| Recent History of the Channel Isles |
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St.Peter Port
Dear reader,
I thought it might be of interest to give a contemporary view of our recent Island history. I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of the article which appears below, from one of our friendly American customers. But we must also give credit where it is due and I am pleased to acknowledge that this report is the "Copyright of The Providence Journal, Providence, Rhode Island, USA 1999"
I hope you will enjoy it as much as we did.
Guy.
Channel Islands
"Stern yet gentle, they bring a taste of France to a bit of Great Britain"
By CAROL MCCABE
Special to the Journal
From the glass-walled room atop the island house where Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables, the view sweeps down to the harbor. Just below is the cobble-streeted town of St. Peter Port on the island of Guernsey, second largest of the Channel Islands. In the distance, ferries and fishing vessels move purposefully among neat white ranks of pleasure boats. At the far edge of the harbor stands the fortress called Castle Cornet.
 Castle Cornet |
Hugo, the 19th-century French novelist, spent 15 years in exile on this island because of his opposition to Napoleon III. He was happy here in a house - now a museum - that he called his "seagull’s nest." This sun-filled room at the top was his "Crystal Palace," where he stood to write and to watch the life of the harbor below. He loved this view, the island and its people. He wrote a novel set in Guernsey, called it The Toilers of the Sea and dedicated it "to the rock of hospitality and liberty, to this corner of ancient Norman soil where live the notable little people of the sea, to the island of Guernsey, stern and gentle." |
| More than a century after Victor Hugo’s death, visitors continue to find Guernsey a rock of hospitality and liberty. The Channel Islands’ attractive and accessible beaches, their rugged cliffs, tidy fields, medieval village churches, historic castles, mysterious megalithic tombs and moderate climate - the sunniest in the British Isles - have attracted British and European visitors for many years. But recently, with interest in World War II spurred by films such as Saving Private Ryan and books like The Greatest Generation, increasing numbers of Americans have also been coming to these islands. They come to revisit a unique piece of World War II geography, the only bit of Britain "conquered" and occupied by the Germany army during that war. |
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On Guernsey and its sister island, Jersey, dozens of evocative landmarks still stand as reminders of that occupation. Ranging from dank concrete bunkers and lonely observation towers to elaborate networks of underground tunnels, many German defenses remain in place and open to visitors.
 German Fortification |
Toured in combination with several excellent museums devoted to Germany’s five-year possession of the islands, those installations create a powerful impression. Still more powerful are the’ stories told by islanders who remember. |
Some prefer not to speak of that period, but others discuss it with ease. "Mostly, I remember being hungry," Daphne Breton said, looking back to her childhood under the Nazis. She is a docent at Castle Carnet. Built in the 13th century to protect Guernsey from invasion by the French in the time of King John, Castle Carnet was strengthened during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. During the 1940s, German guns were moved in. Mrs. Breton and I fell into conversation there one afternoon. "It got much worse after D-Day," she said. "The children had a small milk ration but no one had bread. Mostly we lived on vegetables."
| Many children were evacuated from the islands before the occupation, but with no clear direction from the British government, "It was left up to the families to decide whether they wanted their children to go or not. |  |
I was an only child and in the end my mother and father decided, ‘We all go or we all stay.’ We all stayed." In some ways, she said, it was easier for the children who stayed. "The others were gone for five years. They came back speaking differently, and many of them attached to their foster parents. It was a great upheaval when they had to come back." As we spoke, several languages, German among them, could be heard among tourists viewing displays on Guernsey’s fishing, shipbuilding, smuggling past. Some Germans do ask about the occupation, Mrs. Breton said. "I was talking to a German lady here this morning and. she was asking about the war. She told me how sorry she was, but of course she was a child at the time, the same as I was. It was none of our doing."
