• (NOTE: Information is often sparse and in some cases first name, unit and/or rank is unknown. This list has been generated from various sources and is both incomplete and liable to inaccuracies. However, at the moment, being as information is very scarce its the best we'll get!)

    Waffen-SS British Free Corps

  • SS-Mann William Alexander (Scottish)

  • SS-Mann Frank Axon

  • SS-Mann Harry Batchelor

  • SS-Mann Ronald Barker (Australian)

  • SS-Mann Kenneth Edward Berry (he joined the Royal Navy in 1940, aged fifteen. When his ship was sunk in September that year, he was rescued and interned by the Germans. He later joined the British Free Corps and helped in the recruitment to the German cause of fellow-prisoners. He was convicted in 1945 of assisting the enemy and sentenced to nine months hard labor. [UK National Archives])

  • Douglas Webster St Aubyn Berneville-Claye (1917–1975), born Douglas Berneville Claye, was born in Plumstead, S.E. London. He served with the L detachment of the Special Air Service. He was captured in North Africa. In 1944 he joined the British Free Corps.

  • Blackman

  • SS-Rottenführer William Charles Britten

  • Alfred Browning

  • Chapman

  • SS-Mann Robert Chipchase (Australian)

  • William Clarke

  • SS-Oberscharführer Thomas Haller Cooper (alias Peter, Tom Bottcher. In 1938 he was a member of the British Union of Fascists. The son of an English father and a German mother, he went to Germany in 1939 to teach and later enlisted in the Waffen-SS, serving in Germany, Poland and Russia until invalided. He produced propaganda for the German Foreign Office and tried to recruit British prisoners of war for the Legion of Saint George and the British Free Corps. Sentenced to death for treason in 1946, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on appeal.)

  • SS-Unterscharführer Roy Nicholas Courlander (New Zealander - somtimes reffered to as 'Leonard Courlander'. Born December 6, 1914 – 1979, nicknamed 'Reg'. At the time of his capture by the Germans he was a Lance-Corporal. He was captured in Kalamata, Greece on April 29, 1941 and interned at Stalag XVIII-D at Maribor in Yugoslavia. As a prisoner-of-war Courlander served as an interpreter at the camp. Later he even participated in Axis radio broadcasts to the United Kingdom.

    He joined the Waffen-SS British Free Corps in January 1944. He was one of the original six volunteers. Eventually he left the unit to work with the war correspondent unit SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers.

    After the war he was charged with treason by the New Zealand military authorities. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison on the charge of 'voluntarily aiding the enemy'.)

  • SS-Unterscharführer Hugh Wilson Cowie (Scottish - alias Jock Robert Kingsley: in 1940 he was court martialed, sentenced to 15 years penal servitude and discharged with ignominy for aiding the enemy. [UK National Archives])

  • SS-Mann Frederick Croft

  • SS-Mann George Croft

  • Arthur James Cryderman (Canadian)

  • Clifford Dowden

  • SS-Mann Ellsmore

  • SS Oberscharführer Thomas Freeman

  • Railton Freeman (born in Newbury on October 6, 1903). After nearly a decade serving in the Royal Air Force as a flying officer, in 1931 Freeman retired from military service and became a farmer. In 1937 he joined the British Union of Fascists. During WWII he was recalled to military service and served as a RAF flying instructor with No. 24 Squadron. On May 22, 1940, he was ordered to fly with his squadron and had to make a crash landing and was thus captured. He volunteered to help Germany with its 'German Calling' program. In October 1944 he joined the Waffen-SS. In this capacity he helped prepare propaganda material for the British armed forces. Freeman was captured by allied troops on 9th May, 1945. He was found guilty of treason and was sent to prison for ten years.

