Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (54 page)

As may already be clear, the Guernsey Islanders were very sensitive to symbols and symbolic display, so much so that efforts by the BBC to stimulate a symbolic resistance were likely to fall on fertile ground. Whenever opportunity presented itself, Islanders would make small personal displays to assuage their feelings of distance from Britain. Christmas, that most symbolic of seasons, filled with nostalgia and heightened longing for families on the mainland, brought forth particular efforts. Ambrose Robin could write on Christmas Day, 1941, about having dinner with relatives who “hoisted a Union Jack across the dining room; we therefore had our Xmas Dinner under the good old flag.” They listened to the still-legal wireless while eating and heard a special Channel Islands broadcast, disappointing for its lack of a special message for those under Occupation. Then home for the King's speech and a special cobbled-together Christmas cake, decorated with a small Union Jack. This little cake was placed in the middle of the front-room window and, according to Robin, “attracted the attention of passing German soldiers.”
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Reports of such relatively inconsequential private displays reveal a hunger for symbolic patriotism and participation from afar in the war effort. Sometimes these displays took on a more daring quality as they were made public in varying ways. Winnie described a window in town decked out in midsummer in bathing suits with red tops, blue trunks, and white belts, the display of patriotic colors filling the entire window. The genius of such an exhibition hinged on its deniability as having any real meaning should it be challenged by the Germans.
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Equally daring was a display described by Rev. Ord in July 1943 as “in direct defiance of the Gestapo.” It seems that the woman managing Roger's jewelry business in the Arcade took it upon herself, during the owner's absence, to construct a lovely window of a red cloth base, a blue vase, and ivory elephants. Ord lauded the courage it took to construct what was so plainly a patriotic display, and one speaking “a silent message to all who pass by.” He continued, “Nor, has it been ignored,” although it is unclear whether he meant by the Islanders or the German Field Police.
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It was into this heady mix of repressed patriotism and sensitivity to symbols that the BBC dropped the exhortations of Colonel Britton in 1941. Britain's aim was to establish a presence in the occupied countries, a means to offset the influence Germany had on the civilian population. The problem of how to do this effectively was of particular interest to Victor de Laveleye, the Belgian program organizer for the BBC. De Laveleye initially wanted to find a symbol that transcended language barriers in the bilingual country of Belgium that would lend itself to rapid writing on a wall at night, and that had an unmistakable meaning for the occupied nations. On January 14, 1941, de Laveleye broadcast the result of his deliberations:

I am proposing to you as a rallying emblem the letter V, because V is the first letter of the words ‘Victoire’ in French, and ‘Vrijheid’ in Flemish…the victory which will give us back our freedom, the victory of our good friends the English. Their word for Victory also begins with V. As you see, things ‘fit’ all round. The letter V is the perfect symbol of Anglo-Belgian understanding.
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Thus, the V-campaign was born and “V's” sprouted overnight, chalked on walls and roads and practically any stationary object in the occupied countries of the Continent. One French listener to the BBC described them as “growing like mushrooms on the best sites.”
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It would not be long before “Colonel Britton,” a fictional entity actually voiced by Douglas Ritchie, a BBC news editor, gave further ideas for the V-campaign to English speakers in the occupied countries. He described how the Morse code for “V” of three dots and a dash could be used to knock on doors, to call for waiters in a village café, and to provide the rhythm for blacksmiths at work. He recommended Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with its “Fate Knocking at the Door” opening motif, and the BBC incorporated the Morse signal into their British broadcasts beginning on June 27, 1941.
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A
Time
magazine article from July of that year rapturously recounted further ideas from the BBC campaign, such as sitting in cafés with legs stretched out in a V and leaving the knife and fork to form a V on the plate when the meal was done. Stopped clocks could be left at various locations with the hands set at five after eleven. The variations were quite endless, with the RAF reportedly getting into the act by flying over Europe in a V formation (a symbolic visual that would later form the end shot for the popular 1942 movie
Mrs. Miniver
).
