The Channel Islands At War Read online

  It was the appearance of official notices on 19 June stating that 'those desirous of being evacuated must register their names and addresses with the Constable of their parish at the Parish Douzaine Room as soon as possible and at latest by 8 p.m. today' which really brought war to the Islands. The notice referred to schoolchildren, their teachers and helpers, mothers with children under school age, expectant mothers, and men of military age between 20 and 33. To these categories were soon added unmarried women and widows, women with children up to 17 years of age and 'other persons than the above'. It was not clear if everyone was intended to leave, or if shipping would be available.

  Evacuation began in confusion and near panic, but ended successfully four days later. By that time about 11,000 had left Jersey, and about twice that number, Guernsey. All but 20 of Alderney's population had left, and all but 15 of Sark's had stayed. So in total about 30,000 left, and some 60,000 remained. Those were days of fearful partings and administrative chaos. The first to go were the children. AH over the Islands anxious and white-faced parents gathered in schoolrooms to hear details of evacuation. Mrs Cortvriend in Guernsey recalled she had last sat in the schoolroom to watch a Nativity play in 1939. She wrote: 'Our own children were rather pale and subdued at the last breakfast time we spent together, and kept saying "But what about you, Mummy? You and Daddy will come afterwards won't you?" ' Three weeks after the evacuation, the schoolroom became a billet for German troops.

  On 20 June, shiploads of children pulled away from the Islands, although it was a ten-and-a-half hour wait for some on Guernsey. The crossing in slow boats was pleasant enough for some, but others found it less pleasing. "We are all taking it in turns to rush to the side of the boat and be violently sick,' said Daphne Martel.

  The Tonbridge arrived at Weymouth to find there was no pilot, and had to wait 30 hours before docking with only one nursing sister on board. Mothers fainted or became hysterical, but eventually at midnight food was brought on board, and the children bedded down for the night in cattle stalls. A child of eleven who was already ill died during the evacuation, and a woman gave birth crossing the Channel. Parents left behind had to wait until March 1941 before Red Cross letter forms arrived assuring them of their children's safety or otherwise in the blitz then taking place in British cities.

  People registered at constables' offices in the towns, and in the countryside at the Douzaine rooms. In St Helier crowds surrounded the town hall, besieged the shipping offices, and offered motor cars in exchange for seats on the last flights out. Banks found themselves transacting so much business they had to restrict withdrawals to £25 each, and two couriers came in with £30,000 to steady the banks' reserves against possible panic. But after strong statements from Edgar Dorey on his return, and by Alexander Coutanche, things had calmed down by the evening of 20 June. In Guernsey, Victor Carey and Ambrose Sherwill handled matters less effectively first saying all could go, then saying shipping would not be available for all, and trying to urge restraint following signs of panic. Ralph Durand described how, 'Some farmers killed cattle that in the months to come could ill be spared. Some people before abandoning their homes turned their pet animals out of doors to fend for themselves; some with still less humanity left fowls and rabbits shut up without food or water. Some houses were left open, beds unmade and the remains of a hurried morning meal on the table.'

  After the departure of the evacuees the Island governments passed a law vesting control of all goods and property left behind in the hands of the state, but it was not long before houses were broken into, robbed or occupied as billets by the Germans, and Todt workers. In Alderney some of the early looting was done by Islanders from Guernsey sent to carry out salvage work, and a number were imprisoned. One man returned to Guernsey with 77 carpets, 76 curtains, 13 clocks, and quantities of food and cigarettes.

  Many of the craft involved in evacuation were cargo boats, and maintained speeds of no more than seven knots. As a result the Channel passage to Weymouth often took many hours. Then came lengthy train journeys to the north of England (most of the early evacuees went to Lancashire or Cheshire), and the problems of settling into a new country. Men of military age entered the armed services: the Jersey men, for example, joined the Hampshire Regiment in a body. A Channel Islands Refugee Committee was formed with C.T. Le Quesne and M.E. Weatherall as the most prominent members, and funds were raised to help the Islanders settle in.

