Tag: Guernsey

ISLANDS AT WAR PODCAST – NOVEMBER 1940

The next episode is out! You can find some of the things we talked about including pictures in this post.

You can find the podcast on all the major podcast apps or here.

RSS feed is here: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2314718.rss

We continue to talk about Hubert Nicolle & James Symes and the aftermath of their surrender. The impact on the local community, the fate of those that helped them, and much more.

We also talked about the propaganda photographs that were taken of the civilian prisoners that were shipped off to Prison in France. Below you can see the picture we referred to which was reprinted in the Guernsey Evening Press Weekender Supplement in 1985. The man holding the briefcase is Herr Lensch their interrogator. After this photograph they were taken to prison.

Below you can find the fishing boat that we talked about.

Nick stood by the boat for scale.

The newspaper extracts about Civil Transport are below.

Guernsey Evening Press 19 November 1940
Guernsey Evening Press 30th November 1940

We also talked about four RAF aircrew that were in a dinghy for 48 hours before landing on the island. Since we recorded I have tracked down who they were and which aircraft they were in when shot down.

16/11/1940 1350hrs an SOS was picked up by the St. Eval Direction Finding Station on a bearing of 139 degrees true. Avro Anson Mark I N9889 MW-S 217 Squadron had ditched in the Channel. The crew managed to get into their dinghy. P/O R.E. Troward 42914 , Sgt A.R. Weston 940106, Sgt Wilson and Sgt J.B. Steedman 973774 became Prisoners of War when they landed in Guernsey.

We mentioned in an earlier episode that these types of aircraft flew regular missions around the Channel Islands.

When we talked about this particular crew the information that we had was that one of them had died the day after arriving, at least that was the rumour at the time. There seems to be some uncertainty if that was indeed the case, although I can only find POW records for three of them at present but I also can’t find a record of a war grave in Guernsey for Sgt E Wilson who was the one that I can’t find a POW record for.

The account below talks of some hilarity at the identity card depots.

Guernsey Evening Press 28 November 1940
Bucker 131

Hope you find the above useful.

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.

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

OCTOBER 1940 EPISODE OF ISLANDS AT WAR PODCAST IS OUT!

It is October 1940.

The two commandos, Nicolle and Symes are still at large  and moving around the island. Much happened in the run up to their surrender, their treatment after they surrender and the consequences following this. I wrote a more detailed article here about them.

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


More British forces personnel surrender as part of the amnesty.

Food is already getting short so we talk about an unusual recipe that was used take a look at the link below.

https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/occupation-food-recipes

Clothes rationing article we talked about:

Notice in the Guernsey Press October 1940.

A short soundbite of the podcast is here.

The books we referred to are:

I Beg to Report…Policing in Guernsey During the German Occupation – William Bell

Guernsey Occupation Diaries, 1940-45 – Author: Douglas Ord (ed. John Nettles)

The Commando Who Came Home To Spy – William Bell

If you listen on a podcast app please do give us a review as it really helps us.

Thanks to Gnet Radio for recording the podcast and thanks to Jim Delbridge for the use of his song ‘5 to 7’ as our theme.

ISLANDS AT WAR – SEPTEMBER 1940 – PODCAST OUT NOW

The latest episode is out. You can find it on all your favourite podcast apps and here.

In this episode Keith and Nick talk you through the events of September 1940.

We take a look at the following the civilian perception of what is going on in the war, various commando raids, an escape, RAF operations in the area, a failed rescue attempt, islanders serving in the British forces and much more!

In this episode we mention Captain Parker who was captured (photo below) and details of his reparation.

Photo from display at Occupation Museum.
Reported 29 April 1944 in Guernsey Press

You can find details of the escape here.

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

We also mention a new podcast about Bomber Command called “Never mind the Dam Busters” a podcast about RAF Bomber Command. You can find it here and on all your favourite podcast apps.

If you listen to the podcast and like it please do like and share it with your friends. It would be great if you could also comment on the podcast on your favourite podcast app.

Thanks to Gnet Radio for recording and our producer Sean Johnson.

Hope you enjoy.

‘ISLANDS AT WAR’ AUGUST 1940 PODCAST OUT NOW!

Two weeks have passed already since the last podcast!

