John Grehan - The Allied Assault on Hitlers Channel Island Fortress: The Planned Operation to Eject the Germans in 1943

The Planned Operation to Eject the Germans in 1943

John Grehan

First published in Great Britain in 2023 by

Frontline Books

An imprint of Pen Sword Books Limited

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright John Grehan 2023

ISBN 978 1 39908 422 2

ePub ISBN 978 1 39908 423 9

Mobi ISBN 978 1 39908 423 9

The right of John Grehan to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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P eter Gleeson stood waiting for his old dog Rosy to finish sniffing round the garden. It was almost three miserable years since he had been able to take her for a walk. The Germans had imposed a strict night-time curfew and only those with legitimate reasons for being abroad during the hours of darkness were permitted beyond their homes. Walking the dog was not one of them.

The situation had got worse since the British troops had retaken Alderney. What had been called a model occupation had turned quite nasty. The Germans were clearly on edge and were reacting badly. But, in truth, they had little to worry about for now anyway. It was one thing for the Brits to assault Alderney, but quite another for them to attack Guernsey or Jersey.

Almost all the inhabitants had evacuated Alderney before the Germans had invaded and only a handful had stubbornly remained. There had been rumours of terrible things on Alderney; of ill-treatment, or worse; of Russian prisoners used as slave labour overheard from half-drunk Germans talking too loudly and saying too much. It was said that no prisoner ever left Alderney dead or alive.

It was a secret island, where the Germans could do, and did, whatever they wanted. The massive bombardment of Alderney, as well as destroying the German fortifications, must have done considerable damage to the islanders houses and property and, as Peter looked back at his lovely old cottage, he felt for those who would return after the war to find their homes in ruin. Yet there had been scarcely 1,500 people on the island before the evacuation. Their loss was not a major one amid such a catastrophic war, and its recapture ended whatever atrocities may have been committed there.

Such a thing could not happen here, Peter reflected. There were some 25,000 islanders still left on Guernsey and 40,000 on Jersey. If the British attacked, it would be carnage. No, it could never happen here on this peaceful, if oppressed, island.

As Peter waited patiently for Rosy to finish her morning toilet there was little else to do these days, after all he thought he heard the sound of aero engines. Looking up he saw a feint glow to the north, the high clouds reflecting light from below, from Alderney.

Rosy poked her head out of the bush she had been investigating. The sound of the aircraft grew increasingly louder, alarmingly louder. Suddenly, he was momentarily blinded as the searchlight at the entrance to LAncresse Bay switched on as, one by one, were others across the island. The sky seemed lit from horizon to horizon and moments later the German guns opened fire from all around. Never had he heard such a din.

Rosy had long bolted back inside while Peters neighbours, John and Margaret, had rushed out into their rear garden. He could see them shouting and pointing but could not hear their voices over the chattering of the anti-aircraft guns. Then it began. Explosion after explosion shook the ground. The thudding detonations and the dazzling lights overwhelmed Peters senses, and the air was sucked from his lungs as he convulsed uncontrollably. This cannot be happening. This cannot be happening. The British are bombing their own people!

Another explosion lifted Peter into the air, flinging him into his south- facing flowerbed. Temporarily oblivious to the detonations around him, he laid there baffled, hurt, and confused. Later, Peter would later say that he had no idea how long he had remained stretched out among the marigolds and delphiniums. But he vividly recalled, as the sky began to lighten, seeing the confused mass of round white dots swirling above him.

Peter stared as German machine-guns opened fire on the paratroopers swinging helplessly below their canopies, arms flailing as their bodies shook with the impact of the German bullets. It was horrifying to watch, but he could not turn his eyes away. For the islanders the deployment of paratroopers was, if anything, far more frightening than the bombing, because it was evident that the RAF had not made a mistake the Channel Islands were coming under a full-scale assault and the horror, death and destruction which had passed them by was now upon them.

The noise of battle, as more aircraft Spitfire fighter-bombers and twin-engine Mosquitos swept low over the island to attack the German howitzer batteries at Les Effards, was sickeningly disorientating. As Peter slowly regained his senses, his thoughts went first to his daughter, as any fathers would. Susan lived just down Rocque Balan Lane. He had to see if she was alright.

Wobbling uncertainly, Peter picked his way past the glass that had been blown from his and next-doors windows and out onto Les Clotures Road. Gunfire thudded against his eardrums, but it seemed largely to be behind him, as if a battle had begun on LAncresse Common. But just as he turned down Rocque Balan Lane, Peter stopped. His daughters house appeared as if it had been sliced in two. The easterly side of the old building stood, seemingly at a distance, unscathed. The western part had been cut down, only part of the bedroom floor protruding, defying gravity.

Similar sights were seen throughout Guernsey. It seemed that every part of the island had been struck. Huge bomb craters scarred the fields, rubble blocked the roads and bodies lay amid the ruins of houses. It was utterly incomprehensible. When the Germans approached the French coast in 1940, Britain had turned its back on the Channel Islands, abandoning them to whatever fate Hitler had in store. The reasoning, which Winston Churchill had finally had to accept, was that the only way to save the Channel Islands from becoming a battleground was by leaving them undefended and allowing the Germans to occupy the islands unopposed. As a result, for three years the islanders had endured the deadening and arbitrary impositions of the occupying forces; and, if all that was not enough, the British were now bombing them out of their homes, for the scenes across Guernsey were repeated on Jersey. What on earth had possessed the decision-makers in Whitehall to commit this outrage?