DARING EIGHT ESCAPE TO ENGLAND – 6 SEPTEMBER 1940. THE FIRST DETAILED NEWS OF CONDITIONS!

This is the story of eight men who made a daring escape, by small boat, to England on 6th September 1940. The escapees were Frederick Hockey, a signalman at St Peter Port harbour, his three sons Frederick, George, and Harold. The remainder were William Dorey, William Mahy, Percy Du Port, and Herbert Le C. Bichard. Apart from Frederick they were all tomato growers.

It is incredible to think that they made this journey at night, in a 20ft boat, initially to Dartmouth and then on to Brixham. A journey of approximately eighty-seven miles through some challenging waters. They also didn’t have charts!

I had read a very brief report about this escape in the 1978 Channel Islands Occupation Review and decided to see if I could find more information1. This blog post is compiled using multiple sources which are detailed in the footnotes at the end.

I managed to find quite a bit of additional information as, unusually, it received quite a lot of newspaper coverage in England in the weeks following their escape. This included the names of all involved and a lot of other information about the occupation of Guernsey. This is partly because it was relatively early on in the occupation and thoughts about family members left behind being impacted hadn’t been considered.

The British government even sent three RAF bombing raids to Guernsey, as well as bombs they also dropped leaflets and copies of the the Daily Sketch and Daily Mirror newspapers reporting the escape. More of this later.

As with the all of the escapes in 1940 there doesn’t appear to be any MI 19 reports of interviews with them, unlike the later escapes where it is possible to obtain detailed reports. MI 19, a section of British Directorate of Military Intelligence, interviewed anyone arriving in England from the continent or the Channel Islands. This was to establish that they weren’t spies and to obtain valuable intelligence about the enemy. They also interrogated German prisoners as well as listening to their conversations covertly to obtain information. If you are interested in the activities of MI 19 I recommend the book by Helen Fry ‘The London Cage’.2

This escape, and the escape immediately preceding it, had serious ramifications for fisherman in Guernsey. Following these two escapes an order was issued on 26 September 1940 that all boats, including those stored on land, were to be moved to St Sampson and St Peter Port harbours by 1 October. The Germans were worried that escapees would provide valuable intelligence to the British authorities.

As a result of these restrictions this was to be the last escape from Guernsey until some two years later in September 1942.

Planning

In a newspaper interview Frederick said he felt that “All of this German business was getting a bit two thick.”3 The Germans were importing a large number of German women into the island and they were working in cafes and other places. Frederick’s son Harold went into a cafe and ordered a cup of tea but some Germans who came in after were served first. In typical British fashion Frederick said “This was the sort of thing that makes your blood boiling angry.” The other thing that irritated him was the “oily politeness” and attempts to ingratiate themselves with the local population.

All of the restrictions introduced by the Germans were in Frederick’s words making living in the island impossible.

Expecting air raids, there had been raids in August 1940 on the airport, the Germans had made all civilians dig air raid shelters at home and at their place of work. They also appeared worried that the British may try to take back the island and had, just before this escape, commandeered a number of large yachts and boats and had them fuelled and ready for them to make their getaway should this happen.

This made the prospect of escape by civilians more difficult. Despite this Herbert Bichard approached Frederick and discreetly enquired if he had ever thought of trying to escape. They went to Frederick’s house and sat in his kitchen where they discussed the possibility of an escape. Bichard had access to a 20ft boat, the ‘Tim’, and wanted to use it to escape along with three friends.

As they were all tomato growers they needed someone with boating experience. Frederick had considerable experience of boats sailing around the Channel Islands and this was why they had approached him. He agreed on the proviso that he could take his three sons with him.

They met several times after this, in his kitchen, to come up with a plan as to how to get away. Eventually they agreed on a plan and the night they would attempt it providing conditions were suitable. They needed a pitch dark night and the right tide.

Escape

At ten thirty, half an hour after the curfew started, on the evening of 6th September the men left their homes and set off on foot. They carried a few recent copies of local newspapers, some heavy spanners and some petrol for the boat engine. The petrol was difficult to obtain despite this being only two months after the Germans occupied the island.

Frederick said that they hadn’t dared to leave the petrol on the boat so carried it in cans with them. Another report said that they used beer bottles to transport it so it is not clear which method they used. He declined to say how they had acquired it but one can safely assume they pinched it from the Germans!4

They had armed themselves with heavy spanners as they knew some of the areas were patrolled by Germans. They had decided that it was “them or us” if they were stopped by a German patrol.

In order to attempt to avoid the German patrols they made their way through fields, back gardens and vineries. You can see from the photograph below how many vineries there were in that part of the island at the time. When they got to a main road that they had to cross they spotted a German on a bicycle and ducked into the long grass clutching their heavy spanners. Fortunately, they had not seen them and they crept across the road and continued on their way.

Their first objective was to reach a small dinghy which was hidden on the small tidal islet of Houmet Benest, circled in red on the photograph, at Bordeaux harbour.

The photograph below shows how Houmet Benest can be accessed via a shingle bank except at high tide. Google maps seems to have picked up a slightly different spelling of the name.

Houmet Benest the small islet from which they started their escape. Google Maps

The photograph below from Google maps show the location of the islet of Houmet Benest in relation to St Sampson’s harbour.

Map showing the location of Bordeaux Harbour, St Sampson Harbour and Houmet Benest. Google Maps.

If they had been trying to escape using Houmet Benest later in the occupation they would have been out of luck as the Germans put a 10.5cm Gun and a machine gun position there to strengthen the defences. If you want to have a virtual look around Houmet Benest you can do so thanks to probably the youngest historian in the island Zac Osborne. His video is below.

Very grateful to Zac and his dad Tim for producing this video not least because it saved me climbing over the rocks! Well worth subscribing to his YouTube Channel.

Herbert Bichard and Frederick rowed out to the boat named ‘Tim’ which was on an outer mooring. They then rowed back and collected the others from a group of rocks where they had agreed to meet them. Having returned to the ‘Tim’ they made fast the dinghy and rowed for about half a mile before they caught the tide and raised the sail.

This would have been risky as, by this point, there would have been Germans based at Vale Castle. The castle is on a hill and has an excellent view out over Bordeaux Harbour. Also there would have been sentries along the coast.

Frederick was worried about making any noise and attracting unwanted attention. Just a noisy splash of the oars could have given them away.

They were just north of the Platte Fougère lighthouse, which is a mile off of the north-east tip of Guernsey when three German aircraft flew overhead and flares were dropped. Incredibly they weren’t spotted despite the flares coming very close to the boat. One flare landed in the water only twenty yards from the stern of the boat.

They were unsure if the aircraft had been sent to look for them or if they were doing something else. What they did know was if they had been caught they would have been in serious trouble. If they had been caught they would have been sent to prison for a long time, probably in France. Realising that the noise of the aircraft engines would mask the sound of their boat engine they decided to risk starting it.

Just after passing the Casquets Lighthouse, twenty-five miles north of Guernsey and just eight miles from Alderney, their engine broke down and they had to repair it. This must have been a very nervous four hours drifting at sea, in waters that have strong currents, along with the risk of being spotted by a German aircraft or a German E-Boat, particularly given their encounter with aircraft dropping flares earlier.

Once they repaired the motor they headed for Dartmouth unmolested. Upon their arrival they were unable to attract attention to be let through the boom in the harbour so proceeded to Brixham where they were towed into the harbour by a customs launch. In total, their journey had taken some nineteen hours.

Unlike later escapes from the Channel Islands, they weren’t interviewed by MI 19 but were instead dispersed to their families around England. Frederick Hockey Senior had thirteen Children and all bar his eldest sons, who escaped with him, and his daughter, who wouldn’t leave with him when he escaped, had previously been evacuated.

Newspaper reports

This escape received extensive newspaper coverage, indeed probably the most detailed coverage of any escape from Guernsey.

Initial reports appeared in some newspapers, The Daily Sketch and Daily Mirror, on 27 September 1940. These articles are all relatively short. They didn’t really contain much of any interest.

The Daily Herald ran several days of detailed articles in October about the escape and life in occupied Guernsey. This provided details as to life in the run-up to and under the Germans in the first few months of the occupation. There are some interesting observations within these articles which are worth sharing.

In the first article5 on 16 October, the reporter, Dudley Barker, announced that through the interviews with Frederick Hockey, he would be able to provide for the first time the story of the occupation by the Germans.

After the fall of Paris and the Germans getting closer to the French coast, there was much unease and talk of evacuation, although nothing had been announced. One day Frederick was sitting in his office at the White Rock, St Peter Port harbour, and he got the first hint that things were really wrong. At two o’clock, he noticed that the British garrison was starting to embark on ships. They took everything men, guns and transport. By six o’clock that evening, they were gone and the harbour was quiet again.

Guernsey was now completely undefended. The Royal Guernsey Militia had been disbanded and the Home Guard as they would have been called in England had been disarmed.

Many had not known, with the exception of some in government, that the British were pulling out until it happened; there was a bit of an uproar with people wondering what was going on. This is referred to by Douglas Ord and Ralph Durand in their diaries.

For two days nothing happened. Then it was announced that all women and children under fourteen years old were to be registered for evacuation. Frederick was at work in the signal station when his wife and youngest children left. Interestingly Frederick notes that the boats were by no means full as some people changed their minds. He saw one ship leave which he thought could have carried four thousand and he doubted that there were more than thirty people on it.

On Saturday morning his son Harold came to see him at work and said that he was not going and neither was his girlfriend or his sister and her boyfriend. They had heard a rumour on the Friday night that those that had reached England were being compelled to sleep in public parks so the girls didn’t want to go. He did try to persuade his daughter to join the escape but she was worried that it was too dangerous so would not leave Guernsey and he could not press her to do so.

Another reason that some didn’t go was that on the Saturday the Bailiff and other leading men of the island climbed onto platforms and urged people not to leave. They said trade would carry on as usual, there would be no worry or trouble and if it came to the worst they would see that everybody got safely away. They had cars going around with posters saying ‘Don’t be yellow’. There was no compulsion but they persuaded thousands of people not to leave; he booked out large ships the government had sent with only a handful of people aboard. 

Example of the posters that were placed around Guernsey

The following week the island shook itself back to normal. The tomato boats that had ceased running during the evacuation week started running more busily than ever. The lorries pulled up to the quayside in St Peter Port and the mail boats came in again as usual. He had never had such a busy week. Everything seemed so normal that a few people who had gone away to England came back again on the mail boats, although some others decided to evacuate after all though this time they had to pay their own fares. 

Throughout that week he saw various German aircraft fly over the harbour initially high in the sky and then later at low level, so low he could see the pilot in the cockpit. Then on Friday 28 June 1940 the Channel Islands were attacked by German bombers. You can read about this in the article below.

After the air raid they knew that the Germans would be invading the Channel Islands they just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.

In the next article on 17th October6 Frederick talks about the arrival of the Germans in Guernsey on Sunday 30th June. He, like most people, was not aware of the arrival of the Germans until the next day. On the Sunday afternoon, he had seen a German plane in the distance and had seen it dip but then rise again. Later in the afternoon, he saw another, and this time he did not see it take off again.

In the evening, he rode his bicycle to work. On the way, he saw people gathered on doorsteps chatting and some called out to him to see if he knew what was happening, but he didn’t have any news for them. The rest of his ride was not unusual except he felt that it was quieter than normal and those that he did see were quite nervy. He did not see any Germans.

When he arrived at the signal station his colleague asked him what he thought of things now, and Frederick told him that he didn’t like the look of it because he thought that a German plane had landed at the airport. His colleague went home, and he was alone, not that he was busy, as no ships were coming in or leaving the harbour.

