The Channel Islands At War

by Peter King

  Although most air-crew and naval personnel were sent to stalags in Germany, there was a POW camp at Mount Bingham in Jersey, and it was from this camp that the only successful escape and evasion took place by two Americans, Captain Edward Clark, and Lieutenant George Haas. They escaped on 8 January 1945, and a German order soon appeared stating, 'They will attempt to obtain shelter and help from the English civilian population. It is expressly announced that anyone who takes in or extends help in any way to Captain Clark or Lieutenant Haas will be punished by death'. After four days Clark and Haas reached East Lynne Farm on Grouville Bay owned by Wilfred Bertram, one of the Islanders who actively helped escapers. The Americans got away from the bay on 19 January, and Bertram was later awarded the United States Medal of Freedom.

  The victims, both people and planes, of air war are a reminder that the Islands were in a war zone. Air war over the Islands had the regrettable dimension that the RAF were bound to sink supply ships, and vessels containing Todt workers and POWs, and even to inflict losses on the Islanders. Raids had to be faced by a population whose powers of resistance were already sapped by occupation conditions, and there were only rudimentary civil defence precautions and ever decreasing medical facilities. According to one writer there were at least 22 raids in the Channel Isles resulting in "3 deaths and 250 injuries - many of these Todt port workers caught at their jobs or on transports to and from France. Attacks on air facilities in 1940, on the ports in 1942, and on ports and military installations in 1944 were the worst raids, but, as in Britain, there was a constant menace from planes. Even in the most peaceful year, Mrs Tremayne referred in May and June 1943 to serious fighting that 'has been going on all this week around the Islands and live shells from the Guernsey guns have been whistling over Sark, breaking glass and scattering over the roofs of houses. Our huge bombers have been flying over, very low, and they have sunk a minesweeper off Sark and lots of ships in Jersey harbour".

  The first raids that Mrs Tremayne noticed were three consecutive night attacks on Guernsey Airport in August 1940 which she described as 'perfect Bedlam'. During the night of 23 August she experienced the fall of the first bomb in Sark. 'The noise was so heavy, and the suspense and worry until we could hear at daylight what had happened, were intense. It is a mercy no fire was started, or it could never have been put out, as there is no water and no appliances of any sort. It fell near the Manoir [the Old Vicarage], all Mrs Cook's block had the glass shattered and holes cut in the roofs everywhere.' In July 1941, when the airport was the target again, German guns shook her house with their reverberations. The bombing, she wrote, 'is almost hourly now, night and day', and she found it 'very alarming at times'. On 3 September Julia and her daughter Norah stood on Gouliot top and watched an air attack by many planes on barges moving towards Guernsey, and later on the airport. 1942 opened with more severe raids on Guernsey now mainly directed at the harbour and sufficiently large for the glow of the fires to light up Sark eight miles away. The raids went on for several nights, two ships were sunk, and Polish Todt workers killed. Damage was done in St Peter Port itself.

  1944 was the worst year for raids, and as early as April Mrs Tremayne heard the noise of guns and bombs. Mrs Cortvriend on Guernsey noticed an attack on 27 May by USAAF Thunderbolts aimed at the barracks and Fort George. One person was killed and several injured by shrapnel from German anti-aircraft defences. A bomb exploding near her house fractured their water-pipes. From then on 'scarcely a day passed without large formations of planes flying overhead'. Mrs Tremayne heard that the raid on Fort George killed a number of Germans at a football match. On 15 June she recorded 'another hellish night", and her comments continued with little intermission for the next three months. Mrs Cortvriend and Mrs Tremayne described the destruction in St Peter Port which was the main target in their islands. Windows of the town church, St Peter's, the main shops, and many houses were blown in, and people cut by flying glass. At night, said Mrs Cortvriend, 'from our bedroom we were able to witness brilliant flare and tracer bullet displays, while the beams of numerous searchlights swept the skies. The boom of our naval guns could often be heard ... large fires were distinguished on the French coast, and heavy explosions shook our house throughout the days and nights.' There could be little doubt the Islands were often in the front line of their own particular blitz.

