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.

Interviewer: Thanks Bernhard- please tell us how you ended up in the Channel Islands.

Bernhard: Well, the reason , I ended up in Guernsey is this. After we had completed our training in France we were told that our year (1925) would not be sent to the front line because of the immense losses among the soldiers from the years before us. That’s how I came to be stationed at Guernsey. The older soldiers we replaced at Guernsey were probably sent to the Eastern front.

I didn’t see it, of course. The movement of a battalion within the army was always a matter of secrecy as it could have been read as a sign of weakness by the enemy.  The older soldiers had already left before we arrived there. Well, that was the explanation we were given.

Interviewer: What was the general mood at the time?

Bernhard: I remember everyone being in good spirits. We had arrived there, a whole bunch of us. All young men. The others were old compared to us. Most of them were in their late thirties or early forties. They could have been our fathers. So, it was much more difficult for as young ones to make contact with them.

Interviewer: So you never really mingled with the older soldiers?

Bernhard: That’s exactly how it was. The old ones kept themselves to themselves and so did we. Well, we came in contact with them on the job during the day but our accommodations were separate. As a young person you tend to bond with your peers and most of us already knew each other from training camp, anyway.

We mostly stayed in our quarters in our spare time. I suppose, we could have gone out more but most of the time we preferred to stay inside. It was safer and a lot less hassle. You always had to go through several controls, show your pass etc.

Occasionally we would go into town, to the cinema or down the beach but I wouldn’t say I fully explored the island.

Interviewer:  What kind of crowd was there at the cinema? Did you get to mix with the locals?

Bernhard: No, only Germans were allowed by this point. The best thing about the cinema was the concert organ. It would play before the actual film accompanied by lights and water. This was often much better than the film itself that was to follow. Mainly because of the newsreels they always showed before every film. These newsreels were Nazi party propaganda, as you well know.

Interviewer: You worked in signals during your time on the island. Did you ever hear any of the radio broadcasts being put out by the Allies?

Bernhard: You had access as a radio operator. All you had to do was switch the channels. Which is, what I did and nearly got caught.

Interviewer: What happened?

Bernhard:  I made a mistake. I forgot to switch back the channel. So, this Lieutenant comes in, switches on the radio and hears it.  I tried to convince him that I hadn’t touched it and that it must have happened by accident but the Lieutenant wasn’t convinced.

In the end it took my commander Lieutenant Wolters to bail me out. He did it because, he himself listened in now and then. It was punishable by the death penalty.

I would also like to mention that it was only in the last 6 months of the war that things like this happened. Before that, nobody would have dared to do such things.

Interviewer: Were there many soldiers who did this?

Bernhard: It’s difficult to say. If people did it they would certainly not have talked about it or let somebody else know. It was far too dangerous.

Interviewer: You said your Lieutenant used to listen in too?

Bernhard: Yes, towards the end. In the last six months or so, he would listen in, too.  That’s mainly why we got on so well.

Interviewer: So there were others prepared ot take the chance of being caught?

Bernhard: Well, not in my unit as far as I was aware. I really only knew the first lieutenant and the major. I don’t know whether the major was a loyal follower or not. All I know is that towards the end he was drinking heavily. Drowning his sorrows, I suppose

Interviewer: Do you remember D-Day?

Bernhard: I remember the night of the invasion very clearly. It was a Monday, the 5th of June. We were in session at the command post when I nipped outside to relieve myself. When I looked up I saw the sky was full of airplanes. I went back inside and said jokingly to my commander ‘Looks like tonight will be the night’ but he didn’t reply. We finished at around 11pm that night and by 12am I was back on duty. At 5.30am I received the message that they had landed.  I forgot to mention that I did receive a message before that one. It said ‘Artillery fire and lighting signals are strictly forbidden for all battalions’.

Interviewer: So you were on high alert at this point?

Bernhard: Yes we were. We were on alert the minute they landed. But as I said we couldn’t leave the command post. I went back down to the bunker to try and pick up information via the radio. There was a lot of air traffic going on,  people tried to get information from the main land. Later on we fell under the command of the Navy, and to operate the marine radio was even more difficult.

Interviewer: What was the islanders’ reaction to the invasion?

Bernhard: They kept pretty quiet as they always did.

Interviewer: But you did have contact with the local populace?

