Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (36 page)

Many wrote about the ongoing impressment of Islanders for German work. For example, Bill Warry described a new German order in late March 1943 that followed a census of everyone's occupation and number of hours. Around fifty-eight people were given notices that they had to appear at the German Kommandantur, whereupon they were told to resign their jobs in order to work for the Germans. The next day another batch of workers received notification of their date to appear (and others were sent word that they would be asked to appear when notified). Bill reported that the ages of men subject to these notifications ranged from sixteen to sixty, and women up to age forty-five. From the general “state of excitement” caused by this order and the notification to appear at the German Kommandantur, the implied threat makes work for the Germans appear far from voluntary.
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But most interesting of all is Bert Williams's account, because he was one of those on the second day who received orders to report to Summerland House for compulsory work with the German forces. He described this summons as “a blow to everyone.” It is really fascinating to gauge Bert's reaction because, simply by chance, he was assigned a plum job. Having some skills, he was set to work as an electrician at the main German hospital, previously a mental institution. However, others who were summoned had far worse jobs of trench digging, driving horses, or working in the German kitchens. Bert admitted that one good thing about this work was the increased wages, “very much higher than local rates,” particularly important to him since losing his position as a policeman.

Bert then reported that some had managed to gain exemptions from the work, among them a particular man from the Pollet. “I always thought he was yellow & and this has proved it,” expostulated Bert. “I glory in the fellows who have taken their medicine & gone to work as ordered. They wont get us down this way. We can take it.” It is pure speculation on my part, but the intensity of Bert's reaction may have been because of flak he received after being assigned a good job at higher pay. This does not lessen the compulsory nature of the work; it was simply the luck of the draw that he was not digging ditches. However, his better position may have looked like a collaborative choice to others. Bert therefore wreathes compliance with the German order in elements of patriotism, of doing one's duty and not being “yellow.”

It is difficult to see someone managing to wriggle out of the German net as cowardly, and Bert grants that some of the jobs would have been difficult for “the chaps who have never done a hard days work in their lives.” Even Bert, having landed a lucky—if unchosen—position, voiced the “real snag” noted by others that once the Germans had impressed a person as a worker, “you never know what they will do next.” His theory was also that this compulsory work was
instituted to allow the Germans to send younger soldiers away from Guernsey, presumably to augment the fighting forces at the front lines. Thus, Bert saw that his being shanghaied into German labor could indirectly bolster the German war effort, and he called it a “dirty trick.”
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There were those, too, who watched and judged whether their fellow Islanders were following the rules laid down by the Germans. In conditions of domination, it is when the powerless attempt to skirt the onerous conditions established by those in power that lateral surveillance by peers becomes a disadvantage. As a professional in shoe repair, Ken's dad found it to work to his advantage to set up a subtle system of the barter of his talents. Civilians were hard-pressed to get their shoes mended, and Mr. Lewis would have been forced to take on official repair duties (often for the German officers) during his normal business. The order commanding that Germans were to be attended to first and to be treated with respect by shop owners and craftsmen was clear. So, Mr. Lewis occasionally went by the Market on his own time, where he “was kept supplied with fish in return for mending the various stall-holders shoes.” Ken described it much like a game where Mr. Stead, the new fish controller, “was continually on the look out for persons cheating the law but the fishmongers fooled him all the more.”
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Trustees in the middle-management positions, such as the fish controller or meat controller, were viewed as carrying out laws that would not exist but for the hated German presence. Although the controllers were not viewed as friendly to the Germans—after all, they technically worked for the States—they became fair game when it came to circumventing these Occupation laws and orders.

