Things have been a bit quiet on the blog for the last few weeks as I have had a bad dose of the flu! Hoping to get things back to normal soon because I have a lot of research from the archives to write up for forthcoming blogs.
In the meantime you might enjoy this film that I found from 1995. Fronted by the late Hugh Scully it features some great archive footage and interviews with people that were here during the occupation of the Channel Islands. This includes some German personnel, islanders and slave workers.
A few of these are people that I have written about before, click the links to go to the blog posts about them.
Topics covered include distribution of news from the BBC, secret photos sent to the british intelligence service, a secret transmitter, deportations and a lot more.
Well worth a watch if you want to hear some first hand accounts of life under occupation.
I have a list of other films that you can find here.
I hope that you have enjoyed reading the blog post.
I also co-host a podcast with Keith Pengelley in which we talk about the occupation of the Channel Islands month by month using first hand accounts, diaries and our research in the archives. You can find us on all the major podcast services. Just search “Islands at War” or visit our podcast page here.
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 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 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 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.
If you have read any of my blog posts about Alderney, and even if you haven’t, you might find this short film interesting.
Dan Snow takes a look around some of the fortifications and explains the history. Well worth a watch and provides some context for other blog posts which are linked below.
I hope that you have enjoyed reading the blog post.
I also co-host a podcast with Keith Pengelley in which we talk about the occupation of the Channel Islands month by month using first hand accounts, diaries and our research in the archives. You can find us on all the major podcast services. Just search “Islands at War” or visit our podcast page here.
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 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 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 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.
Those of you that live in Guernsey, or have visited will be familiar with the headland at Rousse and will know that there is a Napoleonic era loophole tower and a pier that is used by fisherman and swimmers. The area is also popular with walkers. I suspect that many of the walkers, like the lady that stopped to talk to us a few weeks back, are unaware that they are walking over a former minefield!
There isn’t anything for these walkers to be worried about as the mines were cleared in the immediate months after the war. There are some innocuous reminders of the minefield that you can still see today and most people walking the area are unaware of.
You may be wondering why I picked this particular minefield to write about. When I was at the German war grave cemetery at Fort George in the summer I happened to photograph the grave of Major Friedrich Blaschek. The reason I photographed it was that I wondered what had happened to him.
Following on from this I did some research and I discovered how he had become fatally injured and the bravery of a soldier that tried to save him.
THE ROUSSE MINEFIELD
The Germans had already laid many minefields around the islands but not on the scale that followed the order from Hitler to fortify the islands in October 1941. You can read about the fortification order on the blog post here.
Some eight months prior to the order this notice appeared in the Evening Press.
I was provided with an original map of the minefield by Jersey War Tours and I thought I would go and take a few photographs to illustrate the blog post.
As with many of the existing fortifications on the Channel Islands the Germans strengthened the defences around the existing loophole tower at Rousse.
The minefield chart or “Minenplan” is very detailed and I will use some extracts from it later on so don’t worry if you can’t read all of the detail on the full scale picture below.
The Tellermine whilst primarily being an anti tank mine could also be triggered by someone running. The S mine shown below was particularly nasty, as if you touched one of the horns it would tigger the mine with a delay of a few seconds then it would spring up to waist height before exploding. It would fire 360 steel balls, short steel rods, or scrap metal pieces in all directions. The Americans nicknamed them ‘Bouncing Betty’ because of this.
Below is a picture from March 1942 of the headland taken from a photo reconnaissance Spitfire of the RAF 140 Squadron. One thing you will notice from the 1942 photo is the lack of boats in the bay. If you are familiar with this area you would know that this bay would normally have been full of boats. The reason there are none are because of the escapes that had happened earlier in the occupation which had led all boats having to be moved to St Sampson and St Peter Port harbours.
Major Blaschek was commander of No.1 Pioneer Battalion 319 Infantry Division. His men were responsible for laying the minefield at Rousse and many others around Guernsey.
In his book ‘Achtung’ Minen! Guernsey The History of the German Minefields 1940-45’ – Henry Beckingham includes an extract from two letters to Blaschek’s widow. These letters were written using the accounts of those present at the time of the accident. A précis of what happened is below.
On the 7th November 1941 Blaschek went to inspect the minefield that his men were working on. He noted that his men were not working on the minefield and inspected the fencing surrounding the minefield. He then stepped into the minefield to go and inspect it. This was a fatal mistake as, unbeknownst to him, the minefield had been made live the previous day.
You may have spotted in the mine chart images above that the minefield had been signed off as ‘unlocked’ or ‘armed’ by Lieutenant Kias on 6.11.41.
Snip from the mine chart showing that it had been signed off In the other corner of the mine chart (translated with Google Translate) it notes that the safety pins have been handed over to Guernsey command.
Having stepped into the minefield he soon set off an ‘S mine’. He was rescued from the minefield by Hauptfeldwebel (Company Sergeant Major) Schulz. Despite the badly wounded Blaschek repeatedly telling him not to enter the minefield he did so and succeeded in rescuing Blaschek who had been unable to move more than a few steps after stepping on the mine. Schulz received a commendation for this.
Blaschek was taken to hospital and initially it was thought that he would survive. Indeed he was visited by a number of men from his battalion before he was operated on. As the operation proceeded it became apparent that his wounds were much more severe than first thought. He died at eight pm, aged thirty six, during the operation without regaining consciousness.
He was buried at Fort George with full military honours. Blaschek was far from the first or last minefield casualty in the Channel Islands.
I hope you have enjoyed the blog. As part of the fortification order a large number of further minefields were to be laid. I am going to be writing a blog covering minefields across the Channel Islands in general in the future.
I hope that you have enjoyed reading the blog post.