  Once the bustle and excitement was over an uneasy calm descended on the Islands broken only by German reconnaissance planes. The banks opened again on June 25th, and from the packing sheds growers worked to load boats with agricultural produce. The newly appointed Controlling Commission met to organize trie collection of petrol and perishable food, and to make financial arrangements for abandoned businesses. Mrs Cortvriend commented on the oddness of not hearing children's voices. In Jersey R.C.F. Maugham found himself at a neighbour's deserted farm, its door swinging in the wind, and wondered who would milk the full-uddered cattle left in the field.

  The total population of the third most important Island, Alderney, was 1,432. Nearest to France, remote Alderney had quickly felt the effect of war with the coming and going of the machine-gun school, and the French refugees. Judge Frederick French, an ex-Indian army major, had only recently been appointed. Lacking a telephone system and unable to use wireless because of the security danger, French felt isolated and ill-advised, and had to glean information from Guernsey where Carey and Sherwill's confusing messages did not help him much. French became convinced that lack of vital food supplies and cash reserves in the banks meant they would have to evacuate the Island particularly since the regular supply ship had not arrived. On Friday 21 June a Trinity House ship, which was taking off lighthouse crews throughout the Islands, stopped at Braye Harbour, and French was able to send out messages to the Admiralty asking for evacuation ships, and to Sherwill complaining that no ships had yet called.

  Next day French who had been stopped in his car by angry people demanding action sent a Town Crier round the Island to summon a meeting on the playing field behind the Grand Hotel, known as the Butes. He stood on a lorry to address his fellow Islanders, and gave a grim picture. Food, he said, was running out, and the Germans were approaching. He ended by asking them what they wanted to do.

  Discussion then took place, and the people cried out that they wished to leave. Meanwhile Sherwill had telephoned the Ministry of Shipping on Alderney's behalf. Early on Sunday morning, six small cargo boats sailed into Braye Harbour, and Judge French ordered the church bells of St Anne to be rung. Carrying no more than two suitcases each the Alderney Islanders boarded the vessels, including French himself who left his yacht behind, and by midday the little flotilla was away into the Channel leaving about 20 people behind. Most of these left a few days later when a boat came to take off cows and horses which were shipped to St Peter Port only to be attacked in the German raid a day later. Apart from Frank Oselton, a farmer, and George Pope, and his family, who became lighthouse pilot to the Casquets lighthouse, Alderney was deserted.

  In Sark, the most medieval of the Islands, still largely controlled by Sibyl Hathaway, exactly the opposite happened. On the same Sunday that the people of Alderney were leaving William Carre, the Island seneschal, summoned most of the 470 Sarkees to a meeting at St Peter's Church. Hathaway said that she, her husband, and one of her daughters would remain, and strongly urged them to do likewise. Carre1 asked for the names of those wishing to leave. Major Breen, a former press attach^ in Berlin, said that he was definitely going in his yacht, and offered passage to others. Fourteen English residents accepted. The German air attack on the Islands passed over Sark frightening the inhabitants, including Mrs Tremayne's daughter Norah who was out shopping, and had to get into a ditch. No word came from Guernsey, and Mrs Tremayne waited fearfully for the coming of the Germans.

  At three o'clock on Thursday 20 June a wireless signal was sent from Naval High Command in Berlin to Admiral Karl
georg Schuster, Commander in France, stating that the capture of the British Channel Islands was urgent. It was followed the same day by a directive from Admiral Schniewind, the cautious-minded Director of Naval Operations to the Flag Officer Commanding, Northern France, Admiral Eugen Lindau. The British Imperial General Staff had declared the Islands to have no strategic importance when discussing demilitarization. But the Naval Directive received by Admiral Lindau claimed that the Islands constituted a forward enemy observation post on the flank of German operations. Although no decision had then been made about invading Britain, the Islands would be valuable to the Germans if it was possible to deny their communication, air and naval facilities to the British. Possession of the Islands effectively scaled off a wide part of the West Coast of France from naval attack, and with guns mounted on the Islands controlled the gap between Alderney and Cherbourg. The Islands also provided a useful base for Channel operations in the ceaseless convoy battles between German E-Boats and the Royal Navy. The Islands could provide repair and supply facilities. Even if German forces in the Islands were to be out of all proportion to their strategic value they were nevertheless useful enough, and their possession later helped the Germans to inflict losses on British forces.