Only 8 miles from France
The
Channel Islands include 45 square-mile Jersey, 25 square-mile Guernsey,
Alderney, Sark, Herm and the littlest ones, 100-acre Brecqhou, 45-acre
Jethou, 40-acre Lihou, and Les Minquiersa and Les Ecrehous, the latter two
not much bigger than reefs. Curiously, the Channel Islands are not in the
English Channel at all but in the Gulf of St. Malo. They’re 100 miles
from the English coast and, at the closest point, only eight miles from
France, broken off the mainland like sweet crumbs from a cookie. But if
location suggests that the islands ought to be French, history - the
Hundred Years War, the War of the Roses and other chapters - dictated
otherwise. The islands are self-governing but loyal to the British Crown.
They have their own currency but also use the British pound. Their people
speak English, although a Norman French patois, once widely spoken in the
countryside, can still be heard among older people.
Many family and place names are French, but they’re usually given an English pronunciation. For a time, German was heard throughout the islands. Later, on the island of Jersey, I heard more of the story from Peter Tabb. He accompanied me on a tour of the German Underground Hospital, one of the most amazing and surely the eeriest of World War II Channel Islands sites. "At the outbreak of World War II," he said, "it seemed that the Channel Islands would not be affected. Then in the early part of 1940, it was realized that the Germans were streaking across Europe, and there was a very real possibility that they might invade."
British soldiers removed
London considered the situation and decided not to attempt a defense of the islands. "The British government declared .this to be an ‘open town.’
There were about 300 British soldiers here; they were removed and the Islands left completely undefended. Unfortunately, the British government couldn’t make up their minds whether they should tell the Germans or not. They thought that if they did, it would be an open invitation to the Germans to walk in, so they didn’t tell them." On the 28th of June 1940, "the Germans bombed the islands and killed 44 civilians, nine in Jersey and the rest in Guernsey," Tabb said. "In Guernsey, they saw vehicles lined up on the docks and assumed they were military. In fact, farmers were unloading tomatoes for export." On July 1, German troops moved into the islands. Eventually, a complete German infantry division of 15,000 men -the 319th Infantry - was stationed on the Channel Islands, supported by tank troops, artillerymen, naval coastal artillerymen, anti-aircraft gunners, signal troops, Luftwaffe and naval personnel. "We’re sometimes asked about resistance," Peter Tahb said. "In Jersey, the ratio was one German to three local residents. In Guernsey, it was more like one to one. It’s hard to mount a resistance under such odds, especially when there was no place to hide."
The German sites that still encrust the islands are the result of a decision by Adolph Hitler. "In 1941, Hitler decided that the Channel Islands should become an impregnable fortress, Germany’s Gibraltar," Tabb said. "Hitler was convinced that the British could not stand the ignominy of having some of their land in German hands. He was convinced that there would be an attack on the islands."
Hitler’s ‘Atlantic Wall’
| Before construction ended, the islands were the most heavily defended part of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. As Tabb outlined the story, we walked along dimly-lit tunnels blasted deep enough in the soil of Jersey to withstand any bomb then in use. "The idea was that the entire German division would be able to go underground in case of attack. In Jersey, there were 17 such tunnels, in Guernsey more than 40, because that’s where their headquarters was." The tunnels were dug by thousands of slave laborers - Russians, Poles, Africans, Alsatian Jews and other prisoners including some Spanish Republicans who had fled into France after the Spanish Civil War. |
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"The slave laborers were regarded as animals, watered and fed like animals but they weren’t paid and they worked extremely long hours." One section of tunnel has been left unfinished, to show the minelike conditions in which the workers toiled, bent double as they hauled rubble.
