The Last Raid E-Book

Will Fowler

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

When Germany occupied the originally 'demilitarised' Channel Islands in 1940, Hitler ordered the area to be staunchly fortified with colossal permanent structures like Battery Moltke on Jersey. As it was the only piece of the British Isles in Nazi control, he was determined that the islands should remain German forever. Churchill was equally obsessed, urging numerous commando raids and harebrained schemes for the invasion and liberation of the islands. But when France was freed in 1944, the Channel Islands were completely bypassed. German troops were cut off from their supplies and the island population began to starve. Occupied for almost the entire war, these quintessentially English islands serve as a fascinating microcosm of what Britain might have been like under Nazi rule. With one German soldier to every three islanders, resistance had to remain at a low level: possession of a radio merited a prison sentence. The Last Raid is an atmospheric account of life under German occupation, as well as the political manoeuvring behind the scenes. With the first detailed account in English of the Granville Raid, a unique German commando operation, Will Fowler combines the social experience of war with the military to form a fascinating chronicle of the fight for the Channel Islands during the Second World War.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title

Foreword

Introduction

  1    Operation

Grüne Pfeil

: The Invasion, 30 June 1940

  2    Occupation, Resistance and Deportation, 1940–45

  3    

Inselwahn

: Island Madness, 1941–44

  4    Commandos and Raiders, 1940–45

  5    Operations Anger and Ambassador, 15 July 1940

  6    The Aftermath of Operations Tomato and Ambassador, 15 July–21 October 1940

  7    Operation Dryad, 3 September 1942

  8    Operation Branford, 7 September 1942

  9    Operation Basalt, 3–4 October 1942

10    Attaboy, Blazing, Constellation, Concertina, Coverlet and Condor: The Raids that Never Were

11    Operation Huckaback, 27–28 February 1943

12    Operation Hardtack 7, 25–26 December, and Hardtack 28, 29–30 December 1943

13    By Air and Sea, 1940–45

14    Siege and Survival, 1944–45

15    Endgame:

Kommando-Unternehmen Granville

, 8–9 March 1945

Appendix I: Fortification Order of 20 October 1941

Appendix II: Operation Dryad Orders

Appendix III: The Commando Order

Appendix IV: Order of Battle of 319th Division

Appendix V: Nestegg Report

Appendix VI: Articles of Surrender

Bibliography

Plates

Copyright

FOREWORD

He picked up the Colt M1911A1 .45 pistol with a smile of recognition.

‘This was my personal weapon.’

He turned it over, looked at its functional lines and felt its familiar weight.

Training and the harsh test of war had given him a confidence with weapons that was instantly recognisable to the group of soldiers gathered around him.

The pistol was part of a display of Second World War weapons used by British commandos. The speaker – a veteran of No. 4 (Army) Commando – was addressing officers and non-commsioned officers (NCOs) of the Infantry Trials and Development Unit (ITDU) Warminster before they embarked on a battlefield study of Operation Jubilee.

I was to be their guide, taking them to the beaches around Dieppe where, on 19 August 1942, men of the Canadian 2nd Infantry Division fought and died in Operation Jubilee, a brief and disastrous amphibious assault on the French port.

The only part of the operation that was a success was Operation Cauldron, the attack by No. 4 Commando on a flanking German coastal battery code-named Hess. It was a well-planned and superbly executed attack. At the time James Dunning, the speaker at Warminster, was the 22-year-old Troop Sergeant Major of C Troop, No. 4 Commando – armed with a Colt 45.

The men of the ITDU hung on his words as he described the formation of commandos and their role in the Second World War. In 1940, commandos were a new and untried force made up of volunteers prepared to undertake hazardous but unspecified operations against the enemy.

It was a chance to hit back.

In 1940, many British soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had escaped from France over the beaches of Dunkirk only months before – they were proud men who felt that they had been driven off the continent of Europe in what had not been a fair fight. Now the enemy had turned the towns and cities of Britain into a battleground as Luftwaffe bombers pounded these vulnerable targets, and their families and friends were forced into the front line.

Many saw the air attacks as a precursor to a massive German amphibious assault on the British Isles and its occupation by an alien and cruel power.

Across the Channel there was already a miniature version of what life under German occupation would be like. The Channel Islands, which had resisted the French for centuries, had been captured by the Germans without a fight in June 1940, and now the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, wanted to challenge these complacent occupiers of this small part of Britain.

Following the evacuation from Dunkirk, he demanded that the armed forces should take the war back to the enemy. One of the most dramatic developments in this fightback would be the formation of commandos – volunteers from the army and later the Royal Marines who would raid the coastline of German-occupied Europe.

It was obvious, therefore, that Churchill would insist that the Channel Islands were on the commandos’ target list.

In all there would be seven raids on the Channel Islands. The first, Operation Ambassador on 15 July 1940, was so ineffective, with men and equipment being abandoned for absolutely no tactical gains, that there was talk among senior army officers that the fledgling commandos should be disbanded.

