The Channel Islands At War (23 page)

Falla was worried about security. On one occasion he found a copy on a market stall, and while ticking off the man concerned turned round to find a German directly behind him. Sadly, copies came into the hands of an Irish informer who decided to turn them in.

On 11 February, the Fe
ldpolizci arrested Machon and Duquemin. A typewriter and back copies were found in Machon's possession, and for a fortnight he was interrogated. Faced with threats to his mother he cracked, and Legg and Gillingham were the next arrested. At last on 3 April Falla was rounded up by a Feldpolizei called Einert, taken home and there handed over his wireless. The five men were tried on 26 April, and their sentences confirmed on 17 May. They were two years and four months for Machon, one year and eleven months for Duquemin, one year and ten months for Legg and Gillingham, and one year and four months for Falla. Machon was deported at once and died five months later at Naumburg. The others were forced to work for the Germans, digging trenches, building a bunker, and loading sand on to lorries. On 4 June, in the company of six Feldpolizei, they were taken to the harbour, and next day arrived in St Malo. Gillingham, too, was
to die, and although Legg. Duque
min, and Falla did survive it was only by the skin of their teeth. Copies of material from wireless broadcasts continued to circulate after the end of
GUNS.
In October 1944, Mrs Treymayne wrote that she had 'seen Mr Churchill's speech' which had been lent to her, 'and I dare not say by whom'. She expressed her joy at reading this piece of news knowing that it was genuine.

None of those involved in activities to keep up morale received any award or recognition from either British or Island governments. No compensation was paid to them, and no pensions given to the relatives of the camp victims who died. Even when the British government eventually obtained paltry compensation from the West German government for British victims of war crimes in 1964 none of this was given to those from the Channel Isles imprisoned on the Continent, and a letter from the Foreign Office informed them they would have to wait until the conclusion of a definitive peace treaty with Germany. Few are now left waiting.

Public Demonstrations and Secret Politics

Bitterness and frustrated patriotism led Islanders to show their feelings against the Germans in outbursts of personal anger or violence, or by petty acts of resistance. Sometimes these were in secret like listening to the forbidden wireless or reading news-sheets. Others were more public, like the drunk arrested in St Peter Port in October 1943 for calling out 'Balls to Hitler', or a boxer in the same town, who hit a German and received two years in prison. Public criticism or insulting words directed at Germans led to severe prison sentences like that on Geoffrey Delauney incarcerated for the rest of the war or a lawyer, Mr Ogier, imprisoned with his son Richard for defamatory remarks against the Germans, who died in a German camp in 1943.

Cutting communication cables began in March 1941 at St Martin in Guernsey. Such an act achieved very little because repairs could be quickly carried out. Carey denounced such activity as stupid and criminal because it involved others in punishments, and after the war Coutanche expressed the same view: i didn't think then, and I don't think now, that it did any good to anybody'. However, German reaction showed they resented it, and feared it might lead to more serious actions. The curfew was extended by two hours, and 60 Islanders were ordered to carry out night patrols of the w
ire for three weeks. John Bouche
rd remembered his father and brother were among those forced to do this duty. There was a subsequent
cable-cutting episode in the Le
s Vardes district although on this occasion as no civilians lived near no-one was punished. Other minor sabotage had more tangible results. Charles Roche, airport controller on Jersey, told his groundsman, Joseph Quernard, to cut the grass so closely that it became slippery in wet weather, causing aircraft to crash into each other. It is certainly true there were runway collisions like that on 29 August 1940 and claims have been made for over 20 accidents being caused. Questioned about the shortness of his grass-cutting, Quernard told the Germans that climatic conditions conditioned the length.

To people living under dictatorship such small signs of opposition possessed a greater symbolic importance than their trivial nature might suggest. It is in this light that the V-for-Victory campaign started in June 1941 on the Islands needs to be regarded.
It was not simply the childish
painting or distributing of V-for-Victory signs: the act represented widespread determination to show the Germans they were unwanted.

They were certainly not 'trivial' acts because, as we have seen, a number
of people like de Guille
bon, Mrs Le Norman and Mrs Kinniard suffered imprisonment as a result. So did one of the most successful V-sign campaigners, Roy Machon. Roy had been involved in cable-cutting, and used his spare time to make V-for-Victory badges out of coins. He was given six months which he served at Munich, al
though he was then sent to Laufe
n internment camp for the rest of the war. His friend, Alfred Williams, continued to make the badges without being detected. The first V-for-Victory signs appeared in the St Martin district near the Hotel Beaulieu. The Germans retaliated by confiscating wirelesses over a wide area, and roping in civilians for a month's night-time guard duty. The signs did not stop in spite of threats from the Germans and Carey, culminating in the issuing of the poster offering a reward for anyone who could help detect the culprits. Mrs Cortvriend said Carey told her he went as far as this because prominent Islanders were threatened with deportation. Although de Guillebon was caught the signs continued to appear chalked on gat
eposts including the Feldkomman
dantur headquarters, in tar on the roads, in chalk on German bicycle-seats, made in matches on tables, cut from cardboard and slipped through letter-boxes, left on shop counters and in other public places. Some people even took to knocking with the morse V.

Prosecutions continued, and 19 children from Castel Primary School were hauled before the Nazis with their parents and teachers and threatened for their activities. In the end the Germans infuriated by the outbreak of V-sign drawing throughout Europe decided to use the symbol themselves incorporating laurel leaves and using it as a peace symbol, and this eventually had the desired effect.

