Occupation of the Channel Islands

THE BRITISH CORPORAL WHO EVADED CAPTURE FOR THE WHOLE OCCUPATION!

Whilst researching material for another blog post I came across a newspaper article about Corporal John Dennis, Royal Army Service Corps. This article tells the story of how he managed to evade detection by the German authorities for the entire five years of the occupation of the Channel Islands.

His reason for appearing in this article was because he had been invited back to Ramsgate, where he had been previously based in 1940, after returning from Dunkirk. Dennis was bringing a message of thanks for the Red Cross parcels that were received by Channel Islanders.¹

Dennis was at home in Guernsey, on leave, when the Germans arrived. I have previously written about visitors that found themselves caught up in the occupation of the Channel Islands, but not military personnel. You can find that blog post here.

There were other military personnel home on leave who were caught up in the capture of the islands and they were taken prisoner and held at Castle Cornet before being sent to P.O.W. Camps in Germany.

Dennis had other ideas. When the enemy arrived he burnt his battledress and wore civilian clothes. He appeared on the “other ranks casualty list” in September 1940 as missing.

WO417/18 Casualty Lists (Other Ranks) 304-322 page 20 held at the National Archives.

By 1941 he appeared on a list of the missing circulated around POW Camps to try and locate missing personnel.

I was intrigued by the newspaper article as I had never heard of anyone doing this, and had not heard of John Dennis. Having asked around it seemed that nobody else had heard of this story either, apart from one possible post war lead that turned out to be a dead end.

I checked the many books and publications that I have and still turned up nothing, other than a Private who presented himself at the Royal Hotel to meet with Lieutenant-Colonel Stoneman of Force 135 on 9 May 1945. That was Private Le Goupillot, who had initially been detained by the Germans for eleven weeks in 1940, before being released back into the civilian population due to ill health.²

One of the regular readers of the blog is Alan Dennis so, although a long shot, I asked him if by any chance John Dennis was a relative. It turned out he wasn’t a relative but Alan had been told about Dennis by his Grandmother. His Grandmother had lived near where John Dennis lived during a large part of the occupation.

This spurred me on to find out more, armed only with the newspaper article this wasn’t going to be easy. My next port of call were the ever helpful staff at the Island Archives to see if they knew anything of Corporal Dennis. They didn’t know of a Corporal Dennis but they did have a registration form for a John Dennis.

They pulled out the documents for me and I went along to see what leads they would give me. Having looked at his registration documents I noted that he had a wife Adèle Dennis with whom he seems to have lived for part of the occupation. Having found her registration form in the same folder I was able to ascertain that, whilst she now had British nationality, she was originally from Austria.

John Dennis shown from the picture on his registration form held at the Island Archives.

The documents held at the archives reveal that he moved around a lot during the early part of the Occupation, although remaining in St Peter Port. Living at Truchot House, Le Truchot, then 29 Havelet, 29 Hauteville, 4 Sir William Place and then 3 Vauvert Terrace.

After this he was looked after by a Scotswoman for the remainder of the occupation and lived in Mount Durand. Initially at 1 Mount Durand from July 1943 then at 2 Mount Durand from 28 December 1943. Curiously in the article in the newspaper he says that the he was looked after by a Scottish lady for the whole five years.

For five years I was cared for by a Scotswoman at Mount Durand, Guernsey, and had it not been for her great help I probably could not have fooled the Nazis.
Cpl. John Dennis – Interview with the Thanet Advertiser & Echo, Tuesday 12 June 1945

Numbers One & Two Mount Durand, St Peter Port, Guernsey. photo ©️ Nick Le Huray.

One thing that nobody picked up on, or if they did they didn’t act on it, was that on his registration form he had entered the date of leaving the British Army as 8 July 1940, some 8 days after the Germans had occupied Guernsey.

Extract from John Dennis’s registration form from 1940. Held at the Island Archives.

At various points throughout the occupation the Germans were convinced that there were British soldiers hiding here, particularly after commando raids. They were successful in rounding up all that didn’t escape after the raids. Dennis and those that helped him were putting themselves at great risk. They risked being deported to camps in mainland Europe or worse shot.

Example of one of the notices published when the Germans were looking for Members of the British Armed Forces. Photo of display at the German Occupation Museum ©️Nick Le Huray.

His updated registration form dated 22 December 1942 lists him as judicially separated from his wife and and working as a lorry driver for for a German firm Ruby. You may be wondering why he is working for a German firm. Frankly those that lived in the Channel Islands had little choice as if they refused they would imprisoned, not be able to obtain food or escape the island. Unlike France they couldn’t disappear from the area.

