Messervy-Norman - Remembrance: Growing Up Under the Nazi Occupation of the British Channel Islands 1940-45

REMEMBRANCE

Front cover: Geoffrey and the three Tommies (Jersey War Tunnels)

Growing up under the Nazi Occupation
of the British Channel Islands, 194045

J. G. MESSERVY NORMAN

Published in 2015 by

SEEKER PUBLISHING & DISTRIBUTION

Units 1 & 2 Elms Farm

La Route de la Hougue Mauger

St Mary

Jersey JE3 3BA

www.seekerpublishing.com

Origination by

SEAFLOWER BOOKS

www.ex-librisbooks.co.uk

Printed by CPI Anthony Rowe

Chippenham, Wiltshire

ISBN 978-0-9932657-0-9

eISBN 978-0-9932657-1-6

2015 Francesca Steele

All rights in or to said property are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright holder, but not limited to, the right to publish, sell, transfer, distribute, or represent anything contained herein for sale, profit or otherwise.

In memory of

those who were there,

those who enriched our lives

and

those whom we fondly remember

Contents

List of illustrations

Foreword

Some years ago I had occasion to visit the British Isle of Jersey, a wonderfully scenic Island, notably situated just off the coast of France. And there I heard a story I could hardly imagine, though it was a true story. Every word true.

At that time I was a writer/producer of American TV fare (Dallas, MacGyver, and the like) and felt privileged to have been invited by the States of Jersey to explore the possibilities of bringing American film production to the Island, and producing a TV series there.

I toured the Island locations with my partner and fellow writer Geoffrey Norman, seeing the ancient churches and castles, the picturesque bays, granite farmhouses and to my astonishment bunkers, bunkers, bunkers! German bunkers and battlements were everywhere, remnants of the German Occupation of the Island during World War II.

I was only vaguely aware of that bit of history but Geoffrey, Jersey born and bred, had actually lived it! Grew up under the Nazi Occupation for five long years!

Geoffrey was three and a half when the Germans took the Island, and almost nine when the war ended and Jersey was liberated. To a child the world into which hes born is the world that is. Geoffreys normal was to see the brutality that came with the war while going about the business of growing up playing in the woods with the other little boys, trading the military junk and live ammunition which was everywhere on the Island, and sorting out the truly important things in life, like why little girls didnt have willies like little boys.

In his world it was normal that bikes had no tyres, that shoes were carved out of wood and soled with tin, and that by the end of the war everyone was starving to death.

I was enthralled as I listened to Geoffreys stories of that time. He told them matter-of-factly, without intending to, because for him the incidents were simply the way it was. To me those stories were more remarkable than any I could make up, and I urged him to set them down.

Many histories are written, but few like this one, from someone who was there. The vignettes Geoffrey describes do more than recall a chronicle of that time; they speak to the character of a people, of the inner strength and values that sustained them through their ordeal.

I believe you will find Remembrance as moving and enjoyable as I did.

Calvin Clements Jr.

1 Red stripe and a peppermint

M y earliest recollection of the German Occupation is that of a narrow red stripe running down the side of a pair of grey-green cavalry breeches and a peppermint. I remember gazing wide-eyed as the man in red-striped breeches jovially knelt down beside me and prised two large round white peppermints out of a red and green wrapper.

Here, said the officer with a light chuckle, after popping one of the mints into his mouth and offering me the other.

Ein fr mir und one for you es ist gut, ja?

The seductive flavour of the chalky white mint exploded in my mouth! A taste I had never experienced before and certainly one that I was not about to forget.

It had been a little less than four months since Hitlers Wehrmacht Forces had landed and occupied the British Channel Islands on 1 July, 1940. The Germans had taken over the art deco sports stadium and indoor roller-skating rink located behind our house for use as a military supply storehouse, which the high-ranking staff officer with the roll of peppermints had come to inspect.

With the peppermint sweetly dissolving in my mouth, I turned from where I stood with the officer outside the stadium and excitedly cried out to my father as he emerged with his bicycle and closed the gate to our back garden.

Daddy! I cried. Daddy!

My father looked up and immediately, for some reason, I could tell from the look on his face that he was not too happy

Oh dear! I thought, and quickly turned back to the tall soldier with the narrow red stripe running down the side of his trousers.

May I have one for my daddy too?

One for your daddy? asked the officer.

Yes. One for my daddy, I replied. Over there.

The officer looked up, and as his gaze met with that of my fathers, the jovial twinkle in his eyes suddenly clouded into a cold, distant stare.

No, he said without looking at me. You go to your father now ja!

For the next five years, I would see that officer and many others like him strut the streets and byways of our Island, but I would never taste another peppermint.

Most people today are unaware that Hitlers German forces did in fact occupy and hold British soil during World War II.

In early 1940, after blitzkrieging their way through France, the Germans kept going off the French coast and took the Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark. Hitler immediately seized upon the propaganda value of having taken British soil and ordered the Islands to be defended and turned into total siege fortresses with eleven heavy batteries and thirty-eight strongpoints more than the entire French coast from Dieppe to St Nazaire.

The British response to Hitlers Occupation, calculated upon the bloody cost of retaking the Islands being too high, was to leave those of us who remained, together with those who had been unable to evacuate to the British mainland, to fend for ourselves. Which is what we did for five long years!

During that time, roughly 66,000 Islanders had to live cheek by jowl in an uneasy truce alongside roughly 45,000 occupying Nazi and German forces, including some 6,000 forced slave labourers.

Members of the Islands small Jewish community were required to register and then denied the right to work. While some of them complied with the order, most were able to simply melt away into the general population.

Over the course of the Occupation, the Germans locally arrested and imprisoned some 4,000 people for breaking German Occupation law. Others who were less fortunate ended up in European concentration camps, some never to return. Therefore, left with no option other than to persevere and survive, we would have to bear up under what would become the most desperate of conditions.