Bernhard: Yes, partly. We talked to them.  They rather liked Germans. I never heard a bad word from them.  We organised ourselves a lady who would do our laundry so we men didn’t have to do it. I would take the laundry round her house once a week. I knew they were short of food and we had plenty, so I would take bread with me one week and butter the next.

Interviewer: Did you ever socialise with them in the evening?

Bernhard: Not in pubs. We were not allowed in there, if I remember rightly.  Well, I never went to a pub there. They were friendly. Would greet you and you would greet them back. Some soldiers had girlfriends.  One of them settled down in Sark after the war. He is German, a former member of the occupying force  at Guernsey.

Today, he is an important dignitary of Sark. He was  received by the queen when she came to visit the island a few years ago.

Interviewer: So going back to the D-Day invasion, what happened after the day of the landings?

Bernhard: We were on alert for the next 6 weeks but nothing really happened. So we gradually slipped back into our old routine. Things went back to the way they were until hunger broke out like an illness among us.

At this point we only slept for a few hours at a time. We were on duty for 3 hours in the morning and another two hours in the afternoon. In-between we had strict resting order.  The food would be mainly porridge by now mixed with lots of water, one hundred grams of it, no more than a thick slice and meshed potatoes mixed with water. That’s when we started to steal.

Interviewer: What sort of things did you steal?

Bernhard: The first thing I stole was a Sunday roast for christmas dinner in 1944.  I caught us a cat.

Interviewer: A cat?

Bernhard:Yes, we called the cats “roof rabbits” *laughs*.

End of part 1.

Part 2 of Bernhard’s story can be found here

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

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 One of the interview. Read Part Two here.

ARTUR BOCH

Artur: My name is Boch. I was seventeen and a half when I was drafted. We first came to Holland where we were trained. We came to Guernsey in October. We went by train to the coast. I can’t remember how long exactly the journey was. We first went to St Malo and at night got on a ship to Guernsey. We arrived in Guernsey during the night and marched all the way to Fort George where we were stationed. We were a bicycle squadron. The squadron had been cavalry but was changed to bikes.

Well, the next day we looked down, it was a wonderful view. I hadn’t seen much of the island until then, that came later. St Peter Port was not so far away from Fort George, maybe 2 km. We arrived there as young recruits, were trained for another 4 weeks and then brought together with the older soldiers

Interviewer: There were a lot of soldiers already posted in the Islands when you arrived. How did you find they were towards you, being so young when you arrived?

Artur: Well, they were all old hands. It was difficult for us young ones to get on with them. There were also a number of casulties from the Eastern front. They were brought to the island for recovery and then went back again. I was always scared they’d send me there, too.

Interviewer: Was this a common worry amongst young soldiers such as yourself?

Artur: I couldn’t say, I remember, one time, no, I couldn’t say.

They always sent the ones they didn’t like, the ones who had been unruly or rebellious. They sent them first. I kept telling myself ‘keep your head down, keep your head down.’ Later on, the invasion put an end to it since we couldn’t get away from the island anymore. A few days into the invasion when the allies landed in France, they were looking for volunteers for Cherbourg. The base had been cut off and they tried to get supplies in there on minesweepers. The volunteers were to be taken there at night in a minesweeper. They needed volunteers for that. I thought to myself if you volunteer they’ll probably take you, if you don’t, they will because you didn’t volunteer. Which is exactly what happened. I volunteered, hoping they wouldn’t take me. And they didn’t. They took the ones who hadn’t volunteered, branded them cowards.

I was lucky. My officer said to me ‘I can’t dispense with you, you are my dispatcher’. I was so relieved when I heard his words because I knew they’d be cannon fodder, the ones who had to go there. I was so relieved when I heard his words.

So, this is how I got to stay on the island. Three days into the invasion a Nazi party officer gave as a speech. He said, ‘The allies only landed, right? Let them all come in, so we can push them out, all at once.’ Yeah, right, bollocks. After that the hard times really kicked in, with the starving and all that. Our island commander, General von Schmettow was replaced around Christmas.

I would like to mention something else. During this time, pioneers went over to St Malo on minesweepers to get us fresh supplies. We didn’t have anything left. No coals, no leather. You see, we nailed wooden soles to our leather boots because there was no sole leather left either. We felt like storks walking on these wooden soles. And the vehicles were switched to ‘wood gas’ because there was no petrol left. A small wood-burning stove was attached to the vehicle and it run. Don’t ask me how.

Interviewer: I’ve not heard about these runs to St Malo, please can you tell us more about that?

