St Lambert Battle Normandy VC awarded. Then and Now.

[WeyAx]

Yes, we can only hope to find one of these elderly people and ask for an dead german officer between this houses and not in the field nearby.
Shure he was buried and rests as an unknown, but there is always a little chance to clear his fate.
Let us try when anybody visits the village in the next times!!

Alex

[qualicumwind]

My father was in St. Lambert from August 19 to 21, 1944. Here is a link to an article that he wrote about the battle. It is the only first hand account of any length that I am aware of. Members might find the Epilogue interesting from an archeological perspective. The bullet referred to was found by my parents at the side of the road beside where Major Currie is standing in the famous photograph that includes Hauptmann Rauch.

http://www.wlu.ca/lcmsds/cmh/back%20...ust%201944.pdf

My father was present when Rauch was captured. He does not know Rauch's fate, but describes him as "arrogant".

As for what happened to Rauch's remains, here is a recently-published description by another Canadian soldier of the aftermath of the battle in the Falaise Gap:

"Well, being an infantryman, it was terrible. We saw things that you can’t even imagine how bad they were. For example, in one instance [in the Falaise Pocket], because of the thousands of dead bodies, there were 10,000 German dead in the area plus thousands of farm animals ̶ the place was rife with rats. But the news didn’t even mention this because they were afraid of a plague, of course. It was a very hot summer; everything was covered with maggots. You can’t even imagine what kind of a scene it was; it was beyond compare. What they did, it was such a jumbled mess, they sent in bulldozers to clean the roads, shoved all the animals and humans in a heap and then set fire to them, which they had to do to get rid of the rats. It was terrible."

KB

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi KB, welcome to the forum and thanks for a very interesting post.

Cheers, Ade.

[Paul D]

Welcome and many thanks for the info

[longues]

very very good job.congratulations luckystrike.

[WeyAx]

Hey KB,

I have already read your thread in the other forum, but thank you for posting it here and welcome too.

I have written to the german grave-commission but they told me that there was no Haupmann Rauch missing or dead in this area???

What was its real name then??

Greetings

Alex

[qualicumwind]

As far as I know, his name was Rauch. A couple of years ago, I was corresponding with someone who did battlefield tours through this area, and he said he had met with Rauch's mother who wondered what happened to her son. She had obviously seen him in the famous photo that shows him surrendering.

[WeyAx]

Hey KB,

I have read these story with the mother too, but here I sent you the original answer from the german WAST:

*Sehr geehrter Herr Weyrich,
*
in der alphabetisch und nach Geburtsdaten geordneten Kartei unseres Zentralnachweises ist ein ehemaliger Haupmann Siegfried Rauch, Angehöriger der 2. Panzer-Division, entwaffnet von kandischen Streitkräften in St. Lambert-sur-Dives /Normandie,* nicht zu ermitteln.* Für weitergehende Überprüfungen wäre die Angabe des vollständigen Geburtsdatums erforderlich.
*
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Im Auftrag

I dont can tell more obout his name, propably you can try more!!

Alex