  One day in February 1942, Norah Tremayne was looking out to sea when she saw three ships go by: they were the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prim Eugen escaping from Brest and returning to Germany, a vivid reminder of the naval war that also affected the Channel Islands. Once, on 12 August 1944, HMS Rodney bombarded Alderney to try and destroy Blücher Battery, which severely damaged a gun and killed two Germans. The usual naval target was enemy shipping: E-boats and submarines, supply ships, and troop transports. German naval personnel were buried on the Islands, and many more British sailors are remembered still on Charybdis Day, 17 November, which commemorates the worst British loss of the war in the Channel during Operation Tunnel on the night of the 23/24 October 1943. The intention was to attack a convoy of 12 German ships, but six destroyers led by the light cruiser HMS Charybdis encountered an escort of E-boats, and the cruiser sustained direct hits sinking almost at once with the loss of 462 lives. HMS Limbourne was hit with the loss of 42 lives, and subsequently had to be sunk. Bodies from the disaster were washed up on the Islands, including a stoker on Sark, and on the shores of France. When the burials of some of these took place large crowds of Islanders attended, and the turn-out so worried the Germans that such demonstrations at funerals were banned.

  It has been stated there were six or seven major convoy battles in the area, some of these taking place in February and September 1943, and August 1944. In February 1943, two destroyers sank two transports and possibly two mine-sweepers on the Alderney-Cherbourg route, and German losses included the Harbour Commandant, Parsenow. Battles at sea in dark and fog were bound to lead to exaggerated accounts. In August 1944 Mrs Tremayne said, after a convoy battle which it was too misty to see, that several boats were lost and 'the sea must be full of dead bodies'.

  The size of the garrison meant that at least 500 Germans a week were moving in both directions, and sometimes they were caught by the Royal Navy, or met with accident in treacherous waters. In January 1943 the Schockland sank off the south coast of Jersey after hitting a rock. Most of the Germans together with 15 prostitutes from German brothels were below decks and had to negotiate a single ladder before climbing through an 18-inch square hatch. As a result perhaps half the complement of 250 perished. They were buried at St Brelade's churchyard which became the main German burial ground on Jersey with over 200 graves. On 4 July 1944 the Minotaure, carrying Sylt prisoners and Todt workers from Alderney, sank with two other ships not far from St Malo. About 250 were drowned including a number of French Jews. By the end of the war the graveyards of the Channel Islands contained at least 560 German dead although most Luftwaffe casualties were taken off the Islands. The cemeteries also contained a substantial number of British dead from air

  and sea battles, and victims of accidents caused by the war, like deaths from mines. War had by no means passed the Islands by as Morrison and von Schmettow had suggested.

  Inselwahn: Hitler's Channel Fortress, and its Garrison

  By far the most obvious effect of the German occupation was the presence of the garrison, and by far the most long-lasting impression made by it was the construction of massive fortifications which still exist. 'The Island echoes', wrote one observer 'with the coarse singing of the troops on the march". Wherever Island people went there were troops, marines, engineers, anti-aircraft forces, and a host of organizations necessary to run a modern army. They swarmed into holiday hotels using them as billets and offices, and their fortifications soon impinged on every stretch of coast destroying houses and farms, denying access to roads and beaches, and ruining agricultural land. Soldiers in their everyday lives, and carrying out mock battles and training were oppressive
in themselves. 'I am so weary of this occupation and the sight of the Germans', wrote one woman who had had Germans standing in her house just staring at her, or invading her garden.

  "The mental torture", wrote Mrs Tremayne, 'from this German occupation is becoming indescribable'. Some, like the teacher on Sark, broke down under the strain, and it will always be impossible to say how many lives were shortened by the experience of occupation, or how many suicides resulted from mental pressure. According to Doctor Lewis there were three in Jersey shortly after Occupation, and there were at least three caused by the threat of deportation in 1942-3.

