Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (11 page)

With this successful mission under his belt, Nicolle had expected a warm reception from the Island government when he returned on September 4, with fellow Guernseyman James Symes, for further information gathering. Through an intermediary he contacted Ambrose Sherwill and asked if the States official had a message for the Home Office. To Nicolle's surprise, Sherwill made clear his opinion that such raids served no practical purpose and merely caused dangerous complications for the Island population. Nicolle later offered his opinion: “Clearly Sherwill was very resentful of our presence and his attitude was, don't bother us, go and fight your war somewhere else.”
¹²⁴
Whether Nicolle wished to acknowledge it or not, Sherwill had good reason to seek an end to spying raids unlikely to be followed by British action. The very submarine that had retrieved Nicolle from Operation Anger deposited two more Guernseymen, Phillip Martel and Desmond Mulholland, meant to prepare the way for a planned commando landing on the night of July 12–13. Much as Nicolle and Symes would later do, Martel and Mulholland stood for three nights signaling for a raiding party that was prevented from landing by bad weather and that finally went to a smaller Channel Island (either Sark or Herm) before returning to their destroyer. A separate landing party that
did
make it onto the sands at Petit Port that night devolved into a series of missteps that would have been comical had the situation not been so serious.

First, the commando party staggered up the incredibly long series of stairs leading to Jerbourg Road, then divided into three separate groups to seek Germans at the old British barracks, to attack a machine-gun post that Nicolle had reported, and to lay down a roadblock (to stop any Germans fleeing the assault on the barracks). Since they found neither Germans nor the machine-gun post, the need for the roadblock they constructed of stones from a farmer's wall was greatly lessened. They then contented themselves with cutting some telephone lines before heading back down the stairs to the bay at three in the morning. The secrecy of their escape was seriously compromised by Lt. Colonel Slater, who tripped on the steep descent, accidentally discharging his pistol. Nor were they in a strong position once they reached the bay. The launches that had brought them ashore could not pick them up due to the high tide, so they piled their equipment into a small dinghy sent to shore by the navy. This seemed to go well until Private Ross vaulted into the dinghy, upending it and sending all the equipment (including Private Drain, who had been perched on the back) into the water.

Faced with swimming to the launches, it was then learned that four commandos sent on a dangerous mission to a Channel Island were nonswimmers! Effectively now, four commandos were stranded as well as Martell and Mulholland. To complicate matters, the Germans would soon be seeking these British visitors to the Island. Not only were there the roadblock (left in place) and cut telephone wires as clues, but rifles, ammunition, and other military gear were left behind at Petit Port Bay. Worse still, a soldier's haversack was found in the
parking area of the Doyle Monument. Since the haversack contained fresh cakes in a paper bag marked with the name of a Plymouth bakery, it did not need genius to know that there had been a British landing.
¹²⁵

The nonswimming commandos' time at large was brief, for they were picked up the following afternoon as they wandered toward the airport in search of a means to leave the Island. Their next stop would be a French POW camp at St. Lo.
¹²⁶
The situation was somewhat different for civilian-clothed Martell and Mulholland, who took shelter with family—Martell with his sister and Mulholland with his mother. Although they also futilely sought some means of leaving the Island, it soon became clear that they were compromising the safety of their families. Thus it was that they turned up at Sherwill's door early on the morning of July 29, seeking advice on the proper way to surrender to the Germans. If Sherwill was initially aghast at having responsibility for two men, certain to be shot if they surrendered in civilian garb, he quickly set a clever plan into motion. First, he sent to the town arsenal store for two militia uniforms for Martel and Mulholland. To buy time, since his office was expecting him and the Germans tended to call without warning, Sherwill phoned in claiming to have a sick headache. This simplest of ruses provided time to attire Martell and Mulholland in uniform, give them a final sustaining meal in freedom, and deliver them to the German headquarters on their way to a POW camp in France.