  For Hitler the Islands possessed another importance because they were the only British territory directly occupied by Germans. Chattering to his cronies before lunch on 22 July 1942 Hitler said with the fortifications we have constructed and the permanent garrison of a whole division, we have ensured against the possibility of the Islands ever falling into the hands of the British. After the war they can be handed over to Robert Ley for, with their wonderful climate, they constitute a marvellous health resort for the Strength Through Joy organisation.'

  Every propaganda ploy was used to present the occupation as a model to the outside world because the example of good relations on the Islands would lull the British into false belief in German moderation, and make good copy for Goebbels. By January 1941 the first propaganda film was being made. In the early days of the occupation when a kid-gloves policy was being deliberately operated even members of the Island governments were caught up in German propaganda, and Ambrose Sherwill was to give a notorious broadcast over Radio Bremen praising German behaviour. Under the stress of German power there were others willing to do Goebbels' work. Pearl Vardon, a Jersey schoolmistress, was sentenced to nine months in prison after the War for broadcasting from the Concordia Bureau in Berlin from February 1944. John Lingsham, who was deported in 1943, was approached at Laufen Camp, and agreed to monitor news broadcasts for the Germans. He was sentenced to five years in prison after the war. Another camp inmate, Denis Cleary, was deliberately sent back by the Germans from Dorsten to give a favourable account of deportation camp conditions in local papers.

  Capture of the Islands might seem at first an easy matter. Britain was under siege, defeated, and short of every kind of war material, while a German army of a hundred divisions, and a Luftwaffe with 3,200 serviceable machines had rolled to the French coast in a matter of weeks. But the Kriegsmarine was naturally cautious about amphibious attack in the Channel where Britain could still concentrate overwhelming naval forces, and worried about what faced them on landing particularly since the Islands' small harbours prevented the use of large craft. Reconnaissance flights over the Islands began on 18 June, and were combined with an earlier outdated appreciation by a German spy to give an intelligence overview that there were manned fortifications in port areas. So certain was the Kriegsmarine of this that even when Reuters reported on 29 June that the Islands had been demilitarized Schuster discounted the report. The reason was that the existence of old fortifications, the movement of evacuation, potato, and other cargo boats, and the presence of farmers' lorries at the ports convinced the Germans there was some military activity. It was this uncertain situation that led to a reconnaissance in force to test possible defences.

  The invasion plan, Operation Grune Pfeile was conceived as mainly a naval affair with strong Luftwaffe support from Luftflotte 3. The plan involved the landing of six battalions from 216 Division accompanied by naval assault troops and two companies of engineers. They would carry only light weapons, and take with them a small amount of captured French artillery. The Kriegsmarine was almost absurdly cautious interrogating French fishermen about currents and tides, and stressing the need to be prepared for minefields. Landing craft of the right size were in short supply, and therefore the occupation would take two days. Alderney and Guernsey being taken on the first, and Jersey on the second day. The Luftwaffe was required to provide air cover from dawn on invasion days, Stuka dive bombers to accompany the small unarmed ships, heavy fighter protection at Cherbourg where the forces assembled, and softening up attacks on the preceding days. The day after the reconnaissance in force on 28 June Schuster attended a staff meeting in Berlin, and next day an operational conference in Paris. In spite of the welcome news from the raid, and of demilitarization the Germans hesitated. Orders were given for a further raid on 1 July, and an operational conference was summoned to meet at Deauvillc at six o'clock that day to consider if attack should start.