Bert Williams becomes a case study in this civilian effort to undercut the rules imposed by the Germans but administered by the States. When I described Bert's diatribe against Mr. Chilcott, the meat controller who searched all the baskets of the slaughtermen, I did not reveal the trigger for his anger. Bert had developed a habit of going to the slaughterhouse on the days that cattle came in from France, and hanging about “to get a bit of meat for the dog.” Bert's friend (one of the butchers) slipped Bert a skull bone “to make a drop of soup with.” But this little under-the-table gift was spotted by Mr. Chilcott junior, the son of the meat controller. It was this act that had prompted the search of the slaughtermen's baskets. Bert was furious. “These skull bones are only offal and the public don't see a lot of them as it is,” he fumed. Bert clearly felt no guilt in skirting the German-enforced rules, and viewed himself as a representative of the common man kept at a disadvantage: “I often wonder where they [the skull bones] go after leaving the Slaughter House…The man in the street has'nt [
sic
] got an earthly chance with all the graft that is going on at the present time.” The meat controller and his son were not men doing their jobs, but the enemy, ripe for vilification: “And the son that reported my incident is always scrounging around the Slaughter House for brains. I imagine he wants more brains than a cow or Bullock can give him.”
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Then one of the little ironies of the Occupation occurred during that final spring. On Sunday, April 1, 1945, Mr. Stead dropped by Bert Williams's house with the news that Bert had been appointed a deputy fish controller! He started his job that Tuesday, and Bert thought that it would suit him well with its flexible hours and decent pay of £3 a week.
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The reader of Bert's diary cannot help but feel a sense of anticipation. Bert has spent his diary castigating the States, the controllers, and anyone in a position where he (or she) might game the system. He rails constantly against graft and corruption; he awaits the day when the Occupation ends and the common man can take revenge on anyone using position to violate the rules for personal gain. Will this be the opportunity for Bert to take a trustee job and enforce the rules that are in place? Then again, he plainly believes that trustees should help the common man skirt the
onerous laws laid down by the Germans. Which side of his complex character would emerge when he found himself in a middle-manager position?

On his first full day as deputy fish controller, Bert “okayed” four boats in the evening as they came in with their small catches after a day of ormering. In mentioning the small catch, Bert writes, “Needless to say I did'nt [
sic
] get any,” an early glimmer of what was in his mind. But dearth of advantage shifted quickly, as he was given two whiting on April 20; two dogfish, a whiting, and seven spider crabs on May 2; a spider crab, a dogfish, and a whiting on May 4; and seven spider crabs and a whiting on May 5. So, now we apparently see Bert take the same type of advantage of position that he has condemned in others throughout the Occupation. Yet before we judge his actions, it is good to consider two competing explanations for Bert's acceptance of the fish.

The first possible explanation is that Bert lacks the ability to hold his own actions to the same standard that he holds others', even when the actions are identical. This is so much an aspect of human nature that those who examine attribution theory (the study of how we interpret events and assign different motivations to our own and others' behavior) consider this part of the “fundamental attribution error.” Attribution theory tells us that when assessing a potentially negative action of another, we tend to see that action as motivated by a character flaw in that person. It is a stable aspect of the personality of that person; they are dishonest, or greedy, or selfish. When we seek the causes behind our own negative acts, even when they are the same actions, we emphasize the external situation in which we find ourselves. We were hungry or desperate, or are simply righting a prior wrong or disadvantage.
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The fact that we do not use the same yardstick in measuring our own, as compared to others' actions may be seen in the common saying that we want justice for others, mercy for ourselves. We therefore provide ourselves with that mercy by the way we interpret the situation, shifting our assessment so that we remain the hero in our own eyes. Few people living under famine conditions would turn down a freely offered gift of food if it meant an opportunity to feed their families (and Bert has the care of a pregnant wife and an elderly parent). His good reasons for accepting the fish are important to Bert, and he carefully documents when he gives three spider crabs to Fred, or a whiting or dogfish to his mother (“I have given my Dog fish to Mother she likes them & it will do her good”). But he is equally aware that not everyone would be happy for his windfall, for he also writes, “I could get a lot of fish but the difficulty is getting them away as there are always the jealous element of Guernsey people on the watch.”
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Like those who worried about being falsely viewed as fraternizers, Bert is conscious of the judgment of others and wants to keep his reputation unblemished. He now sees the negative side of lateral surveillance, viewing those who watch and judge as “jealous” types, a basic character flaw.