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Although the V-campaign was seemingly intended for the Continent, 1941 became the summer of V's in Guernsey. Ken Lewis described the V-campaign as “in full swing” by early July, with everyone involved in giving a V knock of three soft and one hard raps, and with V's chalked and painted all over the Island. Because the Islanders still possessed their wireless sets, they heard the instructions from Colonel Britton directly and also the BBC's assessment that the campaign was working well in France. In de Laveleye's initial broadcast, he described the psychological impact the V-sign was intended to have on the occupier. When confronted with V's on every building and signpost and hearing the V sound constantly repeated around him, he was to “understand that he is surrounded, encircled, by an immense crowd of citizens eagerly awaiting his first moment of weakness, watching for his first failure.”
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This intended impact was not lost on Ken, who described the success of the French V-campaign “as it put the German soldiers on their nerves to be confronted with the Victory sign everywhere.”
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The Guernsey populace was soon to find out just how nervous this small psychological war made the Germans. Despite understanding the purpose of the campaign, Islanders seemed surprised when the Germans reacted with swiftness and vehemence. Almost immediately after the first V's appeared on walls, signposts, and roads, the warning appeared in the paper over
Victor Carey's signature declaring that the letter “V” was considered a form of sabotage by the Germans, and the culprits needed to be discovered within 72 hours. If anything, this proof of impact encouraged the nocturnal graffiti artists, and three days later the infamous reward of £25 for information about perpetrators, discussed previously, appeared in the papers. To the average person, this appeared to be a massive overreaction. After all, the V-campaign was simply a more visible version of all the little symbols quietly exchanged between Islanders to keep their spirits up.

Because resistance in the Island favored the covert rather than the overt, there was also a sense that many of the V-campaigners were schoolboys enjoying the prank of quickly chalking or painting a V. This possibility dawned on the Germans as well. The German police descended upon the Castel School one day and carted off a dozen little boys around ten or eleven years of age to stand before the commandant. Their concerned parents gathered at the school in anxiety over their children, only to have the boys return in high style with their pockets laden with chocolates and even a cigarette or two for the parents. Some of the V-army were certainly children, for one young miscreant, Edmund Corbin, was caught in the act (literally “red-handed”) by German soldiers. He had been hanging around watching some German sign-writers who had been busy that summer adding arrows, letters, and numbers to the many crossroads of Guernsey. In the inspiration of the moment, Edmund slipped up, picked up a paint brush, dipped it in red paint, and put up a quick V right beside a kneeling soldier. Of course the boy “bunked” before the soldier could rise, although he was caught by another soldier.
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Yet, the Germans were right that this was more than children's work, for some of the V's were chalked or painted above the reach of a child. When a Frenchman, de Guillebon, a grower in Grande Rocques near Cobo Bay, was caught chalking V's on military cars, he was given twelve months' hard labor.
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The sixty-year-old de Guillebon had lived in Guernsey for so long that he was considered a Guernseyman, and he certainly seemed unusual in his audacity and sense of humor. Although he only had one leg, he got around quite handily, scrawling V's on various roadways. Most famously, he chalked V's on the cycle seats of a group of Germans who were taking some liquid refreshment in the hotel bars. The prank was successful, with the soldiers unaware of the new addition to their pants until pointed out by others.
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De Guillebon's punishment, so out of sync with the seriousness of the offense, clearly sought to make an example out of him.

Most of the reactions by the Germans to the V-campaign were familiar parts of their repertoire, but then they took a tack that was truly a surprise. Rev. Ord wrote of the Islanders' “utter astonishment” to find the Germans, after their heavy-handed efforts to suppress the V-sign, suddenly painting V-signs on their billets and vehicles.
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Many of the V's were further decorated with laurel wreaths, particularly the ones on official buildings such as the Inselkommandantur in Mount Row and one on the Grange Lodge. The extra artistic touch was presumably to improve the German efforts over the V's that continued to appear overnight around the Island.
