The Channel Islands At War
Page 18
Usually, however, escapers went in groups. There was comfort in numbers both at the planning stage, and in handling unseaworthy craft in dangerous waters. This was certainly true of the Guernsey escapes in 1940. The Dauntless left Perelle Bay on 1 July with seven people including two women and landed at Budleigh Salterton after 16 hours at sea. The Dodo II sailed to Plymouth the same day with two crew, while the Florida III ended its successful voyage at Falmouth with a party of twelve. The fourth vessel to leave that same day was the Mayflower, which was the most substantial boat to leave the Island during the war. She was owned by Clifford Falla who had canvassed for anyone who wanted to escape, and received a big response. In the end, 28 people joined the escape voyage which began at eleven at night from Grand Havre Bay. The escapers made land at Start Point not far from Dartmouth.
The last escapes from Guernsey that year took place in September, and were responsible for the German threats and Island government proclamations directed against escapers. Frederick Hockey and six men moored a small boat at Hommet Benest, an islet off Bordeaux Harbour, in which they rowed out to Tim, a motor boat. Tim was rowed to a point north of the Platte Fougere before the engine was started up for a voyage lasting 19 hours which eventually ended at Brixham. At this stage the British government clearly approved of escapers. The story was published in the papers, and details included in an RAF leaflet dropped on the Islands, presumably to encourage others.
Clearly escapes from Guernsey were more hazardous as there was no alternative to a lengthy voyage across the wartime Channel, but there were some. On 14 August 1943, four men and three women escaped in an 18 foot dinghy, the Kate. Like others they had decided it was a good idea to move their boat first to near Bordeaux Harbour. The engine broke down on the way across, but after a voyage of 14 hours they entered Dartmouth harbour. They were closely questioned on conditions in the Islands.
A smaller party of four escaped from St Sampson's on 15 September 1942. The two men involved in taking out the Whynot fishing boat were her skipper William Lawrence and his partner, Herbert Bichard. They took the boat north and picked up two French girls, Mile Broche and Mile Raymonde who were hidden under a tarpaulin while under observation from the shore. Bad weather lashed the craft for over 50 hours, and they had to work hard at baling out much of the way. Two days later the Whynot was sighted off Portland. The escapers were luckily taken on board a patrol boat because they had strayed into the West Bay Bombing practice area.
Two events during 1941 added a new dimension to Island escaping. In June Russia became Britain's ally and in October the first Organization Todt workers arrived. Islanders helped the Todt workers when they had escaped, although in the past both ROA forces and Todt workers had been among those looting and stealing Island property. It is estimated that 20 were hidden on Jersey and in August 1944 the Germans admitted 13 were still missing, although three were caught at St John's soon afterwards. Richard Mayne's father, and the Vaynors were among those who sheltered escapers. Gold watches were presented to some Islanders by the Russians who as late as 1965 honoured one of the Islanders who had helped escapers.
Mrs Louisa Gould ran a grocer's store, and had two sons, one of whom was killed in the Royal Navy in action. Soon after she heard of this, a starving Todt worker, Feodor Bourriy, presented himself at her shop, and she took pity on him. McKinstry provided false papers. He was taught to read and speak English and even joined Boots Library in St Helier and obtained a job. The Gould family were convinced Bourriy was informed on by a woman fraternizer, and although he managed to escape the Feldpolizei raid in June 1944, Mrs Gould was taken, and a Russian dictionary found in the house was enough to convict her. Her sister, Mrs Ivy Foster, and her brother Harold Le Druillenec were arrested as well, and each had an illegal wireless in their house. Mrs Foster got a five-month sentence to be served on the Island, but the others embarked on two journeys of horror that were to end in concentration camps. Mrs Gould perished in Ravensbrück in February 1945, and Le Druillenec, after a nightmare life in six different penal institutions, ended by nearly dying at Belsen. Among others punished for helping Todt workers were Edward and Nan Ross, and Miss Pitolet.
