No. 3 Troop in numbers

The strength of No. 3 Troop of No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando – which itself comprised around 1,000 soldiers – totalled 87 men, as previously mentioned. Especially after the challenging battles in Normandy in the summer of 1944, losses were replaced, so that in the course of the war around 141 soldiers – the exact numbers can probably not be determined – served with it. 28 of them were Austrians – based on the evaluation of the available sources and the definition of Ernest Wilder Spaulding mentioned above, according to which only those people were considered Austrians prior to 1918 who oriented themselves towards the German language and culture and regarded Vienna or other German cultural centres of the Monarchy as their spiritual and emotional focal points, regardless of their place of birth. These 28 men can be divided into four groups: (1) 14 soldiers who completed more or less the entire commando training and then also saw combat; (2) six soldiers who only completed training or worked in administration but did not see combat; (3) five soldiers who joined the troop later and therefore received no or only condensed training in Britain but were nevertheless sent into combat; (4) three soldiers who were recruited directly in the Mediterranean theatre of war for deployment in Italy and also did not receive any training in the British Isles. Among the latter – apart from the Viennese Walter Burnett alias Walter Inländer and Anthony Anderson alias Antal Török, who was born in Budapest but grew up in the town of Oberwart – was an Austrian born on 16 May 1915 with the nome de guerre “W. Martin“. He is the only soldier in No. 3 Troop of Austrian origin whose birth name and thus exact identity could not be determined (so far) due to the lack of his service record – it may also be the case that he was not a refugee at all but a Wehrmacht soldier captured in North Africa who had been accepted into the Pioneer Corps in the spring of 1943 due to his abilities.

In addition to the above-mentioned group of 28 soldiers, there are a further nine Austrians who, according to comrades, relatives and acquaintances, also served in No. 3 Troop or had at least some connection with it, for example through joint training. However, there is no definitive proof of their affiliation with the unit, as their service records, if they have already been transferred to the National Archives by the Ministry of Defence, are still classified. They include the aforementioned Otto Posamentier as well as Frederick Fletcher alias Friedrich Fleischer from Vienna, who was killed in action with No. 6 Commando in Normandy on 6 June 1944 and whose two sisters served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s section of the British Army – the fact that he obviously had the East Surrey Regiment or the Worchester Regiment as a camouflage unit, unlike all the others, probably speaks against his affiliation with No. 3 Troop. However, in four cases – Otto Posamentier, George Fairbanks (Ernst Kurzweil), Peter Leigh-Bell (Hans Liebel) and Kenneth Reynolds (Kalmann Regenbogen) – commando service numbers were issued, which makes it conceivable that they were with the troop for at least a short period of time. Only for George Bower (Georg Bauer) and the former Buchenwald inmate Frederick Spencer (Fritz Pfeffer) can no further indications of possible commando activity be found, apart from the mention in Peter Leighton-Langer’s book. In the case of Otto Karminski, who was also associated with the troop, it is likely that he may only have trained with them or may have been considered for admission; Karminski, who only went by the nickname “Putzi” instead of an English name, ended up in the SOE in any case.

There is also a list from August 1944 in the War Office files with 15 names of soldiers stationed in a prisoner-of-war camp at that time. They obviously had experience as ski instructors and were considered as reinforcements for No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando, whether merely as training personnel or as actual commandos in view of the expected missions in the mountainous terrain of the German Reich and northern Italy is yet unclear – No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando was possibly toying with the idea of setting up a small ski task force, in which case they would already have had excellent trainers in Geoff Broadman and Ian Harris. Among the 15 men were the Viennese Peter Pearce alias Peter Pirquet, who was accepted into the unit in September 1944, and six other Austrians who obviously did not succeed. Finally, two Austrians should be mentioned who served in No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando but not in No. 3 Troop: Jean Gauthier alias Otto Zivohlava, who initially had fled to Paris after the German annexation of Austria and had joined the Foreign Legion, fought with the French, Kenneth Clarke – for whatever reason, the available sources are silent on this – fought with the Dutch, as mentioned above.

The personal data obtained also allows a series of further analyses. Three quarters of the 28 Austrians who actually served in the troop were born in Vienna. Apart from W. Martin, whose place of birth is unknown, the only exceptions are Garvin (Bucharest), Fuller (Czernowitz), Kirby (Bohorodczany), Laddy (Prague), Anderson (Budapest) and Hamilton (Sambir), but they too moved to Vienna sooner or later for professional or private reasons.

The answer to the question regarding the ratio between Jewish and non-Jewish soldiers is as one-sided as the geographical one. Of the 28 soldiers, at least 20 and thus over 70 per cent were Jewish. The sources do not provide any clear information on a further six men, but it can be assumed that some of them were also Jewish, meaning that the proportion of Jewish soldiers was even higher. Only the above-mentioned Peter Pearce was definitely non-Jewish, although he only joined the troop at a later stage, as well as (very probably) George Bryan Streets alias Georg Alexander Barth, who was killed in a road accident on 29 June 1944 during officer training in Great Britain. Streets was thus one of a total of six – five of them in action – “Austrian” casualties that the troop suffered – not counting Frederick Fletcher, who was serving with No. 6 Commando, as mentioned above. As noted by Hilton-Jones after the war’s end, a total of 16 members of No. 3 Troop were killed and 22 were wounded, some of them several times – only the serious cases are recorded in detail in the files, which led to retirement from the troop, as in the case of Streeten or Terry. If these figures are correct, then the casualty rate of dead and wounded as well as those taken prisoner totalled just under 50 per cent and was far higher than in conventional infantry units of the British Army.

The age structure ranged from 1911 to 1924, with the exception of Ernest Langley and Michael Kirby, who were born in 1903 but, as mentioned, worked for the troop in an administrative capacity. This is not surprising, as youthful fitness and stamina were indispensable for the work of the troop. In this respect, it does not seem strange that Francis Sutton (Franz Schulhof), born in 1905, did not make it into the unit despite his obvious enthusiasm – he had already volunteered unsuccessfully for the British Army in 1938 and 1939 and, after volunteering for Special Services again, completed parachute and commando training at a Special Training School of the SOE from 1943 onwards before returning to the Pioneer Corps. Of the ski instructors mentioned above, only Peter Pirquet, born in 1912 and thus one of the two youngest from this group, was accepted into No. 3 Troop – for the rest of those born between 1901 and 1908, as well as for William Kennedy (Wolfgang Kals) from Kitzbühel, also born in 1912, there is no evidence of any activity with or for the troop in the available sources such as the service records. For the oldest member of the group, Otto Mandel, born in 1901, age was not the only factor. When Mandel had joined the Pioneer Corps, he had already declared that he did not want to serve overseas for fear of being captured and the resulting consequences for his relatives who had stayed behind in Vienna and Slovakia, and was therefore not eligible for service with No. 3 Troop anyway. Unless Mandel later changed his mind, this possibly suggests that this group of ski instructors – which included Franz Beh, John Bloom alias Hans Blum, and Wilhelm Vollbracht in addition to those already mentioned – were in fact only considered as training personnel and that Pirquet applied to join the troop as a result. What is interesting in this context, however, is that the men, who had previously served in the Pioneer Corps, may not have made it into the commandos but then joined the Intelligence Corps, where they were used as interrogators of prisoners of war – an obvious parallel to the great ally on the other side of the Atlantic.