In contrast, Operation Dryad on 3 September 1942 was a well-planned and very effective attack that captured the entire crew of seven men on the Casquet lighthouse, along with their code books and other documents.

Though in itself a small-scale action, Basalt in October 1942 would have repercussions that no one could have anticipated. Because there were reports that German prisoners had been tied up and shot, an enraged Hitler issued the secret ‘Commando Order’; this required that any captured Special Forces were to be executed – a fate that befell members of the SAS and commandos later in the war.

There are some less well-known plans for operations against the Channel Islands that were proposed in 1943 by Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, then heading combined operations. Some were large-scale raids, even landings with armour and paratroops supported by naval gunfire and bombers. Had the operation been launched, the casualties would have been worse than the losses suffered by the Canadians at Dieppe in August 1942.

During the war the Channel Islands would become an obsession for three powerful men: Churchill, who was angered that British territory was now under enemy control; Mountbatten, who proposed the potentially costly and impractical operations; and Hitler, who was determined that the Channel Islands would remain German forever and was the driving force behind a massive programme of fortification.

Allied commando raids were launched against the islands between 1940 and 1943. However, the most unusual raid was that launched by the Germans from Jersey in March 1945, which saw a mixed force of soldiers, Luftwaffe gun crews and sailors land at the Allied-controlled French port of Granville. Their main mission was to capture British colliers and bring them and their valuable cargo back to the Channel Islands to ensure that the power stations were kept fuelled. They captured one collier and destroyed port installations, as well as taking prisoners. These German servicemen on the raid were to be some of the last men to be awarded the Knight’s Cross during the Second World War.

Following the Granville raid, the enraged Americans proposed that Allied bomber forces should pound the islands’ harbours to deter any further seaborne attacks – but fortunately for the civilian population the war ended a couple of weeks later and the garrison on this last outpost of the Third Reich went quietly into captivity.

INTRODUCTION

Visit the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Bayeux in Normandy and you will see the neat rows of distinctive British and Commonwealth headstones, with the name, age, rank, service number and cap badge of the young man or woman buried in the ground below. At the foot of the headstone is a short personal tribute from the wife or more often the parents who had been listed in the soldier’s documents as next of kin.

It is over seventy years since D-Day and the fighting in Normandy, but these tributes still resonate with the surge of pain, resignation and tearful pride felt when the reluctant telegraph boy delivered the buff envelope, and parents or wives picked out the typed phrases such as ‘killed in action’ or ‘missing presumed dead’.

Some 4,648 servicemen and women are buried at Bayeux, including 466 German soldiers. In a block on the right is the grave of a 38-year-old lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) named Fredrick Lightoller. He was killed in action on the night of 9 March 1945 at the small northern French port of Granville. He was one of six British sailors, both Merchant and Royal Navy, and seventeen men of the US Navy and Army to die in a German amphibious raid launched from the Channel Island of Jersey.

Across the road from the cemetery is the pillared Memorial for the Missing. On it are listed the names, ranks and regiments of 1,805 servicemen and women who were killed, but whose bodies were never recovered. At the top of the memorial is the proud motto: ‘NOS A GUILIEMO VICTI VICTORIS PATRIAM LIBERAVIMUS’ (‘We, once conquered by William, have now set free the Conqueror’s land’).

At the far right-hand end of the memorial, high on one of the limestone panels, are the names of men from the Special Air Service (SAS), killed in France in the bloody fighting after D-Day. Some may have been captured and murdered by the Germans and their bodies dumped into unmarked graves: they were the victims of Hitler’s notorious ‘Commando Order’ – an order prompted by a commando raid on the German-held Channel Islands. This is the story of that raid and its tragic consequences, and of others against these islands, the first of which went so badly wrong that it nearly spelled the end of the fledgling commando idea.

Following D-Day and the liberation of France, the islands were isolated and there was no longer any requirement to raid them to capture prisoners, gain intelligence or keep the garrison on edge. Then, only weeks before the end of the war in Europe, the German garrison launched its own commando raid on the French port of Granville.

1

OPERATION GRÜNE PFEIL:THE INVASION, 30 JUNE 1940

The Channel Islands – in Norman Îles d’la Manche, in French Îles Anglo-Normandes or Îles de la Manche – are an archipelago of British Crown Dependencies in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks, that of Guernsey and Jersey, with their respective capitals of St Peter Port and St Helier.

The main islands of the Channel Islands are Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Herm, the smaller inhabited islands being Jethou, Brecqhou (Brechou) and Lihou; all except Jersey are in the Bailiwick of Guernsey. There are also uninhabited islets: the Minquiers, Ecréhous, Les Dirouilles and Les Pierres de Lecq, also known as the Paternosters, part of the Bailiwick of Jersey; and Burhou and the Casquets, which lie off Alderney. These uninhabited islands can be visited but are a valued nature reserve and secure stopover point for migrating birds.

