Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (34 page)

Although some treated the women willing to run with the Germans as part of the sideshow of the Occupation, they often posed a danger for the noncollaborating majority. Ken acknowledged the difficulty of being around Guernsey girls and women of uncertain morals. There were some who were not simply playing the Germans for their own comfort, but who had forged an allegiance to the German cause. As Ken put it, “Some of these girls or women had no scruples about telling the Germans what you said, especially if it was detrimental to the Dritte Reich (Third Reich).”
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If willing to trade their reputations or their bodies for the advantages the Germans could supply, trading information on others would have been an easy next step. Islanders also knew that many of the foreign girls working in the Island before the Occupation (Hungarians, for example, like Winifred Harvey's Rosa and Maria) had flocked to the Germans and were not to be trusted. There also quickly developed some distrust of Irish-born Islanders. Ireland was neutral, and although most Irish Islanders were loyal to Guernsey government and sympathizers to the British cause, there were exceptions, willing to work privately with the Germans, and not to be trusted.

Winifred Harvey had a serious run-in with just such a woman in the Red Cross office on January 29, 1944. Winnie was serving as a volunteer, showing messages received to the recipients and typing replies. A woman named Kathleen Torode attempted to send a Red Cross message that ended, “We are very well treated by the Germans.” It was strictly forbidden that any message be sent that was general and not personal. Winnie pointed this out to Mrs. Torode and requested that she change the final sentence. “No, I will not,” replied Mrs. Torode haughtily. Winnie then suggested that she send the rest of the message and simply leave out the final line, and here is where Winnie made a mistake that could have been tragic. In a burst of frankness, she said to Mrs. Torode, “Everyone is not well-treated by the German authorities. People have been turned out of their houses and we have not much to eat.” Mrs. Torode demanded her message back, angrily saying that she had just come from the German authorities and they had proclaimed the message to be perfectly all right. As Mrs. Torode sailed out the door, her message unsent, a fellow volunteer, Mrs. Baker, leaned over to Winnie and said, “Wasn't she in a rage! I believe it is a put-up job and she has gone straight back to the Germans.”

Winnie, too, worried for several days that the incident would come back to haunt her. Kathleen Torode, as it turned out, was an Irishwoman who worked for the German Schmidt-Walkoff as his “housekeeper,” a euphemism used by Winnie to indicate that Torode was his mistress. Sure enough, several days later, Winnie was summoned to appear before Herr Kraft at Grange Lodge (headquarters of the Feldkommandant) with Mrs. Torode present. Soon they were in the presence of the Feldkommandant, Major Kratzer, a “short, bald, podgy little man with a roar like a bull.” Kratzer began to bellow at them in German, which Winnie could follow quite easily. The issue of the message itself was quickly dispensed with, and Kratzer declared it appropriate to send.

The topic then turned to the more dangerous one of Winnie's words on the treatment of the Guernsey people. Mrs. Torode claimed that she had written Winnie's words down
as “into the bargain, we are not well treated by the German authorities, and we have nothing to eat.” Winnie wrote that there was “silence at this exhibition of treachery,” because it became clear to all that Mrs. Torode had planned to denounce her and had taken her words down as evidence. Winnie provided what she had actually said and apologized for saying such a thing in a public place: “I regret gentlemen, that I said those words, I realized immediately that they should not have been spoken.” Winnie's polite and calm demeanor—not to mention her standing in the Island, important to the snobbish Germans—meant that she was let off this time, although with warnings that a future incident would require “treatment.” She noted that Major Kratzer gave her the Nazi salute on leaving and Herr Kraft shook her hand as she left, politenesses not extended to Mrs. Torode. “Jerry-bags” willing to denounce the Guernsey populace were useful to the Germans, but not generally respected by them.
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So, some female fraternization was definitely taking place in the Island, and the Islanders used gossip about these women to protect themselves from possible denunciations. But how prevalent were these affairs and how often did they result in pregnancy? The reason for this question lies in the fascination in the British press with the topic of German-fathered births during the Occupation. Marriages between Islanders and German soldiers were not allowed, and so German progeny would show up in the illegitimate births. The exception, of course, would be in a birth to a married woman—though unless her husband still was in Guernsey, a birth would signal an affair with someone. Some of the more comical estimates made by journalists include 2,000 (and even 3,000) illegitimate births in Guernsey alone. Consider that much of the roughly 25,000-member population of Guernsey consisted of men and boys, elderly and middle-aged women past childbearing, girls under twelve, and married women. This would mean that the limited population of single women and married women with absent husbands, the only members of the population whose births could have been recorded as illegitimate, would have been very busy indeed. The official estimation of illegitimate births was 285, although Ralph Durand sets the number at 196, and both of these numbers appear far more accurate simply from a logical standpoint.
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That girls and women were not flocking to sleep with the German soldiers may be seen in the need to import “professional women” from the Continent for that purpose. But dread rumors of massive numbers of illegitimate births began to filter across the Island. Rev. Ord heard a startling rumor that before Christmas of 1943, five hundred illegitimate babies had been born in Guernsey. It was disturbing enough that he consulted the matron and sister for their own estimate, which turned out to be under 120 for the Occupation to that point, which was more in line with later official numbers.
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Yet, unquestionably there were women and teenage girls in the Island left with a permanent souvenir of their indiscretion.