We are back for episode 3!  We now have an appropriate theme tune thanks to our friend Jim Delbridge.   He has kindly allowed us to use his song “5 to 7” from his album ‘The Navigator’. You can find details below about the song and the video.

You can find the podcast on all the usual podcast apps as well as here.

Keith and Nick talk you through the events of August 1940 the second full month of the islands being occupied by the German forces.  We talk about matters  both civilian and military.

Freedom of worship except for some.
Major Marie Ozanne see more about her and a video here.
Food & Essentials.
The Bailiff’s controversial broadcast on German Radio.
A mission to rescue two commandos.

During the podcast we talk about some adverts from the Guernsey Press which are below.

We now have some intro and outro music thanks to our very talented friend Jim Delbridge.

If you listen to the podcast and like it please do like and share it with your friends. It would be great if you could also comment on the podcast on your favourite podcast app.

Hope you enjoy.

July 1940 Episode of ‘Islands at War’ Podcast is out!

The latest episode of the ‘Islands at War’ podcast is out. In this episode Keith and I talk about the first month of occupation.

In this episode we cover the following:

Arrival of the German Forces.

The initial orders from the Commandant.

The initial Commando raids being ‘Operation Anger’ and ‘Operation Ambassador’ and their results.

Germans buying up everything in the shops.

The locals reaction to events.

You can find the podcast on all the usual podcast apps. Please do give us a like and subscribe. If you have a moment it would be great if you could leave us a review. It costs you nothing but helps us out massively.

You can also find the podcast here with links to all the podcast apps.

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.

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

A CURIOUS LETTER IN 1940!

Whilst trawling through the British Newspaper Archive I found this reference to a letter from Guernsey in the Nottingham Evening Post of Saturday 17 August 1940.

This is curious for a number of reasons. Firstly the scheme for sending letters by Red Cross was not established until later in 1940, indeed the scheme was still being arranged in October 1940, in any event was initially restricted to ten words then later increased to twenty five words. Initially you could only send a message in reply to one received although this was changed later. You can find more detail about the Red Cross letter system in the article I wrote here.

It therefore isn’t possible that this letter came through the Red Cross. If you read the newspaper article I will continue to consider below how and why this information appeared in August 1940.

Nottingham Evening Post – Saturday 17 August 1940
Image © Reach PLC. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.

The article refers to the letter coming through “the usual route of France, Spain and Lisbon” which wouldn’t have been set up at this stage being only six weeks after occupation of the Channel Islands on 30 June 1940.

So how did this information arrive in England? It is possible, but unlikely, that it was a letter that somehow got out of Guernsey but that would seem to be unlikely. Even a Red Cross Message once the system had been set up later in 1940 took six weeks to arrive. So how would a letter, in the unlikely event it had managed to be sent by some means via all of these countries, manage to arrive six weeks after occupation but containing information from July 1940.

My initial reaction was that this must have been information garnered from one of the early commando raids either “Anger” or “Ambassador” or the attempt to rescue those stranded and then given to the media. This happened for later raids and appeared in many newspapers at the time. This ‘letter’ was only reported in one newspaper so that seems unlikely in this case. To read about those raids click the links above.

It is unlikely that it was information garnered from an escape from Guernsey. There were a spate of escapes on the first few days of July and possibly one in August, although it may have been early September, and again normally information appeared across multiple newspapers.

The only other way I can think a letter may have got out via this route was the French consul in Guernsey. Again this would seem unlikely but may be a possibilityin the initial days of occupation.

All in all a bit of a mystery that will probably never be solved but I thought it was worth sharing. If anyone can shed any light on this I would love to hear from you.

Whilst writing I should mention I am co-hosting a podcast talking through the occupation of the Channel Islands with local guide and historian Keith Pengelley. You can find links to all the major podcast platforms here or just go to your usual podcast app and search ‘Islands at War’.

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.

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

PILOT EPISODE OF ‘ISLANDS AT WAR’ IS OUT NOW!

The pilot episode of the radio show ‘Islands At War’ is now available to listen to on demand. You can listen in your browser by clicking on the link below. Keith and I talk about the phoney war, refugees from France escaping through the islands, confusion about whether to stay or go, the German bombing raid and much more! If you have a spare 46 minutes go take a listen.

We will be releasing a discussion about each month of the occupation every two weeks. Any feedback gratefully received.

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.

