also incorporating figures of Soldiers wearing puttees and Brodie helmets. Either side of the doorway there were panels carved with a list of names, I took this as a Memorial to former Pupils of the School who had died in Service during WWI.
On gaining entrance to the Chapel there was another impressive doorway emblazoned in gold with the words:
'To The Glory of God
In Memory of The Old Oakhamians
Who Died in The Second World War 1939 - 1945 '
Either side of the doorway were panels of stone inscribed with their names.
There was only one other Memorial within the Chapel, which was to a Martyr, The Reverend Vivian Redlich 1905 – 1942, another old boy of Oakham school, who was executed by the Japanese in WWII.
I continued my tour of Oakham taking numerous pics of interest to me, but another which I thought might be of interest to our readers in more ways than one I also attach.
We all have our own thoughts on J.D. Wetherspoon Pubs.... But the Captain Noel Newton drew my attention with a plaque on the exterior.’
Thank you Melvin.
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I return now to my recent visit to Prague, and in particular my visit to Prague’s war cemetery. The cemetery lies a good 50-minute walk east of the old town centre and rather than walk back, I hopped on one of the city’s numerous trams.
I suspect that not too many tourist visitors make the effort to visit the cemetery, but I can say that it is well worth a visit. The cemetery as a whole is also a long standing public cemetery and covers many acres of ground. There are four military plots, the three plots for the dead of WWII are sited together and the plot for the Czech men who fell in the service of the Austro-Hungarian army in the Great War, are a short walk away.
Peter Garland dropped me a line to say; ‘I enjoyed your initial commentary about your visit to Prague. I do hope in next week's edition you'll mention this is where the very last major battles in the WWII European campaign took place. Following Alfred Jodl's order that German forces in Czechoslovakia should prepare to fortify Prague so OKW (German High Command) could relocate their HQ to Prague if Berlin fell (they considered Prague a last "bastion" against the allies) SS Senior Group Leader (Obergruppenfuher) and General of Police Karl Herman Frank gathered around him remnants of the 6th SS Panzer Army, 1st and 4th Panzers, 7th, 8th and 17th Combined Armies and two divisions of the Russian Liberation Army (allied to Germany).
The US Army was pressing in from the west but, by agreement with the Soviets, stopped short of Prague. However, their presence brought hope to the citizens of Prague, and led to the "Prague Uprising" commencing on May 5th, 1945. Frank had warned Prague's citizens in a radio broadcast not to rise up, but they did. The Soviets' "Prague Strategic Offensive Operation" commenced on May 6th 1945, culminating with the liberation of the city, following the surrender of German Forces there, on May 11th 1945. Fighting in Czechoslovakia continued until 12th May (Battle of Slivice) with the last pockets of German resistance mopped up on 13th May.
There were other pockets of resistance around Europe after the German capitulation; for example, Texel in the Netherlands, the Courland Pocket in Latvia and Svalbard in Norway where a party of German troops had been sent under "Operation Haudegen" to set up and operate a weather station. Having lost contact with Berlin in May, they hung on before finally surrendering to Norwegian seal hunters on September 6th 1945!
Thank you Peter for that background information.
When I arrived at the Prague war cemetery, I found the British, Allied and Commonwealth cemetery very easily. There are 256 men buried in this CWGC plot and what struck me was the wide array of nationalities and regiments remembered here.
British Army and Royal Air Force, Canadian, South African, Polish, New Zealand and a complete new one to me, several men of the Cyprus Regiment.
I had not heard of the Cyprus Regiment before and a quick on-line search revealed that they were founded on 12th April 1940. It was a military unit of the British Army, made up of volunteers from the Greek Cypriot, Turkish Cypriot, Armenian, Maronite and Latin inhabitants of Cyprus, but also included other Commonwealth nationalities.
It included Infantry, Mechanical, Transport and Pack Transport Companies. Cypriot mule drivers were the first colonial troops sent to the Western Front. They served in France, Ethiopia, Palestine and Italy carrying equipment to areas inaccessible to vehicles. They were used to supply and support other troops at Monte Casino.
On a brief visit to Cyprus in 1943, Winston Churchill praised the “soldiers of the Cyprus Regiment who have served honourably on many fields from Libya to Dunkirk.”