It was deadly quiet except for the drone of the troop-carrying planes that started to come over about 18:00 and kept it up all night. At midnight one of the local police officers came to relieve him. This was because one of the signalmen had slipped away at the last moment on the pig boat from Alderney. The police officer had no definite news either. He asked what things were like and Frederick said very slack except for those planes going over and he didn’t know quite what to make of that. The police officer said all they could do now was hope for the best and it was his belief that the Germans had arrived.

He got on his bicycle and went home and still, there was nothing unusual to see. The island was very still except for the sound of those planes and the sound of the sea. It was a lovely night. Everything was alright when he got home, so he just went to bed.

The next morning he went down to the seawall at Bordeaux Bay which was the usual meeting place for the area and there were about one hundred people there sitting on the wall, talking and looking out to sea. They knew he had been on duty at the harbour so they asked me for news but he had none to give them. Then two German officers drove by in a car. They were the first they had seen and they were too surprised to do anything but stare at them.

The car was a Guernsey car that they had commandeered. They were driving along cool as you please in the sunshine towards Fort Doyle. Everyone stared at them, and they smiled and saluted and drove on. Frederick muttered something about there go the square-headed pigs. That encounter answered all of their questions. The Germans were here all right, so the meeting on the sea wall broke up, and he went home for breakfast. While he was sitting at breakfast in his kitchen two more Germans went by on motorbikes that they had brought with them in the aircraft.

By noon, the place suddenly seemed to be full of Germans. By nightfall, they were all in their positions, and the German patrols were out on the roads, and that’s how the Germans occupied Guernsey. It made people laugh a day or two later to read the German communique about it, which was printed in our newspapers. It said the British island of Guernsey was captured in a daring coup de main by detachments of the German Air Force. It also reported that in an air fight, the Germans reconnaissance aeroplanes shot down two RAF Bristol Blenheim bombers. There appears to be no record of these aircraft being shot down!

You can read in more detail about the arrival of the Germans in my article below.

The next instalment appeared on 18th October, where he detailed the initial days of the occupation and the impact that it had.7 The first thing he knew on Monday morning, after the encounter with the two Germans, was that the island’s two newspapers were being distributed free. They kept that up for three days, and their front pages were covered with the new German regulations for Guernsey. These new regulations were one of the things that were to spur him on to escape.

The regulations were extensive. All weapons, guns, ammunition, daggers and bayonets had to be handed in immediately to the Royal Hotel. It was forbidden to sing God Save The King; the penalty for doing that was 15 years of penal servitude. Nobody was to be outside their home at night between the hours of 22:00 and 06:00.

No fishermen were allowed to leave the port initially, three weeks later this was altered and they were allowed to go out to a limit of two miles from the shore. One or two fishermen broke this rule and they got a shot across the bows as a warning and then a launch went out to bring them back. Afterwards, their boats were hauled up on the beach for the duration of the war. What is more, if three or more fishermen went out in one boat they had to take a German sentry with them, and he sat with the machine gun across his knees.

Other regulations published on that first day said all motor transport was stopped except for absolute necessities. The chief tradesmen, for instance, were allowed to use their vans for deliveries. All petrol had to be handed into the Germans at once. This was, of course, a problem when they later needed to obtain petrol to escape.

There was to be no talking in groups, and severe penalties would be imposed for that. Nobody was allowed to buy another man a drink in a pub every man had to pay for his own. All sales of spirits were banned, and the spirits were to be handed over to the Germans. Larders had to be cleared of stores of sugar, tea, bacon and any tinned food. It had to be handed over to the Germans at the Channel Islands Hotel. He decided to risk not handing in his food and was lucky that his house wasn’t searched, unlike others.

These were just the first restrictions that impeded normal life. In the next article8 he explains how difficult it made life.

It was surprising, really, how things settled down on Guernsey on the surface, at any rate, after the Germans had been there a few days. After the shock of finding them there at all the islanders were pleasantly surprised at first to discover that the occupation did not seem to mean any particular hardships. It was not long before things began to get sufficiently intolerable for these eight men at least to risk their lives in escaping to England.

Initially, the most difficult thing was getting used to observing all of the regulations. Early on, some people were caught out just two minutes after the curfew. They were taken to a hotel for the night before appearing before the German court in the morning. They were fined and made to pay for their hotel accommodation.

The Germans imposed much stricter blackout restrictions than had previously been in place and Frederick tells some interesting stories. Before the occupation, you might get a ticking off from the local police officer; under the Germans, things were much stricter and slightly bizarrely different!

Old Bob, the police constable, got a shot through his window that nearly hit him because his wife had left a tiny crack in the curtains. Another man was shaving, and there happened to be a faint glow through a window. A German officer walked into the room, smashed the electric bulb with a revolver shot and then walked out again without saying a single word!

He said that the most difficult thing of all to get used to was ‘the attitude of the square-headed pigs themselves’. That is what Frederick said most people usually called the German soldiers.

They offered cigarettes, drinks and even packets of coffee to him. They were always mixing with locals in the pubs. Frederick said he would say ‘Look out here are the square-headed pigs,’ but they took no notice of that. Men would turn their backs, but the Germans would force their way up and offer drinks. Frederick and his friends would say that they had enough or make any sort of excuse but it was no good. They would buy the drinks put them down in front of them, and we had to drink them. Then, they would bring out cigarettes and cigars and compel them to accept them. If you refused the drinks that were offered, there was trouble. They were just so damn polite. This attempt to ingratiate themselves with islanders really got to him.

Sometimes, we just couldn’t stick it any longer and had to revolt. Frederick remembered one night he and some friends had got a bit merry in the London House and then they went home and stood outside his house and sang God Save The King as loudly as they could. Then his friends cycled home after midnight, more than two hours past the curfew. There were plenty of sentries about, but he thought that they must have looked as though we were spoiling for a bit of trouble that night, and none of them spoke to them.

The next instalment in the Daily Herald appeared on 21st October. This article dealt with the difficulties following the first few weeks of occupation.

A couple of weeks after the occupation, the Germans decided to prove that things would be better and happier under occupation. The idea was we should have no rich or poor, and all men would be equal except, of course, the Germans.

It was duly announced in the Guernsey newspapers that, henceforward, all businesses would belong to the States of Guernsey9, which in turn, of course, though this was not emphasised, temporarily belonged to Germany.

It was not exactly compulsory to hand your business over to the States, but if you did not there was nobody in Guernsey that could afford any longer to buy your produce. You could not export it, and you could not draw enough money to pay your employees even if you had it in the bank. This meant there was not much choice about it. A week later, all wages on the island were regulated as well. It was announced that every single man who was employed, and the Germans saw to it that they were employed if only for forced labour at the airport, would draw thirty shillings a week from the States.

Married men would get an extra 30 shillings a week with one shilling extra for each child up to the number of five and sixpence extra for each child over that number. Foremen and people who previously owned their business received two shillings a week extra and people with dependent relatives also got a little bit more. It was surprising how quickly you can put this sort of organisation into force, providing nobody is allowed to express any opinion about it and nobody is allowed to argue against it for they had it running in Guernsey within a few days.

They appointed overseers in each district to go around and make sure that everybody was working properly. Then, they set up local court officials in the school rooms in each parish to pay out the government wages collected each week by the foremen and the owners of businesses.

People of independent means were no better off because no matter how much they had in the bank, they were not allowed to draw out more than their 30 shillings each week, although they did not have to do any work. That was why no man could carry on his private business, as he could not get the money to pay his expenses. The Germans of course, wanted all businesses to be handed over to the States so they themselves could control them. Most of the Guernsey businesses were glass houses for growing tomatoes or grapes. The Germans made the growers turn many of them over to other crops, particularly maize and beans. It was thought that they wanted the seed to be sent to Germany for next year’s sowing.

Now, this idea of everybody having an equal income, even if it was a rather small income, sounded alright in theory, and some people got taken in by it at first.  Frederick heard several of them say so in pubs and sitting on the sea wall of an evening.  Even these people soon began to realise that things did not work out quite the way they thought they would. Everybody is working, everybody is equal, everybody is happy and so on. What happened was the Guernsey people were paid in Guernsey money that was the same as English money. At the same time, the Germans flooded the island with German money; at first, it was Marks they brought from Germany, but a week or two later they started printing them in Guernsey itself.

The Germans were paid in Marks, and the Germans decided how many Marks went to their Guernsey pound. The way it worked out was that the German private soldiers were getting three pounds a week in Guernsey money, and their NCOs and officers were rich men. Then, locals began to find out that it didn’t matter so much what their incomes were, but it did matter if there was nothing to buy with them. Nothing was imported into the island for the use of islanders, whilst the Germans got everything they wanted.

One of the first results was one by one the shops were closing down, despite the German order that business should carry on as usual. They were closing because they had exhausted their stocks. They could not get any more, and they had nothing left to sell. Then, the shopkeepers went out to work on the land or at the airport for thirty shillings a week. That was what his father-in-law had to do for one.

The Germans tried to cover all of this up by starting a little gaiety. They reopened the cinemas twice a week and at first, they showed one German and one English film. But when they had used up all the English films that were in the Channel Islands, they had to be all German films for which they put English subtitles. They also started showing propaganda films.

The article on the 22nd of October continued to tell the story of the difficulties faced by the local population.

Soon there was no bacon, no coal, and they were having to make potato bread. Frederick said that he feared that this winter, people in Guernsey would be existing on little else except potatoes and bread. The bread itself was at least half potato flour already. The Germans even got at people who had vegetable gardens and people who owned a field of potatoes to make a little pocket money. They published an order that these people could only keep for themselves five perches10 of potatoes each, and that had to last the winter.  

The other great trouble was clothes; they were rationed too, and nobody was allowed to buy any clothes at all, not even a pair of bootlaces, without the consent of the Kommandant. If you wanted to buy something, you had to take the old worn-out article along with you when you applied for permission to prove that it was really unwearable. Nearly always, they would hand it back to you saying you can wear it for a few weeks longer. You even had to get a permit to have your shoes repaired and you had to take the shoes to prove they needed it. As for buying a new packet of razor blades, it simply couldn’t be done.

There was of course a strong regulation that nobody could say anything against the Germans or Germany. One day a girl walked into a shop to buy something or other, and they could not sell it to her. She got a bit annoyed and said something about the Germans having everything and the Guernsey people having nothing. She went on that like that for a few minutes just an ordinary bit of grumbling.

As she stepped out of the shop door, she was arrested by one of those men in plain clothes who had been standing outside listening. They took the girl to prison, and though he didn’t think a charge was ever brought against her she was still in prison when he left the island. That taught people to be much more careful about what they said in public, and they started looking over their shoulders to see who was about before they said anything at all.

Early one morning, about fifty German soldiers, all dressed up for battle and carrying their guns, went off with a few boats and a film camera crew to the little island of Herm, which lies off the east coast of Guernsey. They put the camera person ashore on the deserted beach, and then the German soldiers made a gallant landing from their boats. Then they got back into the boats again and made the landing again and again. They landed on that beach hundreds of times that day. They then had a film which looked like thousands and thousands of German soldiers fully armed landed on a beach. He supposed they had already taken a film of German troop ships leaving Germany.

Not all their activities were just propaganda, though; one reason why islanders were not allowed to be out of doors at night was that they were practising all sorts of things, landings on the coast amongst them. There didn’t seem to be much doubt in his mind that if the Germans ever did really try to invade England, they planned part of the invasion to come from the Channel Islands.

They certainly had a lot of guns and ammunition there, and he saw the boats bringing them in and was held to secrecy about it under the threat of the most severe penalties, which may have included death. Frederick said the German propaganda was on the wrong tack when they tried to prove the British were bombing us. The reason was the Guernsey folk would have welcomed it.

Most had grown to hate the Germans, in spite of their soft soap methods, that they would willingly have taken a chance if the British started bombing the Germans out of the island. He had heard scores of Guernsey folks say that. Indeed they were delighted when the British bombed the airport. His father-in-law was up there at the time and he was delighted as the rest of us when we heard the news. Incidentally, as it happens, the RAF killed Germans in that raid and not a single Guernsey-man.

