WW2 Network

Major Jack Alpe , who has died aged 87, earned a Military Cross as an ammunition officer in a wartime career which took him from the North African desert to Hitler’s bunker in Berlin.

In 1944 Alpe found himself at the heart of the Battle of Normandy in command of 20 lorries carrying 25lb shells to advance gun positions at the village of Demouville, outside Caen.

As his unit was being directed by field telephone and dispatch riders toward their gunners, it was spotted from a tower by the enemy, who unleashed a rain of 88mm fire at Alpe’s soft-topped vehicles. Casualties mounted around him, and Alpe was wounded in the head by shell splinters as he was going to the aid of one of his sergeants.

After his men had dressed his wounds, Alpe insisted on moving his forward ammunition point to avoid further loss of life and equipment. Only then did he consent to going to a dressing station; and, after he had been taken to hospital, he quickly discharged himself in order to return to his unit.

The citation for Alpe’s immediate MC declared that "his behaviour was an excellent example to his men, who were considerably shaken, and through his coolness and courage the ammuniton point continued to function".

Jack Gerald Alpe was born on July 25 1920, the son of the founder of Alpe & Saunders, a firm of Rolls-Royce coachbuilders in London; hearses were a speciality. After being educated at St Paul’s, where he distinguished himself as a boxer and on the rugby field, Jack joined the Territorial Army and arrived at Suez as a captain in the Royal Army Service Corps.

In his first taste of action Alpe transported troops of the 4th Indian Division in the advance on Tobruk and then escorted a convoy of Italian prisoners to Alexandria.

When he was ordered to cordon off some unexploded Italian thermos anti-personnel bombs, he decided that it would be easier to fire on them with a .303. He was wounded by the shrapnel from the resulting explosion.

The arrival of Rommel with the Afrika Korps in late 1941 brought an end to the Allies’ run of good fortune, sending the Eighth Army into retreat for 1,000 miles under constant fire from Stuka dive-bombers.

During these attacks Alpe sometimes managed to slip under his Jeep, but ever afterwards he felt uneasy when he considered that this had prohibited him from rescuing those of his drivers who had been injured and immobilised in their vehicles before the ammunition they were carrying exploded.

As the Eighth Army regained control at Alamein, Alpe started to make a photographic record. His pictures showed abandoned Italian trucks being looted, Arab horsemen racing in the desert, and Vivien Leigh performing in a Roman amphitheatre.

From his truck he also photographed the entry into Salerno under enemy fire and then the slow move up the length of Italy.

After being sent home to England, he was next to see action in the Normandy campaign.

Later, on crossing the Rhine, Alpe was again injured, when his Jeep overturned, but he was back with his men when they were stationed in a large country house, which turned out to have been serving as a brothel for senior German officers. The girls were still in residence, posing a problem under the Army Council rules against fraternisation; Alpe endeavoured to solve this by placing a visitors’ book in the entrance hall.

Following the German surrender Alpe was one of the first British officers to enter the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Although the Russians had removed Hitler’s remains, Alpe could see the ashes at the site where his body was said to have been burned.

Since the Russians present showed no interest in what he did, Alpe removed a dinner party invitation from the Führer (dress code: tailcoat or uniform) and took a photograph of a vast chandelier in the ruins.

On being demobbed he married Lorraine Owen, with whom he was to have two daughters and a son. He worked for the family firm in Marylebone High Street before starting his own firm selling Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars.

Like many veterans, Jack Alpe disliked discussing his war service. But he co-operated with his son Jeremy in producing My War, a slim, handsome volume of recollections and pictures; alas, the finished product was not ready by the time of his death on July 10.

HOUVIG, Denmark (AFP) — With a tight grip on his flashlight, Tommy Cassoe looks like a Danish Indiana Jones as he crawls out of a bunker buried under the sand, one of 7,000 the Nazis built along Denmark’s western shores to fend off an allied invasion.

"Mission accomplished. The bunker is empty," Cassoe exclaims, showing off his bounty on the Krylen beach to a crowd of onlookers: rusty cans, a plastic vial containing medicine in case of a mustard gas attack, and electrical cables.

This bunker and three others, entombed under the sand dunes of Houvig since 1945, were uncovered a few months ago in a violent storm, when giant waves swept away the sand, exposing glimpses of the cement and iron structures.

The discovery was "a sensation" for history buffs like Cassoe and archaeologists.

"What’s so fantastic is that we found them completely furnished with beds, chairs, tables, communication systems and the personal effects of the soldiers who lived inside," says Jens Andersen, the curator of the Hanstholm museum that specialises in Nazi fortifications.

The Nazis built some 8,000 bunkers in Denmark, 7,000 of them on the western coast. They were "emptied by the Danes of their contents after World War II to salvage the scrap iron and electrical devices that were needed."

The discovery in May of the four fully-furnished bunkers, untouched after 63 years under the sand, is considered "unique in Europe," according to Bent Anthonisen, a Danish expert on European bunkers.

They were located by two nine-year-old boys after they spotted a bucket in front of the entrance to one of the bunkers.

Their discovery was reported by a local newspaper, drawing the attention of Cassoe, an electrician who has been fascinated by the existence of the thousands of bunkers since childhood.

He rushed immediately to the scene, and was the first to enter the still-furnished bunkers.

"It was like entering the heart of a pyramid with mummies all around. I dug a tunnel through the sand that was blocking the entrance to the bunkers and what I saw blew me away: it was as if the German soldiers had left only yesterday," he said.

Experts and archaeologists also hastened to the scene, and, working together with Cassoe, emptied the structures within a few days of boots, undergarments, socks, military stripes, mustard and aquavit bottles, books, inkpots, stamps featuring Hitler, medicines, soda bottles, keys, hammers and other objects.

