The Channel Islands At War (24 page)

From some source, cither Marxists
within German forces, or those
within the Jersey Democratic Society
, seditious literature began to
circulate in matchboxes and cigare
tte packets. One document read:
'Soldiers in Jersey. How long do you intend to
take part in this, the biggest
deception of all time? How long do you wa
nt to stay here and starve? The
war is lost.' Another addressed to the 'Soldiers of the Channel Islands'
read: 'Pay attention to the following: W
hen the signal is given for the rebellion, tie
a white towel or handkerchief
around the left arm and follow the orders of your leaders. On
principle, all
officers are to be arrested and
on resistance shot immediately.' The docu
ments urged the soldiers not to
shoo
t saboteurs because every act a
gainst the Nazis helped them. '
Free
yourselves through a great act of liber
ation', the subversive document ended.

This did not happen, but there were violent incidents. The first of these is still a matter of dispute. On the evening of 8/9 March, a conference was being held at the Palace Hotel in St Helier, a Todt building used by the Wehrmacht for planning the Granville raids. According to one account a fire broke out, and as the Germans did not trust the fire brigade they decided to put charges round the fire. These blew up demolishing the hotel and killing nine Germans, and further people were injured and property destroyed by exploding ammunition. Another version is that an explosion occurred first killing considerably more than nine Germans, and that the fire was a consequence of the explosion. It is said that an employee at the hotel was warned not to go in that day by someone who knew an explosion was going to take place.

On 18 March, while he was travelling in the interior of Jersey, General Wulf was the object of a bomb attack. The bomb bounced off a wheel and did not explode. Mrs Tremayne noted on 24 March that "another* attempt had been made to kill a leading German officer. At the same time a store with ammunition and vehicles was blown up causing damage to surrounding property.

The counterpart to sedition in the ranks was treachery in the officers' mess. H
ü
ffmeie
r and Wulf succeeded in polarizing the officers between fanatical Nazis and those who believed resistance was futile. Von Aufsess, made plans to escape from Jersey, but was then transferred to Guernsey. There he hid his diary behind the wallpaper of an adjoining room. Von Helldorf was confined to his house and then sent to Guernsey. Three days after H
ü
ffmeier's 'never surrender' speech in the Odeon
Cinema, von Aufsess and von He
lldorf met (according to their post-war statements) to plot the arrest of H
ü
ffmeie
r. They decided this could be done when he went alone early in the morning to the officers club at Castle Carey Hotel. However, five days after this meeting on 28 April, von Helldorf was banished to Herm, and von Aufsess could do nothing by himself. By the skin of their teeth the German forces survived intact without mutiny, but by May 1945 there were clearly many signs that the force was at the end of its tether. In a row between sailors and a group of German officers a few days before Liberation, order was only restored after a sailor had been executed against the wall of the Jersey Motor Transport garage on the front at St Helier.

The Courage and Suffering of the Island Escapers

Three teenagers, Maurice Gould, Peter Hassall and Dennis Audrain, decided to escape from Jersey in May 1942 taking an attache case containing photographs of German fortifications. The small boat they were in sprang a leak and sank. Audrain could not swim and. in spite of desperate efforts by his two young friends, he drowned. Gould and Hassall managed to reach the shore and were found huddled naked together for warmth on the floor of a deserted bungalow, their wet clothes in a pile beside them. The two boys were sent to prison camps in Germany. Gould died at Wittlich of tuberculosis in 1943, and Hassall managed to survive to the end of the war.

Nineteen-year-old Peter Crill on Jersey had a 12-foot sailing dinghy which he managed to smuggle to a farm near Fauvic Beach at Grouville Bay. The dinghy had an outboard motor and Crill, together with teenagers, Roy Mourant and John Floyd, went round siphoning petrol from stationary German vehicles until they had enough for an escape to France. It was decided they would set out on Saturday 11 November 1944, just after the eight o'clock German beach patrol has passed, and at the same time as another boat containing Norman Rumball, Max Le Sueur and Edward Le Masuri
e
r. Rumball was a Westminster Bank official who had with him details of the food shortages. His engine failed and the boat drifted back towards the shore for a time, but later the boats separated and the three boys made it to the open sea. Floyd steered with some difficulty because they could show no light in the wartime Channel and he could scarcely se
e the compass. When the mainshee
t slipped from Crill's hand, Floyd lent over the gunwale to grab it, and in doing so damaged the compass beyond repair. They had to stay in the boat as the wind got up, seasick and soaked, as they took it in turns to bale out. In the morning, Mourant was able to clean the plugs and steering by means of the rising sun they came in sight of land. The engine failed once more, and they had to row. But the shore they landed on was liberated France, and they were free.

Escaping from the Islands was one of the resistance acts condemned by Sherwill who described it as 'running away'. He criticized those who escaped, because they put relatives and hosta
ges' lives at risk, and invited
reprisals on those who could not escape. Cruickshank even suggested that some escaped from the base motive of believing that life was pleasanter in Britain than in the Islands.

There were at least 160 escape attempts. This wish of young men growing to military age under German rule to escape, the desirability of passing on detailed military information and accounts of the supp
ly situation would all suggest e
scapers often had patriotic and unselfish motives for their action, but at the end of the war only two people involved in helping them received any recognition. The escapers themselves received no recognition of any kind. No memorial was erected to those who died.

