Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (58 page)

This, then, was the long anticipated invasion that the Channel Islanders felt sure would liberate them from German control. The Ords could not know as they stood on their balcony on that chilly June night, more excited than at any time in their lives, that the roar and lights did not herald the end of Occupation, but rather the advent of the most difficult year of all. This concluding chapter will begin with a consideration of that final year, one that unfolded in a manner that none could have anticipated. The effects of having France liberated while the Channel Islands remained under German control were both physical and psychological. The line that separated occupier and occupied became more indistinct, as both the Germans and their Island possessions appeared to be caught in the same isolated trap. As easy access to Continental supplies ended, food rations were reduced to starvation levels, and fuel was cut off during one of the coldest winters Islanders could remember. Worse still, the Islanders were effectively locked in their prison without bars with armed and increasingly desperate men.

This year would give the Guernsey civilians new revelations about their German captors and provide a unique perspective on the entire Occupation experience. This viewpoint, honed through many years of Occupation and sharpened by the difficulties of this final year, would color Guernsey's response immediately post-Liberation. More importantly, it would become a source of misunderstanding and contention in the public memory of the Occupation.

I then conduct a close reading of two forms of vernacular public memory, those structured “from below” by the Islanders themselves. Attention to these forms of memory is key to a recovery of the story of the Occupation as actually experienced. Finally, this study ends with conclusions about the nature and structure of rhetorical resistance as practiced during the Guernsey Occupation, and implications for this form of resistance in other situations of domination.

LEFT IN THE LURCH

Oddly, not everyone in Guernsey was treated to the same show as the Ords during the morning hours of June 6. It appears that those living on or near the coast were more likely to have heard the raid in progress, and some in other parts of Guernsey slept through the entire event.
²
What could not be missed were the changes on the streets and roads of Guernsey the next day. Peter Bachmann was stopped by a soldier on guard at the end of their lane, only to be told that he could not go any further and that the town was off limits for the immediate term.
³
Unlike the experience of the Bachmanns, there seemed to be little to no restriction on most Islander movements. Winnie Harvey went into St. Peter Port and saw few Germans about.
⁴
The dearth of off-duty Germans wandering about the streets combined with other equally tangible signs that something major was afoot. The telephones had all been cut off and the post office was closed, with guards posted outside. Finally, when the
Star
came out that night, the Germans confirmed in large letters the start of the invasion, although with their usual spin on the news.
⁵

As the Germans disappeared from the streets and shops and were called to duty in response to the new military situation, the few Islanders about St. Peter Port were “beaming” in undisguised excitement. Winnie ran into Major Scott, a prominent Guernseyman who had been looking “dreadful” in recent weeks but now hailed Winnie with a thumbs-up signal. Winnie responded, “Are you feeling happier now?”—to which the major replied, “Very much so. Both thumbs and big toes, too!”
⁶
But mingled with the joy and anticipation was an equal concern about what it meant to be “in the front line of war.”
⁷
These concerns were not unreasonable and were borne out by events of the invasion and the weeks immediately following.

Islanders already knew on June 6 that at 7
A.M.
, a German shell fired at one of the planes passing over the Island had fallen short into St. Sampson.
⁸
It was reportedly the nose cap of the shell that killed a man who had the misfortune to step at that moment from his outdoor lavatory.
⁹
More violence and likely more deaths could be anticipated, and the raids were quick to follow, particularly in the harbor area of St. Peter Port. Bill Warry reported four RAF raids on June 7 that dropped bombs on the harbor and Castle Cornet, causing his house in the heart of town at 14 Arcade to shake (“but we are still standing”) and catching him twice outside by surprise and without shelter. Bill's response was echoed by many Islanders eager for liberation and willing to face any peril to achieve it: “We are in the war zone properly, but let them (ours) come as often as they like. We welcome them.”
¹⁰