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

FORTNIGHTLY OCCUPATION RADIO PROGRAMME & PODCAST ON GNET RADIO!

I alluded a while back to something coming up that I couldn’t talk about but now I can reveal all! Well apart from the other things that are on the list of things that might be happening that I still can’t talk about that is! Starting on 5th February I will be co-host of a radio programme & podcast about the occupation of the Channel Islands.

I have been talking for a year or so about the idea of teaming up for this project with local tour guide, amateur historian and broadcaster Keith Pengelley. You can find out more about Keith and his tours here. He is a stalwart of GNETRadio as well as a tour guide and member of the team that looks after visitors to our heritage sites. 

Each episode will cover a month of the occupation starting in June 1940. The idea being that we will talk about social issues, life under occupation and the military impact. We will be using diaries of those that were here, our combined research, our families experiences and also talking about other things that were going on in the wider European theatre of operations that impacted the islands.

We finally managed to align diaries and recorded a pilot show for GNETRadio which has now been scheduled for broadcast on 5th February of the pilot episode. We had so much fun with the pilot episode that we decided it was worth putting out. Rest assured the later episodes will be more polished, well we hope so anyway!

Click the link here if you want to listen live on 5th February at 19:00.

Our aim is to broadcast an episode every two weeks which you can either listen to live online or listen later by downloading it from Mixcloud or using the GNETRadio website. 

I will be posting links here and on social media each time an episode is released for catchup on Mixcloud. Sign up here to be notified by email of these.

We have a lot of other ideas about where we can take this concept and will be working on these over the coming months and announcing them as we firm them up!

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.

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

BOOK UPDATE AND WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON AT ISLAND FORTRESS HQ!

I thought it would be a good time to provide a bit of an update on how things were going with researching an writing the book. Having signed a contract with Barnthorn Publishing at the end of December 2023 it certainly focused my mind as I now have a deadline for submitting the manuscript! January 2025 seems like a long way away but when it comes to writing a book it really isn’t!

I had researched and collected a large amount of information about the escapes from the Channel Islands prior to starting to write the book and well before signing up with the publisher. There is however much more information out there that hasn’t seen the light of day! I have been overwhelmed by the response following announcing that the book is underway. I have received a large amount of information and some photographs from family members of some of those that escaped.

In addition a number of my local historian friends have volunteered information and documents to assist me. For this I am truly grateful! If you are reading this and have any information, no matter how big or small that you might want to share please do get in touch! Email me at Contact@Island-Fortress.Com. 

If you are worried that this will mean that the blog will be neglected fear not I will still be posting articles on the blog about the occupation in general.

What else is going on?

Well if I wasn’t busy enough with the book and the blog a few other blog related activities are happening. I have been providing information and contacts to the American TV show 60 Minutes for a forthcoming documentary that they are planning. 

In early January I recorded a podcast episode with the lovely folks from History Hack which will be out in due course. If you don’t listen to their podcast I recommend you do as covers all aspects of history. They are a great bunch of historians and great fun if you get to meet them in person.

I was on Radio Guernsey talking about escapes from Guernsey with Jim Delbridge. You can catch it at the link below for another couple of weeks if you are reading this on the day it is posted.

ISLAND FORTRESS ON BBC RADIO GUERNSEY!

Forthcoming Zoom Q&A!

Another suggestion that I received was a Zoom Q&A about the occupation which it seems that there is a lot of interest in so will be happening in February! I have persuaded another knowledgable local friend Alasdair Davidson to join me on this. Look out for further details! Subscribe to the blog for free here so you don’t miss out!

And there is more!

There is more coming to supplement the blog which I had a meeting about this week but can’t say more than that at the moment! All will be revealed in a few weeks time!

Thanks for reading the blog and please do share it with your friends.

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.

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

ISLAND FORTRESS ON BBC RADIO GUERNSEY!

Thanks very much to Jim Delbridge of BBC Radio Guernsey for inviting me in to talk about my forthcoming book. It was a pleasure to speak to Jim about the escapes from Guernsey. 

We talked about escapes in general and the Frederick Hockey escape in particular. If you missed that one the blog post is below at the end of this post..

You can catch the interview here. Jim was sitting in for one of his colleagues. Interview starts at 1:13:00.

The escape we discussed is detailed more below.

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

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.

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