Other murders were committed in Buron and during the German withdrawal from the village, bringing the total to at least 37 men. After the war, SS Lieutenant-Colonel Karl-Heinz Milius, the battalion commanding officer, was indicted for war crimes, but never brought to justice.
Reports of the killing of soldiers taken prisoner during or immediately after episodes of intense close combat are common, but some of the deaths in the streets of Authie and Buron crossed the line into premeditated murder. When the killing stopped there were still 91 Canadians in German hands.
Learment, his headquarters group and the vulnerable carriers had withdrawn to Buron as Authie was overrun. They dug in and tried to beat back the enemy, but “the field was literally alive with camouflaged Germans” and a number of enemy tanks had reached the north edge of Buron, preventing a withdrawal. Surrender was the only option after ammunition ran out.
The North Nova prisoners were lined up against a wall to be executed “when a German non-commissioned officer intervened and gave the order that we were to be searched.” Learment, who was to survive the day’s brutality, imprisonment, escape, service with the resistance and the North Nova battles of 1945, recalled what followed: “Everything of value was taken from us, including our field dressings and morphine, for which we were to have a great need later. During the search one of the Germans noticed a grenade hanging on the belt of the man next to me, Private Jack Metcalfe. The German raised his Schmeisser and as Metcalfe turned towards me he was shot three or four times in the back and fell screaming at my feet.”