From Alderney there was little chance of escape and the only successful escapes took place in transit away from the island. T. Misiewiez arrested, aged 14, in Poland found himself in Norderney Camp in June 1942, and escaped in December 1943. 'A transport of Russian prisoners were being sent back to the Continent and 1 got among them. Prisoners were helping each other and some of the Russians whispered to me that when the roll was called that I was to answer to the name of Sokolov ... So I was Sokolov and walked onto the ship and disembarked at St Malo.' Misicwicz was soon recaptured after escaping from the depot at St Malo, and it was only after two more attempts that he finally reached London and was able to join the Free Polish Army.
Details of escapes from one of the death trains which originated in Alderney have emerged from SS records because the commandant of Sylt Camp, Maximilian List, and Kurt Klebeck in charge of the guard detail on one of the trains, were subject to a disciplinary hearing at Berlin in November 1943 following the escapes. The transport concerned was originally planned to have 200 sick prisoners, but 50 died before arrangements could be completed. List described what happened at the SS hearing. "When this transport was put together on Alderney the one hundred and fifty prisoners were specifically asked if they would rather work or die. I recall that they answered to this that they would rather die. When we walked back to our quarters there was quite a bit of laughter about this.'
List said that he feared tuberculosis among the prisoners might spread throughout Sylt, and therefore the sick prisoners should be sent away 'for extermination' at Neuengamme. During the enquiry Klebeck added that the prisoners were unable to work due to festering sores and dysentery, and confirmed 50 died between making up the transport and its sailing from Braye Harbour on 5 June 1943. On arrival at Cherbourg the prisoners were herded inside three of the wagons.
During the night the train had been in complete darkness because they had no batteries for the lights. Next morning the Germans found the ill prisoners had made a hole in the floor of one wagon through which ten escaped, and two more did so during the confusion of its discovery. A partially made hole in another wagon was also found and shored up. The guards herded the prisoners into two wagons for the journey on to Neuengamme where they arrived on 15 July. By then, another seven had died.
Other escapes of Alderney camp inmates took place in the summer of 1944 when the camps were closed. For instance, 280 prisoners were loaded on the Gerfried and arrived at St Malo on 1 July after an appalling voyage. One train took them north towards Kortemark in Belgium where they were to work on manufacturing Vis although they had been reassigned eventually to Buchenwald. A Czech political prisoner who had been on Alderney since February 1943, Robert Prokop, has described what happened on that journey. Some 200 arrived at Kortemark, and on 4 September attempted a mass break out. It seems this was betrayed and over 30 prisoners were shot. Only a few like Prokop succeeded in escaping. He took with him a Slovak guard who had been employed by the SS, but had become his friend at Sylt Camp.
William Wernegau was a German leftist who had been captured by the Vichy French in Algiers, and handed over to the Germans who put him in Sachsenhausen before transferring him to Alderney. He was among those evacuated in June 1944. On this particular train, the SS adopted the unusual measure of putting guards inside wagons with the prisoners, and as there were a good many Russians on the train murder was soon committed. At one station while there was a raid some ten Russians escaped after killing a guard. The Germans warned the prisoners that any further deaths would lead to reprisals. A day or so later two SS guards were strangled, and a further escape took place. 'The SS stood on both sides and wildly shot long bursts with their machine-guns into the train, killing many. Then they simply threw the bodies out of the train and left them there. This last incident occurred near Toul on the nig
ht of 26-27th July 1944 where a memorial stands today bearing the inscription "Here are buried seventeen victims of Nazi brutality".' The train continued into Germany with wounded on board. Wernegau himself managed to escape with a Pole, and reach American lines.