The Channel Islands were originally part of the Dukedom of Normandy; after 1066, when the Norman prince William conquered Anglo-Saxon Britain, the islands became part of this larger domain. With the passage of time, England won and lost portions of France but the islands remained secure, protected by the fast currents, rocky coastlines and difficult seas that surround them. The advent of steam power in the nineteenth century saw this protection diminished and, with France still the main enemy, forts, barracks and batteries were built to cover the harbours and protect the coastline.

War first came to the Channel Islands on 1 May 1779 when, in support of the American colonists then in rebellion against the British, the French attempted a landing on Jersey at St Ouen’s Bay. Early that morning, British lookouts sighted five large vessels and a large number of smaller craft 9 nautical miles off the coast, on a course that made it obvious that they were intent on making a landing. Cutters and small craft supporting the landing fired grapeshot at soldiers of the 78th Regiment Highlanders and Jersey Militia who, together with some field artillery that they had dragged through the sand, had arrived in time to oppose the landing. The defenders suffered a few men wounded when a cannon burst but prevented the landing. The French vessels withdrew, first holding off 3 nautical miles from the coast before leaving the area entirely.

They would be back.

Two years later, on 5 January 1781, a new, more powerful force set out for Jersey. It consisted of 2,000 soldiers in four formations loosely called ‘divisions’. Like later commando operations against the islands, the force commander, Baron Phillipe de Rullecourt, was relying on surprise. He held the rank of colonel in the French Army, but was seen in France as an adventurer and the sort of renegade that professional soldiers despise. However, the Baron knew that citizens and soldiers on Jersey would be off their guard celebrating ‘Old Christmas Night’ on 6 January.

French officers with a more rational approach saw an attack on Jersey as a waste of resources and believed that any lodgement on the island would be short-lived – there would be echoes of this in the assessment by the Chiefs of Staff of Admiral Mountbatten’s plans for landings by the British in the Second World War.

Despite this, King Louis XVI was keen to embarrass the British in any way possible and promised de Rullecourt that if he succeeded and captured St Helier he would be promoted to general and awarded the Order of St Louis – better known as the Cordon Rouge because of its distinctive red sash. His second in command was an Indian prince known as Prince Emir, who had been captured by the British during the Anglo-French wars in India. He had been sent to France as a repatriated prisoner of war and remained in French service. Reflecting the attitudes of the times, a British veteran recalled that: ‘He looked quite barbarian, as much as his discourse; if our fate has depended on him, it would not have been of the most pleasant; he advised the French General to ransack everything and to put the town to fire and to blood.’

What makes the expedition sound very modern was that it was not officially sanctioned by the French government, and so if it failed it was ‘deniable’. Though it had no official backing, funding, equipment, transport and troops were provided by the government. In order to conceal its involvement, the government went so far as to order the ‘desertion’ of several hundred regular troops to de Rullecourt’s forces.

It looked as if the plan might work when 800 men of the First Division landed undetected by the local guard post on the night of 6 January at La Rocque, Grouville. A subsequent trial by the British authorities found that the guards had deserted their post to go drinking. The First Division remained in place during the night awaiting reinforcements. Now the plan began to unravel; 400 men of the Second Division did not make landfall when their ships were lost among the rocks – in British accounts the ships were listed as four transports escorted by a privateer. The winter weather also played a part when the shipping for the Third Division – some 600 men – became separated from the main body and so was unable to land. However, the Fourth Division of 200 men landed early the next morning at La Rocque, bringing the total strength of the French force to only 1,000 – but they still had surprise on their side.

On the morning of 6 January the First Division moved stealthily into St Helier and established defensive positions while the population were still asleep. At 8 a.m. a French patrol entered Le Manoir de la Motte and captured the governor, Major (Maj) Moses Corbet, in bed. De Rullecourt tried to bluff the governor that the French were on the island in overwhelming strength, and threatened to sack the town if the governor did not sign a capitulation. Under the circumstances, Corbet showed considerable moral courage when he said that, as a prisoner, he had no authority and that any signature would be ‘of no avail’. However, under pressure from de Rullecourt he eventually signed.

The bluff looked as if it might work when, under escort, Corbet was then pressurised to order Captains Aylward and Mulcaster, the young officers in command at Elizabeth Castle, to surrender. If the castle was secured, St Helier would be under French control. However, not only would Aylward and Mulcaster not surrender, but they opened fire, causing two or three French casualties. The French withdrew.

Though the governor was a prisoner, 24-year-old Maj. Francis Peirson, in command of the garrison at St Peter’s Barracks, was beginning to build up a picture of the strength of the invading forces – in modern terminology the information was coming in from ‘Humint’, or human intelligence: what the locals had seen and heard. Peirson had joined the army in 1772 and was a veteran of the American War of Independence. As he assembled his force at Mont es Pendus (now known more prosaically as Westmount), he knew that his mixed force of regular soldiers and militia had grown to 2,000 men and outnumbered the French two-to-one. He would counter-attack.

In St Helier, the French had camped in the market and positioned captured British guns to cover the likely approaches. Though these guns were a valuable enhancement to their firepower, they had not located the British howitzers that were later to play a significant part in the Battle of Jersey.

