Research, photos and text by Vincenzo Giacomo Toccafondi

The guarantee of immunity offered by the Red Cross flag and livery were frequently broken during both world wars.

In this article we want to limit our attention to the hospital units serving with the German Navy and engaged in the evacuation of the wounded during the retreat from the Aegean and Adriatic theatre.

There are evidence and testimony that the employment of the naval units under the guardianship of the Red Cross did not aim at the evacuation of the wounded alone, but was intended as a means of rescuing as many soldiers as possible who would have fallen prisoner to the Allied forces or to the partisans.

The Allied reaction was severe and ranged from the seizure of hospital ships suspected of transporting troops to the sinking of several of these units.

The author’s aim is not to point fingers at good guys and bad guys or to rewrite history, but to emphasize the good reasons on both sides and the reality that the only great fault is the war, that clouds minds and radicalises actions.

We will analyse some of these missions in detail, using biased sources such as German books and reports from allied air and naval units, but also international sources of great authority such as investigation documents of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The accompanying photos come from author’s personal archive and are the result of research and purchases on auction sites and the kind permission of Mr. Andreas Beitzinger, an author’s friend.

After the landings in Italy, Normandy and Provence the territory in Germanic hands was decreasing every day, in the Aegean and the Balkans the Wehrmacht was retreating under pressure from resistance movements and allied armies.

The retreat through the Balkans was problematic due to a poor road network and undermined by ground attacks from the partisans and from the air by Allied planes. Evacuation by ship with protected vessels was the ideal solution, even if it ran counter to the rules of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which limited the operations of hospital ships to the rescue and treatment of wounded soldiers.

With the official purpose of embarking the wounded to Thessaloniki, two ships were sent in October 1944: the Tübingen and the Gradisca.

The Tübingen was a former French ship, the Gouverneur Général Tirman, built at Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée in Graville near Le Havre in 1922 and incorporated into the German Navy on 1 January 1943. Fitted at the Marseille shipyard as a hospital ship with 448 berths for patients, the vessel had already carried out numerous evacuations of wounded from the Tyrrhenian, Aegean and Adriatic theatres of operations.

On 24 October 1944, the ship reached Thessaloniki and embarked 1019 soldiers, although it had room for less than half of them and the vessel was rather modest in size (3509 BRT).

Medical director Dr. Heinz Neumann and his staff had no real chance to take care of such a large number of patients, especially the critical ones. It is quite clear that soldiers who were only slightly wounded, or not at all, were also brought on board with the aim of bringing them to safety and ensuring that they could continue to fight.

Near Chios, on its return route, Tübingen was stopped by a British naval unit. Initially allowed to continue, it was again stopped and forced to continue to Alexandria where it arrived on 30 October. The ship was subjected to a thorough search and the soldiers on board were evaluated by British medical officers.

While awaiting the decisions of the British military authorities, the Hospital Ship Gradisca, entered the Egyptian port on 1 November, escorted by the destroyer HMS Teazer (R 23) (Lt.Cdr. Arthur Allison FitzRoy Talbot, DSO, RN).

Gradisca had a long operational history behind it. Commissioned in 1912 at the Stephens & Sons shipyard in Gowan on behalf of Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd in Amsterdam, the ship was purchased by Lloyd Triestino at the request of the Italian government. She was used as a hospital ship during the invasion of Ethiopia, the Spanish Civil War and the invasion of Albania.

During World War II, she served with the Regia Marina until the Armistice, carrying out both missions of transporting the wounded and sick and prisoner exchange operations. Captured by the Germans in the Aegean Sea she operated under their command carrying out other international prisoner exchange operations under the auspices of the Red Cross as well as medical evacuation missions.

On 19 October 1944, the ship left Trieste bound for Thessaloniki where it arrived on the 26th, after several stops in Samos, Chios and Lesbos to collect wounded.

The ship’s Medical Director Dr. Hans Treu described Thessaloniki as a city that was about to fall: ships sunk in the harbour, burning documents in front of German commands, fuel depots set on fire. In this chaos, the ship took on board 1940 wounded; it actually had 460 beds, the number of personnel on board was more than four times that which could be transported. On 28 October, the ship set sail for Trieste.

Near Cape Paliouri the Gradisca received a radio message from the submarine HMS Vampire under the command of Lieutenant C.W. Taylor. The ship was ordered to head for the island of Chios, where the Gradisca was searched by the boarding party of the destroyer HMS Kimberley (Lt. James Wolferstan Rylands). The ship was declared a prey of war and, escorted by HMS Teazer to Alexandria.

Both ships will be forced to disembark the soldiers embarked as wounded. On the Gradisca, which will be transferred to Algiers before being released, some 100 seriously wounded will remain. 24 men will die during the long period of detention and disputes through the Red Cross. The Gradisca will return to Trieste and make a further cruise to the Greek islands followed by another detention by the British authorities. Returning to Trieste, it was finally sent to Venice where it awaited the end of hostilities.