  Six Heinkels came in from the east over Sark on 28 June where roofs were sprayed with bullets, and began to drop about 180 bombs on Jersey and Guernsey accompanied by considerable cannon fire and machine-gunning. In St Helier the main casualties occurred in the La Roque area, and ten planes passed over Greve d'Azette and Fort Regent machine-gunning and bombing the port before sweeping towards Beaumont and St Aubin and then turning again across the open sea. In Guernsey the evening sun was setting over St Peter Port, and many people who had been listening to a talk by Sherwill went to watch the busy harbour scene from White Rock. The mail boat and the boat from Alderney loaded with cattle and horses were in together with boats being loaded with baskets of tomatoes from a line of lorries and horse-drawn vans on the quayside. Sherwill was just ringing up the Home Office at 6.45 p.m. as the planes attacked, and he held the instrument so that Markbreiter at the other end could hear the noise. Between two and three hundred people were in the harbour area, most of whom were saved by sheltering on a concrete platform under the jetty or in sheds where they covered themselves with sacks of flour. Others were less fortunate. The lorry drivers were a sitting target. "Some tried to shelter under their vehicles only to be crushed as the fires started and the vans and trucks collapsed. The blood of the wounded and the dying mingled with the juice of the tomatoes, and when I came on the scene just as the last Hun plane faded into the distance the sight was one I shall never forget; the flames, the bodies, the cries of the dying and injured, and the straggling line of people emerging from their shelter under the pier jetty', wrote an eyewitness. The main damage occurred from St Julian Avenue to Salerie Corner, and in the countryside bombs fell at St Saviour's, and Vazon. The only reply was some desultory fire from anti-aircraft guns on the Isle of Sark steamer, and the Germans had long gone when six RAF Ansons appeared.

  Limited civil defence forces did what they could. Members of St John's Ambulance Brigade, the police, special constables, the Auxiliary Fire Service, and the ARP hurried to the scene. Among the dead were an ambulance driver, Joseph Way, a policeman, Clifford Bougourd, and out at sea, Harold Hobbs, son of the Guernsey lifeboat skipper, killed as the Heinkels straffed boats. The youngest of the 44 victims was 14 and the oldest 71.

  But the lack of response had convinced the Luftwaffe that the Kriegsmarine were being over cautious, and Schuster and Lindau's plans were short circuited. Soon after midday on Sunday 30 June Captain Liebe-Pieteritz and three other Dornier pilots were on reconnaissance over Guernsey when he decided to land at the airport. He entered the airport building finding no one and leaving his pistol behind. According to German sources the Dorniers engaged Blenheims in a dogfight shooting down two of them. Between six and seven that evening four or six transport planes with a small contingent of Luftwaffe soldiers landed under Liebe-Picteritz's command. Sherwill rang up Markbreiter to say the
Germans had arrived, and despatched Inspector William Sculpher, Chief of Guernsey Police, to the airfield with a document stating the Island was demilitarized. The soldiers and Sculpher then drove to the Royal Hotel, and Sherwill was sent for by a policeman and a German officer.

  Sherwill picked up Carey, the bailiff, and together they went to the hotel where they found about six Germans, the harbour-master, and a Swiss hotel owner to act as possible interpreter although some of the Germans spoke English. Instructions were issued, and it was agreed to produce special editions of the Guernsey Evening Press, and the Star containing them. The meeting broke up, and apart from the smashing of wireless apparatus at the harbour nothing else happened that night. Frank Falla of the Star went in to work on the special edition: I got out my bike and started on my way, but I'd not gone very far along the coast road when my worst fears were confirmed. I stopped and stood staring along the road ahead of me. I found I was gazing at the first member of Hitler's army I had ever seen in real life: the green uniform, queer-shaped helmet, the jackboots, the gas mask in a tin, and the rifle at the ready.'