Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (7 page)

Winnie, for one, would never completely recover from this terrible act, performed with the most loving of intentions, and she spent the remainder of the Occupation revisiting the decision. Even when lying in the street, under the bombardment of the air raid on the harbor on the 28th of June, she was thinking, “‘Thank God Rolf is out of this!’ Mrs. Kinnersley's lovely young red setter went mad and had to be shot. Rolfie was so upset by noise that it might have been the same with him.”
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Yet, no amount of rationalization could ease Winnie's obvious grief and regret. She wrote in August, “I think sometimes that I did right by Rolf and some times it was a frightful mistake. But I have missed him every day frightfully.”
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Rolfie's death became her touchstone, symbolic of all the decisions large and small in the years to come. These early days of disinformation, panic, and forced decision making under the worst conditions would spawn many regrets for the diarists and the remainder of the Guernsey population. When the announcement finally came from the elderly Bailiff, Victor G. Carey, that evacuation was voluntary, considerable damage had already been done. As Rev. Ord wrote in his diary, “Had this announcement been made a day earlier, much misunderstanding and wretchedness had been avoided.”
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Not only were pets euthanized or abandoned, poultry slaughtered, and cows left in fields to wander loose and unmilked, but property of all kinds took on a lesser significance to its owners. As Ord put it, “Car owners gave away their cars to friends—some for twenty shillings. Others did the like with property: ‘There's my house and furniture; do what you like with it. I'm off!’”
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One of the more amusing stories of the sudden relinquishing of property was provided by Bert Williams, who was working at Fort George in the electrical department of the Royal Engineers staff. All seemed normal when he finished up work at 6
P.M.
on June 19, but on his arrival at 7
A.M.
the following morning, Bert found the fort deserted and turned upside down. Bert and a few others wandered around the fort to the “smashed up” canteen, where a barrel of beer had been left with its tap open and beer spilling all over the floor. Never one to miss an opportunity, Bert said, “The lads soon stopped the beer from running to waste by drinking it up. I came across the piano & so all hands settled down to a sing song with beer.” This same morning, George Collivert, the owner of the Albert Arms, came to the decision to “give his pub away” and began to hand out beer, liquor, and tobacco gratis to all who appeared. Bert snagged the final bottle of Pony Ale, by which time Collivert's “once spotless bar was afloat with beer and all the lads of the village were definately [
sic
] under the weather.”
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The rationale for such giveaways appeared to be unwillingness by evacuees to allow their property to fall into Nazi hands.
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In some parts of the Island, the Germans confiscated the homes of those who evacuated almost immediately as housing for the troops.
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Quick confiscation of evacuee property for German housing appears to have been less common in other areas. Thus, as late as December 1941, Jack Sauvary wrote of his friend Stafford, who had taken on the task of “looking after evacuees' homes,” along with “women [who] ventilate and clean them each week.”
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The decision to evacuate to England or to stay behind and suffer a German invasion was not merely predicated on panic, but on a variety of personal factors. It is important to recognize that many Islanders anticipated not a relatively peaceful Occupation, but becoming the new frontline of the war. They expected an all-out battle between England and Germany on their soil, with the very real possibility of Guernsey being flattened by Allied air raids. Quite naturally, they turned for advice to spiritual advisors, and Rev. Ord reported being “besieged”
by both old friends and total strangers seeking counsel: “We are depending on you; what you say goes for us!” Ord did his best with these requests, but privately filtered them through his dry wit, musing, “It is curious how, in times of crisis, people turn to a Minister of religion when they ignore him at other times.”
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Some of the decisions to evacuate were easier than others. Resident soldiers were demobilized, and men of military age, considered to be from age twenty to age thirty-three, were invited to leave the Island. They would be in especial danger with a German invasion and were of considerable value to Great Britain for war duty.
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It is unfortunate that Ken Lewis does not write about the decision that led him to stay in Guernsey. At the age of eighteen, he fell between the two stools of being considered too young for overseas duty and being considered of conscription military age. Conscription age would change to eighteen later in the war. At this point, however, adolescents of the time were particularly helpful to their families, and Ken stayed in Guernsey, as did some of his “mates.” With no way to become involved in the great cause, they would form a particular point of resistance and bedevilment for the occupying forces.

Many families made the wrenching decision early on to evacuate their children, and nearly entire schools left together, generally with a small group of teachers accompanying. The steamers were often delayed, and Ord described how “the bairns nevertheless marched along the jetty singing and putting on a brave smile.”
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For many children, this must have seemed an exciting adventure, and evacuating by school group was a clever way to give the sense of a school outing. For other more prescient or cautious children, the magnitude of the experience could not be sheltered from them. As Kitty Bachmann tucked in her daughter the night before evacuation, Diana said to her, “I shall try to forget you and Daddy, then I shan't be too sad.” Diana already sensed that her parents would not be joining her in England, although that decision had not yet been made. Kitty described her daughter “as she lay the next morning, dishevelled after a restless night, sprawled across the bed, fast asleep, with flushed cheeks, her new identity disc on its silver chain slipped on to a bare shoulder, oblivious to the fact that I was standing there in mental agony, forcing myself to waken her and send her away, literally and irrevocably into the unknown.”
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Any parent can understand the pain and the peculiar bravery of relinquishing a child to an uncertain but seemingly safer fate. Yet, just as in the evacuation of schoolchildren from London during the Blitz, not all families were able to make this decision or to do so in time.

