
Obituary for Clem Elson
Born May 16 1916, died June 9 2014
Clem Elson, who has died aged 98, narrowly escaped a massacre in France in 1940; after being taken prisoner, his numerous escape attempts eventually led to him being sent to Colditz.
On May 25 1940, during the withdrawal to Dunkirk, Elson was serving with 2nd Battalion The Royal Norfolk Regiment (2 RNR) and was in command of a carrier platoon. His battalion was holding a line on La Bassée Canal when his carriers were hit by anti-tank rounds. Both his driver and batman were killed and his carrier was set ablaze. Elson was hit in the leg and shoulder. Later that night, a German patrol found him unconscious and took him prisoner.
The next day other members of his battalion in a defensive position at a farmhouse, running low on ammunition, with many injured and under heavy shelling, surrendered to a company of the 2nd Infantry Regiment of the SS Totenkopf (Death’s Head) Division. The unit was commanded by SS Hauptsturmführer Fritz Knöchlein.
The prisoners were marched to some farm buildings near the village of Le Paradis, lined up against a wall and shot. Of 99 men, only two survived. After the war, Knöchlein was hanged for his part in the massacre.
Clement Adrian Elson was born at Croydon on May 16 1916 and educated at Bancroft’s School, Woodford Green, Essex. Always known as Clem, he joined the Artists’ Rifles TA in 1935 and, on the outbreak of war, was commissioned into the RNR and posted to the 2nd Battalion. After his capture, Elson was taken to a field dressing station, then to a priory and finally to a field hospital near Le Touquet where his knee was operated on. A death certificate was sent to his parents saying that he had been killed.He wrote to his fiancée to say that he was a POW but it was almost three months before she got the letter. When it did arrive, the letter only confirmed her suspicions. She had refused to go into mourning, and told friends: “I just did not feel that he had gone.”After being treated in several hospitals, in November 1940 Elson was sent to Oflag VII-D, a POW camp in a medieval castle at Tittmoning. His first attempt to escape was by excavating under an oven and through the castle wall but the guards found out and the plan was abandoned.In a second attempt, he and three others were sealed inside a brick oven with enough food for 10 days but that, also, was foiled. He and his comrades were given a fortnight of solitary confinement as a punishment. In August 1942, after he had been transferred to Oflag VI-B, a hutted camp near Dössel, Warburg, there was a mass escape attempt which became known as the “Warburg Wire Job”.
While Elson and a comrade threw grappling hooks over the wire to create a diversion, another officer fused the perimeter floodlights. About 40 prisoners carrying long scaling ladders made from bed slats rushed the barbed wire fence and scrambled over. After one of the ladders collapsed, fewer than 30 escaped the camp and only a handful made it home.
In June 1943, while incarcerated at Oflag VII-B, Eichstätt, Bavaria, Elson was selected as a digger in a four-man team. Using powdered milk tins as air pumps and working three-hour shifts, they averaged two feet a night. Sixty-five prisoners escaped through the tunnel.Elson remained free for two days before being caught and sent to Oflag IVC, the high security prison for serial escapers at Colditz Castle, Saxony. There he was on the Escape Committee. In April 1945 the camp was liberated by the Americans. After the war, he worked for North British & Mercantile Insurance. In 1973 he retired to Sussex where he enjoyed sailing, gardening and playing golf. Ten days after being liberated from Colditz, Clem Elson married Betty Armfield. She predeceased him and he is survived by their son and daughter.
Obituary Courtesy of Daily Telegraph