"It was a race against the clock because of the risk of looters. We lied to keep them at bay, saying that there was only one furnished bunker and that it was guarded around the clock, which wasn’t true. But even so there were two attempted break-ins," Anthonisen says.

Due to the intense media coverage, the long Krylen beach peppered with bunkers has become the big attraction this summer, drawing thousands of tourists from Denmark and neighbouring Germany for guided tours.

Anthonisen leads a group on a tour of one of the bunkers. Nine soldiers and their commander lived in the cramped, 20-square-meter (215-square-foot) space for five years.

"It was surprising to see the soldiers’ living conditions in the bunkers," says Ute Eichorst, a German tourist surrounded by her children and grandchildren.

The bunkers have sparked strong reactions among tourists and the local media.

"In a way, this discovery can be compared to Tutankhamun’s tomb almost a century ago. It has to be preserved, and to blow up the bunkers as some have suggested would be like denying that World War II ever existed," says Ole Becher, a Dane whose grandfather was part of the resistence and who was denounced to the Gestapo toward the end of the war.

Local resident Mogens Kock Hansen disagrees, writing in the local newspaper that "everything should be blown up". He’s "disgusted that people want to attract tourists to this kind of garbage."

The head of the Ringkoebing-Skjern museum, Kim Clausen, said that while the find "was not from the bronze age, what has been found is incredibly authentic and tells us a lot about how they lived in these bunkers."

All of the objects from the shelters have been taken to the conservation centre at Oelgod museum, some 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the beach, to be examined.

The centre’s German curator Gert Nebrich judged the find "very interesting because it is so rare."

"We don’t expect contemporary objects like these to be so well preserved. Maybe it’s because they were kept for 60 years in the cold and dark like in a big vacuum," he says, carefully showing four stamps featuring Hitler’s image and the German eagle.

They were used by soldiers to "send Christmas presents to their families in 1944," which consisted mostly of packets of Danish butter, Anthonisen says.

"World War II and its memories will not just go away. And discoveries like these breathe new life into the story and the fascination that still surrounds this war," the local newspaper, Dagbladet Ringkoebing-Skjern, wrote in an editorial recently.

That is why the bunkers need to be preserved, it said, adding: "They are part of our common European history."

A BURGEONING international market for second world war memorabilia is putting strain on the numerous small museums that commemorate the 1944 D-Day landings, which are increasingly under the eye of unscrupulous collectors, French police say.

Two recent thefts have highlighted poor security at the more than 25 collections - mainly in private hands - which draw thousands of summer visitors along the Normandy coast. In one incident, the booty included a rare German "Enigma" encoding machine which investigators suspect was stolen to order.

In the other, scores of items - including several weapons - were replaced by fakes and then resold to dealers.
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"In recent years there has been a huge increase in demand for anything from the second world war - guns, uniforms, buckles, helmets," said Michel Brissart, who runs the Omaha D-Day museum at Vierville-sur Mer.

"It all ends up going abroad: the US, the Emirates, Russia, Australia. Here in France we are too poor to keep it."

It was Brissart’s museum - overlooking the scene of the US landings on Omaha beach - that two assailants targeted in March this year, overpowering the receptionist when she opened for business. The thieves took some 30 articles, including daggers, uniform caps and firearms - as well as the Enigma machine valued at £120,000.

"Practically everything they took was German, because sadly German memorabilia commands a much higher price than Allied stuff," said Brissart. After reporting the incident to police, Brissart alerted contacts in the world of collectors and two weeks later he was telephoned by a dealer in Paris.

"He said he’d been approached by two men with a list of items for sale, including photographs. It was ours, all right." Police staked out the dealer’s premises and two men - aged 19 and 20 - were arrested. The Enigma has been returned to Vierville with most of the other goods. Six items are still missing.

"They said they’d visited my museum and had the idea there and then of carrying out the robbery. But it’s nonsense. They were acting on instructions," said Brissart. Two weeks ago it was the turn of the Musée de la Résistance in the Brittany village of Saint-Marcel to find itself victim of the mania for D-Day collectables. It commemorates the exploits of the French maquisards who linked up with the Allies after the landings.

"It was some regular visitors who’d been coming to the museum for years who saw that something was wrong and raised the alarm," said village mayor Henri Briand. "We locals were too close to the place to pay attention to what was in the showcases." What was wrong was that gradually - over several years - uniforms, weapons and other pieces of military equipment had been removed and replaced with convincing replicas.

"The culprit was an employee of the museum and is under investigation. Police are questioning the owner of a Normandy antiques shop, where several of the original items were found.

"It made good business sense, because, for example, an original American Garand rifle can sell for 800, while a good facsimile will cost just 180," said a police official close to the investigation. "A real German forage cap can sell for 600, while a replica will get about 100."

It is many years since relics of the campaign turned up in the fields and hedgerows of the Normandy bocage, or washed up after storms at sea.

"Today the pressure is on because there’s so little on the market. The only new items come from house sales," said Frederick Fourqumen, owner of the Dead Man’s Corner museum at Saint-Come-du-Mont near Utah beach .

"An old man will die and the children come up from Paris to sell off the house. They’ll clear out the attic and discover a ration kit or a piece of uniform or even a gun. The dead man will have picked it up as a youngster after the fighting was over, and then it lay forgotten all these years. I got hold of a parachute that way recently," he said.

Fourqumen has had his own difficulties after customs inspectors raided Dead Man’s Corner last month on a tip-off. They confiscated 15 second world war firearms as well as explosives and bullets, which they said contravened regulations as they were still in working order. The museum is demanding their return - they include an extremely rare German FG-42 paratrooper’s automatic rifle valued at £50,000.