While Britain's record for helping escapers in Europe was remarkable, in the Channel Islands lack of support from Whitehall or Island government meant escape had to be carried out in an atmosphere of hostility from government pronouncements, and without the equipment and radio links which proved so v
aluable to escape
rs elsewhere. The decision to escape thus had to be made alone without the benefit of expert advice, and when it had been made the
cheval-de-frise
of natural obstacles was enhanced by the danger of informers. Sherwill not only denounced early escapers, but added (without any evidence) that, in the event of a repetition of any such incident there is a grave possibility that by way of reprisal, the male population of this Island [Guernsey] will be evacuated to France.'

The Island police were ordered to co-operate in every way with the Germans in patrol work to stop escapers. In a statement issued on 28 September 1940, the controlling committee on Guernsey said: it must be known to a good many local inhabitants that some eight persons recently left this Island in a boat with a view to reaching England. As a direct result, drastic control of boats has been instituted by the German authorities, resulting in fishermen ... being unable to follow their vocation ... Any further such departures or attempts thereat can only result in further restrictions. In other words, any person who manages to get away docs so at the expense of those left behind. In these circumstances, to get away or to attempt to get away is a crime against the local population ... '

Escape from the Channel Islands was fraught with difficulties, but so was escaping in all parts of Nazi Europe
. The Channel Islands had the Feldpolize
i, and military intelligence, and there were a number of i
nformers, but these threats to e
scapers were not on the same scale in numbers as on the Continent. It is true the total of German forces on the Islands was very large, but it was no different from the proportion of German troops in relation to the population in Norway or Denmark, and escapes from those countries were attempted, and persisted in after reprisals.
The
Islands
had
difficult
terrain,
tough
climate,
and
rough
seas
ahead for any seeking to escape; though the risk of the natural hazards of weather, a rocky coastline, and difficult currents and tides was balanced by good local knowledge of these conditions. As in Europe, severe penaltie
s were threatened against escape
rs, and limited reprisals taken. In May 1942, the Germans threatened to make parents responsible for teenage escapes, and to deport all men of military age, but such threats were not usually carried out.

Escaping from the Islands contained added hazards like crossing patrol-

led and mined beaches. The strong points, observation towers and searchlights were effective, and sometimes led to tragedy.
In the autumn of 1944 von Aufse
ss commented that, 'attempts by young Islanders to escape to the mainland are on the increase ... Last week a woman was shot when she was caught in the glare of a Very light at night.'

Restrictions in Guernsey meant that all boats were controlled from three harbours: St Pe
ter Port, St Sampson's and Porte
let. Engines were limited to 8 horsepower, and only a day's supply of fuel was allowed. All boats were forbidden to put to sea in poor weather; they had to leave at least one hour after sunrise, and return at least an hour before sunset. Harbour police and customs officials were detailed at random to accompany the boats as a deterrent, and German patrol boats followed fishing craft.

However, it is easy to exaggerate the difficulties. The German garrison like any other was inefficient, and escapes were possible. The British commando and small-scale raiding-forces were able to land unmolested, and clearly submarines could have taken off escapers and resisters if the British government had wished to carry out such actions. Even left to themselves many of the Islanders were well able to take out even the smallest boats, and petrol could always be supplemented by oars and sails. Until June 1944 escapers had to make for England some 60 miles away, and while the Channel contained German E-boats, submarines and mines it also contained Allied shipping, and was criss-crossed by Allied planes. The escapes of Guernsey fishermen like Frederick Noyon, William Enticott, and the Page brothers with vital information in November 1944 and January 1945 showed that escapes were feasible.

A spectacular example involving eight young men occurred in September 1944. Now the war was going Britain's way these young men who had grown up under German rule wanted to escape. For some time they had been working for Major L'Amy mapping the German defences. Unable to find a boat, they set out from Pontac in two canoes and a rubber 'folboat'. Their leader was Bernard Cavey. One canoe containing Frank Killer, Hugh Le Cloche, and Peter Curwood sprang a leak and was forced back. Cavey with four others rowed for six hours until they landed on the coast of France, where one of the young men was confined to hospital. The other four eventually arrived in England. The three who had to put back were arrested. Le Cloche remained in prison for the rest of the war, but Killer and Curwood escaped by covering the top of their prison wall with blankets, and using the rubber hose of a stirrup pump as a rope to get away. They were provided with fake identity and ration books and hidden until liberation by a number of people who risked severe punishment.

Mention of such forged documents draws atte
ntion to those willing to help e
scapers. Almost without exception Islanders faced with requests to hide someone or provide help, did so at risk to themselves. In 1940, many people were involved in sheltering British soldiers sent to Guernsey, and later help was given by people like Mrs Pittard on Sark, or the Le Breton brothers on Jersey. Four names are particularly asso
ciated with help given to escape
rs: William Gladden, Doctor McKinstry, the French consul, M. Lambert, and Wilfred Bertram of East Lynne Farm near Fauvic Beach on

La Grouville
Bay east of St Helier. McKinstry received the OBE and Bertram the British Empire Medal among the Occupation Honours in December 1945, although McKinstry's award, like that of his fellow medical officer, Symons, was for public service. McKinstry. a witty Irishman, and principal medical officer on Jersey, was one of few officials willing to help Todt workers, and other escapers, and to provide them with forged documents which he could obtain in the course of his medical duties. At one point he tried to help Crawford-Morrison escape with military secrets by providing false X-ray information although this failed to pass muster with the Germans. Gladden was an elderly Englishman living at St Martin's who collected information for Major L'Amy, and sheltered escaped Todt workers. He was a boat builder and provided several vessels for escapers for which McKinstry could sometimes provide petrol. Lambert sheltered Todt workers, including a French boy he found sobbing in the road and hid in his garden shed, and gave cscapers information. He sent out a warning of the Granville raid which went unheeded by the Americans.