Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (16 page)

Some acts of German kindness were not without serious potential cost. In June 1942, a fresh warning came to the German troops forbidding fraternizing with civilians, more particularly stating that those giving bread to civilians would be shot.
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Still, the gifts of bread, tobacco, or access to the wireless continued. It was a covert gesture of appreciation for help in a shop or an expression of affection to a family that treated a billeted soldier with kindness. Though the value to the recipient was undeniable, most Islanders did not considered such tokens as collaboration. In effect, accepting German bread was only depleting the resources of the Germans—an extra benefit, though not the motivating factor, for anti-Party Germans in giving the gifts and for Guernseymen in receiving them.

Rev. Ord provided an actual example of the exceptional German, who should be treated on his own merits, and the German who was not just a part of the Nazi system, but who embodied all that these British citizens despised. Eduard Lassauer was a young German soldier billeted on the Chilcotts, and one who seemed to win the affection of all who knew him. Courteous, thoughtful, he was considered “a delightful, well-educated young fellow.” He was particularly considerate in allowing his “hosts” to use his wireless, banned at that point for them, and he brought them many small commodities from the army stores, all as a means to express his gratitude for the comfortable home they provided. Even when he went on leave, he took “snaps” to show his own family his billet and came back with a special message from his parents thanking the Chilcotts for the care of their son. He could, in Ord's opinion, be “easily taken for an English boy” and even reminded Ord of a particular relative.

The counterpoint came with the young NCO who occupied Eduard's billet while Eduard was on leave. Where Eduard was courteous, this young man had little in the way of breeding and very poor manners. Given to constantly performing what the Islanders called the Nazi “stretch” (the greeting done with a straight extension of the arm, literally the
Deutscher Gruß
or German greeting, but better known as the Nazi salute),
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he just slightly outranked Eduard. Thus, any protest was futile, and Eduard was given another bedroom upon his return from leave. Although the Chilcotts tried to be even-handed “hosts” to both Germans, the new soldier began to complain that “those people” could listen to the wireless and that it would have to be moved to the bedroom. Under the advice of a higher-ranking sympathetic officer,
Eduard secretly took up carpets and linoleum and rigged the wiring so that the Chilcotts could still listen in on his set when the other billeted soldier was out. Eduard also ostentatiously removed a part of the set before going on his next leave, to reassure his billet mate that the Chilcotts could not use the set. He then quietly gave the part to the Chilcotts for safekeeping and invited them to use the set as often as they pleased.
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With many such comparative examples before them, Islanders learned as one lesson of their unique experience of Occupation that all Germans were not alike and that the goodness of the individual could transcend the rotten nature of the larger system.

Rev. Ord developed deep personal contact with a series of anti-Party German officers, and this experience helped him to refine his general policy of differentiation. The first of these relationships came about in a fashion that would be remarkable under any circumstance but was doubly so in time of war. On September 2, 1941, Ord went to Rabey's bookshop and found John Rabey, the brother of the owner, in quite a state. He was attempting to help a tall, handsome officer, but having been left the shop to mind for his evacuated brother, and lacking any real knowledge of the trade, he was confused and made nervous by the German's requests. Spotting Ord entering the shop, Rabey cried, “Sir, this gentleman will help you,” and introduced the two men. Ord helped the officer to purchase several English classics to take to his wife when on leave, and they passed a few words, Ord switching comfortably to German. “Oh, then you have been in Germany?” the officer asked, and on a sudden impulse, Ord replied that he wished for a magic carpet if only to visit Köhler's bookstore in Leipzig. The officer said that he would pass through Leipzig on leave and would be happy to bring a special book in appreciation of Ord's kind assistance. Ord replied:

“That is very good of you. When there are so many, it is hard to decide. But perhaps, to name one scholar, I should be very glad to have a book by Hermann Gunkel, the distinguished…”

[But here he interrupted in astonishment:] “But this is extraordinary! You ask for my Father's book! I am Hermann Gunkel's son!”

