SS Charlemagne: The 33rd Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS

Selected candidates then took an examination at the end of six months. Elimination of unsuitable candidates took place particularly during the second term, and the 200 that had started in December were reduced to 50 by the end of March. ‘Returns to unit’ took place every fortnight, those concerned retaining their ranks and even being eligible for promotion to higher noncommissioned rank.

Conditions at the school were tough, to say the least. Few armies would have subjected their officer-cadets to such rough conditions. There was no heating in the abandoned Czech village, so one was entitled to flap one’s arms once every half hour to warm up. For lack of hot water, the cadets shaved themselves with their morning coffee. They were always hungry, and in order to study at night in their rooms, they had to fashion candles out of boot polish.

Vigour, authority and responsibility were the order of the day. The instructors repeated: ‘You can leave when you want; the door is open. We are not holding back anybody!’ And it was true. ‘We always had the choice,’ wrote one of the candidates, ‘but they were even more demanding once we had decided to continue.’

The candidates were woken up for exercises up to four times a night, and weapon handling took place in temperatures of -15 and -20 °C. But in this selection of an elite, the instructors never had to resort to bullying. Having made an assessment of the fighting on all the fronts, they said: ‘Now it is clear that the war is technically lost, but we continue to be confident. Those who want to go can leave!’

The course finished at the end of March 1945. Some twenty to thirty Frenchmen were classified for promotion to second-lieutenant, but continued to wear the rank badges of officer-cadets, presumably remaining under probation. However, they were unable to rejoin the Division immediately and were first distributed among various units of the Regiment remaining behind, bringing them fresh blood. For three weeks their task was to bolster up the spirits of the young grenadiers demoralised by the fighting in Pomerania. They succeeded marvellously and without them the fighting in Berlin, where many of them were later to fall, would not have been possible.

The school was finally disbanded on 9 April and, apart from a small number sent to the depot at Wildflecken, the students returned to the units in Mecklenburg, where they arrived on 14th.

Meanwhile, those detailed for the specialist tasks within the division were dispersed to courses run at Josefstadt for gunners, Lissa for infantry gunners, Brunschau for engineers, Janowitz-Beneschau for anti-tank and self-propelled gun crews, Sterzing (Viptino) for signallers, Göttingen for mounted troops, Stettin for medical-aid men, Berlin for vehicle mechanics, Oranienburg for interpreters and Breslau for clerks. The last course at Breslau for company-quartermaster-sergeants was unfortunate, as the city was cut off by the Soviets while they were still undergoing their training and they were obliged to take part in the defence.

The Brigade’s only fully trained unit was the flak battery, which had been transferred intact from the SS-French Storm Brigade and was sent off on 3 January 1945 to deploy in defence of the little town of Fulda, a frequent target for Anglo-American air raids. This unit of about 150 men had been designated the Storm Brigade’s Flak Battery and was placed under the command of Captain Maudhuit, a veteran of the First World War, at Neweklau in Czechoslovakia. It contained several other former French Army officers in the current rank of sergeant-major, including Croisille, Crespin, Roy, the Count Foulques de Larentie and the Marquis de Tolosan, a former air attaché in Brussels.

Fayard, an officer-cadet fresh from the Bad Tölz SS School, was then attached to Captain Maudhuit and took over the training. Then Maudhuit was transferred and Sergeant-Major Guignot, a former captain in the Foreign Legion, took over the battery.

However, there were no proper facilities at Neweklau for training the battery, so on 25 April 1944, the unit entrained for Munich, where it was accommodated in the ultra-modern barracks of the SS-Das Reich Panzer Division. Three days later it received its official title as the SS-Französische Flak-Batterie, the only French unit to bear the title of SS, as opposed to Waffen.

Paradoxically, the 3rd Company that provided the Flak nucleus was a kind of disciplinary unit containing the hotheads whose behaviour while on leave in France had led to complaints to the German Military Administration.

At Munich it conducted its training alongside German troops, while the three platoon commanders, Fayard, who was to replace Guignot in the August, Ouvre and Mary attended a platoon commanders’ course elsewhere. The battery also took an active and successful part in the defence of the city and their own barracks against the Anglo-American bombers.