Artur: Well, it was a small unit. They were given a proper dinner that night and then sent over to St Malo to capture a coal ship. And they did. They also caught a few prisoners. I don’t know if it was true but rumour had it that they had also captured a British major. The rumour went that General von Schmettow got in touch with the British through this captured major to see if he could get us all interned in Portugal. The general didn’t want any more of his soldiers to starve to death. Even the doctors in the sick bay had finally refused to take any further responsibilities for anyone’s life. And then one of these Nazi officers informed on our general. An admiral from the navy immediately replaced the general. This admiral said to us ‘We will never give up the islands, even if it means we have to share one tin of sardines among ten men.’

Interviewer: At the start of the war when the islands were taken, the German Army confidently believed in their victory. As the tide of the war was turning, how did this affect soldiers’ morale in the islands?

Artur: Well, I had my first leave in February 1944. That was before the invasion. When I came back from this leave I had stopped believing in our victory. We knew there was going to be an invasion. We just didn’t know where and when. We always thought it would be in Calais, certainly not the Normandy. I remember thinking, you will become a prisoner of war and end up wood chopping in Canada until the end of your life. That’s what they’d told us would happen if you become a prisoner of war, or you die. I had very little hope, of ever getting back home again.

We had lost at Stalingrad, Rommel had come back from Africa and I think, they had already landed in Sicily, too. And from they Eastern front they kept reporting ‘line adjustment, line adjustment’. I had little hope left.

Interviewer: Can you tell us more about General Von Schmettow?

Artur: I didn’t know him personally. I only knew what went round. He was an army general. The one who replaced him, Hoffmeier, was a war marine general. And a Nazi, I think. The way he talked.

Interviewer: What made you think that?

Artur: Well, because he always insisted that we will never give up the Islands. When the allies marched into France we were told that it was vital to keep the Islands because they were British and may come in handy, if negotiations were to become necessary, should the table turn, one day. That’s why we had to hold out till the end and starve.

Interviewer: And Von Schmettow wouldn’t have ordered that? What would he have done should things have got to that stage?

Artur: Well, given up the island, I suppose, or negotiated a deal. And we would have been interned in Portugal. Yes, we would have gone to Portugal.

Interviewer: What communication did you have with home after the invasion of Normandy?

Artur: I had my last letter from home in October 1944. Aeroplanes didn’t get through to us anymore. They let us send messages back home on the transmitters. You know, short ones, just your name and that you were well. After that, I wrote my first postcard back home in June or July 1945 when I was already a prisoner of war. The last news my family had received from me before that was a telegram back at Christmas in 1944.

Interviewer: Was the invasion a surprise to the soldiers in the islands?

Artur: Well, first of all we did know what was going to happen, just not when and where. I was on duty the day the invasion started. You could hear the sound of the detonations at St Malo so clearly it was as if it happened in the northern part of the island. I kept looking up at the sky expecting to see parachutes but there weren’t any . The next day though, the sky was littered with aeroplanes. I had never seen anything like it. I remember thinking, that’s it, we are finished. There is nothing we can do about it now.

Interviewer: Did you think that your forces would be able to fight off the invasion?

Artur: No, I had stopped thinking that. I thought they would land on Guernsey, too. But they didn’t. So, we thought, they are going to cut us off, let us starve to death, which was what happened. We were cut off from the supply.

I’d also like to mention that on the Saturday before the invasion, we had planned to go into town, St Peter Port. It was a fine day just like today. We were standing outside the house, ready to go, when we suddenly saw aeroplanes in the skies above us. They kept coming, one after the other, flying towards the sun. Some came crashing down. They had attacked us because we had several radar units, three, I think. Two round ones and one long one. The units were only some eighty meters away from us and they wanted to destroy them before they would start to invade. It was a surprise attack and they succeeded. We were completely taken by surprise. Next door to us there was an army prison, in an old stone house. The guy in there was suddenly outside because the stone wall had gone. He run away covered in dust. We went up on the roof of our house. There we saw one of our anti-aircraft’s going up in flames and four or five of us dead…

Interviewer: Was that the only attack you remember during that period?

Artur: Well, they didn’t manage to destroy all our anti-aircraft during the first attack. When they came back the next day we were prepared. Rumours had it that some of the aeroplanes were downed but I am not sure and couldn’t say how many. The whole thing didn’t last very long, though. Once the invasion had started they left us alone.

Read part 2 of this interview