Thus, Ord met Dr. Gunkel, whose late father had been an Old Testament scholar very influential on Ord's interpretive understanding of the Bible. Both Rev. Ord and Dr. Gunkel were quite overwhelmed by this chance meeting, which sparked a relationship lasting until Gunkel was recalled to Berlin that December.
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During the time of their acquaintance, Dr. Gunkel proved to be a man of many surprises. He would visit Ord and speak with unusual frankness; in fact, Ord found that “his outbursts were almost staggering” for an officer of his rank. He was decidedly “no friend of the Nazis,” and Ord encouraged him to “pour out his burdened soul.”
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Yet, Ord was not just offering a Methodist form of the confessional. He was more than willing to use this connection with the Occupation hierarchy to benefit the Islanders. This came to pass when Ord intervened in a court case involving one of his parishioners, Basil Martel. Martel had been arrested and charged with disrespect to the German army, because he challenged a young Guernseywoman, accompanied by two German officers, when she attempted to buy an expensive eiderdown without a permit. The girl, who had a questionable moral reputation and was a known fraternizer with the Germans, gave a colorful and blatantly false account of what Martel had said privately about the officers. When Ord found out, rather by chance, that his new friend Dr. Gunkel was the head of the Kriegsgericht, the “Judge for the Island,” he wasted no time in sitting down with Gunkel to discuss the merits of Basil
Martel's case. Gunkel shared this information with the presiding judge who was coming in from Jersey. The upshot was that Martel was released at trial with no stain on his character, an unlikely outcome for a working-class Guernseyman.
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Having found this “magic talisman,”
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it is little wonder that Ord was sorry to lose Gunkel in December, realizing that “he might have been of use to us and to others.”
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Other German relationships would develop to which Ord seemed even more personally attached. In February 1943, Heinrich Bödeker, a young German minister, came by bearing an introduction from a German scholar, a mutual acquaintance. Bödeker had been a minister in a German evangelical church until the day that Gestapo spies, planted in among the congregation, decided that he had stepped over the line in what he said. He had only ten minutes to report to the depot, at which time he was placed in the coastal guards. Through Bödeker, a man so strongly anti-Nazi that he was always in danger of being reported by spies and backbiters among the troops, Ord would be introduced to Hoffmann (another former minister of a parish in Germany) and to Reinhold Zachmann.
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All three men would become close friends with Rev. Ord, bringing news about the war (“a precious window of escape from our narrow confinement”)
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and small gifts of bread or sugar, both at great risk to themselves. Ord never asked for this help or information, knowing the danger for his friends. However, these intellectual Germans valued a person with whom they could safely discuss their common loathing of the German regime, and they found small means to express that friendship.

The average Guernseyman would have difficulty knowing the Germans around them in the same way as Douglas Ord, with his knowledge of the German language and his ministerial position. Although they did see the difference in individuals among the occupying forces, these observations were tainted by suspicion that positive behavior was feigned rather than real. One story that went the rounds concerned the two men billeted on Leonard Guilbert at Saumarez Road. One young soldier was reserved and distant, but the other was very friendly, had a seat at the fireside throughout his stay, and became like a member of the family. All of this changed one evening when “the Gestapo” (a term used often in Islander accounts for men who were actually the Geheime Feldpolizei [GFP], or secret field police) came around and asked this young soldier, “Which is the door that is always kept locked?” whereupon the soldier indicated the pantry door. Guilbert was forced to open the pantry, as they suspected that he had a wireless, although only their meager store of food was kept there. When the GFP left, the young soldier tried to resume his usual seat and was told to go to his room and never to enter any other room as long as he was billeted there. Incidents like these made it “difficult to trust the best of Germans.”
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With this carefully gleaned information about the occupiers garnered through their own countersurveillance, Islanders constructed a foundation on which to build their particular style of resistance. James Scott maintains that “discourses of resistance” must rely upon some network of cooperation among the powerless. There must be spaces that are sheltered from the watchful eyes of the powerful and beyond their control, where a line of resistant talk and practices can flourish.
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Susan Gal provides a “nested” view of public and private that is a useful framework when seeking to understand the nature of Guernsey resistance. Gal points up the perceptual nature of the /files/03/04/96/f030496/public/private dichotomy and seeks to find aspects of the “public inside a private or private inside a public.” In Gal's example, the private home, set apart as it is from the public street, is further differentiated between more public areas (such as the living room) and more private areas (such as the bathroom or bedroom). Even these areas may be further broken into increasingly private distinctions by common usage.
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As
the Germans invaded the privacy of Islanders, imposing a surveillance of private actions that sought to restrict resistance, Guernseymen and women countered with a concept of resistance that confounded traditional notions of public action. In the newly hostile environment, public resistance would take on private shadings. Birthed in increasingly hidden locations and revealed in the private writings of Islander diaries, rhetorical resistance would be difficult to shoehorn into traditional notions of public resistance.

