The Channel Islands At War (9 page)

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-Gene
ral Erich M
ü
ller. 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 lar
ge 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 hav
e 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'.

Five years is a long time in a child's life, living under conditions of censorship and propaganda. The children learnt German marching songs. Boys were soon practising and playing at soldiers, doing the German drills, the goosestep, and marching four abreast, bowing from the waist, heel-clicking, and glorying in it!

Most realized that it was pointless to blame the children, but such behaviour was evidence of the extent to which fraternization by adults gave the Germans the opportunity to influence the young. Older boys were invited to drink with the Germans particularly on occasions like Hitler's birthday. In April 1944 a witness saw boys who had been drinking brandy with the Germans rolling home drunk and 'heiling' Hitler as they went. A few of those indoctrinated in this way proved to be informers when other youths discussed escape or resistance; for example, in November 1944 the Jersey Physical Culture Club was closed after discussion of escape had taken place because someone had informed on them.

From the beginning, fostering good relations was part of official policy. At the highest level officials were chosen to present the acceptable face of fascism, and consolidate good relations with the Island ruling class. But the policy applied to ordin
ary Islanders, backed by the Führe
r himself. He drew a distinction between British subjects living on the Islands, and the 'native' Islanders whom he curiously saw as 'French' and therefore opposed to being members of the British Empire. He believed they could be won over to support the Reich, 'if our occupation troops play their cards properly'.

The Operation Hardtack report in December 1943 included the sentence: 'the population generally is not hostile to the Germans". The voices of those like Sherwill and Carey who praised the Germans saying 'the conduct of the German soldiers is exemplary', and 'the German authorities, both military and civil, have treated us with humanity and consideration' were never balanced by open criticism because this was an offence: and the Germans took full advantage of this to pretend their occupation had been a very model of civilized occupations. Von Schmettow told Carey in 1944, when the population was deprived of every basic necessity of life, that the Germans had "made every effort to prevent every hardship that could be avoided', and von Aufsess, chief of administration, confided to his diary the view that up to December 1944, "our conduct of affairs in these Islands has been reasonably fair and decent'. When, in 1945. Morrison and the British and Island governments all agreed with this view it must have seemed remarkable to those who had lived through live very different years.

There were individual decent soldiers, and kind-hearted administrators, but
bonhomie
was policy and propaganda, not evidence of a genuine desire to behave liberally. Early in January 1941 the Germans were busy with their first propaganda film. On Sark they asked a local couple if they would walk past Stocks Hotel, their headquarters, driving cows, and saluting as they passed. They were told the film was being made 'because the Sark people have given no trouble and had been very kind'. The couple declined. At social events cameras were present to record them for military magazines, or films. A series of dances with the troops was organized and the censored local press had to report them as successes. There were sporting events, including a Luftwaffe-Jersey match during the Battle of Britain won by Jersey 5-1.

Gradually for many Islanders the truth about military occupation emerged: that it brought no joy to anyone, neither civilians, nor, after June 1944, the soldiers themselves. The soldiers' mood could quickly change from outward friendliness as Molly Finigan found. Sometimes she stayed behind after school to forage for potatoes that had fallen off farmers' lorries, and the troops usually ignored her. One day a German seeing she had a basketful of potatoes chased her down Truchot Street shouting at her, and although she was a girl of only thirteen or fourteen gave her a hard kick with his army boot. Strict laws forbade criticism of the German forces, or remarks suggesting they deserved to be dealt with by British forces. A waitress who put down four meals and said, 'four dinners for four gangsters', received a month in prison.

One well-known case was the imprisonment of Mrs Winifred Green, who worked as a waitress at the Royal Hotel. Also working there was a pro-German woman who constantly taunted Mrs Green so she could inform on her. Matters reached a crisis during staff lunch one day. Mrs Green was asked if she wanted any rice pudding. You can have it, said the woman, if you say 'Heil Hitler' first. Mrs Green's reply: "To Hell with Hitler for a rice pudding - and one made of skim milk too!', led to her appearance before a military court on 13 October 1941 when she received a sentence of six months. After two weeks in the I
sland gaol, and several days in
Granville Prison, she was sent to Caen to serve her sentence.

Other incidents were more violent. In October 1941 a hairdresser had been sent over to Sark where a German soldier set on him calling him a bloody Swiss, hit him in the jaw and almost kicked him out of an hotel. Not content with that he followed him along the lane shooting with his revolver. Sentences gradually increased so that a local boxer who struck a German ended up on the Continent for the rest of the war. Frank Mallett, owner of an engineering and joiner's business at St Sampson's had an argument with a German interfering with his lathe, and when he pushed the German back the soldier fell over. Mallett was sentenced to pay a line of 5,000 marks, and to six months in prison.

Mrs Tremayne heard of a man put in prison for saying, i wish a few Spitfires would come and settle them', and a particularly tragic case of this kind was that of John Ingrouille. A 15-year-old boy of limited intelligence, he worked as a cook, and made silly remarks, including one that he could find 500 lads to fight the German soldiers. He was informed against by a mother and her daughter and sentenced in December 1940. He was left in Caen Prison for 18 months, and then moved to Germany. His parents begged for the case to be retried. It was, in Germany, and the sentence then increased. Ingrouille remained in prison to the end of the war, by which time his health was undermined, and he died at Brussels on 13 June 1945 on the way home. This was one reality of German occupation: informers, a savage sentence, and death.