Traveling Tuesday: Sark During WWII

Traveling Tuesday: Sark During WWII

The Channel Island of Sark was led by the indomitable Dame Sibyl Hathaway who after visiting St. Peter Port after the demilitarization by Britain and seeing chaos and confusion, returned home to make a speech to her people. She indicated that she would be staying during the German occupation, and indicated that those who wished could be evacuated but “those with a stake in the land should stick by it.” She went on to say, “I’m not promising you it will be easy. We may be hungry. But at least there will always be fish and rabbits.” (Afterward, she would ruefully look back on those words because fishing off the mined coast had been restricted, and the guns needed to hunt rabbits were confiscated by the Germans.)

However, many on the island thought she was a match for the Germans, and they weren’t far off.

The fifty-six-year-old woman was a descendent of one of the forty original families who arrived in

WikiImage

1565 with Helier de Carteret after he earned Queen Elizabeth I’s permission to establish a fief there. Dame Sibyl had worked in Germany and was fluent in German, and the feudal etiquette she’d been using all her life became a formidable weapon against the occupiers, most of whom were uniformed German aristocrats. They treated the islanders with respect, and the dame with reverence, reportedly kissing her hand when they approached her. The troops established themselves in the Hotel Bel Air until they managed to burn it to the ground in 1942.

As on the other islands, the German rules and regulations applied to Sark, including blackouts, curfews, opening hours of public house, fishing, etc. However, as the islanders had no motor cars, those laws were moot. Initially, there was much fraternization, and Dame Sibyl was able to get some of the mandates softened to include the ability to fish within three miles of the coast and for two boats to travel to Guernsey to sell their catches and return with fuel for the botas. Christmas Eve was celebrated together.

Soldiers regularly rotated and additional soldiers arrived bringing the total to two hundred. At one point, the new group was reportedly “full of high-handed bureaucrats” who created more restrictive rules that often made no sense, such as when they limited fishing without paying attention to tide tables, resulting in a fall in the fish catch. Eventually, the new “regime” learned to learn to advice from Dame Sibyl before issuing orders.

By 1942, visitors were no longer allowed on the island, and the only excuse for a local visit to Guernsey was toothache. With a dentist on Sark, fake toothaches became common so residents could spend a few days off the island. Radios were confiscated, and in September an order was issued to send all men of English parents to camps in Germany. Dame Sibyl took that to mean non-Sark-born people, reducing the list to only nine individuals.

Photo: Phillip Capper

A British commando raid occurred in October of that year with the objective of capturing a prisoner. They finally ended up at the Dixcart Hotel where they killed a sentry and found five sleeping German military engineers. During the attempt to take the soldiers prisoner, a struggle broke out with shouting. One of the Germans broke free and headed toward the Stock’s Hotel where other soldiers were asleep. When all was said and done the British managed to escape with one German, three of the German soldiers died, and the Sark woman who’d directed the commandos to the hotel was imprisoned for three months before being deported to Germany. The Sark commander, Oberleutnant Stefan Herdt lost his command for fraternization and failure in the raid.

February 1943 brought a section batch of deportees, a list of sixty people originally but again Dame Sibyl managed to get the group whittled down. Only twenty-five were sent away, including her American husband Robert Hathaway. Food and fuel became even more scarce. Another commando riad was made just after Christmas, but was unsuccessful.

The Guernsey Underground New Sheet (GUNS) illegally published British news. The group was caught and imprisoned where two would die before the end of the war. When Cherbourg and St. Malo fell to the Americans, the islands were cut off and both civilian and German rations were reduced. In retaliation, Dame Sibyl and a few of the islanders raided the German supply of grain and managed to cart off nearly a ton that was distributed to the Sarkees.

WikiImage

Early in 1945, Red Cross parcels arrived and were distributed among the civilians. According to one report, the Germans had less food than the islanders and were known to faint in the street. When news of the German surrender came, Dame Sibyl had the American and British flags hoisted while the Germans locked themselves in their barracks. On May 10, a group of British soldiers arrived to formally accept the German surrender, they indicated they didn’t have enough troops available to guard the prisoners, so Dame Sibyl was put in charge. One of the British officers later commented that she acted “more forceful than any army officer and more than equal to any German Kommandant.” Over the next few months, she demanded that the Germans reestablish the telephone lines, return the confiscated radios, and remove all 13,500 land mines. The prisoners also completed a variety of construction projects. They were required to repeat her commands and then reply “At your command, madam.”

As mentioned earlier in the post, the Germans had indeed met their match in Dame Sibyl Hathaway. Her husband eventually returned to the island with the other deportees, and she would hold her position until her death on July 14, 1974.

_____________

Francine’s Foibles

She's given up hope. He never had any. Will they find it together?