Yet, this rapid and creative action did not save Mrs. Le Masurier, Martel's stepsister, and Mrs. Michael, Mulholland's mother, from being sent to France under house arrest.
¹²⁷
As the Germans undoubtedly hoped, word of the penalty faced for aiding a British soldier, even when undertaken by a relative, made it swiftly around the Island.
¹²⁸

So, it is little wonder that Ambrose Sherwill was less than thrilled when contacted by Nicolle on his second mission to Guernsey in September. Nor would Sherwill's presentiment of further difficulties be incorrect. After their failure to reembark at the end of the mission, Nicolle and Symes returned to family and friends, hoping to “lie low” until the rescue that they felt would come. Sure enough, an attempted rescue took place on September 30, although one marked by the same problems as the commando raid.

An unnaturally thin young Guernseyman, Captain John Parker landed at Corbiere in military uniform, made his precarious way up the cliff, and fell promptly—and loudly—into a German trench. He was blinded by a flashlight beam in his eyes and heard the unwelcome words “For you the war is over.”
¹²⁹
Word reached Nicolle and Symes of Parker's capture, and they feared that rumor of their own presence might find its way to the German authorities. So, once again, Ambrose Sherwill found himself in the familiar position, as with Martel and Mulholland, of having two young soldiers on his hands. In this instance, having witnessed the arrest and deportation of Martel's and Mulholland's relatives, Sherwill took additional steps to protect family members who had, after all, sheltered spies in civilian dress. German Major Bandelow had made clear to Sherwill his belief that British armed forces were still in the Island, and had threatened to shoot not only the soldiers but also those who sheltered them. Further, he maintained that, should such relatives fail to step forward, hostages could well be taken and shot in their place.
¹³⁰

Thus began a dangerous game of poker, with Sherwill holding his knowledge of Nicolle's and Symes's presence very close to the vest. Sherwill first talked Bandelow into an exchange of letters designed for publication in the Island papers, all with the goal of eliciting a public promise that any armed forces, either in hiding from the start of the Occupation or entering the Island since that time, would be treated as prisoners of war. Then, as rewrites were
going on prior to publication, Sherwill slipped in the concept that relatives sheltering such soldiers would be exempt from punishment. This exchange was published, followed by a signed order appearing in the
Guernsey Evening Press
that set the deadline for surrender at 6:00
P.M.
on Monday, October 21, 1940. The order stated that “Members of the British Armed Forces obeying this Order will be treated as Prisoners of War and no measures will be taken against persons who have assisted them.”
¹³¹
Although, the order went on to state, any soldier found hiding after this time would be treated as the “agent of an enemy power,” as would those aiding them. Sherwill believed he had done all that he could to protect those now in hiding. As would happen so often in the coming years, an Islander had thus played concealed information against power in a rhetorical game with the highest stakes. A promise had been extracted and published for all the Island to see; surely such a contract of honor could not then be broken.

Following the order's publication, Nicolle and Symes duly surrendered,
¹³²
and the treachery of the Germans became apparent. Despite the promise in the order, twenty-four people were seized. Perhaps the holding of the immediate families was not surprising seeing that E. W. Nicolle, Lt. Nicolle's father, was secretary to States Committees.
¹³³
Yet, also held were Jessie Marriette, engaged to Lt. Nicolle, and her parents, and Mary Bird, Lt. Symes's fiancée, and her parents. Even Nicolle's eighty-three-year-old grandmother and Mr. Allen (the groundskeeper of the college where the two men sheltered briefly) were detained. At first, it seemed that the Germans would keep their promises in the order, as most of the prisoners were released after interrogation.
¹³⁴
Then came word that all those connected with Nicolle and Symes had been rearrested and sent to France for trial.
¹³⁵