Nowhere were the risks of escaping more obvious than on Alderney itself and Wernegau and Prokop describe a particularly horrifying example of a failed escape leading to death in the summer of 1943 in broad daylight in the middle of St Anne. Their account was confirmed after the war by a corporal working in the ration office in New Street. The victim was Willy Ebert, a trustee or kapo, who had escaped and got as far as St Anne Church then in use as a store. 'A kapo climbed onto the roof, smashed a window and opened the door, the SS men entered the Church and Ebert was led out. They beat him with iron bars, but still he tried to run away ... He ran through the graveyard towards New Street, but before he reached the street the SS fired and hit him three times." Finally, he was dispatched with a shot in the head in spite of appealing to a passing German officer.
Part 5
Occupation Life for Ordinary People
War Crimes: Billeting, Looting and Destruction of Goods and Property
Collaborators and resisters made up only a few hundred of the population. For the majority of the people daily issues were of a different kind. Their everyday lives were the subject of some of Morrison's wilder remarks and inaccurate comparisons when he reported to the cabinet after his liberation visit that: on the whole the situation at least in Jersey and Guernsey was reassuring, and while of course, the Germans have left behind them a good deal of damage which will have to be put right and the economy of the Islands has been dislocated, the problem of their rehabilitation should be less difficult than was to have been expected. Certainly, as far as material damage, the Channel Islands have suffered nothing that compares with the damage due to enemy air raids in this country, while the health of the population docs not seem to have been seriously impaired.'
Yet even his report contained evidence of a different state of affairs. Morrison admitted that 'nobody who has not lived under the Nazis' can fully understand what occupation meant. Writing to Sibyl Hathaway, Morrison referred to 'the trials and privations of the long period of enemy occupation". In one passage in his report he said that, 'The Germans left many of the premises they occupied in a disgracefully filthy condition." This coincided much more with what eyewitnesses said in 1945. One has a harrowing description of evacuees, internees, and servicemen returning to the Islands finding 'on arrival that their homes had completely disappeared; others that while the almost unrecognisable shell of their premises remained, their household goods and effects had completely vanished.'
For many people there was only temporary accommodation, and compensation was by no means paid in all cases. House rents, living costs and taxation had all risen, and many of those returning had lost five years income and savings. Hathaway's daughter Amice returned to her Guernsey home to find: 'All the furniture had been completely wrecked; the drawers of chests and tallboys taken away, and nothing but the frames left. Her silver, which was hidden in the roof, had been discovered and stolen. Fortunately her baby Austin car had been concealed in a haystack by her faithful cowman, but it was a sorry sight." They sat down on a packing-case to view the damage, and Amice turned to her mother to remark that all the Germans seemed to have left was the sun-blinds. She went over to pull one down in the drawing-room and found it decorated with swastikas surrounding pornographic drawings. The Hathaways were able to spend Christmas 1945 in the Boston Ritz while other Islanders struggled to recover from five years plunder of everything in their daily lives.
Economic difficulties began with evacuation. Banks limited withdrawals to £25, and people could not take more than a suitcase or two with them. Savings, securities, homes of a lifetime, treasured and valuable possessions had to be left to the whim of the conqueror. Sometimes neighbours helped by receiving valuables, or taking over the running of shops and other businesses, but in many cases there was no time, and as the ships steamed towards Britain they left behind thousands of fully furnished homes, hundreds of well-stocked hotels and businesses, pubs full of beer, and garages full of petrol. 'One has to be very brave to turn the key in the lock of a home one has had for life and flee at a moment's notice', wrote an Islander.
One of the first tasks for the Island governments was to assume responsibility for this property. In Jersey, the superior council issued orders on 22 and 27 June 1940. Household furniture and effects were to be collected and stored, and arrangements made to collect and dispose of perishable goods. Goods in store were to be retained for 40 days after the return of their owners to the Islands. Land and livestock were in effect nationalized for the duration, although farmers received no compensation for their loss. Special arrangements were made to transfer livestock, agricultural machinery, and petrol from deserted Alderney, although here too no compensation was paid. Sadly, the Island governments proved unable to protect their citizens' property. In October 1943. an eyewitness who lived opposite Lovell's storehouse in St Peter Port commented that: 'The Germans never stopped taking the furniture away in vans from the store to the White Rock where they have special sheds and packers for shipping to Germany. What they are taking mostly belongs to those who left for England, who had stored it for safety or so they thought.'