At the other end of the life cycle, the elderly posed particular problems when decisions were made whether to go or stay. More than one set of plans to evacuate as a family would be confounded by older residents' inability to endure the travel or unwillingness to leave the only home they had ever known. Arthur Mauger, at nearly eighty and still active at his family farm, seemed not to have seriously considered leaving. Jack Sauvary apologized to his children often in his diary for failing to go with them, writing, “You know darlings that I am getting old and to start life again is not very encouraging, not at 64.”
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Today, we would not think of sixty-four as all that old, and Jack seemed extremely vital and involved with everything going on around him. Yet, the recent death of his wife must have made him feel that the best part of his life was behind him. Later, as German orders became harsher, he admitted to worrying that he had made the wrong decision, and then revealed the real tug that kept him in Guernsey, “I was afraid that if we all got killed with bombs there may not be even a small stone to mark Mum's grave.”
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The decision to go with parents, or stay behind with parents, at times divided families. Kitty Bachmann's family was offered berths on a departing ship with less than an hour's
notice. When her mother and sister Audrey called to tell Kitty that there was additional room for two more, Kitty and Peter faced a difficult decision. Peter could not, at such short notice, leave his business as a jeweler, and “neither would his old people entertain, for one moment, the idea of travelling.” Sitting there at their breakfast table, he gave Kitty complete choice to go immediately or wait until they could sort out the proper course for the two of them to follow together. Despite her family's entreaties on the telephone, Kitty decided to wait with her husband. The speed of events robbed Kitty of the opportunity for proper goodbyes, a particularly sad thing in light of later events.
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Not that everyone was so solicitous about elderly parents. Bessie Clayton, a teacher at the Girls' Intermediate School, rang up Winifred Harvey to tell her that she was evacuating with the school. Winnie asked her, “But what about your mother?” To which Bessie breezily responded, “She will probably follow.” And thus, Winnie reports, Bessie departed for England and “left her mother quite stranded and alone.” This apparent desertion of “poor old Mrs. Clayton” gnawed at Winnie. She “didn't in the least want to take responsibility for her,” but her conscience would not let her ignore the woman's plight and she decided to at least make inquiries. As it turned out, the neighbors were leaving and couldn't take her with them, and even her daily cleaning woman had left for the mainland. As the reader of her diary anticipates, Winnie finally writes, “there seemed nothing for it but to fetch her here.”
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This theme of abandonment versus bravely standing by one's responsibility took on great importance during and after the evacuation period. There was pressure applied to reduce panic and to encourage valuable members of the community to remain in the Island. Placards bearing what Kitty Bachmann called “the bitterest taunts” appeared all over Guernsey: “
DON
'
T
BE YELLOW!
” “
CHEER UP!
” “
EVACUATION NOT COMPULSORY!
” “
STAY WHERE YOU ARE!
”
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Many irreplaceable people had left the Island, and there may also have been considerable pressure from Whitehall, uncertain what to do with the sudden influx of so many refugees.
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R. O. Falla of the Controlling Committee made a special trip to Winifred Harvey to beg her to stay, saying, “Miss Harvey, while you are here you are an asset to the island, if you go you become a refugee.” Even a girl in Le Riches store said to her, “I am so glad you are here, Miss Harvey, we do look to those who should lead us to stand by the island.”
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Such repeated assurances of her importance to other people's well-being seemed to have the effect on Winnie Harvey of slowing down her decision to leave, and she was not alone in using others' needs as the criterion for staying. Rev. Ord described his quiet discussion with his wife Grae (always called G. in his diary) and their decision: “Unless evacuation is universal and compulsory, I cannot leave. In any case not until the sick or the aged had been embarked could clergy and ministers leave their posts. G. refused to accept my suggestion that she should go herself, though she was apprehensive of what the Nazis might do with those of my calling. So we made our final decision and found essential peace.”
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So, in an atmosphere of disinformation and conflicting pressures to stay or go, the Guernsey Islanders made their decisions, or delayed until the decision was made for them. There would be plenty of time for regrets for some. Jack Sauvary wrote of Mrs. Stubbs, who was “very upset not to have got away. She blames Dick [her husband] for studying his firm too much.”
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Doubtless, this delay would be a topic of conversation in the Stubbs home for the next five years. One who paid a terrible price for poor decisions made in high places was a British officer, Douglas McLeod. On June 29, the day following the harbor air raid, Kitty Bachmann was in town for supplies. McLeod rushed up to her in great agitation, frantically explaining, “I have just arrived—on leave. I had no idea that Guernsey was being evacuated!”
As he spoke, the two of them looked up, horrified to see German planes overhead. “On no account must I be caught here,” McLeod continued. “I simply must get away, even if I have to steal a fishing boat.”

Even as he spoke, Kitty knew that his escape would be impossible. The last boat had left during the height of the air raid the day before, pulling away to avoid the bombs so precipitously that people on board merely to say goodbye to family were carried away with them, and some husbands and wives waiting to join their spouses on board were left behind on the jetty. Kitty later learned that McLeod was imprisoned by the Germans in Castle Cornet in the early days of the Occupation, later to be transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany for the duration. “On whom, one may ask,” Kitty pondered in August 1940, “lies the responsibility for sending men on leave to a place in imminent danger of invasion?”
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Regardless of personal decisions to evacuate or stay, many clung to the “comfortable illusion” that the Germans would consider Guernsey too tiny to bother occupying or destroying. The air raid of the 28th put an end not only to the option to evacuate but also to such false hopes. Ken Lewis had heard that a German plane landed on Sunday, the 30th, but took off again, and so the family “went to Chapel that evening quite relieved,” only to hear later from his dad that subsequent planes had indeed landed and stayed.
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By eight o'clock the official broadcast came that everyone must “behave and not talk in groups,” and Jack Sauvary grimly reported, “It's now official that we are in camp.”
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