About 30,000 Cypriots served in the Cyprus Regiment. The regiment was involved in action from the very start and served in the Battle of France, in the Greek Campaign, North Africa, France, the Middle East and Italy. Many soldiers were taken prisoner especially at the beginning of the war and were interned in various POW camps.
In the post-war years the regiment served in Cyprus and the Middle East, including Palestine during the 1945-1948 period. The regiment was disbanded on 31 March 1950.
There weren’t any Lincolnshire Regiment soldiers buried in Prague but I spotted three lads of the Sherwood Foresters.
The Parachute Regiment as well as the Tank Regiment featured amongst the casualties, alongside many air crew from the RAF and the Polish air force, including this chap from 301 Squadron Polish Air Force who flew from Lincolnshire’s RAF Ingham base.
New Zealand
Canada
South Africa
Military Police - One for Dudley Giles.
Royal Tank Regiment
Parachute Regiment
Royal Artillery
Royal Air Force
Would Rifleman Sipthorp have gone and done his bit if he could see the state of Tower Hamlets today? What do you think?
"There is a corner of a foreign field that is forever England." - Rupert Brooke
Immediately adjacent to the CWGC plot was a Soviet plot commemorating those Soviet soldiers who died in the final fighting in and around Prague. The layout was very austere and regimented as you would expect with a central monument with two figures topped with a hammer and sickle.
Here is a selection of photos.
The third plot in this vicinity was laid out to remember the Czechs who fell in the fight against Hitler’s National Socialists. It was very stark and simple and contained granite blocks against a low wall with names inscribed.
There was also a statue to Jan Sverma. I did not know of this man so a quick look up revealed that Jan Šverma (March 23, 1901, Mnichovo Hradiště, Bohemia – November 10, 1944) was a Czechoslovak political activist, considered a national hero during the communist regime.
He contributed to Rudé právo, the official publication of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and was its editor-in-chief from 1936 to 1938. From 1929 he was a member of the KSČ Central Committee and Politburo. Šverma spent time in exile in Moscow and Paris during the existence of the Nazi -backed Slovak State and became a close collaborator of Klement Gottwald, who would become the first Communist leader of Czechoslovakia.
Šverma assumed the political leadership of Czechoslovak military units formed in the Soviet Union during the Nazi invasion of the USSR. He died in the Slovak mountains while leading an insurrection of Slovak communists against the Slovak State.
Jan Sverma
A short walk across the cemetery led me to plot 4. My understanding of the Czech language is virtually nil, but I did somehow manage to comprehend what the signs were saying. The main body of plot 4 remembers those Czech men who, presumably died of wounds in Prague, who had fought alongside the Germans on the Western and Eastern Fronts. There was a long memorial wall with many name plates and a couple of figurine statues depicting grieving widows and families.
I found one tablet to a specific regiment, the Imperial-Royal Rifle Regiment No. 8, that was also in English.
The second area within Plot 4 was to the Czech men, who again, I presume died of wounds in Prague from wounds received on the Italian Front. They had their own memorial flanked by simple crosses, each containing a soldier’s name.
As previously mentioned, if you visit Prague, it is well worth making the effort to find the city war cemetery.
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Prague is also known for the assassination of Hitler’s right hand man and Reichsprotektor, Reinhard Heydrich in May 1942. The assassination was carried out by members of the Czech resistance and Czech paratroopers operating under the orders of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Czech government in exile.
Reinhard Heydrich.
Operation ANTHROPOID, as it was known, was successful but led to terrible reprisals against the Czech people including the wholesale destruction of two villages and their entire populations.
There have been a number of films made of the story, the most recent being Anthropoid in 2016 starring Cillian Murphy of Peaky Blinders fame.
You can see a trailer here Anthropoid (2016) - IMDb
Reinhard Heydrich was a devoted and loyal Nazi who was number three in the German High Command and one of the main architects of the Final Solution, the extermination of all Jews in Europe.
Rising through the hierarchy from the early 1930s, Heydrich became one of the most feared men within the Nazi apparatus, closely allied to Himmler he became the head of Sicherheitsdienst (SD), until taking over control of the Gestapo. Heydrich then became the chief enforcer of Nazi terror inside Germany. He began with a crackdown on direct political opponents of the Nazis, and then widened his net over time to persecute more and more groups, including trade unionists, intellectuals, liberal priests, Seventh Day Adventists, sexual minorities, gypsies, and Jewish people.
