Hitler's British Isles, page 38
The following week was a torment for the two girls. They didn’t dare tell their parents what had happened, fearing that they would be angry. Pearl kept her eyes peeled for the young German soldier. She was terrified that she would run into him on the stairs and he would make some remark that would give the game away, but oddly there seemed to be no sign of him.
The anxiety of the situation continued to take a toll on the girls, and eventually their mother confronted them. ‘Let’s have it,’ she demanded. ‘There’s something wrong with you both. Tell me what the trouble is.’
Pearl could hold her tongue no longer. She poured out the whole sorry story, not looking up from the table in front of her until she had finished. When she did, she was surprised to see a smile on her mother’s face. ‘Which German was it?’ Mrs Smith asked her.
‘The one in Room 5,’ interjected Gwen.
The mother’s smile broadened further. ‘I’m pretty sure he was teasing you,’ she told the two girls. ‘He was transferred off the island two days ago. He came to see me before he left and asked me to give you some advice – to make sure you lock your bedroom door in future!’
As the Germans grew increasingly hungry, their remaining scruples were worn down, and soon theft and looting were widespread. The once hale and hearty Army of Occupation had come to resemble the wretched forced labourers of the OT. Now, instead of Russian slaves it was young German soldiers who were spotted in the fields, pulling raw stumps of broccoli out of the ground and stuffing them straight into their mouths, or scavenging for the tiniest scraps in local people’s bins.
On Sark, Dame Sybil was shocked at the sudden spate of looting. ‘You haven’t got an army,’ she told the island commandant, Captain Heiner Magsam. ‘You’ve only got a pack of thieves and beggars.’ The German officers, at least, did seem to take such lawless acts fairly seriously. When the Hamon family lost half a dozen geese from their farm in Little Sark, they reported the theft to the authorities. A day later, the guilty party – a skinny lad who couldn’t have been more than eighteen – was hauled down to the farm by his commanding officer. He was practically in tears as he told Mrs Hamon how embarrassed his parents back home in Germany would be if they ever found out what he had done. She was moved by the young man’s obvious contrition, and told him that she accepted his apology. As far as she was concerned, the matter was over. She just hoped that, given the circumstances, the lad’s officer would be equally lenient.
Certainly, in some cases, such crimes would be punished severely. When Guernsey grower Oswald Falla started suffering nightly thefts of his grapes, he decided to take matters into his own hands. As darkness fell, he made his way to his greenhouse, the ‘Titanic’ – it had been built in 1912, the same year as the ill-fated vessel, and its long, hulking shape somewhat resembled its namesake – and waited patiently for the thief to put in an appearance.
After a few hours, Oswald began to doze off, but he was awoken by the sound of glass shattering, and as he peered around in the dark, he could see that one of the panes was missing. Stealthily, he made his way over to the hole – just in time to see a head popping through it.
Without thinking, Oswald brought his arm down hard on the back of the intruder’s neck. The thief was momentarily dazed, but as he came to his senses, he slid back out of the hole in the glass wall, and began running away into the darkness. It was several seconds before Oswald realised he had left something behind him: his Army-issue cap.
The next morning, soon after curfew, Oswald set off for the local German camp, brandishing his valuable piece of evidence. It didn’t take long for the guilty party to be identified, and – presumably for Oswald’s benefit – subjected to a bit of exemplary punishment. Oswald watched in astonishment as a tub full of clinkers, still smouldering from the camp boiler, was poured out on the ground to make a pathway, and the unfortunate thief was forced to crawl on his hands and knees from one end to the other.
Despite the threat of punishment, hunger pushed the German soldiers to commit increasingly serious crimes. With hardly any meat left in their rations, they began to supplement their diet with what they could catch, plucking snails from the hedgerows and shooting seagulls out of the sky, against the express orders of their superiors, who had outlawed the practice on the grounds of public safety. It was in any case deeply taboo to kill a seagull, particularly for the men of the Kriegsmarine, among whom there was an old superstition that the birds held the souls of drowned sailors. But desperate times called for desperate measures.
