Wormhoudt massacre The Wormhoudt massacre ( or Wormhout massacre ) was the mass murder of 80 British and French POW s by Waffen - SS soldiers from the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler during the Battle of France in May 1940 . Fighting . As part of the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force towards Dunkirk , the 48th Division was holding the road which runs southward from Bergues through Wormhoudt , Cassel and Hazebrouck to delay the German advance . British units at Wormhoudt were overrun by advancing German forces . Having exhausted their ammunition supplies , the troops at this point surrendered assuming that they would be taken prisoner according to the Geneva Convention . Massacre . After their surrender , a large group of soldiers from the 2nd battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment , 4th battalion Cheshire Regiment , and Royal Artillery as well as French soldiers in charge of a military depot were taken to a barn in " La Plaine au Bois " near Wormhout and Esquelbecq on 28 May 1940 . The Allied troops had become increasingly alarmed at the brutal conduct of the SS soldiers en route to the barn which included the shooting of a number of wounded stragglers . On arrival at the barn the only British officer in the group , Captain James Lynn - Allen , protested but was immediately rebuked by an SS soldier . The British officer was then shot . When there were nearly 100 men inside the barn , soldiers from the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler , threw stick - grenades into the building killing many POWs . The grenades failed to kill everyone , largely due to the bravery of two British NCO s , Sergeant Stanley Moore and CSM Augustus Jennings , who hurled themselves on top of the grenades using their bodies to suppress the force of the explosion and shield their comrades from the blast . Upon realising this , the SS called for two groups of five to come out . The men came out and were shot . Despite being shot , Gunner Brian Fahey survived , unknown to the SS men at the time . Concluding that these methods were too slow , the SS troopers simply fired into the barn with their weapons . Several British prisoners were able to escape , while a few others , like Fahey , were left for dead . A total of 80 men were killed . After a couple of days , Fahey and several others were found by regular German Army medics and taken to hospital . Their wounds were treated before they were sent to prisoner of war camps in occupied Europe . Legacy . The Waffen - SS division , Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler was under the overall command of Oberstgruppenführer Sepp Dietrich . It was alleged from post - war testimony that it was specifically soldiers of the 2nd Battalion under the command of then Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Mohnke that carried out the atrocity . However , Mohnke never had to face a trial for any alleged part in the war crimes based on these " hors de combat " killings . Mohnke strongly denied the accusations against him , telling historian Thomas Fischer , " I issued no orders not to take English prisoners or to execute prisoners . " Mohnke died in August 2001 . In 1947 , a number of survivors of the massacre returned to the scene accompanied by officials from the War Crimes Interrogation Unit , following investigations undertaken by the office of the Judge Advocate General . It proved impossible to construct a sufficiently strong case to bring prosecutions . A number of alleged key witnesses were reported to have died on the Eastern Front , while others invoked the " SS Oath " and refused to talk . In 1988 , after a campaign by British MP Jeff Rooker , the case was reopened but a German prosecutor came to the conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to bring charges . The incident was re - enacted in the 2004 BBC television docudrama " Dunkirk " .