Peirson worked fast. He sent the 78th Highland Regiment of Foot, who were part of the Regular Army garrison, to secure Mont de la Ville (now Fort Regent) to block any French withdrawal. When he reckoned they were in position, he ordered the main body to attack. Bluffing, and trying to play for time, de Rullecourt sent the governor to offer capitulation terms, with the threat that if the British did not sign in sixty minutes St Helier would be put to fire and the sword.

He had not reckoned with Peirson and Captain Campbell, commanding the Grenadier Company of the 83rd Regiment of Foot, who simply gave the French commander twenty minutes to surrender.

In Grouville, the 83rd Regiment of Foot had also refused to surrender, and in a somewhat overdramatic but prescient outburst, de Rullecourt is reported to have said: ‘Since they do not want to surrender, I have come here to die.’

The French were outnumbered, but would also be outfought. Though they were able to fire the captured cannon once or twice, the British howitzer crew in the Grande Rue directly opposite the market, in the words of an eyewitness, ‘cleaned all the surroundings of French’.

If men had not died in the action that followed, the Battle of Jersey would be remembered as a slightly farcical episode. It lasted about fifteen minutes. Many of the British soldiers were so confined in the streets of St Helier that, with no clear view of their enemies, they fired their muskets into the air. Finally, while some of the British regiments, such as the 78th Regiment, 95th Regiment of Foot and South-East, had obviously ‘British’ titles, the Battalion of St Lawrence and the Compagnies de Saint-Jean sound as if they should have been in the French order of battle.

Using Corbet as an intermediary, de Rullecourt tried bluffing the British commander, saying that the French had two battalions of infantry supported by a company of artillery at La Rocque, only fifteen minutes’ march away. Through local intelligence, the British knew the true strength of the French forces. Forty-five elite grenadiers from the 83rd Regiment of Foot held off 140 French soldiers until reinforcements from the South-East Regiment arrived, and this proved to be the tipping point. The French broke, suffering thirty dead and wounded and seventy prisoners. Survivors fled through the countryside, trying to reach their boats, but many were caught.

The fight went out of the French when, through the clouds of gun smoke, they saw de Rullecourt tumble to the ground, hit by a musket ball. Some of the invaders threw down their weapons and ran, but others took up positions in the houses around the market and continued to trade shots.

For de Rullecourt, it was perhaps for the best that his fatal wish was granted and he died from his wounds on 7 January. Earlier, Maj. Peirson, leading from the front, had also been fatally wounded by a sniper in the battle in the square, but his troops, led by Lieutenant Dumaresq, had held their nerve and fought on.1 Peirson’s servant, Pompey, located the sniper and shot him dead. The British took 600 prisoners, who were shipped to England. British Regular Army losses were eleven dead and thirty-six wounded, among them Captain Charlton of the Royal Artillery, wounded while he was a prisoner of the French. The Jersey Militia suffered four dead and twenty-nine wounded.

To forestall similar attacks during the Napoleonic Wars, Martello2 Towers were constructed along the coast. Twenty were built on Jersey and fifteen on Guernsey. They were intended both as lookouts and gun platforms to prevent landings, and can be found at St Ouen’s Bay, St Aubin’s Bay and Grouville Bay on Jersey and the northern part of Guernsey. One tower, at L’Etacq on Jersey, was demolished by the German occupation force to give a better field of fire for more modern weapons.

Older fortifications were improved, among the most imposing of which is Castle Cornet on Guernsey, which covers the approaches to St Peter Port. The castle used to be the residence of the governor, and indeed during the last throws of the English Civil War, it was the final remaining Royalist stronghold, having in the process lobbed cannonballs into the town. Partly for that reason, apart from the town church, many of today’s buildings are of eighteenth-century origin. It was superseded by Fort George, which was completed in 1812, during the Napoleonic Wars.

The castle occupies such a tactically significant location that the Georgians built a barracks and battery close by and incorporated the castle into these defences. In surveying many of the existing fortifications in 1940, the Germans pronounced them tactically soundly positioned and went on to improve them further.

In 1852, Fort Hommet on Guernsey, which had begun as a Martello Tower, was expanded, with additional batteries and barracks, the 24pdr cannon replaced with more powerful 68pdr and 8in shell guns. During the Second World War, the Germans recognised the enduring utility of the site and fortified it further, creating the Stützpunkt (Strongpoint) Rotenstein. They also used Fort Albert on Alderney, Fort George and Castle Cornet in Guernsey, while on Jersey, Elizabeth Castle and Fort Henry found new garrisons.

As with all communities in the United Kingdom, the First World War left its mark on the islands. Some 2,298 young men gave their lives in the conflict from the 12,460 (6,292 from the Bailiwick of Jersey and 6,168 from the Bailiwick of Guernsey) who rallied to the colours. Two islanders would win the Victoria Cross (VC) and 212 decorations for gallantry were awarded to islanders. In the Second World War, islanders would fight and die in both the Merchant Marine and the Armed Forces of Great Britain. For infantry soldiers there was a strong affinity with the English county regiments that were the closest to their home islands, such as the Hampshire and Dorset Regiments.

