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Contents
Chapter 1 Early One Morning in July 1943
Chapter 2 ‘So Modest an Operation’
Chapter 3 Europe First
Chapter 4 Back to Washington
Chapter 5 Moscow
Chapter 6 Dieppe
Chapter 7 Husky
Chapter 8 ‘The Best Air Raid Shelter’
Chapter 9 Operation Constellation: The Retaking of the Channel Islands
Chapter 10 Operation Concertina: The Re-occupation of Alderney
Chapter 11 Operation Coverlet: The Re-occupation of Guernsey
Chapter 12 Coverlet – The Plan of Attack on Guernsey
Chapter 13 Operation Condor: The Re-Occupation of Jersey
Chapter 14 Condor – The Plan of Attack on Jersey
Chapter 15 Constelation Cancelled
Epilogue: The German Defences of the Channel Islands Today
Notes
Source Information
Chapter 1
Early One Morning in July 1943
Peter Gleeson stood waiting for his old dog Rosy to finish sniffing round the garden. It was almost three miserable years since he had been able to take her for a walk. The Germans had imposed a strict night-time curfew and only those with legitimate reasons for being abroad during the hours of darkness were permitted beyond their homes. Walking the dog was not one of them.
The situation had got worse since the British troops had retaken Alderney. What had been called a ‘model’ occupation had turned quite nasty. The Germans were clearly on edge and were reacting badly. But, in truth, they had little to worry about – for now anyway. It was one thing for the Brits to assault Alderney, but quite another for them to attack Guernsey or Jersey.
Almost all the inhabitants had evacuated Alderney before the Germans had invaded and only a handful had stubbornly remained. There had been rumours of terrible things on Alderney; of ill-treatment, or worse; of Russian prisoners used as slave labour overheard from half-drunk Germans talking too loudly and saying too much. It was said that no prisoner ever left Alderney – dead or alive.
It was a secret island, where the Germans could do, and did, whatever they wanted. The massive bombardment of Alderney, as well as destroying the German fortifications, must have done considerable damage to the islanders’ houses and property and, as Peter looked back at his lovely old cottage, he felt for those who would return after the war to find their homes in ruin. Yet there had been scarcely 1,500 people on the island before the evacuation. Their loss was not a major one amid such a catastrophic war, and its
recapture ended whatever atrocities may have been committed there.
Such a thing could not happen here, Peter reflected. There were some 25,000 islanders still left on Guernsey and 40,000 on Jersey. If the British attacked, it would be carnage. No, it could never happen here on this peaceful, if oppressed, island.
As Peter waited patiently for Rosy to finish her morning toilet – there was little else to do these days, after all – he thought he heard the sound of aero engines. Looking up he saw a feint glow to the north, the high clouds reflecting light from below, from Alderney.
Rosy poked her head out of the bush she had been investigating. The sound of the aircraft grew increasingly louder, alarmingly louder. Suddenly, he was momentarily blinded as the searchlight at the entrance to L’Ancresse Bay switched on as, one by one, were others across the island. The sky seemed lit from horizon to horizon and moments later the German guns opened fire from all around. Never had he heard such a din.
Rosy had long bolted back inside while Peter’s neighbours, John and Margaret, had rushed out into their rear garden. He could see them shouting and pointing but could not hear their voices over the chattering of the antiaircraft guns. Then it began. Explosion after explosion shook the ground. The thudding detonations and the dazzling lights overwhelmed Peter’s senses, and the air was sucked from his lungs as he convulsed uncontrollably. This cannot be happening. This cannot be happening. The British are bombing their own people!
Another explosion lifted Peter into the air, flinging him into his southfacing flowerbed. Temporarily oblivious to the detonations around him, he laid there baffled, hurt, and confused. Later, Peter would later say that he had no idea how long he had remained stretched out among the marigolds and delphiniums. But he vividly recalled, as the sky began to lighten, seeing the confused mass of round white dots swirling above him.
