Grisly tale of revenge (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Grisly tale of revenge

4:10pm Thursday 10th July 2008

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Prospective buyers of homes at the former Bureau West site in Horton Road, Devizes, may well have qualms about the area's grim history.

Given the crisis in the housing market at the moment, it will probably be some time before 172 homes are built, but the site's inhabitants in 1944 were not the best of neighbours.

Bureau West and the adjacent land, currently the county council depot, were a camp housing German prisoners of war.

By that time, it was clear that Germany was going to lose the Second World War.

Just before Christmas 1944, a group of dedicated Nazis had a plan to break out of the prison and form a Fifth Column to try and stop the Allies' final push on the Fatherland.

They would liberate the 7,000 prisoners at the camp and steal armoured vehicles and planes from RAF Yatesbury.

They would link up with another group of PoWs from a camp in Sheffield and march on London.

But the plot was uncovered when two German-speaking Americans visited the camp and overheard the leader, Warrant Officer Erich Palme-Koenig, remark: "The arms store is the key."

When they reported the incident, hidden microphones were reactivated in the camp, with the result that the British authorities learned the date of the breakout.

The plotters and others suspected of collusion were rounded up and sent to a camp at Comrie in Perthshire, where the toughest Nazis were held.

But someone had made a mistake.

Among the conspirators sent to Comrie was anti-Nazi Feldwebel (Sergeant Major) Wolfgang Rosterg, one of the few interpreters at the camp.

The Nazi thugs believed Rosterg, who had the courage to openly criticise Hitler, had betrayed their escape plan to the Allies and had been sent to Comrie as a spy.

Rosterg was subjected to a kangaroo court and garrotted by his captors.

The following year, eight of the conspirators were brought before a military court for Rosterg's murder.

They claimed that Rosterg had been a traitor and deserved to be hanged.

They also pointed out that no action had been taken against British officers based in a PoW camp near Breslau who had convicted and executed one of their fellow officers whom they believed had betrayed their plot to escape.

Five of the eight accused were sentenced to be hanged, one to life imprisonment while two were cleared.

The hangings were carried out at Pentonville Prison in London, the last such mass execution ever to take place in Britain.

But no one asked why Rosterg had been sent to Comrie with his sworn enemies in the first place.

He was not the first or last serviceman to wish he had been allowed to stay in Devizes rather than be moved on to another theatre of war.

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