Interview Part 3- Bob Le Souer, Jersey Resident
This is part 3 of the interview conducted with Bob Le Souer, 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 SOUER
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.
This was manned by 3 Germans who would be relieved after 2 or 3 days and they would walk back at low tide. Shortly after the D-Day landings in France, the Germans put an absolute stop on any fishing boats being launched as they were worried that the fishermen would simply try and escape to the stretch of coast opposite Jersey which had been liberated by the Americans. his was towards the end of July 1944. These 3 men, either they were relieved late or they set off late and they got stranded. They wet up on a high rock- its a very dangerous area, the tide swirls up and can reach heights of over 13 metres. They were seen on top of this rock wearing their jackboots- jackboots are not ideal for swimming in. Some fishermen saw them. Now the Germans may have been their enemies but these fishermen could not stand to see these men drowned in cold blood and they wanted to launch their boats to go and rescue them. There was a young German officer who would not allow them to do so- he refused to make the decision without first clearing it with a superior officer, whom he could not contact fast enough. In a situation like that you cannot afford to dither and they drowned.
The people of that area although they had been bombed- in fact one of the fishermen who wanted to go and rescue them had had his parents killed in an air raid just before the Germans arrived- despite this he still wanted to go and rescue these men but wasn’t able to.
Interviewer: Was it a common thing that the islanders could differentiate between Germans as enemies and Germans as people?
Bob: By and large no. Well people who had contact with Germans, whose work involved working with Germans, occasionally they would say ”Oh he’s a decent chap really“. I think most of us, well in the line of work I was doing I had very minimal contact with the Germans. I did get to know one very well- his name was Karl Grier because he was a hairdresser, Austrian, who had come to Jersey in the 1920s. He was probably the top ladies’ hairdresser in the island. Well within 2 to 3 weeks of the Occupation, they offered him a choice- join up or serve as an interpreter. Well of course, he chose the latter. Eventually he was drafted regardless even though he was in his early 40s. I remember seeing him in the street. I took both of his hands in mine as he was in tears as he didn’t think he’d ever see his wife and children again. He never did see his wife as she later died of TB.
That man was the island chess champion, he was lead violinist in the symphony orchestra, he was completely integrated. Now I think that many people, even if they had known him before, would have found it very difficult to talk to him after that. I couldn’t bring myself to snub him like that and I didn’t care who was looking. But there were many people who felt even if they had known German people before could not bring themselves to talk to them at that time.
A lady I knew had an incident that in retrospect is quite amusing. She like many young girls of the upper or upper-middle classes had been sent to finishing school in Germany in the 1930s. Her German was fluent. She was taken on by the States of Jersey as an official interpreter. She described how one day walking across the central square of St Helier she met Baron Von Heldorf, who was one of the top German brass. He invited her to dinner. She said to him ”In other circumstances Baron, I would have been delighted but you have to understand that wearing that uniform when I have a brother in the British army, it would be quite impossible.“ He said nothing to this but took her hand to kiss it and she said how she stood there frozen looking to either side thinking ”Who is seeing this?“ as she was worried about her reputation.
There were these little incidents, little crises of how to behave because this man may have not been a Nazi, someone who in better times social climbers would have given their eyeteeth to be invited to dinner by! *laughs*
Interviewer: You were saying earlier there as a German soldier who had been given orders to destroy a very important map.
Bob: Yes this is another incident that I remember hearing about long after the war. In the last few days before the Liberation, when it became obvious that we were about to be liberated, this soldier had plans of all the minefields around the coast. His instruction was, which had come down from the commandant who was a rabid Nazi, a very extreme and unpleasant one, to destroy all plans of these minefields. This man was horrified at this idea. He felt that millions of people had died during the conflict and he thought it was crazy that with the war about to end that there could be more deaths as people walked onto these mines. He also felt, and he was right, that the clearing of these mines was something that would be done by German prisoners of war. So instead of destroying these plans he hid them. In his billet where wallpaper was coming away from the wall he hid them. The Liberation came a few days later and he was then desperate to hand these plans over to someone responsible but the first few Ally soldiers he met- his english wasn’t so good- didn’t understand him and told him to go to hell. He got increasingly desperate, finally in time he was able to make contact and hand them over. Nearly all the mines were cleared without a single casualty. The Germans made meticulous records of this sort of thing, which explains why the Commandant wanted them destroyed.