The reaction of the  Guernsey people towards the Germans after three months of this polite invasion was that they loathed them like poison. A few people may have been partly won over by the propaganda but most of the islanders would give their lives to see the Germans driven out. For now they were powerless to do anything but to submit to German orders, but that is how they feel about it.

The final article dealt with the escape which I dealt with earlier in this blog post. The poignant thing at the end of the article is where Frederick says ‘One day we will go back to Guernsey, with luck, in the British expedition to recapture it’.

Leaflet drops & bombing raids

Following the escape, and the early reports of it in the the Daily Mirror and Daily Sketch, there were a number of bombing raids which were also leaflet drops.

The raids didn’t kill any locals but left Guernsey covered in leaflets blowing around with the Germans desperately scrabbling to collect them. The locals were reminded that being caught with these leaflets was an offence. You can see an example of the leaflets below.

Extract from the leaflet dropped on Guernsey following the escape. Photograph © Nick Le Huray
Leaflet dropped on Guernsey following the escape. Photograph © Nick Le Huray

Consequences

The escape had serious consequences for islanders. The Germans published a notice that all boats whether moored around the coast or on dry land must be brought to to St Peter Port harbour. This severely impacted the ability of islanders to fish and therefore provide vital food for the island.

At the time it looked like they were there for the duration, however, later in the war the Germans relented and fishing was permitted from St Peter Port, St Sampson and Portelet. Those fishing trips were policed by the Germans under strict rules.

The first official notification of the escape came in a notice published in the Guernsey newspapers.

It must now be known to a good many local inhabitants that some eight persons recently left this Island in a boat with a view to reaching England. As a direct result, drastic control of boats has been instituted by the German Authorities, resulting in fishermen in the northern and western parts of our Island being unable to follow their vocation, and depriving the population of a very large proportion of the fish obtainable.

Any further such departures or attempts thereat can only result in further restrictions. In other words, any persons who manage to get away do so at the expense of those left behind. In the event of a repetition of any such incident there is a grave possibility that, by way of reprisal, the male population of the Island will be evacuated to France.

To any who may be contemplating running away (for that is what it is), we urgently address the order to put it out of their heads as an action unworthy of Guernsey men. I am officially informed that, before the incident, the local German command had been at pains to communicate to their headquarters the cooperation of the Island authorities and the exemplary behaviour of the whole of the civilian population, and, for their part, they hope no further incident will compel them to take the drastic action which would follow the departure of any other boat. (Signed) A.J. Sherwill

Notice published in the Guernsey News papers 28th September 1940 by A. J. Sherwill who was President of the Controlling Committee which represented the Government of Guernsey.

The Reverend Douglas Ord noted in his diary11 on the 28th September that he had been to town and groups of people were discussing the notice. Durand notes in his book that some people were critical of the use of ‘running away’ and an ‘action unworthy’ of Guernseymen. The more level headed realised that Sherwill was having to walk a difficult line to do the best for the population without provoking the Germans.

I hope you have found this an interesting story. I will be dealing with other escapes in the future.

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I will be adding more as time permits. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please share it on social media or add a comment if you did. Feedback is always appreciated.

Also happy to be contacted with questions about the war in the Channel Islands, media appearances, podcasts etc.

© Nick Le Huray

Footnotes

  1. Derek Kreckler Article – Channel Islands Occupation Review 1978 ↩︎
  2. The London Cage – Helen Fry ↩︎
  3. Daily Herald 24 October 1940 – Reporter Dudley Barker – British Newspaper Archive ↩︎
  4. Daily Herald 24 October 1940 – Reporter Dudley Barker – British Newspaper Archive ↩︎
  5. Daily Herald 16 October 1940 – Reporter Dudley Barker – British Newspaper Archive ↩︎
  6. Daily Herald 17 October 1940 – Reporter Dudley Barker – British Newspaper Archive ↩︎
  7. Daily Herald 18 October 1940 – Reporter Dudley Barker – British Newspaper Archive ↩︎
  8. Daily Herald 19 October 1940 – Reporter Dudley Barker – British Newspaper Archive ↩︎
  9. The States of Guernsey is the Government of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. ↩︎
  10. Perch = 41m² ↩︎
  11. THE REVEREND DOUGLAS ORD GUERNSEY OCCUPATION DIARIES ↩︎

FLIGHT LIEUTENANT JOHN SAVILLE – TYPHOON RAIDS ON GUERNSEY JUNE 1944

Today, 5 June 2023, I attended the memorial service for Flight Lieutenant John Saville who was killed during a Typhoon raid on Guernsey in the Channel Islands. This blog tells the story of the two raids that happened and also shares some footage of the memorial service.

Flight Lieutenant John Saville was a Canadian who flew two raids against St Peter Port in Guernsey, in the days preceding D-Day on 6th June 1944. He was a pilot in 439 Squadron Royal Canadian Air Force, ‘Tiger Squadron’, flying Typhoon 1b aircraft. Often when these raids, and Saville himself, are written about there is only a passing mention of the first raid.

I thought it would be useful to provide some detail on both raids, as well as some photographs to provide the reader with an insight into what they were attacking. Hopefully this will bring to life the events recounted in this blog.

Photograph of John Saville from Canadian War Dead Records

I wasn’t able to find a photograph of John Saville’s aircraft but I was able to find a picture of another aircraft of the same type from his squadron.

(IWM Photo, MH 6864)
Hawker Typhoon Mk. IB (Serial No. RB402), coded 5V-P, of No. 439 Squadron, RCAF

What were they attacking and why?

The target that they were attacking was a Freya Radar station in Fort George overlooking Havelet Bay and St Peter Port Harbour.

German Freya radar installation near the entrance to Fort George, St Peter Port manned by the Luftwaffe.
Image © The Priaulx Library via Occupation Archive

There was concern that the radar, with a range of 100 miles, would pick up aircraft and ships approaching Normandy for D-Day on 6 June 1944. The map below shows the proximity of the Channel Islands to the Normandy beaches used for D-Day.

Google maps showing the proximity of the Channel Islands to Normandy.

Below shows the target area, Fort George in the centre of the picture. Top centre is Castle Cornet along with the emplacement that forms the south side of the harbour.

Fort George, Havelet Bay and Castle Cornet. http://ncap.org.uk/frame/1-1-44-537-48 Taken 7th November 1942 by 140 Squadron RAF.

The Google Maps image below shows how it is today.

As the Fort, Bay and Castle look today. The Fort has mostly been redeveloped as housing.

A current day view from Fort George looking out over Havelet Bay to Castle Cornet and St Peter Port Harbour.

View from Fort George. Photograph ©️Nick Le Huray
View looking from Castle Cornet across Havelet bay to Fort George. The radar installation would have been roughly in line above first boat on the left of the picture. Photograph ©️Nick Le Huray

The first raid on 3rd June 1944

Squadron 439 RCAF Operations Record Book entry for the first raid on 3rd June 1944. Listing the aircraft and pilots involved. National Archives AIR 27/1879/8.

Eight aircraft carrying 500 lb MC bombs with instantaneous nose fusing attacked the radar installation at Saint Peter Port on the eastern coast of the heavily defended Channel Island of Guernsey. The attack was made without a hitch from a south westerly direction at an altitude of 12,500 feet led by Flight Lieutenant Dadson. The squadron half rolled into a dive on the target and succeeded In scoring a large number of hits in the target area.

No bombs were seen to burst outside of the target area. As the aircraft individually half rolled into position, then heavy flak opened up and lateral errors only were all that kept a number of our aircraft from severe damage. The dive was carried out from 12,000 feet to 3000 feet, with the aircraft being followed all the way by both light and heavy flak and finally crossing out at over 500 mph amid a barraged of incendiary bullets.

Miraculously only two of our aircraft suffered minor damage, one flown by Flying Officer Burgess was struck in the radiator and the other flown by Flying Officer Porritt was nicked in the tailplane. All aircraft returned safely operations successful.

Squadron 439 RCAF Operations Record Book entry for the first raid on 3rd June 1944. National Archives AIR 27/1879/8.

The second raid 5th June 1944

Although the record book recorded the raid on 3rd June as a success photo reconnaissance photographs revealed that the Germans were making repairs to the radar installation. It was decided that a further raid was required to ensure that it was disabled permanently.

This time Saville was leading a flight of eight Typhoons from 439 Squadron Royal Canadian Air Force, “Tiger Squadron”.

Squadron 439 RCAF Operations Record Book entry for the first raid on 5th June 1944. Listing the aircraft and pilots involved. National Archives AIR 27/1879/8.

Having received confirmation of the fact that the last raid on the radar installation at saint peter port was 75% complete this squadron set out to finish the job by knocking over the one remaining Freya radar installation in the northeast corner of the target area.

Carrying two nose fused instantaneous 500lb M.C. bombs each the squadron led by Flight Lieutenant Saville attacked the highly defended target in a long dive from 12,000 feet to 4000 feet in an easterly direction. All the bombs appeared to burst on or very near the target itself.

A large disturbance was created in the sea about a mile offshore and at first it was believed to have been bombs. Flight Lieutenant Saville was not seen after the dive and it was later presumed that his aircraft had been hit by intense flag and failed to recover from the dive. The remaining seven aircraft and pilots returned unharmed.

Squadron 439 RCAF Operations Record Book entry for the first raid on 5th June 1944. National Archives AIR 27/1879/8.

A further report gives more insight into what was observed by another pilot.

On 5.6.44 at 08.20 hours, eight of the 439 Squadron aircraft took off to dive-bomb a Radar installation at Fort George on the Island of Guernsey.

The formation which was led by F/L Saville encountered very heavy flak over and near the target. As F/L Saville went into the target, six bursts of heavy flak were observed in front of him. This officer was seen making an aileron turn to port, which, on pull out, would have brought him out over the Island instead of the sea.

His No. 2 pulled out towards the sea and did not see him again. Shortly after F/L Saville’s No. 2 called him on the R/T twice, but received no reply.

The rest of the Squadron returned to base at 09.20 hours. Subsequently, an A.S.R. search was made in the face of very heavy flak which failed to find any trace of F/L Saville.

Circumstantial Report: Can J. 8146, F/L J. W. Saville, 439 Squadron, RCAF missing on Operations. w.e.f. 5.6.44. Typhoon MN210. – The Typhoon Project .Org

At the memorial service on 5th June 2023 an eyewitness account was read out, which had come to light in 1987. The eyewitness had seen the level of anti aircraft fire and was certain that the aircraft had been hit by fire from a flak ship in the harbour.

Swastika Over Guernsey – Victor Coysh – 1955

You will probably have noticed in the operations book extract above that twelve aircraft are noted as having flown that day. This is because four aircraft took off to search for Saville in the hope that he had been able to bail out of his aircraft and was in a dinghy at sea. If that had happened it would have been likely that he would have been captured by the Germans in any case. The aircraft searched in the face of heavy anti aircraft fire but to no avail.

The chance of being able to call in a seaplane or ship to rescue him would have been slim in any case due to the heavy fortifications on the island.

On the 16th June 1944 John Saville’s commanding officer wrote to his mother to report that he was missing in action.

Letter to Mrs. Saville, from Commanding Officer of 439, S/L Norsworthy, LAC, Ottawa. – The Canadian Virtual War Memorial

Five weeks after the aircraft crashed the body of a Canadian airman was washed ashore, although it wasn’t able to be positively confirmed that it was the body of John Saville.

As can be seen from the letter below he was officially declared dead in 1952.

from Canadian War Dead Records

Outcome of the raids

Unfortunately, despite the valiant efforts of those involved in both of the raids, all of the radar equipment remained in working order. As had been feared they detected the incoming invasions ships and aircraft on the evening of 5th/6th June and a message was radioed from the German Naval Signals Headquarters in St Peter Port to Berlin warning of the attack. You can read and see pictures of the Naval Signals Headquarters here.