Werner Rang had always been relatively slim, and having lost more than three stone in a matter of months he was now looking distinctly emaciated. He knew that others were even worse off, though. The authorities had instituted a two-hour nap every afternoon, but even so it could be hard to make it through the day. One afternoon, Werner found a soldier collapsed by the side of a hedge, drifting in and out of consciousness. He was too weak to carry the man by himself, but he managed to get him onto the seat of his bicycle and gently pushed him the short distance to the nearest casualty station. By the time they arrived, the man was already dead, and he was far from the first German soldier to perish from a lack of adequate nutrition.
Werner and his friends were determined not to go the same way, and set about supplementing their rations any way they could. One night, they crept into a nearby field and stole some carrots that belonged to a local farmer, hiding them at the bottom of a large pile of stacking crates in their storeroom. The military police came to investigate, but they too were exhausted and hungry, and just as Werner had predicted, they gave up searching the boxes long before they reached the hidden cache.
As time went on, Werner and his friends grew increasingly ingenious, setting traps for blackbirds and shooting their fair share of seagulls too. The meat, boiled up into a stew, was tough and stringy, but welcome nonetheless. Finally, they set their sights on a more ambitious endeavour. They might be stuck on an island, but there were worse places to be marooned – there were, after all, plenty of fish in the sea. The only problem was how to go about catching them.
Along with two of his friends, Werner began constructing a rudimentary boat out of some old tent poles, strapped together and covered with a tarpaulin. After two weeks, the jerry-built craft was just about seaworthy, and the trio of foolhardy adventurers set sail, armed with half a dozen grenades and a net on a stick. They pushed off from Portelet Harbour at high tide and rowed out for about half a mile before they began setting off the depth charges, watching with satisfaction as a handful of fish rose to the surface after each muffled explosion. By the time they had scooped up the full haul, they had about twenty to divide up between them.
The three men began paddling back towards the shore, but the tide was now against them and it was almost nine o’clock at night before they finally reached land again. As they dragged their battered and bedraggled craft up the slipway, they suddenly realised they were no longer alone. Standing there waiting for them was Lieutenant Müller, a brusque and business-like officer in his late thirties who was known as something of a stickler for the rules.
Werner saw the lieutenant in good time, and managed to hide a couple of fish in his pockets before he reached the top of the slipway. It was just as well, since Müller soon confiscated the rest of the catch. Then, after a somewhat half-hearted ear-bashing on the dangers of risking their lives at sea, he told the men they were free to go on their way.
Werner and his friends repaired to their camp, where they smoked their two purloined fish in the chimney. It was the most glorious meal that any of them had tasted for months.
As time went on, the extent of German looting only increased, until it reached epidemic proportions. ‘The theft everywhere is terrible,’ wrote Guernseywoman Ruth Ozanne. ‘Nobody can keep fowls, goats, pigs, cows or any livestock.’ But it wasn’t just farm animals that were being taken. Five-year-old Kath Lloyd was heartbroken when her cat Tortie suddenly went missing. She was devoted to the animal, and loved nothing better than dressing her up in a little dress and bonnet. A few days after Tortie’s disappearance, Kath and her parents were coming home from church when they saw something hanging on the washing line of the German troops who lived down the road. It looked like a kind of furry ginger scarf. Suddenly, Kath recoiled as she realised what she was seeing: it was Tortie’s skin, hung up in the sun to dry.
Understandably, not all German soldiers were comfortable with the idea of eating domestic animals. One man, Hans Glauber, played a rather cruel trick on a comrade who told him he could never eat a cat. Having captured and killed a local moggy, he boiled up the meat for a couple of hours, adding nettles and a few stolen potatoes until he had a fairly serviceable stew. By the time it was cooked, there was no way of telling what kind of meat was in the pot, so he told his squeamish friend that it was rabbit.