In 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, the approximate populations of the Channel Islands were: Jersey, 50,000; Guernsey, 40,000; Alderney, 1,500; Sark, 500.

The islands, known collectively as The States, voted for conscription of men aged 18 to 41, to match the mainland’s conscription law. A Defence Corps, the Insular Defence Corps and Royal Guernsey Militia, was formed. In the period known as the Phoney War, the islands made a substantial contribution to the war effort. Guernsey voted £180,000 (the equivalent of £8,533,069 in 2012) towards the cost of the defence of the island, and to do so doubled income tax. In March 1940, Jersey raised a loan of £100,000 (£4,740,594) as a ‘first instalment’. In a letter to TheTimes, Lord Portsea, who would defend the interests of the islands throughout the war, referring to them not as The Channel Islands but The Royal Islands, said that if these figures per head of population were extrapolated to the mainland of Britain they would represent £118 million in 1940.

As in 1914–1918, there seemed to be little threat to the islands following the outbreak of war in 1939. However, with the fall of France following the German invasion in May 1940, the British government decided that the Channel Islands were of no strategic importance and would not be defended. Perhaps through a sense of misguided pride, they decided to keep this a secret from the Germans. So, in spite of the reluctance of the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, the British government gave up the oldest possession of the Crown without firing a single shot. The Channel Islands served no purpose to the Germans, other than the propaganda value of having occupied a very small bit of British territory. The two battalions who had been stationed in the islands were withdrawn. The island’s two lieutenant governors departed on 21 June 1940 with the last of the British troops.

Interestingly, the reasons for the evacuation of troops from the Channel Islands would be ignored by Mountbatten and Churchill when, later in the war, they began formulating ideas for major raids or even the recapture of the islands. The whole raison d’être for the British decision was that they regarded the Channel Islands as being too difficult to defend from German occupation. In coming to this decision, the British government took into account:

1.  Difficulties of maintaining supply lines from England, which they knew would be subject to disruption by German sea and air attacks.

2.  The likelihood that British garrisons would ultimately have to surrender the islands due to lack of supplies and the propaganda this would provide Germany.

3.  Maintaining garrisons on the islands would tie up manpower needed for the war effort, manpower which could be better employed defending England.

4.  The likelihood that actively defending the islands would have resulted in German military attacks, causing significant loss of civilian life.3

The British government had consulted the islands’ elected government representatives in order to formulate an evacuation policy. Opinion was divided and, with no clear policy, there was disorder, with each of the islands adopting their own policies. The government concluded the best course was to make available as many ships as possible so that islanders had the option to leave if they wanted to. The authorities on Alderney recommended that all islanders evacuate, and nearly all did so. The Dame of Sark encouraged everyone to stay. Guernsey evacuated all children of school age, giving the parents the option of keeping their children with them or evacuating with their school. In Jersey, the majority of islanders chose to stay. In all, 6,600 left Jersey and 17,000 Guernsey. The trauma of evacuation was not confined to people – animals, including pets, suffered terribly in all three islands. In Jersey, over 5,000 cats and dogs were killed in five days at the Animal Shelter. In Alderney, cattle and pigs were left shut up and without food and fodder – dairy cows were abandoned unmilked. When men came over from Guernsey on Tuesday 25 June they found the body of a horse in the main street of St Annes. It had broken its neck as it attempted to jump a fence.

Out on the Casquets, the hazardous rocky feature 8 miles to the west of Alderney, the Trinity House vessel Vestal arrived on 22 June to evacuate the lighthouse crew. The light had been turned off at 2.45 p.m. on the previous day. Documents and the clocks were removed by the crew and, when they reached England, along with the keys they were forwarded to London.

Since the demilitarisation of the islands had been kept secret, the Germans assumed they would be defended and approached them with some caution. There were, after all, the many barracks and military installations built in the nineteenth century on the islands, as well as castles and fortifications from earlier times. Reconnaissance flights over these positions proved inconclusive. On 28 June 1940 a squadron of German bombers from detachments of Luftflotte III based at Villacoublay south-west of Paris attacked the harbours of Guernsey and Jersey. In St Peter Port, what the reconnaissance aircraft mistook for columns of troop carrying vehicles, ‘LKW – und PKW – Kolonnen’, were in fact lorries and horse-drawn carts that were loaded with tomatoes for export to England. About 180 bombs were dropped and forty-four islanders were killed in the raids. An eyewitness quoted by Peter King in The Channel Islands War recalled grimly that the lorry drivers took cover under their vehicles:

only to be crushed as the fires started and the vans and trucks collapsed. The blood of the wounded and dying mingled with the juice of the tomatoes and when I came on the scene just as the last Hun plane faded into the distance the sight was one I shall never forget; the flames, the bodies the cries of the dying and injured, and the straggling line of people emerging from their shelter under the pier jetty.