Fort George. Original image here taken on 7 February 1945 by an aircraft of 541 Squadron RAF
The above is a zoomed in part of the previous photo which shows what appear to be bomb craters around the area where the radar was based. These are most likely from the June 1944 raids and just haven’t been filled in.

Discovery of the wreck of Typhoon MN210

In the 1960s what was believed to be aircraft wreckage was found in Havelet Bay. It wasn’t until 1982 that the site was investigated further by local diver Mick Peters and it was established that this was the wreck of Saville’s aircraft. It was subsequently designated as a war grave following identification of personal items which confirmed that Saville had gone down with his aircraft.

Panoramic picture of Castle Cornet, Havelet Bay and Fort George in the distance. Photograph ©️ Nick Le Huray.

Memorials

John Saville is commemorated on two physical memorials in Guernsey. One at the Castle Emplacement overlooking Havelet Bay and Fort George.

Information board on the Castle Emplacement, St Peter Port. ©️ Nick Le Huray
Plaque next to the information board on the Castle Emplacement, St Peter Port. Photograph ©️ Nick Le Huray

The second memorial is at the airport in Guernsey where his name is inscribed. The airport also has a virtual memorial which you can view online here.

Memorial to all Allied Aircrew lost near Guernsey during the Second World War. Photograph ©️ Nick Le Huray

He is also commemorated on the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede in Surrey, England.

Annual memorial service

Each year there is a memorial service held in Guernsey at the site of the memorial plaque on the Castle Emplacement in St Peter Port. Provided I am in Guernsey at the time I attend the service. Fortunately I was able to attend today, 5th June 2023.

Below you will find a couple of video clips from the service which I attended today. It was pleasing to see a good turn out for the memorial service despite the chilly easterly wind. Apologies for the wind noise but it was blowing a force 4!

Part one of the memorial service held on 5 June 2023. Video ©️ Nick Le Huray
Deputy Bailiff Jessica Roland reads a poem “RIP John Saville” Video ©️ Nick Le Huray
Last Post at the memorial service. Video ©️ Nick Le Huray

RIP John Walton Saville. Per Ardua Ad Astra.

Thanks to all involved in organising the memorial service and all that attended.

If you would like to receive email notifications of future blogs, you can sign up to the right of this blog post or here. Feel free to look around the website, where I have categorized posts to make them easier to find and other resources such as tours, places to visit and films that may be of interest.

You can also follow the blog on Twitter at @Fortress_Island where I share other information and photographs. If you prefer Facebook I also have a page there.

If you have questions or information to share you can contact me by email on Contact@Island-Fortress.Com.

You can also find articles, podcasts, TV appearances and other social media etc here.


I will be adding more as time permits. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please share it on social media or add a comment if you did. Feedback is always appreciated.

Also happy to be contacted with questions about the war in the Channel Islands, media appearances, podcasts etc.

© Nick Le Huray

OPERATION CONCERTINA – RECAPTURE ALDERNEY! 1943

If you have read my previous posts about proposed raids on Alderney then you will understand why this blog post could have had a multitude of titles! As with the other proposed operations this one was very much the brainchild of and driven by Lord Louis Mountbatten.

This operation was a sub operation of Operation Constellation the others were Operation Coverlet against Guernsey and Operation Condor against Jersey.   In this blog post I will be dealing with Concertina. I will deal with the other operations in future posts.

The previous blog posts are Operation Attaboy (1941) which you can find here and Operation Blazing which (1942) which is here . If you haven’t already read these I would read them first starting with Attaboy then Blazing. This will give you a good background to how Constellation and then Concertina came about.

I considered “Operation Concertina – third time’s a charm”, “Alderney here we go again or not as the case maybe!” or just a graphic of Alan Brooke shouting “Oi Mountbatten no!”. Anyway enough of being flippant and on with the story.

Having read those you may well be wondering why on earth they were considering what looked like a very similar operation to what had been proposed in February & March 1941 and 1942. This is especially pertinent as they had evaluated the Islands as being “of no strategic importance to either us or the enemy.” as early as mid 1940 and an assessment that was repeated almost every year thereafter.

At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 the possibility of a large-scale raid on the Channel Islands was again discussed.    This was to be given the name Operation Constellation, the sub operations were Operation Coverlet against Guernsey, Operation Condor against Jersey, and Operation Concertina against Alderney.  

On 17 January 1943 Mountbatten, at the Joint Chiefs of Staff 53rd meeting, made the very bold statement that “He would capture the Channel Islands without help from the United States.”1

On 22nd January 1943 a note by the Combined Chiefs of Staff was presented for cross Channel Operations.  Part of this was to undertake “Small scale amphibious operations, such as the progressive reoccupation of the Channel Islands. (Note: Raids are already adequately taken care of by the existing organisation.)”2   The note suggest that such a raid should be along the lines of Dieppe. We all know how Dieppe ended!

At the meeting on 23rd January 1943 the American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, asked about the dates proposed for the operations.  In his reply Mountbatten said that the date for the Channel Island operations had been chosen so as to fit in with Operation ‘Husky.’3  The difficulty being the number of landing craft that the Americans required for ‘Husky’ some of which would need to come from the British Channel Assault Force.4

Mountbatten later goes on to explain that the landing craft resources would only permit an initial assault by 2 brigade groups with an immediate follow up of one brigade group with some armour. This could only be increased with American assistance.  This the Americans declined to help with this as they required all their landing craft for ‘Husky.’    

Despite the lack of support from the Americans the feasibility of a large-scale operation to retake one or more of the Channel Islands continued.  On 17th February 1943 a memorandum was produced by the Chief of Combined Operations, Mountbatten, for the War Cabinet Chiefs of Staff Committee and the name Operation ‘Constellation’ appears.5   It refers to an outline plan for an operation against Alderney. Regarding the other islands, he states that “examination has not yet reached a stage when it is possible to say that attacks on Guernsey and Jersey are practicable.”   The attached outline plan refers to ‘Constellation’ as a whole but the operation against Alderney as a sub operation ‘Concertina.’  The sub operation against Guernsey was named ‘Coverlet’ and Jersey was called ‘Condor’ although these names are not mentioned in this plan.

Interestingly for the first time, having previously been discounted, the plan to retake one of the Channel Islands, specifically Alderney, is referred to as “strategically desirable.”  The plan records that the reason for this is that it would assist with ‘Husky’ because the Germans would become nervous of a landing on the Cherbourg peninsula.  This would also prevent them from moving men and equipment away from France.

It also notes that ‘Concertina’ would have an impact on the proposed, but never enacted, Operation ‘Lethal’ the capture of the U-boat bases in the Brittany peninsula of German-occupied France and Operation ‘Hadrian’ combined operations attack to seize Cherbourg.

The plan notes that if ‘Concertina’ went ahead it would mean that ‘Lethal’ would not be impacted but that ‘Hadrian’ would probably become more difficult because the Germans would strengthen their defences.

The memorandum of 17th February notes that the preliminary air bombardment of Alderney would involve the following:-

  • Night of D-2/D-1 the island is attacked by a force of 500 to 600 heavy and medium bombers.
  • D-1 daytime daylight attacks to be carried out by American heavy bombers.
  • On the night of D-1/Day the island is again attacked by a force of 500 to 600 heavy and medium bombers.   

This would be an incredible amount of bombs to be dropped on such a small target.   At the lower end this would be somewhere around 2,300 tons to 4,500 at the higher end depending on the mix of heavy and medium bombers.

The Naval force was to be:-

  • One Monitor
  • 1 AA Cruiser
  • A/S Destroyer escort
  • 8 Hunt Class destroyers
  • 12 M.T.B.
  • 12 M.L.
  • 6 L.S.I. (H)
  • Landing Craft as required for the force
  • 6 M.S. Trawlers
  • 6 A.S. Trawlers
  • One Boom Defence Vessel

The memorandum considered that the military force required would be:-

  • One Brigade Group   
  • Two Commando Units
  • One Field Company R.E.
  • Two Heavy and two light A.A. Batteries
  • One  Battery of 4.5” Gun Howitzers for coast defence
  • One Squadron tanks
  • Ancillary units

Apart from the bombers they would require:-

  • One Squadron A.S.V. Aircraft
  • One Squadron striker aircraft – torpedo and bomb
  • Forty to fifty squadrons of S.E. fighters
  • At least two aircraft of P.R.U.

This memorandum was discussed at the War Cabinet Chiefs of Staff Committee meeting on 19th February 1943.6 Mountbatten said that he had come to the conclusion that the only option was Alderney given the discussions in Casablanca, referred to above, because of the requirements for landing craft for ‘Husky’ and the Americans requirements.

As with its forerunner “Blazing” Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, thought the plan unsound feeling that the peculiar granite construction of the island that the bombardment would be unsuccessful.  Sir Charles Portal, Chief of Air Staff, on behalf of the RAF doubted that it would bring about the air battle predicted by Mountbatten.

The meeting went on to approve the operation being further investigated but that a raid on the submarine pens in L’Orient was also to be investigated.

On the 19th February 1943 Brooke notes in his diary a long COS meeting.

A long COS meeting at which Dickie Mountbatten gave me a heap of trouble with a proposed attack on the Channel Islands which was not in its proper strategical setting and tactically quite adrift .

Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff

At a subsequent meeting on 1st March 1943 the meeting noted “the Committee took note of a report from the Chief of Combined Operations, Mountbatten, on the result of a reconnaissance of an island in the “Constellation” group.7

After this mention of “Concertina” dries up and it is likely to have been killed off by that final meeting and the lack of available landing craft or crews for them as well as the unwillingness of the Chiefs of Staff.   

If you would like to receive email notifications of future blogs, you can sign up to the right of this blog post or here. Feel free to look around the website, where I have categorized posts to make them easier to find and other resources such as tours, places to visit and films that may be of interest.

You can also follow the blog on Twitter at @Fortress_Island where I share other information and photographs. If you prefer Facebook I also have a page there.

If you have questions or information to share you can contact me by email on Contact@Island-Fortress.Com.

You can also find articles, podcasts, TV appearances and other social media etc here.


I will be adding more as time permits. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please share it on social media or add a comment if you did. Feedback is always appreciated.

Also happy to be contacted with questions about the war in the Channel Islands, media appearances, podcasts etc.

© Nick Le Huray

Footnotes

  1. United States Joint Chiefs of Staff –  https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/History/WWII/Casablanca3.pdf   page 371
  2. United States Joint Chiefs of Staff –  https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/History/WWII/Casablanca3.pdf   Page 113
  3. Husky was the operation to take Sicily.
  4. National Archives – CAB 80. Memoranda (O) Nos. 1-100 – War Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff Committee Memoranda – page 131
  5. National Archives – CAB 80. Memoranda (O) Nos. 1-100 – War Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff Committee Memoranda – page 331
  6. War Cabinet Chiefs of Staff Committee 19th February 1943 – National Archives Reference – CAB 79/59/24
  7. War Cabinet Chiefs of Staff Committee 1st March 1943 – National Archives Reference – CAB 79/59/31

OPERATION BASALT – 80th ANNIVERSARY AND COMMEMORATION


On the 3rd October 2022 I was lucky enough to attend the unveiling of the new plaques on the monument and walk some of the route that they took as well as listen to various speeches at a lunch held afterwards. The purpose of this blog post is to share some videos of events at the commemoration, some photos and discussion around some aspects of the raid that came up during the day. Also included are some other things that I have found over the years in respect of the raid.

The order of the day – just to give you some idea of what to expect in this blog.