It is not surprising that the first serious public demonstration took place when deportation was announced in September 1942. In Guernsey, the German authorities took a relaxed attitude, and permitted farewell parties to take place. Frank Stroobant organized one for some 200 people. During the evening they sang their way through a patriotic repertoire from 'Rule Britannia' and 'Land of Hope and Glory' to contemporary songs like "The White Cliffs of Dover' and 'There'll Always be an England'. In St Helier, crowds gathered shouting defiant patriotic slogans like 'Churchill' and 'England'. Troops with fixed bayonets were called out, and in parts of the town like Pier Road, Bond Street and Kensington Place young men gathered - several of them from Queen Elizabeth College. Leslie Sinel described how, 'The Germans chased some young boys, and one of them unloosed a beautiful right hook and laid out a German officer; others played football with a German's helmet.' Some 14 were captured and imprisoned at the Gloucester Street police station for a fortnight. They were tried, and although some were let off, others received a month in prison, and a man who was said to have incited them was given three years.

When the first funeral of RAF crews was held in Jersey on 6 June 1943, it provided the next opportunity to indicate what ordinary Islanders felt.

The cortege passed through crowds numbering hundreds, and Coutanche himself attended the ceremony in the Mont L'Abbe Cemetery. This was followed on 17 November by an even larger demonstration of silent patriotism when victims of the HMS
Charybdis
disaster were buried at Foulon Cemetery. Falla was present and described the scene. Many people, he said, were suffering from heavy colds, bronchitis and even pneumonia, due "mostly to the lack of nourishing foods'. Nevertheless, under grey winter skies, several thousand Guernsey people crowded into the cemetery. Nine hundred wreaths covered the graves, and the German censors had their work cut out removing all patriotic references from the list of details given in the
Guernsey Evening Press.
They stopped all publicity for the funerals on Jersey, and soon afterwards an order limited the number who might attend such occasions in the future. The
Guernsey Evening Press
managed to produce a four-page supplement on the funeral, and the censor ordered that no more than 2,000 be printed. Apparently the order was defied and 5,000 were distributed.

The last time the Islanders were able to demonstrate their feelings was in June 1944 on hearing news of the D-Day landings. According to one eyewitness, 'when the invasion started on June 6th some hundreds of people in Guernsey went nearly mad with joy and excitement singing 'Roll Out the Barrel", and "There'll Always Be an England'.

The Germans issued orders forbidding all public demonstrations of any kind and
H
ü
ffmeier
was to repeat these orders up to the last minute in May 1945. The curfew was increased by three hours, and all places of public entertainment closed.

The least likely form of resistance was the growth of a politically motivated opposition determined to use the circumstances of the war to oust those in government who had co-operated with the Nazis, and seize the opportunity to recast the outdated government system of the Islands. Intelligence reports referred to opposition political groupings known as the Jersey Democratic Society, and the Guernsey Underground Barbers. The former, founded by a communist who had fought against Franco, was preparing a campaign for 'the abolition of Jersey's feudal system'. Their main work was to co
ntact ROA Russian troops in the
German army, or Russian Todt work
ers. The group's network which i
s said to have had nearly a hundred members was involved in sheltering and feeding escaped Russians, and also supplied paper, and other materials for underground news-sheets.

It has been claimed that in 1945 the Jersey Democratic Society, or at least its Marxist members, linked up with Communist Germans in the Wehrmacht, and played some part in the opposition among the troops. There was certainly sufficient evidence of impending mutiny among the ROA troops for the Germans to disperse some of them from Jersey to
Alderney
and Sark. There was a Jersey Communist Party and they were involved in the decision to erect a memorial in 1970 to Russian slave workers killed on the Islands. The Russians for their part gave gold watches to some who sheltered Russians and have sent Embassy officials to Island liberation celebrations over the years.

As for the Guernsey organization, it never seems to have developed a political content, concerning itself with threats to punish collaborators.

Politically motivated resistance to the German command began under von Schmettow, rapidly increased under von
Hüffmeier
, and came not from Islanders but f
rom some We
hrmacht soldiers, and Kommandantur officers. Once the Islands were cut off, and fiercely attacked from the air, D-Day had taken place, and the evidence of defeat had arrived on the Islands from St Malo to fill the underground hospitals, the morale of the garrison began to decline. As the months advanced into
the icy winter of 1944-45, the r
ank and file of the Germans began to experience what the Islands had long endured: shortages of every basic item of civilized life, and eventual starvation. The military authorities reacted with severe laws and courts martial when the troops began to take the law into their own hands seizing firewood, looting Red Cross parcels belonging to the Islanders, and thieving every conceivable item. Matters became worse when
Hüffmeier
announced there would be no surrender, and attempted to restore military discipline with guard duties and kit inspections of soldiers dropping dead on their feet through starvation.

As early as July 1944 an Islander noticed, 'On Sunday night a lot of the troops got drunk and started fighting. It was a political fight and there was shooting going on, we could hear it until the early hours of the morning. It must have been the Nazis and the Slovaks and the Poles. Several men have been taken to hospital in Guernsey badly wounded, so it looks a good sign for us if they are fighting amongst themselves.' Only a week or so later there was another row amongst the troops, and there is 'great unrest'. A fight among German sailors in a Jersey cafe led to a fatal stabbing. Desertions began. A sailor hid with his local girlfriend, was captured, escaped and committed suicide. A young Jersey girl was sentenced to death for hiding a deserter who was himself shot. The German medical officer on Guernsey advised that morale among ROA troops was very low, and Wulf therefore dispersed some of them. Thirty Russians, unarmed, were sent to Sark, and others to Alderney where two soldiers were executed after courts martial as late as 2 April 1945.