Paul Martelli - On the Devils Tail: In Combat with the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front 1945, and with the French in Indochina 1951-54

This is the riveting true story of Paul Martelli, a fifteen-year-old German-Italian, who fought in Pomerania, on the Eastern Front, in 1945 as a member of the 33.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS Charlemagne and, later, as a soldier with French forces during three years (1951-1954) in the Tonkin area, Vietnam.

Paul recounts his time at the Sennheim military training base, where he was introduced to the rigorous discipline of body and mind: he then goes back to 1940, during the German invasion of France, when he was still a boy in Lorraine, hinting at his motivations for enlisting with the Waffen SS . He reveals his and many young soldiers exciting and often humorous escapades at Greifenberg, his first love with a German girl helping refugees, his experiences and feelings during the combats at Krlin, during the strenuous defense of Kolberg, while regrouping at Neustrelitz and at the German defeat. With a companion he ends up at a castle delivering a group of women camp prisoners to a Russian officer, living in disguise among enemy soldiers until he escapes and surrender to the Americans.

After his sentence, imprisonment, evasions and military service in Morocco, Paul is sent to fight in defense of bases north of Hanoi, Vietnam. He survives three years of fierce combats, assaults, ambushes, night patrols, fatal traps and mortal risks but, deep down, he compares his service with the Waffen SS during the last year of war with the inefficiency of the French Expeditionary Force in the Far East and comes out deeply frustrated. At almost 26, he has fought and lost in two wars, both against the communists, be they Soviet or Viet Minh. Unemployed, and with the ideals of a Nouvelle Europe in pieces, he briefly joins the French Foreign Legion, his last hope, but in the end choses another path.

This is a unique memoir, packed with incident and recounting the story of one individual caught up in a series of life-changing events.

Vittorino dal Cengio wrote books about climbing in the Dolomites that were published during the 1980s. He also wrote articles and short stories for a magazine and for Italian newspapers in Canada. After an interlude, in 2008 he resumed writing books, this time about social history, authoring three in recent years. He moved to Canada in 1977 in the spirit of adventure after his military service with the Italian Alpine Corps. He holds various technical diplomas from Italy and a BA (joint major in French, History, Political Sciences) from Simon Fraser University.

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Published by Helion & Company 2015
Designed and typeset by Bookcraft Ltd, Stroud, Gloucestershire
Cover designed by Paul Hewitt, Battlefield Design (www.battlefield-design.co.uk)
Printed by Lightning Source Limited, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire

Text Vittorino del Cengio 2014
Images and hand-drawn map Paul Martelli 2014
Other maps Helion & Company Ltd 2015

ISBN: 978-1-909982-09-3
Digital ISBN: 978-1-910777-52-7

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Contents

List of Photographs

List of Maps

Introductory Notes

The Origins of the Waffen SS

I nitially, the Schutzstaffel ( SS ) was a small, special force of paramilitaries with the mission of protecting Nazi Party chiefs. It consisted of bodyguards assigned to major cities such as Munich where they maintained order during political gatherings but they also carried out more menial chores such as billposting. By the time Hitler took power in early 1933, the membership of the SS had risen to around 50,000. These were men bound by oath to the Fhrer and organized on military lines under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler. The SS were regarded as protectors of Hitlers dream of a Nordic brotherhood of peoples with pure blood. They performed police duties, served as guards at concentration camps and took part in the by then ubiquitous military parades. In September 1939, they were ready to fight beside the Wehrmacht during the invasion of Poland and later again in Holland, Belgium and in France. In March 1940, those members of the SS who took part in combat missions were designated Waffen SS and fully equipped as military units. At that time membership of the Waffen SS was voluntary and restricted to those individuals who met strict criteria of height, health and racial origin and for the most part, in the early stages of the Second World War, these were German nationals, Reichsdeutsche with Nordic physical characteristics. At the beginning of 1945, the Waffen SS divisions were in dire need of reinforcements but the reserve of Aryan manpower from all over Europe had already been sacrificed. Consequently, the ethos upon which the selection of Waffen SS soldiers had been made was relaxed to include those of virtually any ethnic origin who were willing to fight against Bolshevism and for the establishment of a New Europe. Towards the end of the Second World War, the ranks of the Waffen SS included more than sixty percent of foreigners many of whom did not match the Nazis Aryan ideal and amongst these were the Frenchmen who enlisted in the 33.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der Waffen SS Charlemagne .

Division Charlemagne

In September 1944, the Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS Charlemagne was formed from the remnants of other units including Sturmbrigade Frankreich veterans (whose ranks were decimated during combat in Galicia and in the Carpathians), L.V.F. legionnaires (French Legion Volunteers), French militiamen and nationals who were members of the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe and men from other, minor units. Then, in February 1945, the brigade was upgraded to divisional strength and renamed 33.Waffen-Grenadier-Division Charlemagne ( franzsische Nr. 1 ). The command of this new Division Charlemagne was entrusted to General Edgard Puaud, a former colonial officer from the Foreign Legion and veteran of action in Tonkin, Morocco and Syria, but he was appointed only at Oberfhre r level in the Waffen SS hierarchy. Transforming this disparate group of men into a coherent and homogeneous Waffen SS Division was a task assigned to General Brigadefhrer Gustav Krukenberg who insisted that Division Charlemagne was to serve on the Eastern Front to circumvent the possibility of French soldiers being asked to fight against their fellow countrymen on the Western Front.

From the Greifenberg military depot and the Wildflecken training camp, the soldiers of Division Charlemagne were sent to Pomerania to help stem the Russian advance. Without consistent support, and deprived of heavy armament and adequate supply of materiel, Charlemagnes first clash with the overwhelming Russian forces was a disaster. More than 1,000 soldiers were reported missing and 500 left dead on the battlefield before the division had the opportunity to regroup. Then, in the first days of March 1945, a regiment of Charlemagne was surrounded and annihilated near Belgard. Other units manage to escape but with grave losses. A few hundred survivors belonging to a Bataillon de Marche , having fought furiously at Krlin and at Kolberg, succeeded in reaching Swinemnde by sea where they re-joined the remnants of their once 7000-man-strong division. Many of these survivors met their death in Berlin during a strenuous, last-stand defense of Hitlers bunker while a few others perhaps only sixty or so were able to escape. Of these, many fell into the hands of the Western Allies only to be condemned to stand in front of a firing squad. Paul Martelli is therefore one of the very few soldiers of the 33.Waffen-Grenadier-Division Charlemagne to have survived both the Second World War and its aftermath.