I had the great pleasure of talking at some length to Eric Lee, who wrote the definitive book on the operation Operation Basalt: The British Raid on Sark and Hitler’s Commando Order. It also proved a good chance to catch up with an old school friend Simon Elmont who lives in Sark and spoke at the point where we reached the “Cassino Tree” and explained the significance to us of the tree. There is a video later down the blog post of the story of the tree and it’s importance. Russ Guille whom I have been in contact with on twitter also provided insight into the raid and it was great to meet him and his dad Reg.

THE STORY OF THE RAID

Operation Basalt was a commando raid on the Channel Island of Sark originally planned for 18/19th of September 1942 that attempt had to be abandoned. The raid then took place on 3rd/4th October 1942. The raid would have a much wider impact on operations in the European theatre of operations as it led to Hitler issuing the “Kommandobefehl (Commando Order)”. You can view a translation of the Commando Order here.

The sign explaining the raid and showing what is on the memorial stone. The text is reproduced below. The signs were wet due to a shower earlier in the morning. Photo © Nick Le Huray
The landing point and route that they took. Photos further down the blog of the sites as they are today. Photo © Nick Le Huray
Details of the Germans that died during the raid. Photo © Nick Le Huray

Operation Basalt (Op Basalt) was a raid by Commandos of the Small-Scale Raiding Force (SSRF) on the Island of Sark.

The object of the raid was to gather information on conditions in Sark and to capture one or more German soldiers to take back to England for interrogation. The objectives were achieved.

The raid was led by Major John Geoffrey Appleyard and he, with his Commandos, including the Danish Second Lieutenant Anders Lassen, made their way across the English Channel, to make landfall on the end of this headland known as the Hog’s Back which they scaled.

The raiders were transported on MTB 344 (Nicknamed “The Little Pisser”), which had the ability to run very fast (33 Knots / 40MPH / 64KPH) but with quiet auxiliary engines for close to shore work. The MTB Skipper was directed to wait until 3 am, then leave. This gave the shore party some two hours to conduct the mission.

Having scaled the cliff of the Hog’s Back, the party made their way inland, coming across the house Le Petit Dixcart which was unoccupied. The next building they came to also seemed deserted, but on breaking into La Jaspellerie, they discovered a Mrs. Pittard, who was most helpful in providing them with information on where some German soldiers could be found, a few hundred yards away in Dixcart Hotel. She also provided information on the deportations that had happened in September.

The Commandos made their way silently to Dixcart Hotel; discovering a sentry, Lassen was sent to deal with him, which he did quietly by knife. Entering the Annex of the Hotel, the Commandos captured five German soldiers and restrained them, by tying up their hands and then moving them outside to take back to the MTB. However, the German soldiers realising how few men had them captured, started to resist and cry out. In the ensuing melee two of the prisoners were shot dead, two escaped and the Commandos beat a hasty retreat with their one remaining prisoner to the Hog’s Back.

Fortunately for the Commandos, the MTB skipper had waited beyond his ordered time to leave and was still waiting for them when they arrived alongside, in their canoes at about 3.30am. Mission accomplished, the MTB went to full speed and headed north to arrive in Portland at about 6.30am.

Text from the memorial.

An initial German report notes that Oblt Herdt, the former Company Commander of the 6./IR 583 was relieved of his command and was to face a court martial. Senior Gefreiter (Orderly Corporal) Schubert was also to be court-martialled.

The Germans put their own spin on the raid on 9 October 1942 in an article on the front page of the Guernsey Evening Press.

The English & Irish newspapers also contained articles very shortly after the raid. A selection of them are below.

The Sphere 24 October 1942
The Sphere 24 October 1942
Irish Independent 8 October 1943
Irish Independent 8 October 1943
Yorkshire Post 8 October 1942

Interestingly the newspapers also reported some months later that copies of both of the local newspapers were being received in England. Some of these would have come from the raid. Others from those that escaped.

Western Morning News – Saturday 19 December 1942
Image © Reach PLC. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.

For a quick overview of the raid there is a copy of Eric Lee’s speech from the 75th Anniversary here.

If you want a comprehensive read on the raid I recommend the book by Eric Lee. You can also watch Eric speak from Sark on WW2 TV at the link below.

THE COMMEMORATION

The commemoration took place on the 3rd October 2022, the 80th Anniversary.

The photograph below gives you an idea of the scale of the cliffs on the coastline of Sark. This one is taken looking out from the path on the Hog’s Back where they landed across Derrible Bay.

Photo © Nick Le Huray
The path out to the Hog’s Back. Photo © Nick Le Huray

Whilst waiting for the proceedings to start two members of the British Legion from Sark stood ceremonial guard at the monument. As you can see it is on an exposed point near the top of the cliff.

Photo © Nick Le Huray

Lt Col Reg Guille MBE briefed the crowd at what was about to happen. Proceedings were to commence with a recreation of the cliff climb by The Guernsey Military History Company. They were wearing the correct period kit, which it had taken a long period of time to assemble, and were all former or serving members of the forces. Russell Doherty who heads up the Guernsey Military History Company told me that it had taken eighteen months to assemble the kit and out of all of the re-enactments he had been involved in this one had made him the most nervous. The commandos were instructed to ignore those assembled and move as they would have at the time.

Recreation by the The Guernsey Military History Company Photo © Nick Le Huray
Recreation by the The Guernsey Military History Company Photo © Nick Le Huray
Recreation by the The Guernsey Military History Company Photo © Nick Le Huray

Below is a short video of them coming up the cliff.

Video © Nick Le Huray

Lt Col Reg Guille said: “We have added two new names to the 10 that we listed five years ago, a corporal Jimmy Flint and Bombardier Eric Forster.”

“Additionally we have corrected a spelling error in the rank of one of the German soldiers on their plaque.” The reasons for the new names are explained later on in the blog.

Many thanks to Russ Guille for this photo Photo © Russ Guille. This was taken immediately after the ceremony.

The plaques were unveiled by Simon Wood – a nephew of the commando leader Major Geoffrey Appleyard – and Captain Karsten Adrian of the Bundeswehr, a German Officer serving in the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC).

As we moved off to follow the route they took we passed the memorial further along the Hog’s Back to Hardtack 7. Operation Basalt meant that the Germans laid 13,000 mines in Sark some on this route which proved disastrous for this later mission. I wrote about Operation Hardtack 7 here.

Photo © Nick Le Huray

We then reached the point where they turned down the track to the Petit Dixcart house. They heard a German patrol so had to take cover and wait for them to pass before moving off down the track.

The route they would have taken to Petit Dixcart. Photo © Nick Le Huray
Moving down the track to Petit Dixcart Photo © Nick Le Huray

Once we reached the Petit Dixcart the current resident explained what had happened there. He was standing roughly where the commandos left the Bren gunner to cover them in case the patrol they saw earlier returned. The Bren gunner was facing back up the track in the above photo.

Petit Dixcart. Photo © Nick Le Huray

They broke into the house by breaking the glass on the door to turn the handle only to find that the door was unlocked. Finding the house empty they found some newspapers which gave details of deportations which they took with them. Although the Germans did not refer to these as deportations instead they used the term “evacuation”. This was obviously an attempt to justify the deportations.

It didn’t take long for news of the deportations from these papers and the additional papers they were given later in the raid to make it into the the Channel Islands Monthly Review just one month later. The Channel Islands Monthly Review was produced monthly in England to keep all of those that had been evacuated before the occupation up to date with news of their friends and relatives and conditions in the Channel Islands.

Extract from the Channel Islands Monthly Review November 1942 which was published in Stockport. Picture is of one of the original reviews in my collection.
Extract from the Channel Islands Monthly Review November 1942 which was published in Stockport. Picture is of one of the original reviews in my collection.

Next we moved on to the site of “The Cassino Oak” which was planted on their route to the next property that they went to.

Photo © Nick Le Huray

At this site we paused again where my friend, and Sark resident, Simon Elmont gave an explanation of the significance of the Oak and how it came about.

Thanks to my friend Simon Elmont for permission to share this video I took of him explaining the story of the Cassino Oak in Sark. Video © Nick Le Huray
The Cassino Oak – Photo © Nick Le Huray
The path they would have taken up to La Jaspellerie which is the white house in the photo. Photo © Nick Le Huray

Due to time constraints on the day we didn’t go all the way to La Jaspellerie. On the night of the raid they did where they encountered Mrs Pittard who is described as an elderly lady when in fact she was only in her early 40s. I guess if you were as young as the Commandos then you would have thought that she was elderly in comparison!

Frances Pittard’s ID Card Photo from The History Press.

Mrs Pittard was rightly recalled at Eric Lee’s lunchtime talk as being the heroine of the raid. Once she realised that they were British Commandos she invited them in to her house and gave them information about the troops on the island and more copies of the local papers.

She offered to accompany them to show them to where the Germans were nearby. They declined this offer and instead offered her a trip on their MTB to return to England because of the danger she would be in from assisting them. She declined this offer and was to pay the price later when the Germans discovered her broken window and then shipped her to prison in Guernsey for three months. Fortunately she was not deported.

They left the house with the newspapers and proceeded towards Dixcart Hotel where Mrs Pittard had indicated the nearest Germans were to be found.

Path heading up through the woodland heading up to Dixcart Hotel. Photo © Nick Le Huray
Woodland heading up to Dixcart Hotel. Photo © Nick Le Huray

We arrived at the Dixcart Hotel, the site of the altercation with the Germans.

Dixcart Hotel Photo © Nick Le Huray

We then moved on the nearby Stocks Hotel for a lunch and speeches.

Stocks Hotel Photo © Nick Le Huray

Lt Col Reg Guille MBE said a few words of introduction and Captain Karsten Adrian of the Bundeswehr, a German Officer serving in the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) said a few words.

Captain Karsten Adrian of the Bundeswehr, a German Officer serving in the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) Photo © Nick Le Huray
Eric Lee. Photo © Nick Le Huray

Eric Lee explained at his lunchtime talk why it had been difficult to identify exactly who had taken part in the raids. Whilst it was easy to identify the officers through official records it was often difficult to find the lists of other ranks. This was doubly difficult because of the raiding party not knowing each other and being made up of different nationalities.

Lt Col Reg Guille MBE then showed everyone a Fairbairn Sykes fighting knife often called a “Commando Knife” and invited Patricia Falle to tell the story of this particular knife.

Lt Col Reg Guille MBE With the knife. Photo © Nick Le Huray

Mrs Falle then explained that she had lived at Petit Dixcart in the 1960s when the house was in disrepair and had renovated it with her husband. During the course of this they found this knife. It is possible that it could have been dropped by one of the commandos on the raid.

The knife had been used as a poker for a fire by Pat Falle until someone told her what it was.

As you can see the knife guard has deliberately partially bent. Photo © Nick Le Huray
Simon Elmont & Eric Lee examining the knife Photo © Nick Le Huray
Russ Guille, Nick Le Huray, Eric Lee with the knife, and Simon Elmont. Photo © Nick Le Huray

You can watch the news report from ITV Channel Islands and some drone footage here.

It was a pleasure to take part in the day and the opportunities to talk to so many different people during the course of the day as well as pay my respects.

If you enjoyed reading about this raid you can read about other raids on the Channel Islands here. Other planned Allied Operations can also be found here.

If you would like to receive email notifications of future blogs, you can sign up to the right of this blog post or here. Feel free to look around the website, where I have categorized posts to make them easier to find and other resources such as tours, places to visit and films that may be of interest.

You can also follow the blog on Twitter at @Fortress_Island where I share other information and photographs. If you prefer Facebook I also have a page there.

If you have questions or information to share you can contact me by email on Contact@Island-Fortress.Com.

You can also find articles, podcasts, TV appearances and other social media etc here.


I will be adding more as time permits. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please share it on social media or add a comment if you did. Feedback is always appreciated.

Also happy to be contacted with questions about the war in the Channel Islands, media appearances, podcasts etc.

© Nick Le Huray

DON’T MISS ‘CHANNEL ISLANDS WEEK’ ON WW2TV.