The staggering news for the Island was the treatment of Ambrose Sherwill. Kept on house arrest for a week, interrogated for eleven hours straight in a room with only a single chair, “so that nothing should distract his mind,” finally he was hauled aboard an airplane for France with scarcely a half-hour's notice and held in solitary confinement in Cherche Midi Prison.
¹³⁶
All the prisoners reportedly endured some rough treatment: kept in solitary cells with little food; given a concrete slab with no cover, mattress, or pillow for a bed; and subjected to continuous questioning.
¹³⁷
As far as the family members knew, Lts. Nicolle and Symes were condemned to be shot, word of their reprieve and status as POWs actually reaching Guernsey before it reached the prisoners in Cherche Midi.
¹³⁸
It was all too much for Mr. Symes. In despair over his son and under the stress of harsh treatment, he committed suicide on December 22 by opening an artery in his wrist. Only two days later, the family members learned what Guernsey already knew: that they were to be released.
¹³⁹
A week more, and the families, Ambrose Sherwill, and all connected with the Nicolle/Symes affair, except for the young men themselves, were returned to Guernsey. Although Sherwill was back in the Island, he was forbidden to hold any kind of public office, and the delicate understanding he had pieced together with the Germans was shattered.

The Island at large recoiled at Sherwill's treatment. First, they knew that they had lost a valuable advocate; as Winnie Harvey put it, “He has fought and worked so hard for us and our welfare…it is a dreadful shock.”
¹⁴⁰
Second, Guernseymen learned a larger lesson about the nature of their German masters and drew a comparison with their heritage: “Thus, the Germans have violated the traditional British trust in the given word.”
¹⁴¹
Lacking this basic level of trust, one never to be restored throughout the Occupation, the Islanders faced heightened uncertainty. They would seek to reduce this uncertainty through both direct and indirect methods. At this early point in the first fall, British actions had put the Island in an untenable
position. The Germans used this series of raids as the ostensible reason for the first confiscation of wireless sets and the imposition of heightened surveillance.

THE MAILED FIST

With the enforced change in the States of Guernsey administration following Sherwill's removal, the game between German military hierarchy and Guernsey States representatives would intensify over the next three years. A revolving door of military commandants had started early in the Occupation, but settled by October 1941 into a more consistent reign of Colonel Knackfuss as the Feldkommandant, and General Müller as the Military Commandant of the Channel Islands. This stability did not mean an improved relationship between occupier and occupied. Knackfuss was a short man, described by William Bell as both stocky and aggressive. The fact that he sometimes wore a monocle would have only reinforced the image of a strutting Nazi popinjay. Müller, too, maintained a façade that was less pleasant and apparently conciliatory than that of earlier commandants. His perpetually red complexion and explosive temper made him an object of fear for the German soldiers and far from an approachable figure for civilians.
¹⁴²

With changes in the German leadership, the Guernsey populace was smothered under an incredible array of
Bekanntmachungs.
These orders were rarely rescinded, and thus life was led under layers of rules that were highly detailed but extremely confusing. Some of the orders had an obvious and clear intent to prevent surveillance or to exert control. For example, many diarists mention the order in June 1942 calling in all cameras and all photographic materials of any kind.
¹⁴³
Some new regulations that were taken very seriously by the Germans seemed meaningless to the average Guernseyman. Firing four experienced constables, a group that included Ken Lewis's father as well as Bert Williams, simply because the Germans deemed the men too short seemed inexplicable.
¹⁴⁴
Other orders had mainly symbolic meaning, and this did
not
escape the populace. “
Now
,” Bill Warry wrote in August of 1942, “we have to raise our hats when the German National Anthem is played, or…?”
¹⁴⁵

Whether the orders were clear and practical from a German perspective or vague and largely symbolic, the diarists used much the same language to describe the ratcheting up of control from 1941 until D-day. Winnie Harvey considered Knackfuss “a Nazi of the Nazis” and described his orders as his “turning the screw.”
¹⁴⁶
Bert Williams also described the new regulations as “the screw gradually being put on.”
¹⁴⁷
Jack Sauvary echoed this language as new rules took effect: “We don't know what to expect from day to day. Things are tightening up all the time.”
¹⁴⁸
In this manipulation of everyday life, a term that derives from the Latin “manus” or “hand,” the Islanders felt the closing grip of control. Rev. Ord described their evolving sense of their situation: “We feel the grip of the German mailed fist upon us without a doubt. The power of the Military and the secret, crafty machinations of the Gestapo, striking in the dark swiftly and silently are brought home to us in many ways. One here, one there, is hauled off to prison.”
¹⁴⁹