Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (50 page)

Just as Tennyson's words embodied the evolving self-understanding of Islanders in their new subjugated position, Ord's construction of a coded message enacted the rhetorical resistance of Islanders to that subjugation.

BODY RHETORIC

In the 1960s, Leland Griffin coined the term “body rhetoric” to describe the use of physical acts of dissent developed by the New Left in the social protests of the day.
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This concept has evolved over time to encompass the many ways that the physical body may be used as a “mode of argument” and a means of defiance.
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In considering the means of rhetorical resistance utilized by the Guernsey Islanders to counter the domination of their captors, some fall into more overt physical actions. Some of these deeds were of a type considered to be classic resistance, such as took place in a more organized effort during the same period on the Continent. Yet, other forms of body rhetoric are still more interesting to us in that they align with the general subtlety of resistance efforts during the Occupation. Being in continuous close contact with the occupier under conditions of domination could not help but spark spontaneous instances not just of verbal explosions but also of physical violence. Thus, throughout
the contemporaneous accounts, we see mention of arrests and imprisonments for striking a German soldier or officer.

It is obvious that Islanders were lucky the Germans chose not to treat low-level physical violence with the mass hangings and shootings of randomly selected civilians that were then taking place in Pancevo, Vinkt, and so many other locations in Europe. It is impossible to know whether the work of the Controlling Committee and the “model occupation” meme established early on had an effect on this restraint, or whether it was based on the demilitarized nature of Guernsey and continued German belief that Islanders were potential allies that they had “liberated” from British tyranny. Of course, there also was not an armed resistance, and had there been, any deaths of Germans would likely have been followed by the hostage executions that were already being threatened behind the scenes.

Still, spontaneous acts of violence were bound to happen. The type of deference necessary for constructing an opaque “veil” of willing subordination,
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behind which rhetorical acts of subversion may be refined and enacted, is not natural to a free people. It requires “controlling what would be a natural impulse to rage, insult, anger, and the violence that such feelings prompt.”
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Sitting on such feelings was particularly challenging for Guernseymen and women, noted for their stubborn independence, and now forced to deal with sometimes belligerent German soldiers. Even self-defense was not a viable excuse for returned aggression. In 1942, Bill Warry described yet “another” young Guernseyman sentenced to two years in prison for having struck a German soldier. Rumor was rife that the act was one of self-defense after the German struck the young man first and was continuing to hit him with his belt. “
But
,” Bill emphasized, “you are not allowed to strike a German soldier, even under any conditions.”
⁷²

Bill Warry was able to observe for himself a “nasty incident” that occurred right outside his shop, coincidentally on Hitler's birthday in April 1944. That morning a German officer came riding a pedal cycle through the Arcade, and the policeman on duty, Officer Smith, held up his hand to signal that cycling was not allowed. The German dismounted and “let out full tilt with his fist on the policeman's jaw,” stood yelling in rage over the felled policeman, took down the policeman's badge number, and left. Bill worried about what would happen in days to come, but noted, “The constable took the blow & said nothing. It's fatal to retaliate.” It is obvious that Bill considered Constable Smith wise in his restraint, although it was “damned hard to get your face punched in a main thoroughfare when simply carrying out your & their orders.”
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Being involuntarily intermingled with German soldiers—surrounded by them at work, in town, even in their own homes—Islanders would have ample practice over five years learning to swallow feelings of rage and humiliation.