Paul Woodage of WW2TV is running a ‘Channel Islands Week’ starting this Monday (26 September). Links are below to the various shows as they stand at the moment. Promising to be a cracking week of excellent content.

Really pleased to have been invited to talk about ‘Commando Raids on the Channel Islands’ on Wednesday. I will be dealing with all the raids except Operation Basalt as Paul has the wonderful Eric Lee doing that on the anniversary on 3rd October 2022 live from Sark. I am also planning on being in Sark that day for the re-enactment on the anniversary.

Don’t worry plenty of other raids for me to talk about! Come along and ask questions.

Ever so slightly in awe that I am in such esteemed company as Duncan Barrett , Eric Lee , Phil Marett talking about various aspects of the occupation.

If you haven’t seen WW2TV it is a free to view history resource with lots of fantastic content covering all aspects of the Second World War. Either click the links below or go give the channel a follow on the various social media below. If you enjoy what you watch Woody would appreciate a sign up on Patreon.

Social Media links – https://twitter.com/WW2TV https://www.facebook.com/WW2TV https://www.instagram.com/ww2tv/

Monday 26 September 2022 – live at 7:00pm (BST) – or catch up anytime after that.
Tuesday 27th September 2022 – live at 7:00pm (BST) or catch up anytime after that.
Wednesday 28th September live 7:00pm (BST) – or catch up anytime after that.
Monday 3rd October 2022 – live at 7:00pm (BST) – or catch up anytime after that.

If you would like to receive email notifications of future blogs, you can sign up to the right of this blog post. Feel free to look around the website, where I have categorised posts to make them easier to find and other resources such as tours, places to visit and films that may be of interest.

You can also follow on Twitter at @Fortress_Island where I share other information and photographs.

I will be adding more as time permits. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please share it on social media or add a comment if you did. Feedback is always appreciated.

Also happy to be contacted with questions about the war in the Channel Islands.

© Nick Le Huray

A SECRET MISSION 3/4 SEPTEMBER 1940 – NICOLLE RETURNS WITH SYMES

Despite Churchill being reputed to have said ‘Let there be no more silly fiascos like those perpetrated at Guernsey’ after the Ambassador operation it was only a matter of a few weeks before another raid was under way.

Following Nicolle’s earlier mission and the subsequent disastrous Operation Ambassador it was decided to send him again. This time it was planned that he and fellow Guernseyman and school friend James Symes would stay for three days and gather intelligence. They had known each other since they both attended Elizabeth College and played in the football team together.

James Symes – Photograph of a photograph on display at the German Occupation Museum
Photograph of Hubert Nicolle on display at the German Occupation Museum which I took a photograph of recently.

Much has been written about this operation mostly from the perspective of Hubert Nicolle, however, I recently came across an interview in the IWM archives with James Symes where he recounts his memories. I thought that it would be interesting to use this and some other resources to recount his side of the operation. I will also pick out some of the key aspects of the operation.

We pick up the story where Symes recalls how he came to be involved.

I think if I remember rightly, anyway, Hubert Nicolle had already been to and come out from Guernsey. He was summoned to the Admiralty again, because he went in by submarine and came out by submarine and he was asked if he would go again.

He said he would go on condition that I went with him. I used to play inside left in the football team and he played inside right between us we had enough. There was something between us like that on the football pitch, which made us friends for life really.

So this was what all that was about and I said yes I would go. So I went up to London, Nicolle   at that time was in Parkhurst, in this other holding unit.

Symes, James Michael (Oral history) – Imperial War Museum

Both men knew that they were taking a massive risk as they were landing wearing civilian clothing. They also had family in the island so they were putting them at risk as well. More of that later.

They were landed at 3am on the 4th September 1940 at Petit Port from an MTB.

I went to see him and he had a lot of photographs of German planes which we had to look at and memorise and then we set off London, where we were both asked if we would go and said yes. Did we realise that If we were caught, nobody could help us? Like idiots we both said yes, we were only 20 at the time, both of us and we went.

We went over by MTB, Motor Torpedo Boat. I took five and fourpence ha’penny and a flask of brandy. I was dressed in civvies, I was dressed in a Guernsey so was he and that was all we had because we were going to be there for three days and then they would come and pick us up. We could do what we’d like to on the island as long as we got information on the civilian aspects of the island. Not the German military side so much but they wanted to know in London how people were being treated those were our tasks.

Symes, James Michael (Oral history) – Imperial War Museum

Symes recalls that it was either MTB 69 or MTB 70 that dropped them ashore in Guernsey. Photographs of these two vessels are below. Sadly he never solved the mystery of which of these vessels it was as their records were lost.

MTB 70 MTB 70 © IWM (FL 25709) LIGHT COASTAL FORCES ON OPERATIONS AT BEEHIVE, FELIXSTOWE. 12-17 NOVEMBER 1942. LIGHT COASTAL FORCES ON OPERATIONS AT BEEHIVE, FELIXSTOWE. 12-17 NOVEMBER 1942. © IWM (A 12914) LIGHT COASTAL FORCES ON OPERATIONS AT BEEHIVE, FELIXSTOWE. 12-17 NOVEMBER 1942. LIGHT COASTAL FORCES ON OPERATIONS AT BEEHIVE, FELIXSTOWE. 12-17 NOVEMBER 1942. © IWM (A 12915)

It was decided to use an MTB because of the issues that had previously been encountered using a submarine on the first visit and the difficulties encountered using other types of launch during Operation Ambassador.

Surprisingly they were landed at one of the beaches, Petit Port, that was used during Operation Ambassador in July 1940. Although they were cautioned not to use the same route up the steps and instead used a path that they were familiar with. Given that there are approximately 350 steps this was no mean feat! Instead of the steps they used a steep track to the left of the beach if you stand facing the cliffs.

Map showing Le Jaonnet Bay on the left and Petit Port on the Jerbourg peninsula
Photograph taken part of the way down to the beach at Petit Port © Nick Le Huray

After a few days they successfully gathered the information required by London and were ready to return.

At the end of the period, we went back to where we had landed earlier. We did take one thing we took a torch quite a large torch, which had been had a metal funnel put on it so when it shone out to sea the beam was restricted by this funnel. All we had to do was once every half hour we had to signal the letter, dot dash dot, dot, dot dash dot, dot and a long one and a little shorter one went straight out to sea.

We were on a bay where they would pick us up at approximately 3am They never came. So we went back to our respective homes and the following night we went back to this beach they never came so we went along the third night was a hell of a storm.

Anyway we instead of concentrating on one beam down the middle every hour or whatever the timing was we’ve decided to do one left one centre one right like that in case the ship, the torpedo boat was out there somewhere and one couldn’t see the beam or a direct line. It never came so we both went back to our respective homes.

Symes, James Michael (Oral history) – Imperial War Museum

They had been told that if nobody came they were to wait until the next period with no moon and somebody would come and look for them. This did happen but didn’t go to plan.

A chap came and he got caught. Fortunately for him, he was in uniform and he couldn’t be treated like we could have been if we’d been caught because we were in civilian clothes.  He, John Parker, Captain John Parker, he told the Germans he was on a recce. I don’t know whether they believed it or not, anyway, he became a prisoner of war. So we have to sit at home and wait for the next new moon.

Symes, James Michael (Oral history) – Imperial War Museum
Apologies for the quality but this is a photograph of photograph on display at the German Occupation Museum

Parker was later repatriated in 1944 as detailed below.

Guernsey Evening Press 28 April 1944

Now at various times during the time from the landing up until their surrender they stayed with family or friends and even hid in the cricket pavilion at their former school. The problem they had was that they could not move about easily as the Germans were convinced that there were British troops on the island. They could only move around under cover of darkness and after the curfew.

Between the time of the September new moon and the late September and October the Germans issued an order that anybody, after Parker, issued an order in Guernsey that if there were any British soldiers in hiding in the island, they’d already done this once before when they first got there, and they got a few who were on leave. If these people gave themselves up they would be treated as prisoners of war and those who helped them would not be punished.

Symes, James Michael (Oral history) – Imperial War Museum

Below is the notice issued by the Germans. As you will see later on the offer of no punishment was an empty promise as Nicolle and Symes were initially treated as spies.

Notice issued by the German Authorities October 1940

In the interview Symes recalls how Ambrose Sherwill, later Sir Ambrose Sherwill and Baliff of the island post war assisted them greatly. At the time Sherwill was President of the Controlling Committee for the island. Effectively the most senior person in the government during the war. He negotiated with the German Commandant, Major Fritz Bandelow, for any members of the British armed forces still in the island who gave themselves up to be treated as POWs.

A clever man he saved our lives he persuaded the Germans he put up a draft for the letter that sort of go out into the press the notice he knowing full well that we were there. He got the thing worded in such a way that we could go and give ourselves up as if we were as if we’ve stayed behind when the Germans arrived as if we were on leave when the Germans arrived.

Under the terms of that letter, which became a German proclamation, we eventually gave ourselves up with five minutes to go to the time when we should have done it. On October the 21st Trafalgar day 1940 we ourselves up to the local police, who then told the Germans and we were then spies captured spies. Terrible now thinking of it, anyway we were court martialled by the Germans. We were sentenced to death.

We were then relieved because of this letter. We were taken to France we went to the prison Cherche-Midi in Paris, Dreyfus was one time so we were in good company.

We spent two and a half months in solitary confinement there and then just before Christmas my father died in the prison. My mother was in the prison, a lot of our friends were in this prison. Terrible place. It no longer exists. We were told on the 21st of December or there about that the Germans had decided we should be treated as prisoners of war.

Symes, James Michael (Oral history) – Imperial War Museum
Cherche-Midi Prison in 1938. (public domain)

You can read about the prison on the Frank Falla Archive website here including the experiences of those that assisted Symes and Nicolle.

If you click on the links in the quote below you can access the individual stories.

Uniforms were found for Symes and Nicolle and they handed themselves in. However, the Germans reneged on the agreement and the friends and family of the two men were picked up and put in prison. When Sherwill went to complain, he realised that he, too, was a suspect. With days, all involved were deported to France.

Those deported were Ambrose Sherwill; Jimmy Symes’ parents Louis Symes and Rachel SymesAlbert Marriette and Linda Marriette and their daughter Jessie Marriette (Hubert Nicolle’s girlfriend); Wilfred Bird and his adult children Mary Bird (Jimmy’s Symes’ girlfriend) and Walter ‘Dick’ Bird; Emile Nicolle and Elsie Nicolle (the parents of Hubert Nicolle); Hilda Nicolle and Frank Nicolle (Hubert Nicolle’s aunt and uncle); Henry E. Marquand (a family friend); Bill Allen (the groundsman at the Elizabeth College sports field, who helped shelter the commandos when they were hiding in the pavilion), and farmer Tom Mansell (who was covering for his married brother, Dick Mansell, at whose farm Hubert Nicolle arrived as part of his gathering of intelligence as the Mansell’s farm bordered the airport). 16 people in total were deported.

Frank Falla Archive

The uniforms were obtained by the Deputy Harbour Master from stocks left behind by the Germans.

It transpired that the reason that they were treated as spies was that It was later established that Bandelow, who had been on leave at the time of their surrender, moved heaven and earth in his endeavour to keep his word. He called for a Court of Honour and General Feldmarschall Von Reichenau was consulted. He declared, “When one gives one’s word, one gives one’s word.” Sherwill later said that he regarded Bandelow’s action in time of war as in the very highest traditions of chivalry.

Below is the notice that was published in the Guernsey Evening Press of 24th December 1940 announcing the change in the decision and the exemption from punishment. Sadly this was too late for Louis Symes, James’s father, as he had died a few days before.

From the 24 December 1940 Guernsey Press

As you will see from the above the it ultimately cost Sherwill his position although this was reversed during the winter of 1942/43 when he was to return as Attorney General.