As word of an increase in illegitimate births got around, many Islanders responded harshly. Bill Warry noted that several girls had been in the Emergency Hospital, and that there “will be & is a lot of new blood (German) in the coming generation. Some of these girls should be put in the pillory.”
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Bert Williams, too, thought that “we have got the German blood here alright, that will want some getting rid of.” He was particularly scandalized at the mothers who seemed proud to “have had a child for a Jerry.” And Bert stated that there were quite a few married women now with a baby by the occupying forces, and that most would never be able to trace the fathers: “What a lovely thing for the children themselves. The single girl's parents are to blame in a large degree for allowing the girls to knock around with the troops. It is a proper disgrace to the Island & strong measures should be taken at the earliest opportunity.”
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Bert was on point when he criticized the fact that some parents allowed their girls to “knock around” with soldiers, because these were not sophisticated young women. They were quite likely not to know how to protect themselves either from sexual assault, which undoubtedly happened, or from the flattery and charm of soldiers who were usually older and more experienced. In April, just before the close of the Occupation, Ken Lewis reported that two of Vera Lloyd's friends were both expecting babies from the German Panzer troops recently in the Island. Vera's mother was concerned that a slur would attach to Vera and her sister Jane (particularly because Jane had been in the hospital to have some teeth out and thus was not “about” and visible).
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But this shows the oddity of the situation; Mrs. Lloyd knew that both girls flirted with the troops and went to dances with them. One would think that the damage to their reputation would have already taken place, and it is difficult not to see Mrs. Lloyd as negligent where her daughters were concerned.

Of course, some of these illegitimate babies had mothers among the foreign girls who left their positions with Guernsey families and worked for the Germans. Again, if Rosa and Maria are any indication, what you have are some naive country girls from the Continent with romantic notions and surrounded by young soldiers. Another factor that is too rarely considered is that the fathers of many of these illegitimate babies may not have been German.
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In January 1943, Ken was surprised when a young man he knew, only twenty-eight years old, died one morning, apparently of natural causes. Ken pondered this untimely death: “He had never lived what one could call a good life and he always went about with other girls despite the fact that he was married.”
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Thus, Ken reminds us of what we already know: that the Occupation did not put a moratorium on the illicit affairs that go on in any community. In fact, war itself heightens this tendency toward casual affairs, and we can see this acknowledged in the popular culture. After World War II, there was a spate of movies that touched on this issue and the need to forgive and forget any indiscretions.
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The Occupation could only have been more difficult for married couples now separated by the English Channel, because it would be five very long years without any leave to ease the strain. Kitty Bachmann wrote often in the early days about the number of “grass widowers” she knew, now separated from their wives who had evacuated with the children before the Occupation. Kitty was all sympathy for their loneliness. Then, in early 1944, she writes, “A number of deserted husbands have sought ‘solace’ elsewhere. This staggered us at first as we clung to the tenets of our Victorian up-bringing.” Peter, it seems, took a more “liberal” view, acknowledging that it was hard to be judgmental when “four, or perhaps five, years is a long time to be lonely.” So, not only were there the usual single Guernseymen to get a girl “in trouble,” but an entire new population of deserted married men seeking comfort where they could find it.

Some of the married women, also alone and with husbands in the British forces, would find themselves with a new baby to greet their husband's arrival after the war. The volatile combination of lonely-though-married Islanders who knew each other and socialized together increased the odds that many of these babies were not German-fathered. Kitty overheard two brothers talking about this turn of affairs, so to speak, as they were working to repair a shed in the Bachmanns' back garden. Bill was “most scathing” about the lack of marital fidelity among the people they knew. John replied, “Go on! If, when Betsy returns from England you find she've been unfaithful, you'll forgive ‘er.” “Eh,” Bill replied, “Never! I'm pure and I expects ‘er to be pure!” Kitty wrote that it really took hearing the Guernsey-French accent to do the exchange justice.
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Before leaving this subject, I want to touch on one aspect not always acknowledged when discussing young women who did have affairs with, and occasionally babies by, the German soldiers. This action is often treated as traitorous in some way, as a form of fraternization that was unpatriotic and a matter of “sleeping with the enemy.” We need to be careful about reading anything political or pro-Nazi into the average liaison between a young girl who might have been thirteen or fourteen at the start of the Occupation and eighteen to nineteen by its close. She did not have to go and seek out the soldiers, nor did she have to be a wild girl who liked to drink or dance and was heedless with her reputation.

A young nineteen-year-old soldier might well be billeted nearby, where she would have learned to know him as an individual. She would have met these young men in the shops or on the streets or on a country walk along the cliffs (occasionally even seen them at church). Over time, they might have shyly spoken to each other for one reason or another and have practiced exchanging a few words of German or English. Many of these young men were apolitical, with no interest in the war except to see it end, and some would be anti-Party. It does not take much imagination to see how an attraction would result. And anyone familiar with teenaged girls knows that the added fillip of a Romeo and Juliet love—one opposed by parents and community—would only add to the appeal.
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If time has given some perspective on these women and their motivations, the response from Islanders during the Occupation was anything but forgiving. Plans for retaliation against all quislings and traitors became part of the fantasy life of the Islanders—particularly against those who sent anonymous letters to the Germans denouncing Islanders with hidden wireless sets. Winifred Harvey wrote about this last group, “The behaviour of such cads is shameful: they are traitors and deserve to be shot by the British when we are free.”
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Such collaborators who “‘sold’ their own countrymen to the enemy” through betrayals were high on the list of those targeted for retaliation after the war. “Hanging is too good for them,” wrote Bert Williams.
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Bert extended his desire for revenge to growers who sold to the Germans, hoping that they would be “rounded up after the war & either deported or branded.”
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Even the mild Rev. Ord had a flash of these thoughts: “For quislings it is quite appropriate to cage them in the zoo!” although this is swiftly followed by “But allowance must be made for overstrain after these years.”
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But women who fraternized with the Germans came in for more than their fair share of retribution fantasies.