The Channel Islands At War (15 page)

There was one joint body called the purchasing commission formed on 16 August 1940 which worked well throughout the occupation. This body consisted of a German official, and two representatives from Guernsey and Jersey. The scheme was got off the ground by Raymond Falla, the agricultural committee chairman on Guernsey assisted by William Hubert, a Guernsey seed merchant, John Jouault and Touzel Brec, a farmer of Breton stock, who was Jersey agriculture committee's chairman. Falla made the first of many journeys in ships flying the German flag to Granville where the commission established an office at the Villa Hirondelle, with a bilingual clerk provided by the Germans, and under somewhat primitive conditions (their money was kept in a wardrobe). Their job was to purchase essential supplies and to arrange shipping, and to do this it was necessary to deal in the French black market as well as making legitimate purchases. A false set of books was kept to show the German authorities, and in this way after shipping had been improved by employing a firm of brokers all manner of goods were transported in one small boat ranging from 'underpants winter weight, ankle length', through putty, yeast, insulin, seeds, to replacement violin strings. Hubert and Falla returned to Guernsey and were replaced by Philip Mahy and George Vaudin who together with Jouault became the permanent officials assisted so
metimes by Falla, Louis Guilleme
tte from Guernsey and Mr Rumbald from Jersey. All these men risked prosecution for their black market dealings. The conduct of other aspects of government was to prove less satisfactory.

Guernsey was the worst-governed of the two main Islands because it was the poorer of the two, and yet contained German headquarters and those involved in running
Alderney
and Sark as well as the garrison. Conditions deteriorated more rapidly than is often realized, and as early as September 1941 Mrs Tremayne wrote after a visit there by her daughter, 'They
are
well on the way to starvation. She says it is pathetic to see the hungry faces of the people waiting in the queues for rations, and these include even some of the old colonels resident in Guernsey and well-to-do people ... There are Germans in the Post Office, the Press office and
Star
Offices overlooking everything and everybody. People are afraid to speak in the streets, the Gestapo [Feldpolizei] is everywhere, two and three abreast.' Victor Carey, a lawyer and member of an old Island family, had become bailiff in 1935 rather surprisingly in view of his age. By the time the Germans arrived he was 69, and as an old man was naturally fearful and anxious to avoid any trouble. Although he gave his place in day-to-day supervision of the Controlling Council to others, he remained bailiff and orders of both Island government and the Kommandantur were published under his name. His upbringing and conservative nature led him to employ a courtly official tone which looked subservient, even though he disliked the Germans perhaps more than some of his colleagues.

However, even if his orders were required to be published by the Germans, there was no reason why he should not have taken greater care with some of the words. In August 1941 he referred to escapers as being from 'enemy' forces, and on another occasion offered a reward of £25 for information about the chalking of V-for-Victory signs. Frank Falla said he knew of at least one case when this reward was claimed, and as a result an elderly and crippled man, Xavier de Guillebon, who chalked the signs on German bicycle seats was sentenced in July 1941 to a year in prison. Nor did the Island authorities complain when John Martel, his defence counsel, was excluded from the trial. It would have been better if such orders had been published under the commandant's signature alone.

Ambrose She
rwill was placed in charge of the controlling committee on the advice of Guernsey's attorney-general. He was dismissed and then imprisoned in October 1940 for his involvement with the concealment of four British agents, but was allowed to resume his former post of attorney-general, and from July 1942 to attend the controlling committee once more. A few months later he was among British subjects deported to Germany where he became camp leader at Laufen. Sherwill, a Devonian, had obtained his entry into Island ruling circles by his marriage to May Carey. He became attorney-general in 1935. The way in which he was punished in 1940 in spite of his encouragement to agents to surrender, his complete backing for obedience to German rule, and his broadcast on Radio Bremen may well account for Sherwill's persistent determination thereafter to see the Germans in the most favourable light. He told the police chief, 'I can see no way of avoiding' conformity with German wishes. In the background, too, was the fear that his son John with intimate knowledge of the Island, might be used in a subsequent raid.

But his willingness to co-operate brought him some reward in September 1942. The deportations were supposed to include all British-born subjects on the Islands, and very few exceptions were made even among the elderly and sick. Kn
ackfuss asked Millle
r if women and children should be included, and was told no exceptions could be made, but von Aufsess in the Ko
mmandantur deliberately left She
rwill's wife and sons off the list. May and the two boys continued to live at Havclet House in a flat while the upper part of the building was given over to billeted troops who in this case, unlike so many others, behaved 'with perfect consideration'. Although there were other cases in which the Germans relented, like that of Doctor McKinstry, the favourable treatment given to Sherwill and other members of the Island governing class was yet a further example of double standards.

Another prominent member of the Guernsey government exempted in 1942 was the man who succeeded Sherwill in charge of the controlling committee, the Reverend John Leale, formerly financial adviser to the committee until his permanent appointment
in January 1941. Although Leale
was a Methodist minister of cultured tastes, he was also an extremely rich man. From the first he argued 'there must be no thought of any kind of resistance', and strongly condemned sabotage as foolish. He adopted the line that both sides were bound by the Hague Convention which forbade any actions by an occupied people against their occupiers and after the war he said he could not recommend any
one for honours who had helped e
scapers or damaged the Germans because it would violate the convention. There was no validity in this argument, as a resistance news-sheet pointed out in June 1942, because while the Germans could not point to any major violations of the convention by the people, they had broken it whenever it suited them to reduce rations, confiscate property, or enforce labour.