The form had a number of slips attached to it updating details of where he worked and lived. From October 1943 until February 1944 he worked as a labourer for the German Forces. After this he became a docker working for Blum & Co until November 1944 when he returned to being a labourer.

The report in the Thanet Advertiser & Echo records that he told their reporter “a harrowing story of the misery he had seen, and experienced himself, and some of the details of the Germans’ behaviour are so revolting that they are unprintable”.

The remainder of the article tells of the hardships faced by the civilian population. He talks about the difficulties in obtaining food and that the Red Cross ship Vega delivering food saved many from starvation. I wrote about that in a blog post here.

I also found a small article which recorded him talking about the cost of obtaining rabbits and chickens on the black market being £20. That is the equivalent of £1,105 at the time of writing this in May 2023.

Kentish Express – Friday 15 June 1945
Image © KM Group. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.

As well as shortages of everyday items medicines had all but run out. As a result of this he reports having had twenty two teeth extracted without anaesthetic.

He appears again on the casualty lists from July to August 1945 as reported not missing.

WO417/95 Casualty Lists (Other Ranks) 24 July 1945 to 14 August 1945 page 6 held at the National Archives.

The article finishes by providing the address that he was staying at and inviting those Channel Islanders in England seeking news of relatives to contact him.

So what else do we know about Corporal Dennis? Sadly the answer to that is not a lot. If you are reading this and are by any chance related to him or know something about his time in Guernsey or the Scottish lady that helped him I would love to know more.

Massive thanks to the following people for their assistance with locating information on Corporal Dennis.

Alan Dennis for passing on the story that his grandmother had told him about this gentleman which spurred me on to keep looking.

The team at Island Archives for searching their records to see what they could find on anyone called John Dennis. This enabled me to find more about who he was, where he lived, and what he did.

Pierre Renier for tracking down the service number of Dennis and that he had appeared in a casualty list as missing and then a later list as no longer missing. This helped me to track down some more information.

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

Footnotes

Thanet Advertiser & Echo – Tuesday 12 June 1945
Lamerton, Mark, Liberated by Force 135 An account of the Liberation of the Channel Islands after World War 2. Volume 2 page 180.

“OCCUPATION. AN ISLAND STORY” – FILM BY TRISTAN TULL

Today I came across a tweet from The History Islands (@HistoryIslands) highlighting this film by Tristan Tull. (@RegentsMedia) from 2021.

The film is about life in Jersey during the Occupation. Surviving islanders telling their stories interspersed with archive footage, animations and photographs.

Whilst there have been a number of other documentaries over the years this one has a different style. It doesn’t trot out the same old footage. I really enjoyed watching it and recommend it. Tristan has kindly made this free to watch on Vimeo. You can click the link below to watch it.

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

RAF RAID ON ST PETER PORT – 17 JANUARY 1942 – PART 2.

Last year I wrote a blog about this air raid. I recently came across this article, written at the time for the Star newspaper, and I thought it was worth sharing it.

It is important to remember that the content of the newspaper was controlled by the German forces, so presents their viewpoint.

My original blog post with tmore detail on the raid is here.

Report in the Jersey Evening Post reproducing the article from the Guernsey newspaper the Star. From a scrapbook kept by Helene Marie Sinnatt, née Jackson, during the Occupation. Book 3, Page 57. It is in the Jersey Heritage Archive ref L/C/306/A/3/57.

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

FILM – JACKBOOTS, BUCKETS AND SPADES

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.

Hubert Nicolle – M.C. – Hubert comes home, the first commando landing in Guernsey and A secret mission 3/4 September 1940 – Nicolle returns with Symes.
Dame Sibyl Hathaway (recorded in 1974) – What Happened in Sark and Rose Cottage and the liberation of Sark.
Bob Le Sueur MBE – A truly remarkable man.

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.

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

RAF Air Raid on St Peter Port 17th January 1942

On 17th January 1942 three Bristol Beaufort Mk Is of No. 86 Squadron RAF, attacked shipping in St Peter Port, Guernsey. In the photograph above the aircraft are passing over St Julian’s Pier at its junction with White Rock Pier. Bombs can be seen falling from the aircraft in the left-hand corner, which was itself nearly hit by bombs dropped from the photographing aircraft (seen exploding at the bottom). Photograph is © IWM C 2249.

Having seen the photograph it intrigued me and I thought I would find out a bit more about the raid. I had read some mentions of it before but hadn’t really looked at it in more detail.