Molly Bihet, who lived in St Peter Port at the time of the bombing, recalled the day: ‘We were in Les Canichers walking home and these three planes came very low from the north … my mother pushed us into the closest house and we went down to the basement and we were hearing the noise, terrified we were really.’ The youngest to die that day was 14 and the oldest 71. The only anti-aircraft defences on the islands was a Lewis gun on the steamer Isle of Sark that was in St Peter Port.

To prevent any further loss of life, an unofficial announcement was made on the BBC that night that the islands had been demilitarised, and formal notification was made via the US Ambassador in London on 30 June.

The Germans had in fact included invasion of the Channel Islands as part of their strategy long before they attacked Poland in 1939. In July 1938, they had sent at least one agent there and his report was sent to the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), the Armed Forces High Command. Though the loss of the islands by the British would not have a significant strategic impact on the defence of the mainland, the Germans could not leave them as a potential base for British operations. At 3 p.m. on Thursday 20 June 1940 a signal was transmitted from Berlin: ‘The capture of the British Channel Islands is necessary and urgent.’

The plans for capturing the islands, Operation Grüne Pfeile (Green Arrows), were in place and men of the 216th Infantry Division were standing by in nearby French ports ready for an assault landing. There was a fear among senior officers that the British might make a determined stand to hold the islands, and if the Germans sustained heavy losses in their fight for this little bit of Britain it would detract from the relatively bloodless victories they had enjoyed so far in Europe.

The plan involved the landing of six battalions, accompanied by naval assault troops and two companies of engineers. They would carry only light weapons and would take with them a small amount of captured French artillery. It would have to be a phased operation due to lack of sufficient shipping. Alderney and Guernsey would be taken first, then Jersey a day later. Aircraft from Luftflotte III would provide protection for the unarmed landing craft and Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers suppress the onshore defences. Admiral Karlgeorg Schuster, naval commander in France, was convinced that the Victorian fortifications covering the ports would be manned. The lack of reaction to the Luftwaffe attacks failed to convince him, but the Luftwaffe were prepared to take a gamble and test out the demilitarisation claim.

Hauptman Liebe-Pieteritz of the Luftwaffe landed at Guernsey with three Dornier aircraft flying top cover. He had to make a quick getaway when a flight of three Royal Air Force (RAF) Bristol Blenheim bombers appeared, and in the air battle that followed the Luftwaffe reported that two of the Blenheims were shot down – though RAF sources have no record of losses. Liebe-Pieteritz made his report and between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. on 30 June a Ju 52 transport aircraft flew a platoon of Luftwaffe troops under command of Maj. Dr Albrecht Lanz to Guernsey. They were met at the airport by Inspector Sculpher, head of the island’s police. The German officers were escorted in police cars and a commandeered taxi to the Royal Hotel to meet senior island officials. German instructions and regulations were read out. Few people on Guernsey realised that they had been occupied until they received their newspapers free on Monday 1 July – the lead story for the papers were orders from the first island Commandant.

On Friday 28 June, the German aircraft attacked Jersey. Two houses at La Rocque were damaged and three people were killed. The Havre-des-Pas slopes of Fort Regent were hit, and a stick of bombs was dropped on Norman’s, which was gutted, Le Sueur’s and Raffray’s buildings, and in one of the little bays where yachts were kept, smashing some of those. More air activity followed, and on 1 July German aircraft piloted by Leutnant Kern flew low over the island, dropping messages for the authorities, demanding the surrender of the island. The messages were in pouches made from the bed linen of a French captain who had commanded a squadron of the L’Armée de L’air. The bags were weighted with sand and had red and blue ribbon streamers, while the surrender ultimatum was in a cardboard tube. The message said that white flags were to be flown and white crosses marked out at several key places like the airport. The States met urgently and agreed to the terms of surrender, as they had been advised to do by the British government.

By the end of that day about 100 men were on the island. The German commander had met with the Bailiff, and Jersey was under German rule. The force was reinforced when about 1,750 German soldiers flew in, and marched into St Helier. In the end about 11,500 German soldiers occupied Jersey, setting up their first HQ in the Town Hall in St Helier.

On the island, the occupying forces were quick to stamp their authority with orders issued to the population:

1    All inhabitants must be indoors by 11 p.m. and must not leave their homes before 5 a.m.

2    We will respect the population of Jersey; but, should anyone attempt to cause the least trouble, serious measures will be taken.

3    All orders given by the Military Authority are to be strictly obeyed.

4    All spirits must be locked up immediately, and no spirits may be supplied, obtained, or consumed henceforth. This prohibition does not apply to stocks in private houses.

5    No person shall enter the Aerodrome at St Peter [sic].

6    All Rifles, Airguns, Revolvers, Daggers, Sporting Guns, and all other Weapons whatsoever, except Souvenirs, must, together with all Ammunition, be delivered to the Town Arsenal by 12 (noon) tomorrow, July 3rd.

7    All British Sailors, Airmen, and Soldiers on leave, including Officers, in this Island must report at the Commandant’s Office, Town Hall, at 10 a.m., tomorrow, July 3rd.