World War II is finally over, and America is extra grateful as the country approaches this year’s Thanksgiving. But for Francine life hasn’t changed. Despite working at Fort Meade processing the paperwork for the thousands of men who have returned home, she’s still lonely and very single. Is she destined for spinsterhood?

Grateful that his parents anglicized the family surname after emigrating to the United States after the Great War, first-generation German-American Ray Fisher has done all he can to hide his heritage. He managed to make it through this second “war to end all wars,” but what American woman would want to marry into a German family. Must he leave the country to find wedded bliss?

Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3LrRasj

Traveling Tuesday: Guernsey During WWII

Traveling Tuesday: Guernsey During WWII

Pixabay/Kaufdex

During WWII, England’s Channel Islands (located closer to France than to Britain) were occupied by German forces. Learn about the islands here: http://www.lindashentonmatchett.com/2023/10/traveling-tuesday-channel-islands.html. Each of the islands responded differently. Today’s post is about Guernsey, the second largest and westernmost of the islands, it is the furthest from the coast of Normandy and forms the major part of the Guernsey jurisdiction which includes the three other inhabited islands of Herm, Jethou, and Lihou.

When the islands were demilitarized, arrangements were made to evacuate the residents. Each bailiff reacted differently, and on Guernsey panic reigned. Unsure whether there would be enough ships, the decision was made that the children would go first. Arrangements were made with Whitehall that three ships would arrive at 6:00 AM on June 20. Hurried meetings were called at the schools where the sounds of war could be heard from France. Knowing about the bombing raids of England’s cities and towns, parents wondered if the greater danger lay in sending the children away or keeping them under German occupation. Ultimately, there were enough ships for adults to evacuate as well, and approximately half of the fifty thousand residents left.

At 69, Guernsey’s Bailiff Victor Gosselin Carey was considered too old to serve as the island executive

Photo: Public Domain

on his own. Described as pink-faced, chubby, highly strung, and absent-minded, he was an attorney when given the position upon the unexpected death of his predecessor in 1935. Gentle and kind, he was popular among the residents. Interestingly, when the Germans arrived, they went to the home of Major A.J. Sherwill rather than meeting with Carey.

By all reports, a polite exchange between the Germans and Sherwill culminated in them moving to the Royal Hotel to conduct the business of setting up the occupation. By the time Carey arrived, evidence of the occupation was apparent: scores of German soldiers driving motorcycles on the “wrong” side of the road. The hotel’s Swiss proprietor acted as interpreter while the Germans read out the list of orders and instructions that ended with the edict that the full cost of the Occupation would be borne by the island.

The front pages of special editions of the island’s newspapers, the Guernsey Evening Press and the Star, were headlined: Order of the Commandant of the German Forces in Occupation of the island of Guernsey, followed by Carey’s signed statement that “The public are notified that no resistance whatever is to be offered.” More troops arrived on Monday, and the Occupation was completed without any hostile incidents.

Photo: Public Domain

Carey’s powers were reduced and a Controlling Committee created comprised of members from the States of Guernsey and chaired by Major A.J. Sherwill who would later be imprisoned, then deported to a German labor camp for his part in the Nicolle and Symes affair, the second of a series of British Commando raids on the islands. During the Occupation, the Red Cross ship SS Vega delivered supplies and mail to the island. Residents were given work by the Germans, but many refused despite promised associated benefits. Fortifications of the island were constructed by forced labor of captured men. Tragically, the three Jews who were part of Guernsey’s population were deported to German-occupied France in April 1942 where they were given jobs and eventually rounded up and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau where they died. After the war, a British Military Intelligence report said “when the Germans proposed to put their anti-Jewish measures into force, no protest whatever was raised by any of the Guernsey officials, and they hastened to give the Germans every assistance.”

Carey was knighted in 1945, and Sherwill given the British OBE in December of that year. He was knighted in 1949 and would serve as bailiff from 1946 to 1959.

_____________

Francine’s Foibles

She's given up hope. He never had any. Will they find it together?

World War II is finally over, and America is extra grateful as the country approaches this year’s Thanksgiving. But for Francine life hasn’t changed. Despite working at Fort Meade processing the paperwork for the thousands of men who have returned home, she’s still lonely and very single. Is she destined for spinsterhood?

Grateful that his parents anglicized the family surname after emigrating to the United States after the Great War, first-generation German-American Ray Fisher has done all he can to hide his heritage. He managed to make it through this second “war to end all wars,” but what American woman would want to marry into a German family. Must he leave the country to find wedded bliss?

Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3LrRasj

Mystery Monday: Who was Jean Anouilh?

Mystery Monday: Who was Jean Anouilh?