  At first the Islands were held by small forces on the main Islands and token contingents in Alderney and Sark. As late as June 1941 there were only 13.0(H) military personnel on the Islands, but then two decisions were taken that altered the position. On 15 June a major strengthening of the garrison was ordered, and on 20 October an order to fortify the Islands was given which led to a massive increase in troops, and to the presence of the Organization Todt and its slave workers, as well as other organizations like the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD). By the end of 1941 there were 15,000 Wehrmacht, 5,000 Luftwaffe, and 1,000 Kriegsmarine forces on the Island. The Luftwaffe men were 'flak' or anti-aircraft and maintenance and repair crews, and the Kriegsmarine defended the harbours. Two companies of engineers, the 14 on Jersey, and the 19 on Guernsey and Alderney accounted for 1,400 troops while supply forces accounted for 3.5(H). There was constant movement of forces to and from the Islands, but on paper at least the garrison reached a strength of 37,600 in April 1942 equal in size to the evacuated population and giving a ratio of one German for every two inhabitants.

  The bulk of the new forces ordered in was Infantry Division 319 from the Seventh Army which replaced Division 216. Amounting to some 21.000 troops they were commanded independently from October 1941 to September 1943 by Major-General Erich Müller. and from February 1945 by Major-General Rudolf Wulf. At other times the troops were under the orders of the Islands' military commandant from October 1940 to February 1945, Colonel Graf Rudolf von Schmettow. The only exception were Alderney troops who until December 1941 were under naval command from Cherbourg. Throughout the occupation the troops varied in quality with a steady tendency to decline. At first, life, wrote a Guernsey baker in March 1941, had been tolerable enough, 'owing to the general courtesy and inoffensiveness of the German officers and soldiers'.

  But as German chances of occupying Britain, and then of leaving the Islands, declined and war turned against the Reich, troops began to change, particularly those who had seen service in Russia, and could not unlive their new brutality. Russian war also brought to the islands companies of Russian troops lighting for the Germans (ROA). A new relationship based on fear and suppressed hatred resulted as a typical incident involving Russian troops will show. Bonamy Martel agreed to help night-watch at a friend's farm. He had with him a member of the Feldpolizei, and the two men hid under hay in a stable for the night. In the early hours of the morning, the farm was approached by two Luftwaffe men who ran off when they were challenged. After an hour two ROA soldiers appeared. The security policeman was shot dead, and one of the Russians ran off. The murderer produced a knife and stabbed Martel, and a grim fight began in the barn. The Russian tried to finish Martel off with the gun, but he broke his aim with some lead-piping. The two Russians were captured, and the murderer was executed.

  Alderney had 3,000 and Sark nearly 300 military encamped on them by 1944. After D-Day the Islands lost most of their Todt workers, except on a maintenance basis, but more naval troops arrived, and in August 1944 evacuated forces from St Malo including 600 wounded who soon filled the military hospitals. A few escapers also reached the Islands, five from Granville in December, and in March 1945 35 German POWs were rescued from Granville by force. At the time of the German surrender in May 1945, 2,832 in Alderney, 275 in Sark, and about 24,000 troops in the main Islands surrendered. By then they were a demoralized and starving force, and many were hospital cases. 'When we were first occupied', wrote Molly Finigan, 'and for a good while afterwards it seemed the Germans were always marching in groups and singing in the streets of the town. Now all was quiet, no more shouting, no more singing their familiar song I.E.I.O.' By the winter of 1944 the once proud occupiers, 'go about unshaven and dirty, badly clad and some in rags, seeking roots or potatoes to cat' wrote Mrs Tremayne. The last six months brought home to the Germans the conditions many Islanders had lived with for years.

  But in the early years it had been very different. The newly arrived forces represented the summit of years of training in the Hitler Youth, Land Jahr. and armed forces. When William Shirer saw the first British prisoners after Dunkirk he contrasted their physical condition with poor teeth, thin chests, and rounded shoulders after years on the dole with that of the Germans who really looked like a master race.