8    No boat or vessel of any description, including any fishing boat, shall leave the Harbours or any other place where the same is moored, without an Order from the Military Authority, to be obtained at the Commandant’s Office, Town Hall. All Boats arriving in Jersey must remain in Harbour until permitted by the Military to leave. The crews will remain on board. The Master will report to the Harbour Master, St Helier, and will obey his instructions.

9    The Sale of Motor Spirit is prohibited, except for use on Essential Services, such as Doctors’ Vehicles, the Delivery of Foodstuffs, and Sanitary Services, where such vehicles are in possession of a permit from the Military Authority to obtain supplies. THE USE OF CARS FOR PRIVATE PURPOSES IS FORBIDDEN.

10  The Black-out Regulations already in force must be obeyed as before.

11  Banks and Shops will be open as before.

12  In order to conform with Central European Time all watches and clocks must be advanced one hour at 11 p.m. TONIGHT.

13  It is forbidden to listen to any Wireless Transmitting Stations, except German and German-Controlled Stations.

14  The raising of Prices of Commodities is forbidden.

The German Commandant of the Island of Jersey

July 2nd, 1940

On 2 July, German forces landed at Alderney, which had already been evacuated. The airfield had been obstructed but was soon cleared by the crews of two Fieseler Storch (Stork) liaison and observation aircraft that had superb Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) capability. They landed between the obstacles and, after they had been cleared, Ju 52 transports brought in more troops. A day later, Maj. Dr Albrecht Lanz, commanding officer of II Regiment 396 of 216th Infantry Division, and Dr Maas, his chief of staff and interpreter, arrived on Sark. Maas spoke excellent English, having studied tropical diseases for eight years in Liverpool.

It was here that the Germans found themselves faced by a remarkable woman, the feudal governor of the island, Seigneur Dame Sibyl Mary Hathaway. She had decided not to evacuate when faced by the prospect of German occupation, and urged all 500 of the population to remain on the island as well. She was much respected by the islanders and would soon be by the Germans, whose language she spoke perfectly. In her first encounter with the two officers, she achieved a small but significant psychological victory. When Maas discovered that she spoke German, he said, ‘You do not appear to be the least afraid,’ to which Sibyl Hathaway – in her words ‘looking as innocent as possible’ – replied, ‘Is there any reason why I should be afraid of German officers?’ This completely disarmed the two officers, and Lanz said if there were any difficulties in the future she could contact the Commandant of the Channel Islands in Guernsey direct – bypassing the chain of command. It would allow her to ‘put a stop to any petty tyranny in Sark’.

For her leadership during this period, the British Home Secretary commented that she remained ‘almost wholly mistress of the situation’ throughout the occupation. On 4 July, a date that the Dame’s American husband, Robert ‘Bob’ Woodward Hathaway, noted wryly was ‘a hell of a day on which to be occupied’, Obergefreiter Obenhauf and a section of ten men arrived to garrison the island.

For the Germans, there was considerable propaganda value in publishing photographs of the men of their armed forces – Wehrmacht – against classically British backgrounds of shops and banks or even talking to British policemen. When these pictures first appeared in the summer of 1940, they sent the tacit message that mainland Britain would soon be occupied.

One of the iconic pictures from the occupation shows a Luftwaffe officer in conversation with a police constable on Jersey. When it appeared in the British press, an effort was made to make the best of a bad thing with the caption ‘This is Jersey Now – and this is still the law’. Eventually the corrupting effect of an occupation lasting almost five years would see the police involved in criminal activities.

For those on the mainland who remembered holidays on the Channel Islands in the 1930s, there were poignant pictures of a German soldier buying an ice cream from a ‘stop me and buy one’ tricycle ice cream vendor in Charing Cross, St Helier, Jersey. The photograph of a German Army band leading a column of soldiers past the very British architecture of Lloyds Bank on Pollet in St Peter Port, with an arrogant young officer at its head, was also disconcerting.

Within three months, civilian-owned cars were requisitioned – the owners receiving notification of which depot they were to deliver their cars to and the price they required. A few days later, the German authorities informed the owner if their vehicle had been acquired. On 23 October 1940, Mr A.A. Gould learned that the German authorities had paid 25,000 francs – roughly £7,000 in today’s values – for his car. Continental road signs, along with a plethora of German tactical signs indicating headquarters and hospitals, were introduced and drivers were required to drive on the right. While these were inconveniences for the few islanders who could still use their cars, the speed at which some of the young German soldiers drove meant that it was safer to obey these new rules of the road. During the occupation there were improvements – some dangerous corners were straightened out, roads were widened and junctions improved to accommodate large military vehicles.

Horse-drawn ambulances carried the sick to hospital and horse buses moved islanders around – though one recalled in the latter years of the war that lack of fodder meant that the gaunt horse looked as underfed as her fellow islanders. Horses were also used by senior officers, who rode around inspecting work on the defences.

