The situation was critical, for the enemy, attacking from the southeast, had almost surrounded Neustrelitz from the north and Neubrandenburg had already fallen. With foresight, the Construction Battalion had been sent two days previously to the Malchin area and beat a retreat towards Teterow-Gustrow, while the motor transport withdrew rapidly towards Waren and Malchow.
Since the previous day, the Army Group had been under the command of Luftwaffe-Colonel-General Kurt Student, with General Kurt von Tippelskirch reluctantly standing in temporarily for him.
All the Army Group was in full retreat and for three days of forced marching, the isolated elements of the Charlemage, harassed by Allied aircraft, hampered by columns of refugees and mixed up in a flood of diverse elements of the 3rd Panzer, 12th and 21st Armies, made their way across Mecklenburg at increasing speed to escape the constant threat of encirclement by the Russians.
On the evening of 1 May, the exhausted units reached the line Wismar–Schwerin, but the rapid advance of the 2nd British Army’s Vlllth Corps had already cut off the route to Denmark, the only way out. The Mecklenburg pocket was sealed with the remains of the Division inside.
The capture of the Baltic port of Wismar by the British 6th Airborne Division and Soviet troops put paid to Major Cance’s plans for saving the remains of the Charlemagne. Cance, who had been wounded in the foot in the Carpathians in 1944 and subsequently served as director of the SS Franco-Wallonian Officers’ School at Kienschlag (Neweklau) and then at SS Main Office in Berlin, had made plans for the evacuation of the retreating French troops to Sweden by sea, for which he had chartered some ships in Wismar harbour. When the French failed to arrive in time, some Wehrmacht elements appropriated the chartered vessels.
At 0900 hours on 2 May, Major Boudet-Gheusi assembled the fifty men accompanying him in a village near Bad Kleinen and permitted them to either disguise themselves as civilian labourers or to surrender themselves to the British with him. The Germans, with SS-Second-Lieutenant Bender in charge, were ordered to try and rejoin a German unit that was still fighting.
At 1500 hours, Major Boudet-Gheusi, Lieutenants Bénétoux and Métais, Second-Lieutenant Radici, one NCO and three men surrendered to an English unit occupying the railway station at Bublitz. When Major Boudet-Gheusi presented himself to an English officer as ‘commander of the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism’ he was immediately made to climb on a tank with Second-Lieutenant Radici to be taken to Wismar for handing over to the Russians, but the two officers managed to escape when night fell and rejoined the other prisoners of war unnoticed.
SS-Captain Kroepsch’s 58th Battalion, which had lost its 6th Company to the Berlin contingent, conducted a delaying action for two days with its remaining three companies deployed as follows:
5th Company: Holding the anti-tank barrier south of the village of Fürstensee on the Berlin road, thus facing south with the support of one of our last 150mm heavy infantry guns
7th Company: Deployed in advance positions the first day, it was deployed on the left of the 5th Company on the second day
8th Company: Deployed facing east astride the road from Fürstensee to Wokuhl. Destroyed two or three tanks during the final fighting.
A marsh and then a line of small lakes extended east–west to the west of the Neustrelitz–Fürstensee–Berlin road in line with the barriers manned by the battalion. The Berlin–Neustrelitz railway passed between the marsh and the lakes and was mined with big spherical naval mines. Further west was the line of retreat assigned to the battalion. Behind these positions, but in front of Fürstensee and alongside the road, was a very important anti-aircraft ammunition depot.
On 28 April the first Soviet elements advanced to contact. Towards 2100 hours the ammunition depot suddenly blew up without warning, wiping out a column of 2–3,000 inmates of Oranienburg Concentration Camp with their guards.
The Russians attacked on the 29th, and eventually the remains of the battalion withdrew to the northwest as pre-ordered.
Meanwhile, Captain Roy’s Construction Battalion suffered losses from air attack as it retreated. It soon found itself halfway between American and Soviet spearheads about 20km away. American tanks caused them further deaths just as the battalion was dispersing, and another group was surprised by a Russian vanguard, again sustaining unforeseen losses.
The remains of the 5th Company, about sixty men, reached the southern end of Schwerin town, which is bordered to the east by Schwerinsee Lake, from which a canal runs to the south. The town was already occupied by the Americans holding the western edge of the lake, while Soviet troops bordered the east side of the canal. With their backs to the canal, the company used up the last of its cartridges against the Soviets, while its left flank made contact with the Americans, to whom they then surrendered.
As a result of the Soviet advance in Pomerania, the Charlemagne’s Training and Replacement Battalion under SS-Lieutenant-Colonel Hersche had moved from Greifenberg to Wildflecken, where other elements of the Division congregated, amounting to a force of 1,200 men. Hersche organised them into a March Battalion under SS-Major Katzian of 3 combat companies, a 400-strong Special Battalion under SS-Major von Lölhöffel consisting of 2 construction companies and a penal company, and a transport unit and workshop company under Lieutenant Maudhuit.
On 18 March, Reichsjührer-SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the March Battalion to rejoin the Division. The battalion set off on foot on the night of 30/31 March for Neustrelitz with American forces less than 20km away. Marching day and night and keeping away from the main roads subjected to air attack, the battalion barely managed to keep ahead of the American advance. By 13 April the column was beginning to disintegrate and men were deserting when SS-Lieutenant-General Berger from the Main Security Office addressed the troops and announced that they were not going to Mecklenburg but to Bavaria, to the ‘Mountain Redoubt’ where the Reich would conduct a last-ditch stand. The last 600 men were taken by train to Regensburg on the Danube, where they split into 2 with some of the men being attached to the 38th SS-Grenadier Division Nibelungen.
The remainder continued marching south. On the 18th they fought a delaying action near Wartenberg, but were swept aside. Eleven days later, now re-equipped, they fought another action in defence of a bridge over the Amper River, and on the next day, the 30th, a further action in defence of a bridge over the Isar. The unit then disintegrated, the men going their separate ways. It was some of these men that were taken prisoner by the Americans near Bad Reichenhalle, only to be handed over to General Leclerk’s 2nd Armoured Division when the Americans moved on.
The subsequent fate of survivors of the Charlemagne varied considerably. A few escaped to South America and eventually died under circumstances that appear to have been engineered by French Deuxième Bureau agents. A few escaped Soviet or Allied captivity, while others eventually returned to France only to be imprisoned or executed after trial.
Plates