  Two groups found it particularly hard to ignore so handsome and stirring a body of men: the women and children. In Jersey Chapman noticed within a short time of Occupation that more and more girls were seen with Germans. 'They dined openly with them in restaurants, swam with them, entertained them, and attended their concerts.'

  In April 1941 Mrs Tremayne noticed 'some of the Sark girls are walking out with German soldiers, silly little asses. I feel I would like to shake them", while Frank Falla, who had to visit the Kommandanmr as a reporter for the Star saw 'What upset me considerably at first - the sight of the local lovelies. Guernsey, Irish and Austrian, disporting themselves in plush chairs and settees with Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe officers and no doubt later sharing their beds.'

  To an older woman like Mrs Tremayne the behaviour of the Germans was shocking. Her early tolerance soon gave way to suppressed hatred describing them as 'swine' and 'sweating bulls'. To her they were: 'A foul, fat. ugly, bullet-headed lot, capable of doing any dirty deed. They drink all day and night. They do no drill of any kind, just strut along the lanes armed to the teeth, with their behinds bursting out of their breeches with such good living.' She disliked their bathing and sunbathing habits. She noticed them 'wearing nothing more than a loin cloth, their bodies are a mahogany colour'. On one occasion soldiers opened her garden gate on a Sunday afternoon and came down the path in their trunks, although they ran off when her dog appeared.

  But some things that she disliked appealed to younger women, and some Island women were to become collaborators in bed. Fraternization was sometimes a genuine relationship. Phyllis Barker on Sark who knew German was often called in to interpret for the German medical staff, and later married Werner Rang, a medical orderly. Sergeant Hesse, a billeting officer in Guernsey, returned after the war to marry his girlfriend, and open a restaurant. But most relationships were casual. Mrs Tremayne noticed women whose husbands were away had soldiers in their houses in the evening, and she thought the way the young girls played up to Germans 'really too disgusting for words'. These good relations did not disappear in spite of brutality, the decline in living standards, or even as a result of the general war. As late as August 1944, Germans were able to swim from a public beach, and afterwards played their wireless. They switched on English dance-band tunes, and were soon surrounded by mothers and children while the Battle of Normandy could be heard in the distance. Such relationships could always lead to trouble. Molly Finigan found she got on well with soldiers as a young girl of thirteen. One day, however, she and her sister took a pram and shovel to a sawmill at Piette to collect wood shavings and sawdust for fuel, and, 'a young German soldier came over to me and offered a large loaf. He could not speak any English and started jabbering in German. I must have looked surprised, not knowing what he was on about until she heard the word "belt" on the end of his jabber, with him pointing up the stairs."

  Schoolchildren were particularly vulnerable to the German presence. Gifts of food and sweets were handed out, and children were taken for rides in cars and military vehicles. Even officers indulged in this fraternization. But the closest link was forged by
the introduction of German into schools. Begun voluntarily in 1941, this was made compulsory in primary schools in April 1942, and throughout all educational institutions in January 1943. The Island education authority on Guernsey objected, pointing out that children already learned French, but their letter of complaint was forwarded without support by Carey, and the Germans had their way. In Sark, Hathaway did her best to support the policy. She appealed for help with books, and said she was prepared to have the children in the Seigneurie for their German lessons when there were difficulties over heating at the school. Although the schoolmistress, Miss Howard, could not teach the subject, a local German speaker obliged instead. The language created a bond between the children and the German soldiers, and its teaching was a way of influencing them. Molly Finigan described how a German officer visited her intermediate school in St Peter Port, to check progress and question the children. At Molly's school, two Germans attended her prize-giving and the children had to learn a German song for the occasion. Although an internal minute on compulsory German had suggested people would not like it this did not prove to be the case. By July 1943 one observer heard 'quite little kids talking it in the shops and lanes'.