Resistance in general comes in many forms, and certainly did so during World War II. Activities ranged from sabotage and violence to clandestine publications and coded radio programs. But not all resistance was performed by members of any sort of organization.

Such was the case of Jean Anouilh (pronounced ah-noo-eej). A playwright born in 1910 in a tiny village on the outskirts of Bordeaux, he seems to have received creativity from his mother who played violin. The family eventually moved to Paris where Jean attended Lycée Chaptal, a secondary school that taught students trades. He went to law school, but was unable to afford tuition and left after eighteen months. There followed a variety of jobs from copywriter at an advertising agency to secretary a French theatre director, Louis Jouvet.

It is unclear whether he was always interested in playwriting or the desire was sparked by his work with Jouvet. Jean managed to get two of his plays into production, but they closed after just a few performances. Undeterred, he continued to write and finally found success in 1937 with Le Voyageur sans Baggage (Traveler without Luggage). After that, every theatre season featured one of his works.

Vocally apolitical, Jean continued to live and work in Paris during the German occupation. However, because he refused to take sides, had several public disagreements with Charles de Gaulle, and was one of many who signed a petition to prevent the execution of writer Robert Brasillach, some feel (then and now) that he was a Nazi sympathizer.

Completed in 1942, Anouilh’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Antigone (pronounced Ant-ee-gōn to differentiate it from the original An-tig-on-ee), became a symbol for the underground. As one scholar put it “freedom fighters saw the heroine’s defiance as a rebel-yell to patriotism.” Others have commented that the play is purposely ambiguous about the rejection of authority by Antigone and the acceptance of it by Creon. Another claims Jean purposely adapted the play to speak out against authoritarian rule.

Whatever the truth about its inception, the Nazis saw nothing wrong with it, and while German censors regularly suppressed any new works that even hinted of anti-Fascism, Jean’s Antione slipped past as a safe retelling of this classic tale that debuted in 1944.

Five years later, it premiered at the Old Vic Theatre in London and starred Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

Talkshow Thursday: Meet Rolande Bisset

Talkshow Thursday: Meet Rolande Bisset

My next release, Love's Rescue, (anticipated date 2/14/19) is a modern retelling of the biblical story of Rahab, a prostitute who hid two Hebrew spies and diverted the attention of the authorities so the men could slip out of the city upon completion of their  reconnaissance. After lots of research, I chose the liberation of Paris during WWII as my setting to redo the story. It was a part of the war about which I knew very little. Here is Rolande to tell you what it was like to live in Paris during the dark days of German occupation:

LM: The Germans arrived in June 1940, what do you remember most about that day?

Rolande: I felt like the lights had gone out over the city. The joy was gone, overtaken by a sense of fear and foreboding. We had not believed we would be defeated, so when the government fled on the 10th, we were distraught to see German tanks rumbling down the Champs de Elysees with thousands of German troops marching behind them on the 14th. We thought we would all be killed or taken prisoner. Rumors were rampant the Germans would steal anything of value, rape the women, and kill the men. I stayed in my home with the curtains drawn, hoping to escape notice. When I went out later and saw the Nazi flag flapping in the breeze from the Eiffel Tower, my heart broke.

LM: In a show of power, the Germans implemented many laws to undermine the French culture. What were some of those laws?

Rolande: Censorship and propaganda made life difficult. We were not allowed to speak French, wear berets, fly the French flag, or sing Marseillaise, our national anthem. There was a curfew, and anyone breaking it faced stiff fines, or perhaps worse...Books and American films were banned, and the Germans changed our time zone to match that of Germany.

LM: What was it like trying to provide for yourself during the occupation?

Rolande: The occupiers took about eighty percent of food production, so finding enough to eat became a daily struggle. There was a rationing system of sorts, but it was so mismanaged the black market flourished and people became malnourished. Lots of substitutions had to be created to handle the shortage of things like gasoline and coffee. My friend started roasting chicory to replace her coffee, but I never developed a taste for it. Many vehicles were converted to run off charcoal.

LM: Your father was part of the Vichy government. How did that come about?

Rolande: My father was a wealthy and successful man long before the Germans arrived. He is cunning and has a lot of business savvy which is a lot of what helped him get ahead. But he also knows how to ingratiate himself with whomever is in power at the time, so I was not surprised that he managed to find a position within the new government

LM: Despite your father's job, you chose to join the Resistance. How did that come about, and weren't you frightened for your life?

Rolande: I could not stand by and let the occupiers win. I knew I might die, but it seemed more important to do the right thing rather than live in bondage under the Germans. There were times I was terrified. What if the circuit had been discovered? What if I had been betrayed? Those thoughts were with me every moment of every day, and more so when I was on a mission. My friend Adele was involved in the Resistance first. She knew how I felt about the Germans, and she eventually got me into the organization.

