The Cemetery MTO (id:#57638)

Dagger (Rout Report # 5.2 ID: Z26)   [next]   [previous]

Drvar, Yugoslavia 1944-05-26 (3 others)

Overview:

Operation Rosselsprung (Knight's Move), the attempt to capture or eliminate Marshal Tito, had ended in dismal failure. The surprise airborne assault on his headquarters, for which the Germans had held such high hopes, had ground itself up on the slopes of Tito's fortified hillside. After an afternoon of costly assaults that approached but never reached the HQ cave, the Germans admitted defeat. The SS Paras were now plagued by encirclement and growing partisan pressure. Food, water and ammunition were running short due to intense heat, heavy fighting and ineffective supply drops. Relief columns that had been ordered to break through to the paras that first day had failed to appear. The German commanders sent runners to notify all elements of the battalion and its supporting units to disengage and fall back to the town of Drvar. After an extremely difficult fighting withdrawal, they arrived at the town's cemetery, the most defensible position available to them. Inside the cemetery's thick stone wall, the survivors organized for a decisive fight, now on the defensive. The partisans of the 1st Proletarian Brigade, confident now that they had engaged and held regular forces, were determined to destroy the last survivors of the para battalion. The SS fought with the desperation of men fighting for their very existence. Both sides were quite aware that come morning it was likely German relief columns would break through.

Defender: German (SS) (Remnants of SS Para-Battalion 500)  

Errata (source)