The Channel Islands Occupation Archive

The following entry has been submitted by Graeme Harvey, a Jersey resident who lived through the Occupation years.

Here is an occupation tale:

We lived at No. 2 Library Place. Mum and Dad were caretakers for Edward Falle Le Gresley, Solicitors, and Bois & Bois Advocates.

Up in the attic, Dad had an aviary of canaries. Somehow, a cat got in one day and caused havoc, so Dad put a wire mesh over the window.

Now at that time, the Royal Square was home to many pigeons. The story was that someone told the Germans that these could be used for sending messages to England, but on reflection, I think they they were seen as a source of food. Anyhow, the idea was to catch the birds. A net was put up on a contraption, much like a football goal and placed up near the statue, and the birds enticed into it.
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This is part 2 of the interview with Rudolph Rueter, a German soldier who served as part of 319 Division’s Signals section posted to Guernsey. He served in the island for the entire length of the Occupation up to the Liberation on May 9th 1945. A lively straight-talking character who has some fascinating, extremely honest personal insight into life as an Occupation soldier.

RUDOLPH RUETER

Interviewer: You mentioned that your friend Deisner was involved with a Guernsey woman. Was this a common occurrence  amongst local women and soldiers stationed there?

Rudolph: Well, I think they were a different type of women, really, but I am not sure. Most of the time it was just friendly contact or, in the case of Manfred and his Jane it was a real love story. Other than that, they hardly got involved with Germans. I mean, Manfred and Jane had been seeing each other for a long time and then they met again. I think theirs was a true love. The others it was all just, you know, fleeting encounters.
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This is part 1 of the interview with Rudolph Rueter, a German soldier who served in 314 Division’s Signals section posted to Guernsey. He served in the island for the entire length of the Occupation up to the Liberation on May 9th 1945. A lively straight-talking character who has some fascinating, extremely honest personal insight into life as an Occupation soldier.

RUDOLPH RUETER

Rudolph: My name is Rudolph Reuter. I was born on the same day as Hitler, April 20th. (laughs)

I am a baker by trade but in my spare time always mucked around with radio equipment.
So, when I was drafted they had me repair all the radio gear.

Interviewer: Did you enjoy being in the signals division?

Rudolph: It was great, brought me a lot of advantages. You see, everytime something unpleasant was coming up, like exercises, I invented an excuse, said something needed repairing. The things I got away with, you wouldn’t believe it.
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Hello readers, I’ve recently added a few new social media functions to the site that mean there’s even more ways to keep in touch and also interact with the site.

The first of these is we’ve set up a Flickr photo group- this is for anyone with any old archive images from the Occupation or pictures of fortifications etc. We are keen for people to add to this group and its been steadily growing since we first set it up with some wonderful images. You can access this at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/occupationarchive

Secondly I have set up a Twitter account to announce new content when its added for the site. I won’t be checking this continually but if oyu have a question please ask and I shall do my best to respond.

www.twitter.com

ID: @CI_occupation

Visitors to the site are slowly growing so hopefully we can continue that through 2009. Really hoping for more user submitted content but some more interviews on the way in the meantime.

All the best

Carl

This is the final part of the interview with Bernhard Weiss. He was drafted into the German army at 17yrs of age in 1943 and was immediately posted to the Channel Islands. Here he enjoyed a relatively trouble free life until starvation and low morale forced the soldiers to take drastic actions, including his shocking confession that he would hunt and eat cats to survive. His story continues…

Interviewer: Did you ever wish you were fighting in any of the other regions- France or the Russian Front for example?

Bernhard: Well, certainly not to the Eastern front. Nobody wanted to go there and I was lucky I didn’t have to. I was even more lucky to have ended up on an island. France? Well, I would have gone there but Guernsey was really the best of all bad choices. We were starving, yes, but at least we were safe. We were sheltering in the air-raid shelter of Europe, so to speak.

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This is part 2 of the interview with Bernhard Weiss. He was drafted into the German army at 17yrs of age in 1943 and was immediately posted to the Channel Islands. Here he enjoyed a relatively trouble free life until starvation and low morale forced the soldiers to take drastic actions, including his shocking confession that he would hunt and eat cats to survive. His story continues…

BERNHARD WEISS

Interviewer: Did you steal food from the islanders?

Bernhard: No, we didn’t. But we started to steal other things like sugar. Restaurants which were still stocked were confiscated by our army and we helped ourselves on the side.  By February 1944 an order was issued.  Everyone caught stealing would be sentenced to death. We all had to sign it but we continued to steal all the same.
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This is part 1 of an interview conducted with Bernhard Weiss, a German citizen who was drafted into the German army in 1943 at the age of 18. He was a private stationed in Guernsey until the liberation of the islands by British forces in 1945. He was sent as a POW to England for a few years after the war ended. He was part of the 319 Division signals unit and as he arrived late in the war years, has a unique story to tell about the last days of the Occupation when starvation and fear destroyed the remaining morale of the occupying force.

BERNHARD WEISS

Bernhard: I am from originally from the area of Schlesigen which became Poland after the war. Before the war I worked on a farm just like my father did. I worked there until I was drafted in 1943.

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Apologies to readers for the lack of new content on here for the last few weeks, as I took a summer break for various weddings and my honeymoon. Now that this busy period is ended, I am looking forward to increasing the content on the site much more regularly and also re-vamping the site visually to give it a bit more of an identity (rather than the standard template we are currently using).

Content coming up includes more interview transcripts including a Captain and Major from 319 Division and the memories of two Islanders who were young children during the Occupation.

Thanks for your patience and we hope that you continue to check out the site to see what’s been added.

This is part 3 of the interview conducted with Bob Le Sueur, a lifelong Jersey resident who was a young man during the Occupation. Bob was involved closely in the hiding of escaped Russian workers from Organisation Todt, the German company contracted with building all the fortifications that covered throughout the islands.

BOB LE SUEUR

Interviewer: Moving on, you mentioned before this interview a story of some Germans who got stranded off the shore and were unable to be rescued. Please can you tell us more?

Bob: This was a sadly ironic case that happened off the south east coast of Jersey about a little less than a mile off shore called Seymour Tower.

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This is part 2 of the interview conducted with Bob Le Sueur, a lifelong Jersey resident who was a young man during the Occupation. Bob was involved closely in the hiding of escaped Russian workers from Organisation Todt, the German company contracted with building all the fortifications that covered throughout the islands.

BOB LE SUEUR

Interviewer: What were the risks involved in helping the workers escape?

Bob: Well quite considerable, I told you earlier about the old lady who ended up in a gas chamber, although that was I think extreme. Normally that would not have happened. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison initially, but if you had a sentence of more than a certain length of time, you didn’t do it in the islands but were sent to France. But after the Allies landed Normandy, the whole system collapsed and prisoners were moved around from one place to another and many got lost in the system.

Interviewer: How would you make sure that these forced labourers were kept hidden?

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