Some of my family recollections on the German Nazi Occupation of my Beloved Channel Island of Guernsey

The Channel Islands were occupied by Nazi Germany for much of World War II, from 30 June 1940 until the liberation on 9 May 1945. The Bailwick of Guernsey and the Bailwick of Jersey are two British Crown dependencies in the English Channel near the coast of Normandy, France The Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be invaded and occupied by German Forces during the war.

The island of Guernsey is where I was born and lived for 43 years before moving to America to marry my American Husband 

My Grandfather, Grandmother, Mother and her siblings lived there before the war and so did my Grandmother (my Grandfather was deceased) and my Father and his Brother

These are just some of many, many German 'bunkers' that were built by prisoners throughout  the Channel Islands ..fortifications of the Germans incase of invaders ..they are still on the island today

On 15 June, after the Allied defeat in France, the British government decided that the Channel Islands were of no strategic importance and would not be defended, but did not give Germany this information. Thus despite the reluctance of Prime Minister Winston Churchill , the British government gave up the oldest possession of the Crown “without firing a single shot”. The Channel Islands served no purpose to the Germans other than the propaganda value of having occupied some British territory. The “Channel Islands had been demilitarised and declared…’an open town'


Although contingency plans had been made for evacuations of government departments in the United Kingdom, no contingencies for evacuation had been planned for the Channel Islands. The British government relaxed restrictions on travel between the UK and the Channel Islands in March 1940, enabling tourists from the UK to avail themselves of morale-boosting holidays in traditional island resorts. The realisation of the necessity of civilian evacuation came very late, and with no forward planning and secrecy being maintained, communications between the island governments and the UK took place in an atmosphere of confusion and misinterpretation. The British Government consulted the islands’ elected government representatives in order to formulate a policy regarding evacuation.

Thousands of children were evacuated with their schools to England and Scotland and a number of Guernsey headteachers re-established their schools in Britain for the duration of the war. One such school was assisted financially by the ‘Foster Parent Plan for Children Affected by War’ where each child was sponsored by a wealthy American; one girl, Paulette, was sponsored by Eleanor Roosevelt

1940: A group of girls evacuated from the Channel Islands to Marple in Cheshire try on clothes and shoes which have been donated as gifts by America.


My Mother and her siblings were evacuated ..they were allowed to take very little with them and had labels with their names on ...they mostly left with their schools not with their Mother's ..my Grandmother had to find her children, whom were in different 'foster' homes in England but finally found them all and kept them together in the same place for the rest of the war 


I remember my Mother telling me about how she had hardly ever had a Strawberry Soda as a child and her Mother bought her one to take on the boat and the people in charge made her open it up and empty it in to the gutter in the road as she may have been sea sick if she had drank it ...she never forgot that ...

I hope you have enjoyed my few recollections of what my parents told me 

I have so many to tell about my Father and Uncle's parts in the war etc ...but for today I will just leave it at this 

I don't remember my Grandmother's recollections of the evacuation of Her and my father and my Uncle's evacuation but they were older that my Mother and her siblings 

I do remember that the German's took over my Grandmother's empty house for their offices and that when she came back to Guernsey after the war there was no furniture in it 

So she and her Sister Lydia were able to go to some kind of hall or church and choose furniture for their homes of the huge collection that had occurred when the Germans took it out of houses they wished to occupy ...Both my Grandmother and her Sister ended up with much more expensive furniture than the ones they owned before the war ...I have a piece of it here in my American home 


My Grandfather (Mother's Dad) never left the Island of Guernsey he stayed behind on their farm with the animals etc to tend to ...at the end of the war the German soldiers were nearly starving to death and they caught my Grandfather's dog and ate it !!

I leave you with the photo's that still give me chills of the German Nazi's marching through the streets of my beloved Island of Guernsey in 1940 after they arrive occupying the islands for 5 years till liberation on May 9th 1945

Note the English Policeman in the foreground