In the next chapter, we will see how interpersonal support among close family and friends and personal notions of defiance and patriotism, both generally considered private concerns, took on new public importance during the Occupation.
Chapter 2
will first establish the strength of relationships among Islanders, and the networks of interpersonal care that grew up under the wearing and sometimes brutal conditions of the Occupation. These vital connections of support would be strained over the years as the physical and mental stresses of Occupation took their toll. Yet, these ties were the bedrock upon which common understandings of the situation and the spirit to survive were constructed. This sense of support would provide the first set of foundational elements necessary to the sustaining of a rhetorical resistance.

The second necessary component for fostering resistance was a reassurance that the majority of Islanders shared a common set of patriotic beliefs. Only with the trust that came from knowing the mindset of others could a common form of discursive resistance develop. It was an object of belief that Guernseymen and women should face their difficulties with the same “thumbs up” positive attitude that dominated stories of the British spirit. In the next chapter, too, I will discuss how identification with Britain became a primary influence on Guernsey mood and outlook. Although consigned by fate to the fringes of the war effort, Islander affiliation with the Allied cause reinforced their self-view as patriots and true Britons. Their concerns for their evacuated families, particularly children, and for relatives serving in the Allied forces were heightened by distance and the uncertainty of contact. Thus, a network for discursive resistance was constructed from common experience, mutual anxieties, and shared mindset, one so embedded in everyday familial, neighborhood, and occupational settings as to be “opaque to the authorities.”
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It was in these informal, everyday settings that the hidden transcript of resistance was written.

CHAPTER TWO

The Bedrock of Resistance

I
T WAS A
M
ONDAY BANK HOLIDAY IN
A
UGUST
1941,
BUT
J
ACK
S
AUVARY WAS HARDLY
in a holiday mood. Midday fog had turned to windy rain, and Jack felt for those he watched set off with their ill-supplied picnic baskets and bathing suits in the morning. This attempt to carve out an illusion of past holiday-making ended with a slog home through the wild gales of early afternoon. All in all, it was a “dull day” for Jack as well, with “only the fowls and rabbits for company.” When he had met that morning with Uncle Ned (in actuality, his brother-in-law) at the Bridge roadway and shopping area in St. Sampson, he found that Ned, too, was depressed and feeling deserted by his friends. It was, Jack mused, “the usual.” When a person kept an “open house,” as Ned did before his wife's death, then friends were sure to flock around; but when “you're down and alone you get nobody.”
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Jack fought his own battle with loneliness, especially in the evenings, when he missed “dear old Mum” the most. He would often visit a fellow widower and old family friend, Dr. Jones, until curfew, but in general, Jack wrote that he found little interest now in other people. With family and friends scattered and an unfillable void left by his wife's passing, he sometimes felt that “Life is very disappointing, very few people are sincere.”
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