I also co-host a podcast with Keith Pengelley in which we talk about the occupation of the Channel Islands month by month using first hand accounts, diaries and our research in the archives. You can find us on all the major podcast services. Just search “Islands at War” or visit our podcast page here.
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 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 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 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.
Batterie Mirus is probably the most well known of the German gun batteries in the Channel Islands. Probably because it was the largest on any of the Channel Islands.
The name of the gun batterie was in honor of Kapitan-zur-See Rolf Mirus, who was killed in 1941 while sailing between Guernsey and Alderney.
They had a range of 51km (31.5 miles). The image below shows the impact this could have on shipping in the area.
If you have read some of my tweets and blog posts you will be familiar with the Germans taking captured equipment and reusing it themselves. This is features in a number of aspects of the construction of the battery itself.
The 30.5cm (12 inch) guns themselves had a couple of previous owners including a short period with the Germans. Originally they were the main armament of a Russian battleship captured by the Germans and then returned to the Russians at the end of the First World War. After the battleship was broken up in the mid 1930s the guns were placed in storage before being pressed into use in the Russo-Finnish war. Captured by the Germans they were sent back to Germany to be reconditioned. Then onwards to Guernsey.
As you can imagine they were not easy to transport at any stage of the journey. Arriving at St Peter Port on barges a special crane was required to lift them. 50 ton guns will not be easy to move.
What was required was a crane with a large lifting capacity. The Germans had captured one from the French, the barge ANTEE, with a tested lifting capacity of 100 tons. This was dispatched from France to Guernsey and can be seen in the photographs below.
The next problem was transporting them, for which 48 wheeled trailers were used. If you are familiar with Guernsey roads you will know that they are often quite narrow and not particularly straight. The dotted lines on the Google Map below show where the harbour at St Peter Port is and then the location of the Batterie Mirus which is in the Guernsey countryside at the far end of the Island.
Some junctions such as the one shown below had to be widened to enable the trailers to get through. The pictures below show some of the challenges they faced.
You can see from the photograph below the difficulties in navigating the guns through the narrow lanes once they reached the area near the gun pits.
Once at the sites they then had the problem of lifting the guns into place. This was achieved using the massive cranes that you can see in the pictures below. You can see from looking at the people in the photographs the scale of the guns.
An incredible 45,000 cubic metres of concrete were used in construction of the four gun pits and supporting buildings.
Concrete mixers on construction.
Once completed it was disguised as a house. This was an attempt to hide it from reconnaissance flights. In reality the Allies were well aware of the construction because of photo reconnaissance missions during the course of construction.
I found an interesting account “The Grower’s Tale” in the June-July 2014 edition of “Shore to Shore” a magazine for the Parishes of St. Saviours & the Forest.
The first that Renaut de Garis knew that these guns were coming to stay, was when his brand new brick house, La Croix in La Vieille Rue, was requisitioned. He and his pregnant wife were moved down to the Grand Douit behind Perelle. La Croix was given a reinforced first floor: steel beams and a foot of concrete; and the Commander of the gun battery moved in.
Interviewed in 2009 aged 95 (he was 100 this May), Renaut remembered it all: “They were Spaniards building the battery, we called them Morroccans. Some of them were quite refined people. They were treated terribly, poor devils. Soupe d’Atlantique, they called the food they gave them, it was just water really. Disgusting.
In the winter they wrapped cement sacks round their feet to try and keep them warm. If British planes were overhead, the Germans would cut all the lights at their building sites, but not the power to the concrete mixers. Those huge mixers just ran and ran, night and day.
After they had built the battery they covered it all back with earth again. There used to be a little valley there, and now it’s flat. When they were going to test the [Number 2] Mirus gun the first time, most people didn’t want to go. The shock of the detonation was tremendous. I had my young son in my arms at the time… I saw his cheeks rippling with the shock wave. I had three greenhouses and they were just lifted up and moved sideways. The glass was like snow on the ground.
“The Grower’s Tale” in the June-July 2014 edition of “Shore to Shore” a magazine for the Parishes of St. Saviours & the Forest.
Below is a video from YouTube which shows the transport issues and firing.
The guns were fired numerous times from 13 April 1942 onwards.
When they were test fired large numbers of the population had to move out of the area and much disruption was caused. One can only imagine what happened when they were fired without warning. The picture below is from a document I found in the Island Archives relating to restrictions on test firing.
AQ696/08 Island ArchivesFrom a report to the Historical Division of Group West. It was written in May 1948 by Major General Graf von Schmettow who was commander of the Channel Islands until his removal on 20 February 1945. Usefully there was an English translation.
The Guns were removed after the war as part of the scrap drive. You can see below a photograph of the site maintained by Festung Guernsey. Don’t be fooled by the photograph this is a massive site. The video at the end of the blog will help you appreciate just how big this site is.
Photo Copyright Nick Le Huray Entrance to the gun pit. Photo Copyright Nick Le HurayPicture from Weapons & Warfare gives an idea of the scale of just one of the gun sites.
Below is a great video with an overview of the site.
If you want to learn more about the Batterie Mirus and visit the site of one of the guns I highly recommend the tour that is run by Tours of Guernsey around the site maintained by Festung Guernsey. I recently took the excellent tour and posted about it below. If you go on the tour you will find out far more than I can write in a blog post. Plus nothing is as good as walking the ground!
I hope that you have enjoyed reading the blog post.
I also co-host a podcast with Keith Pengelley in which we talk about the occupation of the Channel Islands month by month using first hand accounts, diaries and our research in the archives. You can find us on all the major podcast services. Just search “Islands at War” or visit our podcast page here.
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 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 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 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.