A legend reads, "Under these conditions, men of many nations labored’ to construct this hospital. Those who survived will never forget, those who did not will never be forgotten." A candle burns in one tunnel as a memorial to those who died. Elsewhere, an exhibit includes the recollections of a Russian slave laborer who was 15 when he arrived in Jersey in August 1942: "Every day we marched before dawn from base camp to the underground hospital. We were boys, frail, exhausted and dressed in rags. Twelve hours a day we worked underground …Everywhere workers toiled like ants. I was terrified. When the rock was blown up, we loaded the debris into trucks by hand... Constantly workers were injured by falling rock, taken away and never seen again. One morning, three workers near me were killed by a rock fall. A week later more were killed when the roof fell in. The fate for all of us seemed the same: Death." In 1944, when Allied invasion seemed imminent, the concept of the installation changed from barracks to a military hospital. Today, it has been refurnished as a hospital, complete from wards to an operating room to a staff lounge with vintage armchairs. As Tabb and I walked up to a room containing a switchboard a ghost telephone rang. "Part of the sound effects," he reassured me. "The Germans had 133 bunker installations on this island. This would have connected them." Complete with central heating, air supply and air conditioning, drainage system, and a system of locks, air seals and escape hatches, the complex is truly impressive. But, as Tabb explained as we neared the exit (through the inevitable giftshop), the entire island defense system was bypassed when the Allies invaded Europe from the coast of Normandy.
"The whole thing was an exercise in futility. It was never used."
Several important museums
In addition to such defensive installations, several Channel Islands museums are important sites for any visitor with an interest in World War II. They include a small, privately run Occupation Museum in Guernsey, the Island Fortress Occupation Museum in Jersey, and the Occupation Tapestry Museum, also in Jersey.
The Occupation Tapestry consists of 12 panels, Each stitched by members of a different island parish, which together tell the story of life in Jersey during World War II. A film presentation describes the making of the tapestry, along with oral histories of islanders’ wartime experiences. Even where you least expect it, World War II history can be found. On Jersey, I stayed at Longueville Manor, parts of which date from the 17th century, one of the nicest small hotels I can recall. I enjoyed a pleasant room overlooking a garden, fragrant wood fires burning in sitting room fireplaces and dinners of local seafood - scallops, lobster, and Jersey crab. It was only later, when I finally did my reading, that I learned that the Manor - not a hotel at the time - had been used as World War II German Headquarters.
 Mont Orgeuil Castle |
Of course, military history is only part of the appeal of the Channel Islands. Environmentalists will like the Jersey Zoo, 25-acre headquarters Of the Wildlife Preservation Trust established 40 years ago by Gerald Durrell, as well as flowers such as the pink Jersey lilies and the wild orchids that carpet parts of Guernsey in spring. Golfers will find six courses on Jersey, others on Guernsey. Hikers can trek along miles of cliff walks. For me, it’s worth the trip just to rediscover civility. On narrow island roads, there’s a top speed limit of 15 mph, signs warning "Swan Crossing" and "Caution, Squirrels," brown bins labeled "Dog Waste Only." |
In town, people (probably employed in banking, the most important element of the islands’ economy) are carefully and elegantly dressed. Cab drivers and shopkeepers use "muh luv" as a form of address. Even politics has an element of civility. One poster read, "Please Consider Paul LeSeur for Senator." Obviously one of Victor Hugo’s notable, gentle people.
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If you go: Information on the Channel. Islands is available from the Channel Islands Tourism Office; 12 West 37 Street, 4th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10018. Call (800) 617-3333. Among material you may request: Guernsey Information Guide; Guernsey in Pictures; Jersey: What to Do on the Island; Jersey: Holiday Guide, and Channel Islands Vacation Planner, as well as events and dining guides. |
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British Airways flies to Jersey through Heathrow Airport, with connections at Jersey for Guernsey and other Channel Islands. (A word of warning: Allow at least two hours between your scheduled arrival time at Heathrow and departure time for Jersey. It can take that long to reach the proper terminal and gate.) Island travel agencies offer day trips to points on the Brittany coast of France. NOW A MUSEUM: Hauteville House in St. Peter Port on Guernsey was the home for 15 years of the French novelist Victor Hugo. While living here he wrote Les Miserables.
St.Peter Port
