The Channel Islands Occupation Archive

Artur Boch was a dispatch rider serving with 319 Division in Guernsey. He turned 17 in the second half of the Second World War and was immediately drafted into a bicycle cavalry unit. He served in Guernsey until the Liberation of the Channel Islands in May 1945. Following this he served as a prisoner of war in England until 1948 before being allowed to return home.

This interview was conducted in August 2001 as part of the filming for In Toni’s Footsteps: The Channel Islands Occupation Remembered.

This is Part Two of the interview. Read Part One here.

ARTUR BOCH

Interviewer: After the invasion had happened you would have had no contact with your family. Were you worried about them?

Artur: Well, yes, because I was born in a little village with about five hundred souls and the front came closer every day. They were already in Germany at this point and we were worried about the future. Our house, I found out much later, was right beside an important cross road for the army. They moved their troops through there. So it was a target. And our house was hit by a granade one day. Luckily, my father had just gone out when, literally a few seconds later, this granade dropped on our house and went straight into my parent’s bed room.

My father was so lucky he was missed. They later did up the bed room again.

Interviewer: We’ll speak about passing your time now. Did you ever visit the local cinema in St Peter Port?

Artur: Sure, it was great, especially the live music from the organist. I mean, I must say, I’m from a small village myself. The nearest town was some eleven km away. That’s where they had cinemas too. Not that I had never been there. I mean, it’s not like today. In those days if you wanted to go into town you had to either get on a bike or to the nearest train station, which was some 3km away, in Celle. You know it?

Well, there is something else I remember now, talking about the cinema. I was seventeen and a half when I was drafted. We youth, we had to be off the streets by 9pm. We were not allowed on the streets after 9pm. I was already a recruit by that time – we are talking August ‘42 – and expected to be drafted by February ‘43.

So, here we were, one night in August ‘42, it was about half past nine or a quarter to ten, getting dark but not yet completely. I was out on the streets with my mates riding bikes, when the police came. Me and a mate, the two of us couldn’t get away quick enough. We had blocked each others way with our bikes. The others got away in time but we got caught by the police.

I had to appear before the magistrate the next day because of it.

Just imagine, I got a weekend in the nick for that but was considered old enough to go out and die for my country only some three months later.

Great, really. Makes a lot of sense. I am not allowed on the streets after 9pm, or to the cinema but I am allowed to go out and die for my country some three months later.

Interviewer: We’ve heard people talk about sports events such as football where islanders and German soldiers would play against each other? Did you see anything like this?

Artur: Well, there were some guys from our unit, they played there and I’m sure they had these local matches, too. You know, one unit against another, nothing special.

Well, the civilians, of course they had their own teams, too. They had two teams, mixed teams, men and women. I had never heard of such a thing before, let alone seen it. Men and women playing together in one team. It was quite fun to watch. It was in St Peter Port on the playing field. Nice field, Cambridge Park I seem to remember.

Interviewer: Was there much in the way of contact between the islanders and the German soldiers at public events such as this?

Artur: Yes, among the players, I am sure. But for us onlookers, well, no. You see, I had arrived there after everyone else and also, I didn’t speak English. Maybe it would have been different if I had spoken English but I didn’t and so I hardly had any contact with the civilians at all. Only when I went shopping, to Woolworth for needles and thread or for socks or stationary.

Interviewer: There is a lot of accusations thrown around about collaboration and whether island girls were liaising with German soldiers. Did you experience this at all?

Artur: I, personally, didn’t have any contact with anyone but you saw it happen all the time.

People told you about it especially later in captivity. They told you about the contact they had made with girls, or families, or a lady to do their laundry. I think, all the sergeants had a lady who would do their laundry. Yes, that’s how it was.

And in St Peter Port on the beach, yes, there I remember seeing some of us flirt with girls.

Interviewer: Let’s now discuss your experiences after the invasion. Did you manage to get through the war on rations or were you affected by the starvation that plagued the islands?

Artur: No. When the hunger period started we looked for anything to eat. Anything. There were stinging nettles everywhere. You wouldn’t help yourself from the fields. It was punished by death penalty, as I mentioned before. One person got sentenced because he nicked cauliflowers.

Cauliflower leaves was a delicacy. We would cook it by itself, boil sea water first, to extract some salt. To boil water was an act in itself. You needed to find wood to make a fire with in the first place and so on. It was all rather complicated.

I mainly had nettles, if I could get my hands on them or mussels, sea mussels, boiled with a bit of salt. No cooking recipes needed there. And tomatoes, of course. There were so many tomatoes on this Island!

When we first arrived we had tomato soup every single day. Tomatoes were big export business on the island before the war. Mainly to France. Invasion put a stop to it. Later they were thrown into the sea, truck loads of them. I saw it myself. How they threw a truck load of tomatoes into the sea, because of the huge surplus.

And this despite the fact the troops ate a lot of tomatoes because we were always hungry. There were a lot of restaurants on the island too before food became scarce.

Interviewer: Many reports from that time indicate that the soldiers became so desperate for food that theft became a big problem. How did this affect the troops? Did you experience this?

Artur: Well, stealing from comrades, stealing anything from anyone, stealing as such was punished by death penalty. If you were caught you got shot or threatened to be shot. There was this guy from the unit next to mine, a father of four. He nicked two cauliflowers and got sentenced to death.

They picked a few from our unit, too when they put the execution command together. You know, you have to exercise that before hand, the different commands like ‘aim’ and ‘fire’ etc.

The guys they picked for this command were all guys who had been a bit rebellious, you know, a bit out of line.

Anyway, they were already exercising the commands but in the end the sentence was never carried out. A day before the sentence was due, the war ended so that was the end of the sentence, too.

Well, that’s all I know about the death penalty for theft. Whether somebody else got shot somewhere else for it, I couldn’t say. I only know of this one incident. The one I just told you.

Interview copyright 2001 High Tide Productions Ltd, can be reproduced with permission