LM: A little more than four years later, Paris was liberated. What was that day like?

Rolande: It was very scary, but also exciting. The FFI had staged an uprising, so there was a battle in the streets. Barricades and trenches were created, and hundreds of people had guns. I was frightened to think I had survived the occupation only to be killed in the fire fight to liberate the city. After the surrender, people were dancing in the street, singing, and drinking. They were hugging the Allied troops who had come to save us.


About the book: 

Cover revealed in January!

A prostitute, a spy, and the liberation of Paris.

Sold by her parents to settle a debt, Rolande Bisset is forced into prostitution. Years later, shunned by her family and most of society, it’s the only way she knows how to subsist. When the Germans overrun Paris, she decides she’s had enough of evil men controlling her life and uses her wiles to obtain information for the Allied forces. Branded a collaborator, her life hangs in the balance. Then a British spy stumbles onto her doorstep. Is redemption within her grasp?

Simon Harlow is one of an elite corps of American soldiers. Regularly chosen for dangerous covert missions, he is tasked with infiltrating Paris to ascertain the Axis’s defenses. Nearly caught by German forces moments after arriving, he owes his life to the beautiful prostitute who claims she’s been waiting for the Allies to arrive. Her lifestyle goes against everything he believes in, but will she steal his heart during his quest to liberate her city?

Inspired by the biblical story of Rahab, Love’s Rescue is a tale of faith and hope during one of history’s darkest periods.

Available February 14, 2019

Talkshow Thursday: Lights out!

While searching for WWII events to blog about, I stumbled onto an unfamiliar factoid: On October 9, 1944 Germans forces occupying the Netherlands turned off the electricity in Amsterdam.

Why did the Germans do this? Despite the questions that filled my mind, I found little additional information. Had the Dutch been caught performing some act of resistance that angered their occupiers, or was it simply another mechanism to bring more suffering to a country the Germans sought to dominate? The Nazis had already cut off food and fuel shipments from rural areas. Reports indicate the winter of 1944-45 came early and was exceptionally harsh. The canals froze over, preventing barges from getting through. A famine set in. Soup kitchens were set up, and Operation Manna and Chowhound alleviated some of the shortages, but thousands died of hunger.

As I write this, I’m sitting in a darkened room in our small, rented cabin by the Pemigewasett River. It’s early, and the sun hasn’t risen, but the glow of my computer screen illuminates my workspace. Two digital readouts and several LEDs gleam in the darkness from various pieces of electronic equipment.

It’s a cold morning-well below freezing, but I am toasty-warm thanks to the propane stove (that probably has an electric ignitor). I’m in the woods, but still have heat, electricity and internet service.  

I don’t know about you, but I take electricity for granted until there is an outage. Even then I am rarely inconvenienced because we have a large gas-powered generator and two small battery generators.

What about you? Have you ever experienced a long-term loss of power? What was it like?

Traveling Tuesdays: The German Occupation of British Soil

Did you know that the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey were occupied by the Germans during WWII? Between June 1940 and VE Day, more than 40,000 German troops were in residence of these two British territories. (The island of Alderney had been vacated days before the arrival of the Germans.)

Shortly after the Allied defeat in France, England decided to forego a military presence on the islands because of their lack of strategic importance. With the exception of propaganda purposes the Germans didn’t need them either. It was a morale booster for Germany to boast the occupation of British land.

Prior to the invasion, the British government made boats available to the residents of the islands in order to evacuate those who wished to leave. Over forty percent of the population of Guernsey took advantage of the opportunity vacate, however, less than fifteen percent of the residents of Jersey evacuated.

There are many reports of incidents of resistance against the Germans on both islands. After radios were confiscated in 1942, Frank Falla created a clandestine newspaper, an act for which he was deported to a prison in Frankfort. Officials of the Parish of Saint Helier provided ration cards and identity cards for fugitives. A study by Dr Gilly Carr has found examples of small radio sets that were concealed in books, biscuit tins and even light switches. Other resistance was symbolic such as the woman who stitched a dedication to George "V" (for victory) into her tablecloth, her German occupiers apparently oblivious to the fact that George VI was on the throne at the time.

There were just as many stories of collaboration with the Germans. Some of the prisoners joined the British Freikorp (a division of the Waffen SS formed by POWs), and there were dozens of babies born of relationships between island women and German troops. According to papers released in 1992, there is also evidence proving that individuals in the government collaborated with their captors.

Seventy five years later, it’s easy to cast aspersions on people and the decisions they made during a situation about which we know very little. I’d like to believe I would have resisted, or at the very least simply minded my own business and live day to day. Would I have collaborated if it meant saving the lives of friends and family? Hard to say.

What would you have done?