In addition to individual and spontaneous aggression, the Germans seem to have made plans to counter a second form of physical resistance. From the beginning, it is clear that they anticipated small acts of sabotage as one of the few overt activities that Islanders could take to impede the German war effort. Under conditions of clear domination, such as existed with the unarmed population in Guernsey, any efforts by individuals or small bands of activists to attack property would be “anonymous and usually nocturnal.” In some situations, small acts of property destruction could remain disguised, chalked up to natural causes or incompetence by those in power. In those cases, the secret hand at work remains entirely invisible. The advantage of such acts, if accomplished with the necessary “prudence and secrecy,”
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is that they deny the dominant the smooth running of the machinery of control without ruffling the placid surface of power and triggering reprisals. Carefully conducted, sabotage and tampering
are effective means for the dominated to assert some measure of their identity, signaling to peers that their forced compliance with power does not reflect a true self.
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More often, however, the sabotage is detected but the saboteur is not caught. For the Islanders, the danger was that a momentary sense of empowerment came at the cost of the Germans reinforcing their power base through discipline. Reprisals against the population at large would then further establish the Germans' ownership mentality and the right to control inherent in the Occupation situation. Small acts of sabotage are unlikely to “destabilize” a system overall, but they provide a legitimate excuse for the dominant to exercise their power.
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It was, in other words, a dangerous game to play, and the Islanders knew it. Detectable acts of sabotage also serve as generally ineffective means of resistance because they are, in Jordan's words, “
expected
rather than
confounding
behaviors.”
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Small acts of sabotage seemed to come in waves, another indication of the contagious nature of resistance. Ambrose Robin quietly heralded the advent of one major spate of sabotage in January 1941 when he described a young workman, believed to be about twenty-five years of age, who had been detained for cutting German telephone wires.
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It is difficult to know whether this small incident inspired the person who cut German field telephone cable near the airport in March of that year, but this second act would be commented on by almost all of the diarists. On March 18, 1941, close to half of the front page was taken up with a special
Bekanntmachung
from the Feldkommandant in the largest type used to that point. It informed the Island that due to the severing of a telephone cable in the St. Martin area of Guernsey, the curfew would be fixed from 9
P
.
M
. to 7
A
.
M
. (moved back from 10
P
.
M
.). The second part of the order was ominous: starting the next night, sixty Guernseymen from eighteen to forty-five years of age would be designated to perform guard duty during the night hours.
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Ken Lewis learned of this order when he reached work that day, and described himself as “dismayed to hear that some stupied [
sic
] person” had committed this useless act of sabotage. Partly, his concern was that the new curfew hours meant they had to be home before darkness fell. He quickly realized that since the civilian guards would be comprised of men of every class, chosen from the parishes of St. Martin, St. Andrew, St. Peter, St. Saviour, and Forest, he would be among this group that was set to guard the telephone wires at the water tower and the airport. He reported for duty on the Forest Road on a terrible night of wind and pelting rain, but fortunately he was considered a reserve man and allowed to go home.
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Dorothy Higgs saw this guard duty in a darker light than did Ken. One concern was that the men were on guard without arms (or, Dorothy believed, “even a torch”), which seemed to indicate that they were not seriously intended to stand guard. Rather, what made this a “pretty rotten job” in Dorothy's estimation was that “it actually means they are hostages and if any more damage is done they will be for it.”
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There is an excellent chance that Dorothy was correct, and that these men would have stood proxy for the entire Island and faced the same treatment meted out to hostages on the Continent had further acts of sabotage occurred during their time on duty. The States seemed very aware that these men were hostages more than guards, and an emergency meeting was held, with Jurat Leale to address the situation.
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Whether most Islanders grasped the full implications of the situation or not, the condemnation for the anonymous saboteur was fairly universal. Winifred Harvey considered the whole thing “very foolish,” because it was ineffective in accomplishing anything concrete, and everyone was punished for the act of a single person.
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Elizabeth Doig was still more condemning of the act, although her sole focus seemed to be on the disruption of the 10
P
.
M
.
curfew, which had only been in force for four nights when set back as punishment for the act of sabotage. Elizabeth described the act more in terms of a prank, and its result as “most disappointing & we feel very sore about it & trust the delinquents will be caught & punished.”
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In fact, the act seemed so heedless of consequences that many doubted it to be a case of determined sabotage at all. Jack Sauvary considered the perpetrators could be not necessarily resistance activists, but “probably irresponsible boys.”
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Reverend Ord went one further and floated the concept that it might have been “a disgruntled German who did it for a malicious prank.” He then hypothetically removed the act not only from the hands of Islanders but also from human hands entirely: “The Island is enmeshed in telephone cables now, many of which are carelessly slung from branch to branch of trees
OR SHRUBS AND HEDGES
. Those from trees could almost touch the heads of passers-by, while those on hedges etc. could be dislodged very easily by accident.”
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In these accounts, we are able to see the developing community attitude toward resistance as it was being constructed. In general, Islanders held instrumental acts of resistance, those that were not predominantly symbolic but intended to have an actual impact on the functioning of the German war machine, to a higher standard before granting their support. The underlying attitude was very practical. If these acts had been large enough to have a real impact on the Germans and had constituted a coordinated uprising against the Occupation, approbation for the acts most likely would have been widespread among the braver of the civilians. Dorothy Higgs revealed Islanders' willingness to revolt in her response to an August 1944 rumor that British leaflets would soon detail the precise resistance desired by the British government. Dorothy was more than eager for these marching orders “telling us what to do. And we'll do it!”
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But small actions that had no particular goal and yet could bring down such mass reprisals as hostage executions were viewed as stupid, irresponsible, or even childish acting out.

What
did
pass muster with Islanders was the clever, invisible sabotage undetected by the Germans as deliberate yet lauded quietly in civilian circles. Some of these
sotto voce
acts were minor but delightful in the telling. One classic example, related by Rev. Ord, involved a tomato grower who had been ill-treated continuously by the Germans and determined to pay them back in kind. His tomatoes were designated to be shipped to Germany. Knowing this, he told his packers as they were busy at their task, “Give the lower layers a bit of a press down before you put in the top layer.”
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This is the type of performed compliance, masking personal acts of small subversions, that constitutes effective resistance among the powerless. As far as the Germans would ever know, the grower had complied with their demands, and any damage to the tomatoes would be read as accidental. The hidden transcript, passed orally from person to person, revealed the truth to those privy to it, providing a point of commonality and counter-reading of apparently compliant acts.

Certain individual acts of serious sabotage came to light, and in those cases, the person responsible for them took the punishment and received the admiration of Islanders. Ambrose Robin was concerned for a man named Ferbrache, compulsorily employed in the cleaning of ammunition, who did “something to the fuses of shells to make them immune and damaged clips of machine gun cartridge belts to cause gamming [
sic
] in the guns.”
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Other secret sabotage was conducted so subtly that its impact never came to light until long after the Occupation. When I talked with the resister Alf Williams in 2003 and 2004, he casually mentioned that one job he had at the airport afforded him a chance to work around and on the airport runway. Alf used the opportunity to surreptitiously dig on the runway, hoping to put enough
small holes, pits, and ruts in the runway surface to cause German airplanes to crash upon landing. Telling me of one German plane that touched down, could not get a sure footing on the runway, and skidded off in a resounding crash, Alf's eyes sparkled; he laughed loudly and said, “I knew that one was mine!”
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