And come they did, although not with the liberating effect that the Islanders desired. One of the major raids that passed into Island lore occurred on June 19 at 8:30 in the morning when American Lightnings passed high over the Island and bombed the Harbor, targeting the spot where a German submarine had only hours before been positioned. What Bill Warry called a “big ‘un” was dropped at that point, later to be estimated as a 500 lb. bomb that took out most of the glass in the town center. The Anglican Town Church, so prominently tucked in the corner where the streets intersect by the Harbor, lost many of its historic stained-glass windows. In the Arcade, only the Warrys' shop and Mackay's Wine Merchant escaped damage to their shop windows. Bill had experienced a small stroke in early June and was on bed rest at Blanc Bois (where his wife had been located since early May as she recovered from a possible heart attack and a failing gallbladder). He was so determined to assess the damage to their shop that he went into town, against doctor's orders, to see for himself.

It must have been a stunning sight as bank clerks and shop owners swept up what Peter Bachmann estimated at the time to be £100,000 worth of glass, and the High Street was
shut to pedestrian traffic until the “sea of broken glass” was cleared. Islanders knew that they were lucky, for despite the number of ceilings that collapsed in buildings at the same time, there were no casualties. Opinions varied about whether this was a matter of dumb luck and whether the raid was worth the damage. Winifred Harvey was aware that had it been an hour later, shop assistants and bank clerks would definitely have been at work, and the outcome far more tragic. She was a bit tart in noting that “No damage whatsoever was done to the Germans or to the shipping.” Rev. Ord, on the other hand, took a positive slant on the entire event, describing how “The aim of the bomb was excellent. So was the timing of the raid—just before people began to open shops and offices.”
¹¹

Competing theories for the future seemed split between the Islanders starving or undergoing a full-out attack by the Allied forces, with the harbor bombing as merely a taste of things to come. Neither was an appealing scenario, although most seemed ready to face any future in order to rid the Island of German control. Optimists believed the Germans would be gone by the end of June, timed pleasingly by fate to coincide with the anniversary of Occupation. It was only the most pessimistic who maintained that they would be trapped with the Germans in the Island until the war's end, and this estimation came with the further grim assumption that all civilians would be starved to death by that time.
¹²
It was with no lack of courage that the Islanders faced an uncertain future now that the war threatened to come directly to their homes. They may have been just “flotsam in the path of the current,” only able to “await the outcome of the gathering storm,” but most did so with hopeful anticipation.
¹³
News of Operation Valkyrie, the July 20, 1944, attempt on Hitler's life, was encouraging, but frustrating at the same time. Elizabeth Doig heard of this failed plot and applied the proverb “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick” to Guernsey attitudes, for “we had so hoped our release would have come ‘ere now.”
¹⁴

One of the worst aspects of being cut off was the silence from evacuated family in England and deported family in Germany. With no Red Cross messages available now, and no German boats to bring messages from Biberach, the sense of isolation was quite complete.
¹⁵
So, here they were, cut off entirely from those they loved and saddled with the Germans in that strange position where, in Ord's words, “our captors are our prisoners now until they are taken off our hands.”
¹⁶
It simply seemed unbelievable that there could be so many victories in France, and the Channel Islands—a part of Britain, after all—bypassed. Everything was frozen in place, “at a standstill waiting for the Germans to give up and release us from this stupid bondage.”
¹⁷
All the talk was of the irony of being bypassed, a line of talk that held some humor for Dorothy Higgs when her gardener/stableman, “who is definitely simple,” told her quite seriously that Churchill had passed over the Channel Islands while flying on the way to Italy. Churchill asked the pilot what that land was down below them, and the pilot responded that it was the Channel Islands. “Oh,” Churchill supposedly responded, “I'd forgotten all about them. We'll send them a message.” Of course, the gardener was trying in his own manner to filter all the talk that Churchill had “passed over” the Island.
¹⁸

It was all too apparent that if the Germans were cut off from supplies and food, the civilians were similarly severed from outside food, fuel, and medical supplies. The food situation, always tenuous, now seemed likely to end in starvation for captors and captives alike. Soon after the invasion, rumors of white flags in various places cropped up,
¹⁹
none particularly reliable, and life under increasingly arduous conditions settled into routine. In late September, as the new reality of a food and fuel crisis loomed on the horizon, word came of a white-flag sighting that was not a mirage. Ken Lewis and his fellow clerks raced up to the highest window
at work to try and distinguish details of the approaching vessel through a telescope. They could clearly see the white flag, and they watched as a German launch went out, returning about an hour later.