Created by Göring in 1933, the Gestapo (Geheime Staats Polizei,) grew under Heydrich’s regime to become an unprecedented organisation of terror. Within three years of taking over, Heydrich grew an organization of some 700 into more than 7,000. Two years later, in 1939, that number rose to about 40,000. In 1936, after the Reichstag passed the Gestapo Law, which declared, “Neither the instructions nor the affairs of the Gestapo will be open to review by the administrative courts," Heydrich’s control became nearly absolute. This ultra-legal designation, along with the 1933 redefinition of Schutzhaft (or “protective custody”), a ruling that allowed the police to detain anyone without judicial review, gave Heydrich and the Gestapo unchecked powers. Initially targeting political enemies, from communists to left-wing politicians, the Gestapo expanded its definition over time of who was an enemy of the Reich.
In 1934, Heydrich helped engineer the Night of the Long Knives, a violent action that both helped Hitler consolidate power and handed over to Himmler and Heydrich complete control of Germany’s police force.
After Hitler was appointed the Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary organization that provided the muscle for Hitler’s rise to power, was quickly becoming an embarrassment. The SA’s thuggish brown shirts, regularly engaged in bloody street fights with communists and others, and were becoming a liability. Even more of a problem was the SA’s leader, Ernst Röhm. While still fiercely loyal to Hitler, Röhm’s vision for Nazi party’s future was increasingly at odds with Hitler’s. For Heydrich and Himmler, there was a more pragmatic problem with the SA. Although the two men ran the SD and the Gestapo, those organizations were officially under the domain of the SA and Röhm. To secure their independence, Himmler and Heydrich conspired with Hermann Göring to create a case against Röhm.
On June 24th, 1934, Heydrich presented a dossier of fabricated evidence to Hitler that detailed a plot in which the French government was paying Röhm 12 million marks to overthrow the Reich. Based on Heydrich’s trumped up report, Hitler authorized a surprise attack against the SA to take place on June 30th. Heydrich’s men arrived, arresting Röhm along with 85 of his senior officers, many of whom were deliberately shot dead in the attack. When the attack concluded, the SA had been dissolved, and between 150-200 people, including Röhm, had been murdered. Heydrich and Himmler were now in a strong position to run the SD and Gestapo as they saw fit.
Heydrich was then instrumental in the organisation of Kristallnacht in November 1938 when Jewish businesses, shops and homes were targeted in a night of destruction and terror, which led to 1000’s of Jews being deported to the camps. To add insult to injury, the business owners were charged by the state for the clean-up of the destruction. It was after this day, that Jews were forbidden from attending cinemas, theatres, public parks, hospitals and riding on public transport, in addition, Heydrich began the process of making Jews wear a yellow star on their clothing.
He also instigated the ‘in house’ attack on a German border radio station at Gleiwitz by Germans dressed in Polish uniforms which gave Hitler the excuse to launch his attack on Poland on 1st September 1939 and thus started WWII.
Following the collapse of France in 1940, Hitler turned his attention to Britain, but with the RAF eventually winning the Battle of Britain and retaining control of the skies, the invasion of Britain was postponed and Hitler turned his eyes eastwards towards the Soviet Union.
Initially, German forces steamrollered the Soviet defenders and as the Russians retreated, so vast swathes of Soviet territory fell into German control. Heydrich was now instrumental in the formation of four new Einsatzgruppen, death squads that followed the attacking troops murdering all male Jews between the ages of 15 and 45. The original Einsatzgruppen squads, had by now, already murdered some 60,000 Poles since September 1939, but their reign of terror was now about to accelerate.
Heydrich extended the death squads remit to include all Jews, women, children and the elderly, so that by the end of 1941, some 800,000 Soviet Jews had been killed. However, face to face large scale murder was becoming a major issue for the German soldiers, who were becoming repulsed and even suicidal over their daily actions.
This led Heydrich to instruct Walter Rauff to devise a method of mass murder which shielded the soldiers from the physical act. Rauff’s first idea was to place Jews in a sealed lorry and then direct the carbon monoxide exhaust fumes from the lorry into the rear so as to gas the victims aboard. This became the acorn that the killing camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau grew from.