Interviewer: What about the story of the soldiers who were stranded on a tower after the war ended?
Bob: I told you earlier about the soldiers who were drowned at Seymour Tower- well there is another tower about a mile out from my house called Ichou tower. They were not relieved and were getting very fed up. They were getting very hungry eating shellfish and running short of water. Finally they decided to come back even though they had not been instructed to do so. They met an old lady who was gathering winkles and ended up surrendering to her. Its a nice story but it may not be true. I think there was something similar about some soldiers on the Minquiers Reef about 15 miles south of Jersey, which territorially is part of Jersey, who didn’t know the war had ended but I’m not the man to ask about that.
Interviewer: Have you any final stories or comments that you’d like to add before we leave?
Bob: The island has been much criticised by people who were not here for what they think of as collaboration. How do you define collaboration? Can I give an extreme example.
Within 48hrs of the Germans arrival a whole load of orders were published around the islands by the occupying force. One of these was that as of midnight on that day, one would use the right hand road instad of the left. I suppose some purists not on the island would have insisted that we should have carried on driving on the left. Now I don’t know of the most loyal subject of His Majesty King George VI who would have risked riding on a bicycle down the left hand side of the road when possibly confronted by a tank. Were we collaborating by submitting to that law?
There was no manual issued by the British government on how to deal when living inside an occupied territory. Just do the best you can was all they told the inhabitants.
Now the Jewish position I would like to mention as they were much criticised as a notice appeared in the Jersey Post saying that all Jews should register with the Aliens Office, a precursor to the Immigration Office. It was the poor unhappy man who was in charge of that office who had to sign that order. Now I was horrified, I thought they were going too far. I didn’t know the inside story- it was this woman who was being employed as an interpreter who told me. They had got this instruction from the Field Commandant that they wanted a list of Jews and they were told:
”We don’t have a list of Jews, we don’t go around asking people their religious persuasion“.
They replied ”Oh but you must know of Jews“.
“Well, they would have known a few but the Jersey Jewish population would have known what was happening in Germany before the war and if they had any sense, they were told this, would have got out before the Islands were invaded. As far as we know they all did, we don’t know of any still here“
So the reply from the feldkommandantur was that in that case there was no reason not to print the notice as they had nothing to worry about. They were told that this was an order from Paris, which would have meant straight from Berlin. The local administration knew well that if they were too difficult with the Germans in the local feldkommandantur they would be replaced by ones who would be much more difficult to deal with such as the SS. They really didn’t think that there were any Jews left in the island and if there were they assumed that they would be sensible enough to ignore it.
However, some didn’t. They were told ”What are you doing here? We haven’t seen you, get away“. But their response was that it was an order- most people are law-abiding, they were worried that if it was found out that they would lose their property and so they registered. Nothing happened to the Jersey Jews who registered ultimately. There was one who was Romanian and was deported after Romania entered the war in 1941 but he survived. But there was nothing that the Jersey administration could do to prevent the Germans from being deported if they wanted that to happen.
There were three women who were deported from Guernsey, but again there was nothing they could have done to prevent this. They were held German passports and therefore had no-one who could step in on their behalf.
You can see how seeing a notice like that horrified people, it horrified me, even though none of us knew the whole story. I think that the local authorities did an extraordinary job. Letters have been found to the feldkommandantur saying ”Dear Sir“ and ”Yours faithfully“ which is seen as dreadful collaboration. Well that is how letters are written! Is that collaboration? Would it have been better if they started ”You bastard“, would that have helped anyone?
Interviewer: So you are saying that historical documents should be taken in their context.
Bob: Yes, definitely.
Don’t get me wrong- there was collaboration. There were people who acted as agents for recruiting labour, who used their trucks to help carry building supplies- people who profited from helping the Occupation force. That kind of thing.
There was one German for every three islanders, so you never could have had armed resistance like you did in France and I think one person in 20 actually went to prison, now that was men women and children. I’m sure for every person who went to prison there were probably 10 who didn’t so everyone was crossing the Germans somehow. It was just a case of not being caught.
Interview copyright 2001 High Tide Productions Ltd, can be reproduced with permission