Ken did not have solid information about this meeting until a convocation the following day held at Mount Durand, involving Jurat Leale, J. E. L. Martel (the acting attorney general), Col. von Heldorff, and L. A. Guillemette. Ken attached the memorandum of this meeting in his diary, during which Leale made clear to the colonel that all in Guernsey were well aware of the ship. They requested any information that resulted from the meeting and might impact the local population. The colonel claimed that nothing had resulted from the meeting, except that the Americans “asked some silly questions” that “had nothing at all to do with the civilian population.” He said that the Germans would not discuss the situation in the Islands with the Americans; however, the issue of dwindling food supplies was being discussed with the British through a neutral country. The Germans gave the date of the end of essential supplies as October 15 and believed that a ship would arrive with relief by then.
²⁰

They were overly optimistic with their estimation. October 15th came and went, with no relief ship from a neutral country appearing. In November the truth of the Islanders' predicament became apparent to all. Official estimations at the meeting were that the bread would be depleted after December 15, that the potato ration was vanishing quickly, and that gas and electricity would be at an end in about five weeks (with no wood fuel available). Many were now turned away from the Market without even the small amount of vegetables that had been previously available. Miss Ellis, at the corner shop near to Jack, had only 2 cwt of carrots (an imperial cwt being about 112 pounds), 1 cwt of swedes, and just a few parsnips, all to be shared among one hundred customers. Jack “did not envy her the job.”
²¹

Quickly, things became even worse. Winnie started her diary entry on November 19 with the simple word “Potatoes.” The States now had no potatoes to give in a ration, for the Germans had taken all of the potatoes (500 tons) stored in the depots for themselves. Then, they demanded all of the potatoes in private hands, leaving only 90 pounds per person to last for the entire winter. Immediately, a small game of hide-and-seek sprang up as Guernseymen and women sought ways to hide any potatoes they had above the allowed amount and prevent them from falling into German hands. Winnie herself was determined to thwart this German theft, and she set to work to arrange for the gardeners to come with a hand truck to carry her store of potatoes into hiding. Despite gale-force winds and a continuous downpour of rain, the potatoes were loaded, covered up carefully, and hauled toward Newlands, with Winnie following on her bicycle. As they passed one corner, a Guernsey policeman on duty said to them, with a grin, “What's that? Potatoes?” Once at Newlands, after ascertaining that no Germans were in sight, the potatoes were stowed away in boxes at the back of the stable. Each week, Winnie would go and bring her ration of potatoes back to Grange Terrace, neatly tucked away in a pram.
²²

The Bailiff made an appeal to Guernsey citizens to relinquish their potatoes willingly, which was widely read as his desire to prevent the Germans from searching each home and finding hidden wireless sets. He was unlikely to meet with cooperation from a hungry populace, for that same week, it was announced that the bread ration was being cut to 3 lbs. per week.
²³
The apparent determination of the Germans to survive at whatever cost there might be to the civilian population was borne out as November continued and turned the corner to December. Five hundred head of cattle were confiscated from the farms, and then began a sad parade of Islander cows taken to the Grange to be slaughtered for the Germans.
This meant even less of the ration of milk, already at only a quarter of a pint of skim a day per head. Soon it was the vegetables, the one thing remaining to the average person, that began to disappear. All green vegetables now had to be sold to the States depots, and the Germans took half of them.