Peter stared as German machine-guns opened fire on the paratroopers swinging helplessly below their canopies, arms flailing as their bodies shook with the impact of the German bullets. It was horrifying to watch, but he could not turn his eyes away. For the islanders the deployment of paratroopers was, if anything, far more frightening than the bombing, because
it was evident that the RAF had not made a mistake – the Channel Islands were coming under a full-scale assault and the horror, death and destruction which had passed them by was now upon them.
The noise of battle, as more aircraft – Spitfire fighter-bombers and twinengine Mosquitos – swept low over the island to attack the German howitzer batteries at Les Effards, was sickeningly disorientating. As Peter slowly regained his senses, his thoughts went first to his daughter, as any father’s would. Susan lived just down Rocque Balan Lane. He had to see if she was alright.
Wobbling uncertainly, Peter picked his way past the glass that had been blown from his and next-door’s windows and out onto Les Clotures Road. Gunfire thudded against his eardrums, but it seemed largely to be behind him, as if a battle had begun on L’Ancresse Common. But just as he turned down Rocque Balan Lane, Peter stopped. His daughter’s house appeared as if it had been sliced in two. The easterly side of the old building stood, seemingly at a distance, unscathed. The western part had been cut down, only part of the bedroom floor protruding, defying gravity.
Similar sights were seen throughout Guernsey. It seemed that every part of the island had been struck. Huge bomb craters scarred the fields, rubble blocked the roads and bodies lay amid the ruins of houses. It was utterly incomprehensible. When the Germans approached the French coast in 1940, Britain had turned its back on the Channel Islands, abandoning them to whatever fate Hitler had in store. The reasoning, which Winston Churchill had finally had to accept, was that the only way to save the Channel Islands from becoming a battleground was by leaving them undefended and allowing the Germans to occupy the islands unopposed. As a result, for three years the islanders had endured the deadening and arbitrary impositions of the occupying forces; and, if all that was not enough, the British were now bombing them out of their homes, for the scenes across Guernsey were repeated on Jersey. What on earth had possessed the decision-makers in Whitehall to commit this outrage?
None of the above occurred, of course. When the Channel Islands were liberated and the German garrison surrendered at the end of the war, it was a
peaceful, if tense, affair, and no blood was shed. But the fact that British and American military and political leaders seriously considered a massive assault upon the Channel Islands is no fiction. All it would have needed at the time was the nod of approval from Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Winston Churchill, and the attack would have been carried out, as everything had been carefully analysed and planned.
This book explains how sane, rational men, under pressure to achieve positive results, came to see the killing of British people and the destruction of their homes as acceptable collateral damage merely to strike an indeterminate, ill-defined, blow against Germany.
This is the convoluted – and admittedly protracted – story of what so nearly became one of the most controversial actions of the Second World War.
Chapter 2
‘So
Modest an Operation’
On 4 June 1940, as the last of the troops rescued from Dunkirk were disembarking at Dover after being chased out of France and Belgium by Hitler’s blitzkrieg, Britain’s new prime minister, Winston Churchill, delivered what was probably his most famous speech. He told his people the enemy would be fought on the beaches and the landing grounds, in the fields, the hills and the streets. What he also said, perhaps more significantly, was ‘we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength’. According to Churchill’s history of the Second World War, to emphasise the point he had made in his speech, that same day he dictated a note to his military secretary, General ‘Pug’ Ismay:
The completely defensive habit of mind which has ruined the French must not be allowed to ruin all our initiative. It is of the highest consequence to keep the largest numbers of German forces all along the coasts of the countries they have conquered, and we should immediately set to work to organise raiding forces on these coasts where the populations are friendly. Such forces might be composed of self-contained, thoroughly equipped units of say one thousand up to not more than ten thousand when combined. Surprise would be ensured by the fact that the destinations would be concealed until the last moment.1
With that simple memorandum the concept of what would eventually be known as the Commandos was conceived and, with it, Combined Operations, the body that produced a plan to attack the Channel Islands in 1943.