Yet before we make any decisions about what this incident reveals, we should consider another explanation that sheds more light on Occupation resistance. Bert's acceptance of the fish occurred only days before Liberation, but during a time when the Germans still could enforce their standing order for the first of all fish that were caught. It is quite likely that we are witnessing the type of semi-organized resistant pilfering from the Germans that we have seen elsewhere in the Occupation. If the fishermen had decided to bypass the Germans and slip as much fish directly to the Islanders as possible, it would be natural to use a fish controller “of the right sort” as their confederate. In a situation of extreme want, the first Islanders to benefit might be the controller's family and friends, but the circle of beneficiaries would broaden quickly. Certain pieces of evidence seem to support this reading of the situation.
There is no sign at all that Bert used pressure or requested the fish; they seem to have been freely offered and gratefully accepted. The fact that he anticipated that fish would come his way may indicate an awareness of an ongoing system of pilfering, possibly already involving the man that he replaced. And during these same weeks, Bert expressed anger at growers who still sold to the Germans for personal gain, advocating that they should be “hung in public” or “rounded up after the war & either deported or branded.”
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Even granting a tendency to ignore our own flaws, Bert's disgust at all those who seek personal gain seems wholehearted and not tinged with personal guilt. This second reading also more closely matches Bert's consistent view that “trustees” should help in siphoning resources from the enemy and placing them into the hands of average Islanders.

Speculating about such small incidents and whether they involved smudging of the ethical line or constituted a form of resistant pilfering makes clear the moral achievement of Islanders over five years of Occupation. The diarists are forthcoming about ethical dilemmas and were obviously determined to see the Occupation through with a clean reputation in their own and others' eyes. When Madeleine Bunting claims that “each individual faced moral choices” during the Occupation, she is absolutely right. But when she adds, “and only a few could claim a calm conscience by 1945,” she could not be further from the mark. I cannot find in the contemporary accounts any basis to her belief that “the Occupation compromised almost everybody who lived through it,” if she is considering compromises of any serious weight.
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And in the Islanders' pride in their history, I do not read some murky undercurrent of suppressed guilt and shame.

The reason Bunting sees Islanders as almost universally compromised and sporting uneasy consciences is largely because she conflates small ethical conundrums with major moral failings. Perhaps this indicates a different level of expectation between Bunting and myself when it comes to human perfection. The majority of Islanders do not have to be viewed as plaster saints in order to know that they were not collaborators, fraternizers, or dishonest agents hoping to profit off of their situation. Their very intolerance of the minority who
did
fall into these categories reveals the strong ethical values that were part of their Island heritage. They developed the discursive means described in this chapter in order to protect themselves from the bad players in their midst. And we will see later how this moral strength and self-protection were needed to avoid a collapse of civilized society during the worsening conditions of the final year.

Although not necessarily developed in temporal order, the first aspects of rhetorical resistance that we can identify occur through shadow channels of discourse emerging when other means of communication and information flow are restricted. Rumor as an alternative discourse carries with it a sense-making capacity and the ability to transmit the hopes and fears of the community. The value of gossip is in its function as a mechanism of normative control and self-protection. Part of the resistance to domination involves lateral surveillance and the ability to identify those in collaborative relationships with the powerful. Fantasies of retaliation unite a subjugated community, and dreams of a future made right serve to sustain resistance. Yet, all members of that same community face issues of their own need to comply with power and the proper limits of that compliance. It is a tricky discursive task to skirt the borders that might bring down retaliation from above, while still communicating solidarity with the community of the dispossessed. As I will discuss in the next chapter, this need, and a desire to lay claim to their own story of the Occupation, gave birth to a second form of rhetorical resistance in the detailed construction of an oppositional narrative.