The other man wolfed down the meal, and only after he had finished did Hans reveal the truth: ‘You’ve just eaten a nice big tomcat,’ he told him gleefully. At first his friend thought he was winding him up, but when Hans produced the animal’s skin, all doubt was dispelled from his mind. He ran outside and promptly threw up the whole meal.
It wasn’t just cats that were in the Germans’ sights – in fact, if anything, pet dogs were more vulnerable to being taken. Their size meant that the meat would go a lot further, and they were generally easier to catch. Guernseywoman Ruth Ozanne knew several people whose animals had vanished in suspicious circumstances, and was terrified that her own little terrier could be next. ‘I dare not let Gary out of my sight,’ she wrote in her diary. ‘The Germans look at him with hungry eyes.’
At Les Pieux Hotel in Cobo, Pearl Smith and her family kept a close eye on their Alsatian, Risky. It was hard to believe that any of the Germans staying at the hotel would harm her – they loved the dog and spent hours happily petting her. But things being what they were, you couldn’t be too careful. Pearl’s cousin Eileen had gone out to fetch her dog Sally one morning and found the lock on the kennel had been forced. With no sign of Sally anywhere, she and her family had begun a frantic search of the area, aided by a friendly German man who lived in the house next door. But after a whole day traipsing across fields calling her name, they could find no sign of Sally anywhere, and in the end – much to Eileen’s disappointment – the search was called off.
The next day, the German neighbour arrived at the door. In his hand was a small package wrapped up in newspaper. ‘This is for you,’ he told Eileen’s mother, placing it down on the kitchen table. ‘Something to give your children tonight.’
She opened the newspaper parcel and was amazed to find a joint of meat inside. ‘Oh, how lovely!’ she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up at the sight. But Eileen leapt from the stool where she was sitting, tears already streaming down her face. ‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Take it away! We don’t want it.’
The girl’s mother couldn’t understand what had got into her. ‘Eileen!’ she scolded her angrily.
‘Can’t you see, Mum?’ Eileen whispered between sobs. ‘It’s my dog. It’s Sally.’
Understandably, such incidents did little to foster good relations between the local people and the Germans. Occasionally, when the circumstances allowed, the islanders would even fight back – a nation of animal lovers wasn’t going to let its pets be taken by the enemy without putting up a little resistance. Guernsey teenager Esme Ingrouille was astonished to see a German soldier run past the front door of her house in L’Islet carrying a sack which was writhing furiously. She could hear muffled miaowing coming from inside, and sure enough, moments later an angry woman appeared, shouting at the German to bring back her cat as she pursued him down the road.
Esme’s father leapt up to give chase as well, but got no further than the front steps of his house before he slipped and twisted his ankle. ‘You go, love!’ he shouted to his daughter. ‘See if you can catch him!’
Esme darted off as fast as her young legs would carry her, overtaking the elderly lady and soon gaining ground on the German soldier. He was terribly thin, and the wriggling sack was slowing him down. As she reached the end of the road and began pursuing him into a nearby field, she realised that she wasn’t alone. Several of her neighbours had also joined the chase, and soon a whole host of them were charging across the field together in pursuit of the German soldier.
The German reached the far side of the field, where a little stream ran alongside some woodland. He had to slow down to cross it, and the rabble were rapidly gaining on him. Esme saw him turn around and stare at the mob in terror. Then he opened the bag, upended it over the stream, and bolted into the wood.
Esme and her comrades arrived to find the cat scowling as it dragged itself out of the muddy water. Soon, it was back in its owner’s arms, safe – for now at least – from being made into anyone’s dinner.
The German soldier had learnt his lesson: he wouldn’t dare show his face in that neighbourhood again. But his hunger clearly hadn’t abated. The following day, one of the nearby farmers reported that his dog had gone missing in the night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
MUTINY
With his forces in such dire straits, Admiral Hüffmeier knew that the battle for hearts and minds was going to be a tough one, but he wasn’t a man to give up easily. He had only been in the top job on the islands less than a month when he embarked on a kind of speaking tour that wouldn’t have been out of place in a political campaign.