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Quite soon, the papers produced an explanation that came straight from Goebbels's Propaganda Ministerium in Berlin with an article titled “‘v’—
GERMAN VICTORIES ON ALL FRONTS
.” This amazing little screed claimed that the V was actually the first letter of “Viktoria,” which stood for victory: “Great Germany's Victory in the war is the victory of Europe in peace.” Warming to its argument, the article described how V's were appearing everywhere as a sign of support for the Germans. Rev. Ord found particularly charming this sentence: “In Holland,
thousands of people are walking about with the little “V”-brooch in orange colors.” According to the article, a gigantic V-sign had been put up in Prague, and the main thoroughfare had changed its name from “Volkstrasse” to “Viktoria Street.” Example after example was given of cities on the Continent choosing the V-sign to be “worn and displayed with the certain confidence of a German victory on all fronts.”
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The response of the Guernseymen, always a bit cynical and quick to enjoy irony, can be imagined. Ken Lewis snorted that the Germans taking V to mean Victory for them “was, of course, hopeless as in German the word victory is ‘Sieg’” and was obviously adopted in sheer frustration over their helplessness to stop the V-campaign. If anything, it was proof that “the ‘V’ campaign must have been a great success.”
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Rev. Ord found the entire attempt to co-opt the V fairly ludicrous, and puckishly observed, “We thus presume that, in future, those who must greet the Führer must now say: ‘Viktoria Heil’!” Coming so close on the heels of a serious offer of reward money for anyone caught in such “sabotage,” it was a source of “real entertainment”—unconscious on the part of the Germans—to see the soldiers busy with paint brushes in broad daylight, “hard at work everywhere” slapping V's on billets and vehicles. “Why sir,” Ord's parishioners exclaimed to him, “they're sabotaging their own things!” Ord had the added pleasure of overhearing two girls as they rode their bicycles past him in front of the Government House gates: “‘Look!’ cried one, ‘they've put a ‘V’ on the Governor's gatepost!’ ‘Well,’ said her companion in a voice all could hear, ‘The blooming babies!’” Ord further enjoyed the joke supplied by a friend of his who served as a telephone engineer for the States. All of the cars commandeered from Guernsey citizens for the use of the Germans had been stamped with “WH,” meaning Wehrmacht Heeres, a reference to the army portion of the German forces. Now the rear mudguards bearing the “WH” also had a prominent “V” added to the letters. In a playful mood, Ord's friend asked one of the Germans with whom he dealt regularly concerning technical matters exactly what the letters stood for. The German replied, “Don't you know? It means Victory, Wehrmacht Heeres.” “Oh,” Ord's friend replied, I thought it meant ‘Victory, What Hopes’!” Perhaps fortunately for Ord's friend, the German completely missed the irony.
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If Rev. Ord thought that the initial V-campaign had “surely turned the German's brain,” there would be further evidence of this to come.
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As might be imagined, those now feeling themselves to be part of a V-army were not easily dissuaded by a little poaching of the concept by the Germans. One morning, in front of the German V-signs in some locations, there appeared a large E, daubed in tar, turning the supposed victory symbol for the Reich into E V (English Victory). Notably one of these new versions appeared on a signpost near the Hotel Beaulieu, and on the hotel itself. At this point, the Germans seemed to lose track of their theme that V's equaled support for the Nazi cause and issued a new
Bekanntmachung
describing the “V-propaganda carried on by certain culprits of the civil population” as being “anti-German manifestations.”
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Those living within 1,000 meters of the Hotel Beaulieu would have their wireless sets confiscated, and two men from the area were to stand sentry by three of the local German signposts. Ken Lewis's family was among those affected, and he was tapped both to supervise the collection of wireless sets and to stand as one of the sentries. Although it was irritating not to have the wireless in the house in this period when they were still legal, he had plenty of offers of places to listen. And, quite naturally, he found the sentry duty to be more interesting than anything else. His stint began at 1:00
A
.
M
., and most of the time was spent sitting on a wall and chatting with his sentry partner, Owen Lucas. They only saw Germans, some on bicycles, some in cars, and two quite drunk who asked directions to the hotel. Because his
replacement was a bit late, Ken was given a cigar to make up for the delay. Not a bad evening all around.
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