In September 1941, Hitler appointed Heydrich as Reich Protector of Bohemia-Moravia. In taking on this job, Heydrich did not give up his position as the head of the German Security Police or the Reich Security Main Office; rather this new position expanded his power. Hitler had specifically chosen Heydrich to apply his experience in terrorising and controlling populations to the Czechoslovakian people. Within two months of arriving, Heydrich, with the help of Police Chief, Karl Hermann Frank, established Protectorate special courts, which sentenced 342 people to be executed. Another 1,200 Czechs were handed over to the Gestapo for imprisonment.
Heydrich’s reign of terror ended on May 27th, 1942, when two Czechoslovakian patriots, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, approached his open-topped car at a tight hairpin curve on V Holesovickach Street and opened fire. Gabcik, armed with a Sten sub-machine gun, leapt in front of the car and pulled the trigger. The gun jammed.
Heydrich ordered his driver to halt and drew his pistol. Kubis threw a bomb, which exploded near the car, and fled. Heydrich, wounded and in shock, pursued his attackers for several metres before returning to the car and collapsing.
It initially seemed the attempt to kill Heydrich had failed. But he died in Prague's Bulovka hospital eight days later, reportedly from septicaemia from the shrapnel, or possibly fragments of upholstery.
The attack itself was the final stage of Operation Anthropoid, a mission set into motion eight months earlier in London by the Czechoslovakian government in exile. After the attack, Kubiš and Gabčík, who had parachuted into Czechoslovakia in December 1941 to plan the attack, fled the scene and went into hiding. While resistance fighters were willing to sacrifice everything to take out Heydrich, the mission’s unknown cost, the reprisals the Nazis would extract, was about to be realised.
Reaction to the attack was swift and terrible. Hitler immediately ordered his Gestapo and SS “to wade through blood” to find the attackers. With the country in lock down, hundreds of Czechoslovakians were arrested and tortured as the Gestapo ramped up their manhunt to find Kubiš and Gabčík. As a gesture of vengeance, Hitler ordered 10,000 randomly selected Czechoslovakians to be executed. While cooler heads were able to talk Hitler back from his initial idea, the alternatives were no less shocking. The Nazis wanted the world to know of their anger over the death of Heydrich, who was being memorialised as a national martyr and hero in endless radio broadcasts in Germany.
On June 9th, a train with the words Attentat auf Heydrich(Assassination of Heydrich) painted on it carried over 1,000 Jews to concentration camps and extermination. The next day, the village of Lidice, which the Gestapo mistakenly identified as having harboured the assailants, was erased from the earth: all men over the age of 16 were shot dead; all the women sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp; most of the children deported to the Chełmno extermination site; and the village itself burnt and razed to the ground. On June 25th, the town of Ležáky suffered a similar fate.
Kubis and Gabcik moved from safe house to safe house across Prague before being given shelter in the crypt of St. Cyril’s and St. Methodius’ church. Here they were joined in due course by five more of the SOE paratroopers, Adolf Opalka, Josef Bublik, Jaroslav Svarc, Jan Hruby and Josef Valcik.
Bishop Gorazd, Chaplain Vladimir Petrek and priest Vaclav Cikl provided food and news for the men but as the German reprisal against the Czech population intensified, one man, also a paratrooper resistance member, Karel Curda, voluntarily turned himself in to the Gestapo in the hope that it would stop the killings. Curda gave the Gestapo all of the names of the assassins, their helpers and the families in the city who were providing safe houses. Arrests followed, and after a brutal interrogation, Vlastimil Moravec revealed the hiding place in the church crypt.
On June 18th, a large scale German offensive began against the church. As the attackers entered the church, they came under a hail of fire from three of the resistance men, Bublik, Opalka and Kubis, who were situated in the loft.
After a two-hour fire-fight, Kubis was mortally wounded by grenade fragments and Bublik and Opalka, down to their last rounds of ammunition, committed suicide. It was at this point that the Germans realised that there were more men holed up in the crypt.
They attempted to use tear gas through the small slit windows at ground level [See bullet holes in the photo below – Ed] followed by grenades. Each time the four brave patriots resisted the Germans. This resulted in men of the Czech fire brigade being summoned to the scene where they were forced to use their hoses to flood the crypt.
Eventually, the attackers broke into the crypt and the four remaining men, Gabcik, Valcik, Svarc and Hruby, decided to commit suicide where they stood by shooting themselves. Thus ended the siege at the church, although the reprisals against the Czechs continued for some time.