  • SS-Mann Roy Ralph Futcher

  • Cyril Haines

  • SS-Mann Robert Reginald Heighes

  • SS-Mann William How

  • SS-Mann Edward Jackson

  • Thomas Blake Kipling

  • SS-Mann Pieter Labuschagne (South African - He joined the Waffen-SS in the winter of 1944/1945. He was recruited while working on a road gang by Unterscharführer Hans Kauss. He didn't seem to be sincere however, and ended up sneaking away toward Dresden and the advancing American troops. He used the alias Private Adriaan Smith. He was found guilty of treason after the war and fined £50. Damn, fifty whole bucks?)

  • SS-Mann Robert Henry Lane

  • John Leigh

  • SS-Mann Dennis John Leister

  • Frederick Lewis

  • SS-Mann Alexander MacKinnon (Scottish)

  • SS-Unterscharführer Douglas Cecil Mardon (South African - Before being captured Mardon was a corporal and his unit is unknown - Mardon joined the Waffen-SS sometime around Christmas 1944. He was one of three of his countrymen who joined at Dresden, where he was a POW. He was very concerned about the threat of communism. He had been imprisoned with Soviet POWs and was quick to see the inhumanity of communism. On March 8, 1945 he was promoted to the rank of Unterscharführer and was entrusted with the command and defense of a section. According to a report on March 15, 1945 he 'removed the tell-tale BFC insignia from his uniform and substituted an SS runes collar patch.' He is said to have used the alias Douglas Hodge. After WWII Britain found him guilty of 'high treason' and fined him £375! Thousands of others were executed for a lot less.)

  • SS-Rottenführer Edwin Barnard Martin (Canadian)

  • SS-Unterscharführer Richard Paul Francis Maton (captured in Crete in 1941, he joined the British Free Corps and broadcast propaganda in 1943. Court martialled in 1945, he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for voluntarily aiding the enemy. [UK National Archives])

  • SS-Unterscharführer Francis George MacLardy (alias Wood Mclaren. Before the war he was a member of the British Union of Fascists. A pharmacist by profession, he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was taken prisoner in 1940, joined the British Free Corps and later the Waffen-SS. In 1946 he was sentenced to life imprisonment.[UK National Archives])

  • SS-Mann William John Miller

  • SS-Sturmmann Alfred Vivian Minchin

  • SS-Mann Charles Munns (Scottish)

  • SS-Mann Ernest Nicholls

  • SS-Mann Harry Nightingale

  • SS-Mann Thomas Perkins

  • SS-Mann Eric Reginald Pleasants (of Norwich. Pleasants had been a Blackshirt security officer in Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF). When the war broke out he refused to fight against Germany and was forced to do agricultural work on the Channel Islands instead of military service. When the Germans occupied the Islands in 1940 he was interned. But not for long - Pleasants was one of the first volunteers in the BFC. He was known to be very strong and athletic, with a superhuman constitution. He was an experienced wrestler, boxer and martial artist. These qualities enabled him to be the physical fitness instructor for the BFC. He also represented the men of the BFC in exhibition boxing matches with the other Waffen-SS units, and even became the middleweight boxing champion of the SS! During the Battle of Berlin he showed great heroism and courage, battling his way through the Soviet encirclement, during which he killed two Soviet soliders in hand-to-hand fighting. Although he surrendered to the Americans he ended up being interned by the Soviets, where he was interned for 7 years in a Siberian slave labor concentration camp. He died at the age of 87 in Hethel, England, close to his home town in Norwich.)

  • SS-Sturmmann Norman Rose

  • SS-Mann Herbert George Rowlands (alias Roland Miller. He served in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. He later joined the Merchant Navy and in June 1940 the ship on which he was serving was sunk and he was taken prisoner. He was interned until June 1944 but was released when he joined the British Free Corps. In February 1946 he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for conspiracy and assisting the enemy. [UK National Archives])

  • SS-Untersturmführer William Shearer

  • SS-Mann John Somerville

  • SS-Mann Albert Stokes (Australian)

  • SS-Sturmmann Henry Symonds

  • Van Heerden (South African - He was originally a Rifleman in a British or Allied Commonwealth Long Range Desert Patrol. It is unknown what exactly happened to Van Heerden. Like so many others he disappeared during the last days of the war. It is said that he left Pankow (second-largest borough of Berlin) on December 1943 and was 'Killed in action on February 12, 1945, during bombing of Dresden'. Another report says that he had gone from Dronnewitz to Schwerin in May 1945. We may never know the truth. He used the alias of Jan Pieterson.)