Island governments were under severe and constantly mounting financial pressure, but they did do something to mitigate the difficulties resulting from the breakdown of legal and financial contact with Britain. They shouldered the payment of pensions payable by the British government. After liberation, the states voted to pay pensions and half wages to all returning civil servants, a privilege which extended to only a few other Islanders in the employ of richer firms like the banks. Otherwise those who were evacuated lost five years wages.
Island governments also agreed that people should file claims for damage to their property for treatment after the war. This often meant property remained in disrepair or near ruin for the rest of the war. Writing in October 1944 an Island official said these claims, 'will have to cover not only damage by bombs, but also damage to property, both movable and immovable, which has been in the possession of the German forces and their auxiliaries. The number of dwelling houses and business premises thus occupied exceed three thousand [in Guernsey alone]. In a considerable number of cases houses were completely demolished, while the erection of fortifications... has rendered useless hundreds of verges of pastures and arable land.'
Ten per cent in Jersey and 12½ per cent in Guernsey of agricultural land was wasted by the Germans. The official concerned admitted that there would be no compensation for the loss of trade by businesses, like tomato and flower-growers whose trade had largely vanished. Owners of pedigree cattle would get no compensation even though their herds would degenerate due to lack of breeding and feeding requisites. All investments would lose interest in the Island, while Islanders would also suffer from increased taxes and lower wages and thus be unable to save. The disappearance of many materials meant that maintenance of houses and domestic appliances was impossible.
Just at the moment the Channel Islands lost a third of their population they were compelled to pay the costs of the Occupation in conformity with the Hague Convention of 1907, which laid down conditions for the treatment of civilians by occupying forces. They continued to pay until 1942 when the Germans agreed to shoulder three-quarters of their own costs. Occupations costs included the wages of those employed by the Germans, the cost of transport and public utilities, and the rents of requisitioned property. John Leale on Guernsey and Edgar Dorey on Jersey had their work cut out to make ends meet, and in spite of all they tried to do the two main Islands were forced into debt. The budget surplus in Guernsey was converted into a debt of £3,022,400 by 1944. Leale calculated the Occupation cost his Island about seven million pounds sterling, and that the total debt was over four million pounds by Liberation Day. On Jersey the government h
ad a debt of over five million by the same date. Tax was raised to try and meet these difficulties. In Guernsey income tax rose from 9d to 4s in the pound and in Jersey the figures were a rise from 1/6 to 5s in the pound. Higher rates of tax were also raised proportionately. In addition, purchase tax was introduced of a halfpenny for every 6d of goods purchased by a merchant or vendor although foodstuffs were exempted. After liberation, the government in London gave £3.7 million to Jersey and £3.2 million to Guernsey to liquidate their debts as quickly as possible.
Financial difficulties were compounded by the introduction of Occupation Reichsmarks (RM) in July 1940 at a favourable rate of exchange for the Germans. Whereas the RM stood at 11.10 to the pound, the occupation orders proscribed a rate of 5 marks to the pound helping to precipitate the troops' buying spree. Germans and others who used this money had it paid into the banks where it was credited in sterling. The governments of the Islands then bought the RM back from the banks to pay some of the occupation costs. Surplus marks could be used for purchases in France. Twenty, five, and two RM, and fifty pfennig coins were introduced, and these gradually drove out all but the copper sterling coins as silver coins were hoarded or sold on the black market. To meet the gap the Island governments had to produce notes of low-denomination. Eventually RM became the main currency, and after fluctuating considerably settled down at 9.36 RM to the pound in September 1942. The final stage was reached towards the end of 1943 when the Germans decided to confiscate the remaining British paper money, and RM became the official Island currency.