Jersey was better governed than Guernsey. The bailiff, Alexander Coutanche, was an able and ambitious member of an old Jersey family, and had been a deputy for St Helier since 1922. Called to the Jersey bar, he rose to be attorney-general and bailiff in 1935 aged only 43. He had been closely involved in developing the tourist trade, and in the opening of a new airport at St Peter's. Von Aufsess found him congenial company, but also remarked on his "coolly calculating' nature. His bland memoirs say nothing about his personal views or role in the occupation. Although he is on record for complaining about various measures like deportations, or ration reductions, it is clear he endorsed the policy of co-operation. He told Norman Longmate he did not believe they could have done anything else to help 'the general cause'. When questioned about anti-Semitic orders he claimed there was nothing they could have done to help, that the significance of these and other measures was not then appreciated.

Charles Duret Aubin, the attorney-general, was probably the second most important figure in Jersey Island government. A large and rather ponderous man in speech, von Aufsess nevertheless saw him as a modest and intelligent person, and the two got on sufficiently well for von Aufscss to tell him about his dislike of Hitler, and his intention to escape. The bailiff's secretary was Ralph Mollet who faithfully supported the co-operation policy. On one occasion he was in church at St Saviour's when the clergyman, Canon Clifford Cohu, asked the congregation to sing the National Anthem. This was strictly forbidden and. although Germans present made no objection, Mollet reported it to Duret Aubin who in turn told the Dean who warned Cohu to be more careful.

Could this group of men have done more to distance themselves from German policies and encourage resistance? After he had stayed with Carey and Coutanche Herbert Morrison did not think so, and his report to the cabinet said, 'the Island officials had discharged their difficult responsibilities during the Occupation in exemplary fashion'.

This was simply untrue. They had surrendered to pressure. The Germans warned them they would remove from office any official who failed to conform to orders from the commandant. If an official did not obey orders he was entitled to have charges in writing submitted to him, and to a hearing at which he could put his case. No official availed himself of this procedure. The removal of Sherwill and others in 1940 had been sufficient warning for most. Doctor McKinstry, who was critical of German policies was threatened with deportation in 1942, as was Doctor Symons in 1944. The Germans also threatened general action against the administration. Carey told Mrs Cortvricnd that one reason why he had issued the reward notice about V-for-Victory signs was because the Germans threatened to deport some of the jurats to Germany. When the
Bulletin of British Patriots
criticized the Germans, ten members of the States were briefly imprisoned as hostages.

Administrators and lawyers
are
experts at creating delays and smokescreens, and Island officials could have used their outdated procedures and legal niceties to create endless difficulties. They must have realized the Germans valued their signature on orders, and their public pronouncements against escape, or sabotage. This fruitful co-operation benefited German military occupation and could have been made into a bargaining counter. The Island rulers knew they were treading on dangerous ground. When they signed the anti-Jewish orders it was agreed that only the preambles should be published over their signatures rather than specific details of anti-Jewish measures.

Apart from a handful of individual cases, and a number of delays in implementing measures, their complaints were ineffective even in the palmy days before June 1944, and none after that date. They denounced escapers as foolhardy, and sabotage as pointless. Several times they urged Islanders to act as informers. The Germans imposed collective penal
ties illegally after the Nicolle
-Symes landing, cable-cutting sabotage, the commando landing on Sark, and the publication of the
Bulletin of British Patriots.
They threatened to take hostages and to deport people, and did so in certain cases. They confiscated bicycles, cars, motor cycles, cameras, and wirelesses among other goods. When the Island governments objected to confiscations in May 1942 their protest was ignored. Reductions in food rations were carried out illegally as a reprisal and when Sir Abraham Laine. who had a good record of complaining, used the word 'reprisal' Dr Kratzer reprimanded him. Coutanche and Carey published the order making the reductions stating 'it is no sense a punishment against the civil population'. Forced labour was demanded for the fortifications and nearly 200 Islanders conscripted. Leale complained that this violated the Hague Convention. The labour was used, and then in August the Germans replied and agreed not to take any more 'to perform fortification and entrenchment work' after they had used what labour they needed.

What made the policy even more regrettable was the degree of goodwill towards the Germans in person
al relations. Although Coutanche
said that there was no 'social intercourse', there was in fact a good deal as von Aufsess' diary shows, and von Schmettow himself broke off cordial relations late in 1944. Sherwill, Carey, Hathaway, and Leale all spoke of courtesy and consideration between themselves an
d the Germans. In one speech She
rwill said of relations: 'These
are
not merely on a correct basis, but they
are
cordial and friendly. It is most important that they should remain so. Let no one jeopardize this by unseemly or unruly conduct."

This sort of relationship had a number of results. For breaking laws, like sheltering British agents or listening to the wireless, which sometimes led to death and long imprisonment for other Islanders, they received minimal punishment. Although some of them or their relatives were deported others were granted exemption. Small though such kindly gestures as not digging a trench across Coutanche's lawn, or getting Hathaway's glasses repaired might be, they were privileges not extended to others, and a constant reminder that withdrawing co-operation would render their lives as unpleasant as those of most Islanders.

In October 1944 a case involving Deputy E. Le Quesne, chairman of the labour committee and a member of the Jersey superior council, highlighted the situation and its inequalities. The Feldpolizei arrested him for listening to a wireless. The police had not consulted
the Platzkommandantur so Le Quesne
was tried, and given seven months for an offence, which in other cases had led to deportation to a German prison. Von Aufsess intervened, and then a 'foolish blunder' was made because after only two weeks Le Quesne was released. Such behaviour on their part, said von Aufsess, 'leads to the accusation that we have one law for the highly placed and another for the ordinary citizen".