  • SS-Mann Viljoen (South African - Originally a corporal in an unknown unit. Viljoen joined the Waffen-SS in December 1944 - January 1945 after befriending an SS officer in charge of his working party. Sometime after he was hospitalized and suffered burns during a terrible Dresden bombing raid. Although he was charged with treason after the war, he was acquitted.)

  • John Wilson

  • SS-Oberscharführer John Eric Wilson

  • SS-Mann Lionel Wood (Australian)


    Germans who served with the British Free Corps

  • SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Werner Roepke (Nov.43-Nov.44)

  • SS-Obersturmführer Dr. Walther Kühlich (Nov.44-Apr.45)

  • SS-Hauptsturmführer Alexander Dolezalek

  • Wilhelm August "Bob" Rössler (Interpreter)


    Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler

  • Hiwi James Conen

  • Hiwi William Celliers (South African - Originally a South African police officer from Windhoek, South West Africa. Unlike most of his countrymen who joined the fight against communism, Celliers didn't join the British Free Corps of the Waffen-SS, he joined the 1st SS Panzer Division, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler! A very esteemed division. There he served in the flak detachment in the autumn and winter of 1943 - 1944. After the division was sent to the Western Front he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class.

    The Waffen-SS British Free Corps were allocated to the 3rd Company, under the command of a Swedish Obersturmführer named Hans-Gösta Pehrson. The British Free Corps was led by the South African – SS-Scharführer Douglas Mardon. They were attached to a Waffen-SS company on the Eastern Front which was situated in the small village of Schoenburg near the west bank of the Oder River.

    On March 22, 1945, as the British Waffen-SS and their new comrades were digging in, they were suddenly partially overrun by an advance element of the Soviet Army! They had ran into the Waffen-SS position by accident. Both groups were taken by surprise, but the Waffen-SS with the British Free Corps volunteers quickly gained the upper hand and launched a violent counterattack, effectively driving off the Soviet force.

    Almost a month later, on April 16, 1945 the British Waffen-SS were moved to Templin, where they were to join the transport company of Waffen-SS Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner’s HQ staff.

    On April 29 Steiner ordered his men to head west into Allied captivity. The war was over. With the help of the American and the British communism had triumphed. Over the next decades millions of innocent men, women and children would be tortured, brutalized and murdered.)


    SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers

  • SS-Untersturmführer Benson Railton Metcalfe Freeman (alias P. Royston. A pre-war member of the British Union of Fascists, he was a Pilot Officer who was captured by the Germans and interned. He wrote propaganda scripts for radio and joined the Waffen-SS. In September 1945 he was sentenced by Court Martial to 10 years' imprisonment. [UK National Archives])

  • Roy Walter Purdy (interpreter - alias Pointer Wallace, a member of the British Union of Fascists before the war, he served as a junior engineer in the Royal Navy, until in 1940 his ship was sunk and he was captured. As a prisoner of war he broadcast for the enemy and prepared propaganda. He was convicted of treason in 1945 and sentenced to death, later reduced to life imprisonment. While he was on trial an ex girl-friend in whom he had confided his treason attempted to blackmail him and was herself tried for that offence and convicted. [UK National Archives])


    SS Medical Department

  • Doctor Patrick O´Neill (Irish)


    Azad Hind (Free Indian Legion)

  • Sonderführer Frank Becker (interpreter)

  • SS-Unterscharführer James Brady (Irish)

  • SS-Mann Frank Stringer (Irish)


    Propaganda Department München

  • SS-Sturmbannführer Vivian Stranders


    Unit unknown

  • SS-Hauptsturmführer Douglas Berneville-Claye