When it comes to air raids on the Island it is mostly the German raid immediately prior to the taking of the Islands that is written about. This is entirely understandable given the large loss of life during that German raid. A subject I will cover in another post.

Below is a Royal Navy map of the harbour to provide some context for those not familiar with it as well as a map showing the location of the Islands. On the map of the harbour the RAF aircraft approached at low level from the top right of the map.

Map of St Peter Port harbour as it was during the Second World War

The aircraft took off from RAF St Eval in Cornwall, top left of the above map, having only moved there seven days earlier. Other aircraft types did fly to the Channel Islands from St Eval during the course of the war. One of which was an Avro Anson of No. 217 Squadron which had been on a photographic mission ditched during a storm west of Guernsey on 16 October 1940. The crew of 4 came ashore in Guernsey and taken as POW’s.

These are two extracts from the 86 Squadron operations record which I tracked down in the National Archive. These give an account of the raid from an official point of view.

Extract of No. 86 Squadron Operations Record page 1

The above extract refers to “excellent photographs” of the raid being taken but despite searching all of my usual sources the one at the top of the page is the only one that I am able to trace taken by the RAF.

Extract of No. 86 Squadron Operations Record page 2

It isn’t really surprising that they received a lot of incoming fire given that the German fortifications around the harbour and out towards the south of the Island, which was their flight path away from the raid, were fairly formidable.

The gallery below this gives a flavour of what the likely armaments were but as the photographs aren’t dated not all may have been in place in 1942 it is likely that many were given the previous raids. Click on the gallery to see larger pictures of the images.

In his book “Guernsey under German rule” written immediately after the war Ralph Durand provides quite a bit of detail on the impact the raid had. He also notes that this was the first raid that the Germans had reported in the newspapers having ignored the previous twenty five raids of varying kinds in the preceding years. This was almost certainly because of the evidence that Islanders could see could not be denied.

The casualties inflicted by the raiders were, as nearly as could be ascertained, one Guernseyman, eight Germans and twenty Frenchmen killed by the bombing and some fifty Germans killed or wounded by machine-gun fire in Castle Cornet and Fort George. Among other results of the raid that both accounts minimise were three cranes wrecked, a steamer of 8,000 tons sunk at the Southern Railway’s berth on the jetty, a large munitions steamer holed in the bows, the back of a barge broken, and the sides of several other barges perforated with bomb splinters.

The Germans always endeavoured to keep us in ignorance of any damage done to them by British planes, but they could not hide from us what had been done to these vessels for the broken-backed barge was towed into the inner harbour with her fore hold flooded, the steamer that still floated was brought to Albert Dock where any passer-by could see that the hole in her bows was at least eight feet in diameter, and as for the steamer that was sunk, because only her fore part was flooded, her stem rose with each tide and could be seen at high water high above the level of the jetty.
Ralph Durand

Durand also noted that the almost identical stories in the two local papers, which were controlled by the Germans, led to another impact on Islanders views on those publications.

But it is quite inconceivable that two such journalists, after neglecting to record any of the previous raids that the RAF had made on the island, should, three days after it had happened, be inspired by this particular raid to write, spontaneously and independently, accounts of it in which the same bare facts were chosen for record, the same misstatement made, the same important details as to the damage done to the shipping ignored, the same sneer indulged in, and the same attack made on the veracity of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Such coincidences do not occur in real life. Anyone who read both accounts must have realised that they had the same source and that that source was the mind of the German Press officer.

In causing them to be published the Press officer defeated his purpose. So far from sowing in our minds doubts as to the truth of the news given us by British broadcasts he confirmed what we already knew – that the anti-British propaganda published each day in our newspapers, though often amusing, was not to be credited as true. Incidentally he reminded us that among other cherished British institutions of which German rule had deprived us was the freedom of the Press.
Ralph Durand

Another account by Ruth Ozanne provides her experience as she was close to the harbour at the time of the raid.

Extract from “*Life in Occupied Guernsey: The Diaries of Ruth Ozanne 1940-1945″*

Despite the damage that RAF raids caused to civilian properties they were pleased to see the RAF in action. This is noted in an interview with a German NCO Erwin Grubba which is in the IWM archive and can be found here . He wasn’t here in 1942 having arrived in late 1943 but recalls that locals used to “smile and give the thumbs up” if RAF aircraft appeared over the Island. Even if they were bombing the Island.

The images below show some of the damage caused by the raid to one of the ships. Unfortunately one is mostly reliant on German sources for pictures as cameras were confiscated in 1942 and anyone retaining one and using it did so at great personal risk.