The Tübingen was released in early November and returned to Trieste. A few days later, November 15^th, she was in front of the Montenegrin port of Bar, busy evacuating two cutters packed with german troops, from the coast.

Tübingen was involved in the firing action of two British destroyers against a coastal battery. The ships were HMS Wheatland (Lt. Hugh Askew Corbett, RN) and probably HMS Avon Vale (Lt. Ivan Hall, RN), according to the HMS Wheatland’s logbook.

The Tübingen was seized, probably by one of the destroyers present at Bar and was escorted to Bari where the ship was searched and the soldiers on board were disembarked and taken to a POW camp.

Another German hospital ship, the Bonn, was moored in Bari. Destroyer HMS Aldenham (Commander James Gerald Farrant) seized the vessel on  November 2th on return route from Šibenik, where the hospital ship had taken on German servicemen.  Commander Farrant ordered to set course for Ancona. When the ship was searched, it was contested that it was transporting military personnel not in need of medical care. Bonn was declared war prize and impounded in Bari, soldiers and crew were interned in the Grumo Pow camp.

The Bonn was a ship for the coastal transport of people and goods. Built in 1937 by the Jadranska Brodogrališta A.D. Shipyard in Split under the name Sumadija, she was later captured by the Italians, who renamed her Bruno Caleari, after a decorated officer who fell in 1940. After the armistice, the ship was taken under German control and in November 1943, it was converted into a hospital ship at the Cantieri Riuniti dell’Adriatico San Rocco in Muggia and renamed Bonn.

The ship was small (470 gt) and therefore not recognised by the British. Employed on coastal trades to transport and evacuate patients from bases in the Adriatic, the ship ran enormous risks and was often on the verge of being lost.

On 10 June 1944 she left port in time to save herself from a massive attack by Bombardment Groups 376th and 449th of the 15th US Air Force based in Puglia. The hospital ship Innsbruck, moored at the Maritime Station near Bonn was sunk.

On 16 September 1944 at 8 am the Bonn was attacked by British aircraft seven nautical miles south-west of Cape Promontore.  The ship reached Pula where she entered dock for repair, a few days later she escaped a partisan ambush near the island of Molat.

From Bari, this lucky ship was returned to the Yugoslavs and survived the war by serving for a long time as a coastal trade ship.

Returning to the Tübingen, the ship was allowed to return to Trieste on 17th November. The following day at 7.45 a.m. the ship was attacked and sunk by British twin-engine aircraft, while 3.5 nautical miles south of Cap Promontore (Pula). According to Germanic reports the planes were identified as Boston mkIII, probably from RAF Squadron 18.  The weather was clear and the sea was calm; the British national insignia clearly visible.

Navy surgeon Heinz Neumann died and nine men were missing, others wounded. The dispatch of motorboats from Pula enabled the shipwrecked men to be rescued.

International Red Cross paper reports the testimonies of the commander of the Hospital Ship Kapt. Wolfgang Diettrich Hermichen and many officers of his crew. The RAF attributed the incident to poor visibility and communication problems.

The Tübingen suffered the same fate as her sister ship Erlangen (formerly the French Gouverneur Général Cambon), which was hit by Allied aircraft on 15 June 1944, off Liguria’s coast while rescuing shipwrecked sailors from a collision involving German units of the 3rd Geleitflotille based in La Spezia and Allied torpedo boats. About the damage to the Erlagen and the attempted rescue of the crew and the wounded in front of the village of Monterosso, there is a short film made by the Germans which clearly shows that the sky was clear and the visibility excellent (video link in the bibliography).

Towed to Genoa, she was hit and permanently disabled on 4 September 1944 during an attack by Flying Fortresses of the 15th Air Force.

The International Committee of the Red Cross received grievances from the German government and Allied explanations for these attacks.The folders with the documents sleep in some dusty office, the dead lie in peace, hopefully.

International Humanitarian Law is not in good health, in recent times it is even worse.

 

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my son Gianluca for proofreading my articles, for his valuable advice and his encouragement to publish in English

Bibliography

Vincenzo Giacomo Toccafondi –  Le Navi Ospedale Italiane dopo l’Armistizio

Volker Hartmann, Hartmut Nöldeke – Verwundetentransport über See Deutsche Lazarett- und Verwundetentransportschiffe im Zweiten Weltkrieg – Verlag Dr. Dieter Winkler; 2010

Erich Gröner Dieter Jung Martin Maass – Die deutschen Kriegsschiffe 1815-1945

Rudolf Schmidt, Arnold Kludas – Die deutschen Lazarettschiffe im Zweiten Weltkrieg  Motorbuch – Verlag, 1978

Alfred M.Dezayas, Walter Rabus – The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 -University of Nebraska Press

General Statements on International Humanitarian Law  International Committee of the Red Cross

Attack on German Hospital Ship “TUEBINGEN” The National Archives, Kew

https://www.bridgemanimages.com/it/noartistknown/the-german-hospital-ship-erlangen-is-attacked-by-allied-bombers/footage/asset/703844