Both Symes and Nicolle remained prisoners of war until their camp was liberated. Both men were awarded the Military Cross for their trip to Guernsey for “displayed the highest qualities of fortitude and bravery throughout”.

Symes went on to win a second MC in Malaya in 1955 for anti terrorist work. He finally retired from the army in 1971. You can read his obituary here

Hubert Nicolle returned to Guernsey and was very active in the community as well as being an insurance salesman. I was privileged to have known Hubert or Mr Nicolle as we called him. He was a past pupil of the school that I attended, Elizabeth College, and was actively involved in college activities when I was a pupil in the 1980s. Little did I know that the gentleman that often started swimming races with a starting pistol was used to more deadly weapons!

A plaque was erected at the College Field Pavilion commemorating the actions of Nicolle and Symes.

Plaque in the Cricket Pavilion at the College Field where they hid

I have only been able to touch on a fraction of the story here so if you would like to read more about the operation I recommend you track down a copy of William Bell’s “The Commando Who Came Home To Spy” which is out of print but you can pick up for a few pounds second hand on Amazon, eBay or from a second hand book shop.

If you would like to listen to the whole interview with James Symes you can find it here .

If you would like to receive email notifications of future blogs, you can sign up to the right of this blog post or here. Feel free to look around the website, where I have categorized posts to make them easier to find and other resources such as tours, places to visit and films that may be of interest.

You can also follow the blog on Twitter at @Fortress_Island where I share other information and photographs. If you prefer Facebook I also have a page there.

If you have questions or information to share you can contact me by email on Contact@Island-Fortress.Com.

You can also find articles, podcasts, TV appearances and other social media etc here.


I will be adding more as time permits. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please share it on social media or add a comment if you did. Feedback is always appreciated.

Also happy to be contacted with questions about the war in the Channel Islands, media appearances, podcasts etc.

© Nick Le Huray

OPERATION ATTABOY – THE FIRST PLAN TO RETAKE ONE OF THE CHANNEL ISLANDS – 1941

A while ago I wrote about Operation Blazing which was a planned operation for a large scale attack on Alderney in 1942. You can read it here .

A forerunner to Blazing was Operation Attaboy in 1941. Despite Attaboy ultimately being cancelled they still went on to plan Blazing and Constellation at later stages in the war. This was partly due to Lord Mountbatten and the fact that he had the ear of Churchill and an apparent obsession with retaking one or all of the islands at various stages of the war. Some of the reasons are in earlier blog posts and some are for future blog posts.

Given this first assessment for Attaboy concluded that “The strategic value of the Channel Islands either to ourselves or the enemy is negligible.” it is somewhat surprising that they persisted.

If Attaboy had gone ahead it would have been Alderney that was the most likely target.

The paper below sets out the original proposal.

The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-43_8.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-43_8.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-43_8.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-43_8.jpg

The minutes and papers below show the consideration of this proposal and subsequent meetings.

The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-37_
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-37_02.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-43_1.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-43_5.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-43_6.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-44_1.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-44_3.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-48_1.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-48_1.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB 80/57
The National Archives’ reference CAB 80/57
The National Archives’ reference CAB 80/57
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-55_1.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-55_1.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB 80/57
The National Archives’ reference CAB 80/57
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-54_1.jpg
The National Archives’ reference CAB-79-9-54_4.jpg

As you can see from the minute above they decided not to proceed and instead to proceed with Operation Barbaric.

‘Barbaric’ was a British unrealised intelligence-gathering operation involving the landing of special forces parties of No. 12 Commando, totalling some 220 men, along the north coast of France between Dunkirk and Calais, and between Boulogne and the Somme Bay for the purposes of capturing German troops for interrogation (20/21 March 1941).

The operation was cancelled just before its commitment.

https://codenames.info/operation/barbaric/

If you want to read about other raids that happened or were planned take a look at my other posts that are listed here.

Worth a watch if you want to get a feel for the fortifications on Alderney.

If you would like to receive email notifications of future blogs, you can sign up to the right of this blog post or here. Feel free to look around the website, where I have categorized posts to make them easier to find and other resources such as tours, places to visit and films that may be of interest.

You can also follow the blog on Twitter at @Fortress_Island where I share other information and photographs. If you prefer Facebook I also have a page there.

If you have questions or information to share you can contact me by email on Contact@Island-Fortress.Com.

You can also find articles, podcasts, TV appearances and other social media etc here.


I will be adding more as time permits. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please share it on social media or add a comment if you did. Feedback is always appreciated.

Also happy to be contacted with questions about the war in the Channel Islands, media appearances, podcasts etc.

© Nick Le Huray

HUBERT COMES HOME – THE FIRST COMMANDO LANDING IN GUERNSEY

Photograph of Hubert Nicolle on display at the German Occupation Museum which I took a photograph of recently.

Just over a week after after the Germans had occupied the Channel Islands twenty year old Hubert Nicolle landed in Guernsey to undertake “Operation Anger”. Hubert was a Guernseyman that had originally served in the Royal Guernsey Militia and then joined the Hampshire Regiment.

Guernsey had been occupied by the Germans on 30 June 1940 and on 4 July Nicolle was ordered to report to Room 74 at the Admiralty. Arriving, still having no idea why, he learned that Combined Operations had been instructed by Winston Churchill to send someone “to find out what is going on in the Channel Islands”. He was told, “If you do this and are caught we don’t want to know you; you are out on your own. You will be shot and that will be the end of it.” Nicolle immediately agreed to go.

Obituary of Hubert Nicolle The Independent 2 October 1998

He was brought to the Island on the submarine H43 and landed at Le Jaonnet Bay on the south coast of Guernsey in the early hours of 8 July.

In an interview with the Imperial War Museum Ian McGeoch who was a first lieutenant on H43 recalls how things didn’t go smoothly.

We found our way to the southwest side of Guernsey and surfaced near the coastline so we could hear the dogs barking. Fortunately, it was fairly calm. Well not calm but fairly calm. I recall an incident, it was a very still night.

I recall probably the second Coxswain, the leading seaman whose job it was to open up the casing and help to get the canoe out and so forth when he lifted the big steel plate which was part of the door of the top of the casing, he inadvertently let it drop. And you can imagine the noise made by about 100 square inches of steel being dropped. And of course, we thought oh well everybody is bound to hear the dogs bark and everything I said there was a panic, but we got away with it.

Ian McGeoch
H43

He was taken ashore in a canoe that had been purchased from Gamages a London department store a few days before. The flat pack canoe was originally assembled inside the submarine but they then discovered it wouldn’t fit out of the hatch. It had to be taken apart and reassembled on the hull.

Once assembled a naval officer, Sub-Lt J.L.E. Leitch took him the two miles to shore before returning to the submarine.

This bay is at the bottom of a large cliff. The initial ascent is via a ladder from the beach, sorry no photo, and 218 steps to the cliff path at the top. As you can imagine this beach doesn’t attract the casual visitor given how difficult it is to access. So on a dark night it must have been a challenge to get up from the beach.

The picture below and the map will give you an idea of where he landed.

Looking down from the cliff path at Icart towards Le Jaonnet Bay. This photograph gives you an idea of the terrain. © Nick Le Huray

Nicolle was able to make contact with friends and family. He borrowed a bicycle and was able to move around the island and obtain information about the German garrison and their positions. Now you might wonder how he was able to move about so freely. He was of course in civilian clothes and the island had been occupied for little more than a week.

He had determined that the German Garrison stood at only 469 soldiers based mainly around St Peter Port, this information was provided to him by a friend who was a baker and forced to supply the Germans. His uncle was the assistant harbour master and provided him with information about German shipping activity.

The reason for the small numbers was that they had only been here for a week. At the peak in numbers Charles Cruickshank estimates in in his book there were approximately 12,000. Whilst there were machine gun posts located around the coast he estimated that it would take about twenty minutes for reinforcements to arrive if the alarm was raised.

As a result the Germans were still present in relatively small numbers and identification cards had not yet been introduced. He was of course a local so able to pass without suspicion as well as using his local knowledge to move about through the lanes. He was therefore able to also visit the roads around the airport and assess the position there.

Having gathered this intelligence he was picked up by the same submarine on 10 July 1940 and two other Guernseymen were dropped off, this time using a Berthon boat rather than a canoe. They were 2nd Lieuts Philip Martel and Desmond Mulholland who were to conduct the second phase of Operation Anger.

They were taken to shore by the same navy officer that had dropped Nicolle off. This nearly ended in disaster as the boat became swamped in the waves near the shore. Fortunately they made it with the help of Nicolle. He briefed his two fellow Guernseymen on the curfew, where the Germans were and other useful information.

They didn’t have to wait long to repay the favour of being rescued as the boat began to sink as it was on the way back to the submarine and they had to help bring it back to shore.

Eventually the boat made it back to the submarine and Nicolle was able to report back to London with his findings.

A memorial stone stands at the top of the cliffs in commemoration of Nicolle’s landing.

Memorial at Icart to the landing. © Nick Le Huray

I was privileged to have known Hubert or Mr Nicolle as we called him. He was a past pupil of the school that I attended, Elizabeth College, and was actively involved in college activities when I was a pupil in the 1980s. Little did I know that the gentleman that often started swimming races with a starting pistol was used to more deadly weapons!

He was to return to Guernsey again on 3 September 1940 with another Guernseyman and fellow pupil of Elizabeth College James Symes. That is a story for a future blog and a far more eventful visit it was! I have an interview with Symes that provides some interesting insight into this raid as well as some archive material and an interview with one of the submarine crew who recalled the landing. Sign up for email notifications of you don’t want to miss out.

I have only been able to touch on a fraction of the story here so if you would like to read more about the operation I recommend you track down a copy of William Bell’s “The Commando Who Came Home To Spy” which is out of print but you can pick up for a few pounds second hand on Amazon, eBay or from a second hand book shop.

At this point you are probably wondering what happened to Martel and Mulholland. Well they stayed in the island to gather intelligence and take part in the next phase Operation Anger and the follow up Operation Ambassador later in the month. This was a raid consisting of some 140 men. A blog post about this will be out later in July.

If you would like to receive email notifications of future blogs, you can sign up to the right of this blog post or here. Feel free to look around the website, where I have categorized posts to make them easier to find and other resources such as tours, places to visit and films that may be of interest.

You can also follow the blog on Twitter at @Fortress_Island where I share other information and photographs. If you prefer Facebook I also have a page there.

If you have questions or information to share you can contact me by email on Contact@Island-Fortress.Com.

You can also find articles, podcasts, TV appearances and other social media etc here.


I will be adding more as time permits. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please share it on social media or add a comment if you did. Feedback is always appreciated.

Also happy to be contacted with questions about the war in the Channel Islands, media appearances, podcasts etc.

© Nick Le Huray

PLANNED LARGE SCALE RAID ON ALDERNEY 1942 – OPERATION BLAZING

The small-scale raids that took place around Alderney and the other Channel Islands are well recorded; however, this planned raid was something completely different. This would have been a full-scale invasion of the island with the intention of holding it for a week during 1942.

The attack would have involved a force of 6,000-7,000 personnel from all services—a vastly different proposition from anything planned before. An estimated 4,800 men to land on the island.

It raises many questions; why hold it for a week and then leave? Why do it at all? What would it achieve, especially in the first half of 1942? This blog post will look at all these questions and more.

Whilst researching something else, I listened to an interview on the IWM website with General Michael Stephen Hancock, part of which he talked about his role in this proposed raid and the training that was undertaken in early 1942.

Before I start with an explanation, there are a couple of things that would be useful to set the scene, particularly for those not familiar with Alderney or its location. This will help understand the reasons for the proposed raid and the challenges they may have faced if it had been executed. If you are already familiar with Alderney, then feel free to skip past this bit.

Alderney is the most northerly Channel Island and approximately ten miles from La Hague on the Cotentin Peninsula. You can see it on the map below with the red pin.