On 25 March, Werner Rang and his friends were summoned to a speech at Guernsey’s Regal Cinema, which had been specially bedecked with huge swastika banners. The admiral marched onto the stage, taking up a central position under a bright white spotlight. ‘Heil Hitler!’ he bellowed, raising his right arm.
‘Heil Hitler,’ Werner called in response, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Of the two hundred-odd men standing alongside him, he was sure that no more than a handful could have put any real feeling into the words. Most of them were probably as jaded as he was. But while everyone knew that the war was about to be lost, they didn’t dare say it in public. No one wanted to be the one to stand up and declare that the emperor was wearing no clothes.
Hüffmeier, at least, was clearly giving it his all. ‘I intend to hold out here with you until the Fatherland has won back its lost ground and the final victory is wrested,’ he intoned gravely. ‘From our present pain, and with the certainty of German victory, as commander of the defences of the Channel Islands I will carry out plainly and without compromise, strictly but justly, the mandate given to me by the Führer.’
It was hard to imagine that the admiral himself believed the words he was speaking. The whole performance felt like a sham. But his power as an orator was undeniable – and, of course, when he finally stopped speaking and the orchestra in the pit struck up a rousing tune, the crowd erupted into their usual deafening applause.
A month later, as the Channel Islands were blooming into their usual rainbow of spring flowers, those with access to a radio were subjected to the most shocking news broadcast of the war. On 19 April, the BBC broadcast a report from their correspondent Richard Dimbleby, who had joined British troops liberating the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. They arrived to find more than thirteen thousand unburied corpses littered around the camp, just a fraction of the tens of thousands of men, women and children who had died there in the last two years. Those prisoners who were still alive were in a desperate state. Among them was Louisa Gould’s brother Harold Le Druillenec, the only British survivor of the camp, who now weighed just five stone.
The horrors Dimbleby saw at Belsen made such a strong impact on him that he had to stop his recording five times because he was unable to control his own tears. It was, he said, the worst day of his life, and the twelve-minute report – with its vivid descriptions of moaning, skeletal prisoners, naked, lice-infested women, and tiny babies who had died from a lack of milk – was not easily forgotten by those who heard it. For anyone who still doubted the true depravity of the Nazi regime, this was surely the final straw.
The morning after the BBC broadcast, Adolf Hitler celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday in what was left of the Chancellery gardens, pinning medals to the boys of the Hitler Youth – some as young as twelve – who were still fighting to save Berlin from the Russian advance. When the ceremony was over, he returned to his underground bunker, for what he must have known would be the final time. The great and the good of the Nazi Party – Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Bormann, von Ribbentrop and Speer – along with the man who would soon be appointed as Hitler’s successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz, had all come to pay homage to their Führer. Given the circumstances, however, the celebrations were distinctly muted.
In the Channel Islands, meanwhile, the big day was marked as bombastically as ever. There were military parades through the streets, and swastika flags hoisted far and wide. At the RealKino cinema in Guernsey, Admiral Hüffmeier gave another of his barnstorming performances, complete with enormous flags, dramatic floodlights and a full orchestra to play him onto the stage. When he reached the rostrum, he stood there in silence for at least thirty seconds, milking the moment for all it was worth. Then he launched into the performance of his life.
Even Baron von Aufsess, who was no fan of Hüffmeier’s, couldn’t help being impressed. ‘This scion of a family of Protestant pastors began his National Socialist sermon,’ he wrote sardonically, ‘speaking with evangelical fervour but on behalf of Adolf instead of God. He spoke, too, with consummate skill, first engaging the common sentiments of his listeners, then speaking frankly, glossing nothing over, the more compellingly to carry them away in a final surge of emotion.’ The admiral, von Aufsess was forced to concede, was not just one of Hitler’s most devoted disciples – he was also a pretty convincing surrogate for the Führer’s unparalleled rhetorical style.