Today, the church of St. Cyril and St. Methodius is a functioning church, but the crypt has been turned into a small and very moving museum, which explains clearly on a number of boards the whole timeline behind Operation Anthropoid, and includes biographies of the men involved.
The actual crypt where the final acts took place is a hallowed room and you can only enter in complete silence and photography is forbidden. The crypt contains a bust of each of the seven men together with various memorials, and rather naughtily, I took an illicit snap from the doorway.
Note the bullet holes in the stone work around the small window. It was windows like this that the Germans used tear gas and water against the men holed up inside.
My naughty boy photo of the crypt.
The following day, I pre-ordered a 7.30am taxi to take me from the hotel to the actual site of the assassination attack which is about 3 miles north of the old town centre. Today the site has changed and the tight hairpin bend is now much smoother and has become a junction for a dual carriageway towards the city. My driver very kindly pulled from the rush hour traffic into a bus stop so that I could take the pictures below of the attack site and of the Czech memorial that stands on the side of the road. I was then back at the hotel for breakfast to continue my day with my wife and friends as an ordinary tourist!
The assassination site today.
The roadside memorial.
Was the assassination worth it? Two substantial communities, Lidice and Lezaky were completely erased from the face of the earth. The Bishop and his priests at the church were all executed and some 262 men and women associated with the paratroopers and the families who sheltered them were executed in Mauthausen camp on 24th October 1942. As the arrests continued across the city, further large scale executions took place on 26th January and 3rd February 1943.
For the Czechoslovakian government in exile, the atrocities and executions gave them sufficient ammunition so as to ensure that the United Kingdom and France de-recognised Chamberlain’s cowardly 1938 Munich Agreement, which ceded Czechoslovakia to the Germans, the UK in August, and France in September 1942, thus, Operation Anthropoid had accomplished its task and set the path again for an indpendent Czechoslovakia. [Until the Soviets stepped in - Ed]
Heydrich, Kubis and Gabcik.
Heydrich's car after the attack.
The bomb damage is clear to see. Heydrich's body was punctured with shards of metal and cloth, which caused the sepsis that eventually killed him.
The Czech fire brigade being forced to flood the crypt.
All men and boys at Lidice were executed - June 1942.
[I am indebted to various web sites and the museum guide book that I brought home, in the construction of the Heydrich article – Ed]
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Finally, we return to Chris at Colour by CJS, and his wonderful work in bringing the men and women of the Great War to life for us.
I have chosen this week;
Lieutenant the Honourable Felix Charles Hugert Hanbury-Tracy.
Felix was born in London in 1882. His father was Charles Hanbury-Tracy, the 4th Baron Sudeley. He was one of nine children.
Felix was educated at Ascham St. Vincent's School in Eastbourne and then Harrow before going on to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, where he was commissioned in 1903 into the Scots Guards, but resigned his commission after four years to work as a land agent.
Felix married Madeleine Llewellen Palmer in 1908. The couple lived very comfortably in Montague Square, London where they produced two sons.
On the outbreak of war in August 1914, Felix re-joined his Regiment and served with the 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards.
The battalion sailed for Belgium on 6th October 1914 where he served until he was seriously wounded in an attack at Fromelles on 18th December 1914. The Battalion war diary entry for that day states that he had died of wounds but his fate was not confirmed until the Christmas Truce, when German officers told their British counterparts that he had been brought into their trenches seriously wounded and had died on 19th December.
Felix was buried in the German Cemetery at Fromelles, but after the war either his body was not found or it couldn’t be identified.
Today he has no known grave and is commemorated on the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing.
Felix Hanbury-Tracy was 32 years old.
Postscript
His brother Algernon was killed in action in 1915 and Felix’s son Michael died of wounds sustained at Dunkirk in 1940.
In Memoriam the Lincolnshire Regiment 14th December.
Remarkably, not a single man of the Lincolnshire Regiment or the Lincolnshire Yeomanry, died on 14th December in any year of the war.
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.
After the excellent Show and Tell event last Monday, which saw a best attendance for five years, I hope to see many of you tomorrow at the Battle of Jutland talk.
Here are a couple of snaps from last Monday’s Show and Tell.
Until next week,
All best wishes
Jonathan
© Jonathan D’Hooghe
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