By mid-August 1940, the German civil and military administration had begun to take over on the islands. Feldkommandantur 515 – FK 515 – established its HQ in Jersey, with the Army HQ in Guernsey. Guernsey was a Nebenstelle – a branch of FK 515 that also ran Sark, while Alderney was an Aussenstelle – Outpost, and on the mainland the French port of Granville was the Zufuhrstelle – Stores Assembly Point.

British territory was now occupied by the armed forces of Nazi Germany and would endure almost five years under their control. For the first German soldiers who arrived on the Channel Islands, the people did not seem hostile and the well-stocked shops were a revelation; they quickly bought up luxury goods to send home – using Reichkreditkassen (Occupation Marks). This new currency would later become useful when official Channel Islands buying commissions went to France to purchase supplies for the islands.

Carel Toms, writing in Hitler’s Fortress Islands, sums up the summer months of 1940:

The troops were in paradise. The weather was perfect and the islands looked their best. The beaches were empty and the shops full. The ‘visitors’ bought as much as they wanted for themselves and to send home. They commandeered, placarded, paraded, marched, sang victory songs and held band concerts. They were going to be in England before the end of August.

Notes

1    The battle was reported in the London Gazette, where it was read by John Boydell, an alderman of the City of London. Boydell, a successful engraver, knew and admired the work of John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), a fashionable London-based American artist, who had settled in London and made a considerable reputation for himself painting historic subjects on a grand scale. Boydell’s imagination had been captured by the report of the Battle of Jersey and he persuaded Copley to paint it. Copley’s painting, entitled The Death of Major Peirson, was unveiled in London in 1784.

2    Martello Towers trace their name and origins back to a round fortress, part of a larger Genovese defence system built in Corsica at Mortella – Myrtle Point. Typically, a Martello Tower stands up to 40ft (12m) high (with two floors) with a garrison of one officer and fifteen to twenty-five men. Their round structure and thick solid masonry walls made them resistant to cannon fire, while their height made them an ideal platform for a single heavy artillery piece, mounted on the flat roof and able to traverse a 360° arc. A few towers had moats or other batteries and works attached for extra defence. The towers, which also served as observation points, were sited to give interlocking fields of fire.

3    Three years later, when British forces occupied the Dodecanese islands of Kos and Leros, the Germans were able to concentrate air and naval resources and recapture the islands. The operation was the brainchild of Churchill, who was convinced that it would bring Turkey into the war on the side of the Allies. In fact it cost the Allies losses of 4,800 men killed or captured, 113 aircraft, six destroyers sunk, four cruisers moderately damaged, four cruisers severely damaged, two submarines sunk, and ten minesweepers and coastal defence ships sunk. German losses were 1,184 men killed and fifteen landing craft sunk.

2

OCCUPATION, RESISTANCE AND DEPORTATION, 1940–45

During August 1940 the German military government organisation took over the administration from the army. The Channel Islands now became part of the Départment de la Manche, a sub-district of German Military Government Area A centred at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. For the first time since the days of William the Conqueror, the islands were now nominally part of France.

It is said that the OKW was anxious to study the behaviour of the Channel Islanders under occupation to learn how best they might govern Britain – a country they were confident would come to terms with the Reich. Berlin felt, therefore, that the occupying forces should be led by individuals who would create, as far as possible in the circumstances, a favourable and sympathetic impression on the local population. They could not have made a wiser choice of commander-in-chief than Maj-General Rudolph Graf von Schmettow.

Von Schmettow was an urbane aristocrat, head of an ancient Silesian family with long military traditions and nephew of Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt,. A wounded veteran of the First World War, von Schmettow was respected by the troops under his command, but also quickly gained that of the local population, including Alexander Coutanche, the Bailiff of Jersey, and Ambrose Sherwill, the Attorney General in Guernsey, who described the general as a man of great charm and humanity, someone who, according to the official history of the occupation, earned the reputation of favouring the Channel Islanders whenever he could.

In a further move to create the right kind of impression, the general brought with him Maj. Prince Georg von Waldeck to take command of all the regular troops, Graf Hans von Helldorf as his chief-of-staff and, in 1942, Graff Max von Aufsess to handle the liaison between the military government and the Jersey authorities.

None of these cultured and aristocratic men were Nazis, and consequently, as the war progressed, von Schmettow became increasingly suspect in the eyes of his masters in Berlin. Baron von Helldorf would later come under suspicion for his leniency towards the local civilians and for failing to carry out orders he received from Berlin, and be banished to the little island of Herm, pending court martial. The wife of von Aufsess, who was still in Germany, was declared an enemy of the state and arrested by the Gestapo.

In June 1941, a detachment of the Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP) Secret Field Police was posted to the islands. It consisted of 131 uniformed personnel and 312 civilians. Headquarters were established at Silvertide, St Helier, Jersey, and The Albion Hotel, St Peter Port, Guernsey. The role of the GFP was security work, including counter-espionage, counter-sabotage, detection of treasonable activities, counter-propaganda and to provide assistance to the German Army in courts martial investigations.