Map from Google Maps.

The island is shown on the map below, and it is 3 miles (5 km) long by 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide. The size of the island is essential for understanding some of the challenges the proposed raid may face.

Map from Visit Alderney

I remembered that I had come across a few references to this planned raid some time ago when reading the diaries of General Sir Alan Brooke, later 1st Viscount Alan Brooke. The references to the planned raid did not provide much information but are of interest because it involved those at the highest level of the armed forces and the prime minister Winston Churchill.

Frankly, the diaries do not give you a lot to go on. It is also important to note that his diary entries are obviously from his perspective and need to be tempered by reviewing other documents from the time. I decided to search the National Archives and various other sources to see what I could find.

GENERAL SIR ALAN BROOKE, CHIEF OF GENERAL STAFF, 1942 © IWM TR 151

Brooke notes on 28 March 1942 that “Mountbatten was still hankering after a landing near Cherbourg where proper air support is not possible.”

It is fair to say that Brooke found Mountbatten quite irritating at times, not least because of his status and his relationship with Churchill. Brooke found it frustrating because he frequently stayed with Churchill at Ditchley Park and Chequers from late 1942. This gave him the opportunity to discuss his ideas and try to get Churchill onside.

Now Lord Mountbatten was known for his love of a hair-brained scheme, and this certainly would seem to be one. However, he was not alone in these ideas of actions in the Channel Islands. Vice-Admiral John Hughes-Hallett also advocated operations to retake the Channel Islands by force at various times during the war.

These were discounted for many reasons. Primarily because of the massive loss of life, this would have caused the civilian population let alone the inevitable casualties of any invading force. One must remember that an estimated 8% of all the concrete used on the Atlantic Wall was poured into the fortifications of the Channel Islands by the end of the war. The fortifications in the Islands contained more armaments than the 350 miles of the nearby Normandy coastline.

The other Channel Islands were also of less significance for the Allies from a strategic point of view aside from the other challenges mentioned above. The fortification and sinking of men and resources into the Islands are often referred to as “Hitler’s Island Madness.”

Alderney would have been a different prospect as only approximately seven civilians were left on the island. However, many forced workers on the island would have also become casualties. During the war, Alderney was heavily fortified and became one of the most heavily armed sections of the Atlantic Wall. Alderney was designated a Festung (Fortress).

Alderney had gun batteries that could prove troublesome to any attack on Cherbourg at a later stage in the war but not in the summer of 1942. Later in the war, in June 1944, the 150 mm guns in Battery Blücher on Alderney fired upon the American troops on the Cotentin Peninsula. Subsequently, the British warship HMS Rodney attacked the gun battery, which cost the lives of two German soldiers.

Article from the Northampton Mercury & Herald 18 August 1944

What purpose could risking so many lives to occupy the island for a week serve war effort? There appears to be some speculation that such a raid could have been used to appease Stalin that the Allies were serious about mounting operations to open a second front, but surely this would have been too small scale.

Another reason that they considered the raid to be of value was that the Germans were using Alderney as a control centre for U Boats in the area returning to or leaving the French ports.

In his book “The German Occupation of The Channel Islands” Cruickshank states that Mountbatten first raised the idea of a an operation to take Alderney at a meeting of his staff on 6 March 1942.

Brooke notes in his diary on 8 April 1942, “Very difficult COS attended by Paget, Sholto Douglas, and Mountbatten. Subject-attempt to assist Russia through action in France. Plan they had put up was a thoroughly bad one!!” This would indicate some substance to the assertion that the raid may have been partly for this purpose.

Mountbatten briefed the Chiefs of Staff Committee on 16 April 1942. His initial plan was to take and hold Alderney permanently. His reasons for doing so were:

A) The island would provide a base for small craft to be used to attack the German’s convoy route from the Channel ports down to Bay of Biscay.

B) It could be used to site a radar installation to extend Fighter Command’s radar coverage.

C) It could be used as an emergency landing strip.

D) To open a second front in a small way.

The plan changed many times during the course of April and early May. Not least changing from a plan to hold the island permanently to a plan to hold it for a week.

The interview with General Michael Hancock sheds more light on the plan and just how far preparations went.

“The object of the operation was only to hold the island for about a week, and the stated objects in the Chiefs of Staffs um appro… approval of it were, (I cannot remember in what order they were), but they included three things, and I don’t know that I can remember them all, but one of them, (which surprised me having had nothing to do with the political side of things) was in order to satisfy the clamour for a second front. Seems a little surprising, I suppose for a small-scale thing like this, but still, it was not all that small scale. We are talking about 7,000 men that sort of size.”

“A lot of men to put on such a small island. It is the island is what three miles by one something about that, but the Germans were holding it with four or five thousand.”

“Secondly, to put out of action, er, their control of their submarines, which they did from there with radio control etcetera and thirdly, to hold it long enough, so the Germans might think we intended springboards for the invasion of France and might withdraw something from the Russian front.”

“Wishful thinking, I suspect. We had allocated not only for this not only for this, but we had also been allocated a Parachute Battalion.”

“One of the snags was that the island is about a mile wide from the northwest side, north, east side and southwest side. The prevailing wind, of course, is across that, and in those days, you jumped out of an aircraft with 20 men, one after the other, and the mathematics of it are that if you do this and everything goes perfectly, you drop two or three men in the sea, either before you start or at the end of the run.“

“This was one of the difficulties at any rate, in the end, after I suppose three or four weeks of planning and rehearsal and so on. It was called off because it was recommended the RAF, who would have to give us a great deal of support beforehand, would lose several hundred aircraft, and they could not afford it at the time.”

So how far did they get with the plan?

“We got as far as having a particular beach and the Isle of Wight, which had the right characteristics tarted up a bit with certain little floating jetties, but to make it similar to where we would be landing in at Alderney. We did rehearsal landings on it.”

When asked why they expected such significant losses, he explained
“It was heavily defended, very heavily defended. I don’t know, but that is what we were told.”

He wasn’t wrong; Alderney was indeed heavily defended. Now I know this link is a Wikipedia one, but it does stack up with all of the reference sources I have checked at the time of writing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortifications_of_Alderney#German_fortifications

Brooke notes in his diary on 6 May 1942, “Arrived just in time to go to COS meeting to turn down proposed attack on Alderney Island [Channel Islands] as a large raid by Guards Brigade.”

So why did they turn it down, given the immense effort put into planning and training? These extracts from that meeting explain the discussion and the reasons. They even considered scaling back the operation to a single day.

A significant problem was the gap they would have between the bombing of the island and the landing. Given the small size of the island and the lack of accurate bombing in 1942, it was doubtful how effective it would have been in softening up the defences.

In 1942 it would only have been possible for fighters to provide cover for fifteen minutes at a time. The Luftwaffe would have been able to operate from airfields only twenty miles from Alderney where as the RAF would have had to operate from airfields more than seventy miles away. This partly explains the massive commitment of aircraft that would have been required.

Overall, they felt that the casualties would not be worth the dividend from such an operation. You can read the complete deliberations in the extracts of the War Cabinet Chiefs of Staff Committee minutes below.

CAB 79/56/37
CAB 79/56/37
CAB 79/56/37

Churchill was still keen for a raid, perhaps spurred on by Mountbatten. Brooke notes in his diary of 11 May 1942, “At 12 noon we had meeting with PM to discuss the giving up of the attack on Alderney, and raids planned as alternatives.”

The minute of this meeting is not very clearly scanned in the national archives, but you can get its gist. (Blue text added to clarify the feint wording)

Even at this stage, they didn’t discount resurrecting the operation later in the year. It did make an appearance later in they year as Operation “Aimwell” with the intention of a smaller force and only holding the island for twenty four hours. This was also cancelled.

Going back to the interview with Hancock, he talks about what happened next.
“So as we were there and all geared up for such an operation, an alternative operation was planned as a raid on the French coast. Somewhere in the … between Boulogne and Dieppe, I forget where but in that sort of area, and so we then started planning for that instead. And they got us in, I suppose it must have been the end of May, early June, and we are about then getting into the ships ready to go, and we were all in our ships with these funny little radios off Spithead, and the weather was foul.”

“That is why I remember the ship was flat bottomed pitching and, and so all these six-seven thousand men but in the ship sitting there we sat down for three days. The weather showed no sign of abating. And they decided then that it was too long or risks to security over us being there for three days. Without anything happening were too great. So, the whole operation was called off. We were sent back to Scotland.”

Ultimately some of what they planned was used in the planning and execution of Operation “Jubilee”, the raid on Dieppe.

I wonder what the impact would have been on the civilian population of the Channel Islands if the raid had gone ahead, given the deportations following other raids later in the war.

If you find this of interest, I can highly recommend visiting Alderney, where you can visit some of the fortifications. You can find details at Visit Alderney.

Worth a watch if you want to get a feel for the fortifications on Alderney.



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Thanks to my brother Matt Le Huray for his patience in proofreading these longer blog posts. Any typos in the shorter ones that I put out are nothing to do with him 😊

© Nick Le Huray

Operation Hardtack

Operation Hardtack was a series of raids on the German occupied Channel Islands, the French coast and southern Holland between 24 December and 28 December 1943. This article will deal with the raids on the Channel Islands.

The raids on the Channel Islands were all for Reconnaissance and
capture of prisoners.

Hardtack 7 (Sark)

Whilst Operation Basalt, a raid on the island of Sark1 in October 1942, has been the subject of a book by Eric Lee2, not as much has been written about the raids that comprised Operation Hardtack. Although they do merit a chapter in Will Fowler’s book The Last Raid: The Commandos, Channel Islands and Final Nazi Raid3.

Thanks to @KevSouth1 on Twitter for reminding me that some of the population of Sark were moved inland after Basalt as well as deportations to camps on the Continent. More of that in another blog.

The first raid on the night of the 25/26 had to be abandoned as the climb was found to be impossible. As can be seen from the photographs that I took from the top of the cliff that they climbed on the second raid it isn’t easy to scale these cliffs.

Pictures ©Nick Le Huray

They returned the next night and successfully landed and climbed the cliff at the Hog’s Back where Operation Basalt had landed in the previous year.

Unfortunately the shore party found themselves in a minefield, laid in response to the previous raid. After several mines detonated, causing a number of casualties, they decided to return to the MGB that was waiting for them.

Photograph I took of the memorial in May 2019. ©Nick Le Huray

There is an excellent summary of Hardtack 7, including the report on the operation along with maps and photographs here

Aberdeen Evening Express – Wednesday 29 December 1943

Hardtack 22 (Herm)

The raid on the Island of Herm4 was cancelled at the planning stage. Originally planned by No. 10 Commando responsibility for the proposed raid was transferred to No. 2 US Ranger Battalion, but the operation was not proceeded with5.

Arguably there would have been little to have been gained from a raid as the Island is much smaller than the others and only had a small number of troops stationed there. Although it was visited by other troops for leisure purposes during daylight hours.

Hardtack 28 (Jersey)

The raid on Jersey6 took place on the night of 25/26 December and was time to be on the same night as the raid on Sark. There is an excellent article with maps and photographs here.

No Hardtack raid on Guernsey?

It is likely that there were no Hardtack raids in respect of Guernsey7 as there had been a number of other raids over the previous years. There was little to be gained from such a raid.

Conclusion

Whilst only the raid on Jersey provided any useful information news of the raids did at least boost the morale of Islanders with hope of the second front being imminent. Albeit this came a great cost in casualties.

Shortly after the raids it was decided that no more raids were to be made on the Channel Islands.

Footnotes

1 Sark – Information about the Island.
2 Operation Basalt – Eric Lee .
3 The Last Raid: The Commandos, Channel Islands and Final Nazi Raid – Will Fowler Chapter 22.
4 Herm Island
5 Cruickshank 1975 page 245.
6 Information on Jersey.
7 Information on Guernsey.


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