Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Occupation
Trail
CONTENTS
P2 introduction
P3 map - section 1
P4 map - section 2
P5 map - section 3
P6 map - section 4
P7 St helier map
P9 map directions
Introduction
The Island of Jersey today bears many scars from Germany’s Section 1 (page 3)
five-year military occupation of the Channel Islands during Section 2 (page 4)
World War II. Hitler demanded the Islands be turned into
‘impregnable fortresses’, resulting in the allocation of 20% of
material from the Atlantikwall (Atlantic Wall) project, a line
of massive defence works which stretched from the Baltic
to the Spanish frontier. German forces and slave labourers
constructed an inordinate amount of tunnels, concrete
bunkers and fortifications - out of all proportion to the Islands’
strategic value. Their remains represent a remarkable window
to a period almost unimaginable in the present day.
P2 INTRODUCTION
19 MP3 naval artillery direction
and range-finding tower, Rouge Nez
The third of 3 direction and range-finding towers built on the Jersey coast,
out of a planned total of nine. MP3 mounted a huge radar aerial of the Freya
type on its roof. Stand in front of the tower and look over the brink of the 21 Case mates, Gr
cliff, and at low tide you can spot a jumble of metal – the remnants of the big Sheltered between its headland
guns dumped over the cliff and into the sea after the war. Several were later the most popular north coast b
retrieved and are now on display – for example, at Moltke Battery (No 18). It was the presence of those he
Germans to fortify the beach a
‘Strongpoint Grève de Lecq’ h
concrete casemate for a 7.5cm
Romany Café, while around the
anti-tank casemate for a 10.5c
18 Moltke Battery, Les Landes gear turns out on close inspec
This German army battery was installed on the Les Landes heath a double duty as a reinforced sh
in the spring of 1941. Its four 15.5cm guns, captured French 20 Reinforced F ield Position and
artillery pieces, commanded the sea approaches to St Ouen’s
Bay. They were all dumped over the cliffs at Rouge Nez after
searchlight shelter, Plémont Bay
the war. The gun that points out to sea from its emplacement The 19th-century guardhouse, built to combat invasion by the
today is one of the originals, raised from the ‘elephant’s French, was adapted into a Reinforced Field Position covering
graveyard’ in the 1990s, along with other salvaged coastal the craggy promontory of La Tête de Plémont and the bays
artillery pieces, also on display nearby. Moltke Battery’s labyrinth on either side. Twin machine guns and mortar emplacement
of underground bunkers have been dug out and restored by were backed by searchlights. An observation post occupied
the Channel Islands Occupation Society. Walking across the the tower at the cliff edge, while down below a Napoleonic
flowering heath with lark song overhead is a strange and barracks was taken over, providing cover with a searchlight.
poignant experience. The shelter tunnel still carries its steel rails. The metal rim
of a 3.7cm tank turret, captured from the French army and
1 7 ‘Strongpoint’ L’ Etacquerel mounted here, stands beyond at the edge of the cliff.
Strongpoint L’Étacquerel was established as part of the series
of works built by the Todt Organisation using slave and forced 20
labour that would have defended St Ouen’s Bay in the event of
an Allied invasion. A massive concrete bunker now in use as a
fish market sits on a promontory of rock overlooking Le Pulec 19
Bay (known locally as ‘Stinky bay’). In the cliff face behind
you’ll find a concrete casemate that held a 10.5cm coastal 18 21
gun. A system of tunnels connected this bunker and others in
the cliffs with a searchlight shelter on the clifftop above.
17
15 10.5 cm coastal gun casemate and Channel
Islands Military Museum, near Lewis’s Tower 15
16 Anti-tank wall in several sections, St Ouen’s Bay Like the neighbouring casemate at Kempt Tower and many others round the
Coastal Panzermauern or anti-tank walls were installed where defensively weak coasts of Jersey, Resistance Nest Lewis Tower housed a captured 10.5 cm 16 13
points had been identified. In the case of the west coast of Jersey there were some French field gun, which was sited to fire sideways across the beach and provide
5 miles of open beach backed by dunes and farmland to defend, and here the forced flanking fire against Allied troops attacking from landing craft. The bunker now 14
and slave workers built five distinct sections of Panzermauern, PzM 1 – PzM 5. These houses the Channel Islands Military Museum, an excellent display of artefacts,
walls are now over 60 years old, and have been patched and renewed throughout; photographs and personal reminiscences, forming a powerful picture of life
but you can spot plenty of original sections with sloping face and outcurving top under the German Occupation – often staffed by islanders with first-hand 12 11
whose wartime concrete with its steel core still resists wind and weather. experience of the Occupation. 10
P3 MAP - section 1
10 Jersey War Tu nnels, St Lawrence
Jersey’s chief wartime tourist attraction comprises a really first class museum of the
German Occupation, housed in a complex of tunnels – Höhlgangsanlage 8 – near the centre
of the island. These purpose-built tunnels, dug by forced and slave labourers from late
1941 onwards, were initially intended to act as a bombproof munitions barracks, but were
converted later in the war into a vast subterranean casualty receiving station in anticipation
of an Allied invasion. The original operating theatre, store rooms, boiler room and telephone
exchange are on display, but most of the rooms now house exhibitions on successive stages
and themes of the war – the slide to conflict, the arrival of the Germans, life in Jersey
ase mates, Gr vé de Lecq under Occupation, and the liberation of the Channel Islands on 9 May 1945. In among
the privation-generated recipes for home-made toothpaste (crushed cuttlefish and ivy),
ed between its headlands, Grève de Lecq is one of coffee (grated and roasted parsnip), tobacco (dock leaves and rose petals) and Occupation
st popular north coast bathing beaches in Jersey. loaf (predominantly grated potato ‘flour’), the museum does not flinch from the seamier
he presence of those headlands that enabled the and more questionable facet of Occupation. Jealous or spiteful neighbours denouncing each
s to fortify the beach against attack by creating other, poison pen notes, local girls ‘fraternising’ with the invaders, and the sad story of island
oint Grève de Lecq’ here. A solid reinforced
e casemate for a 7.5cm anti-tank stands near the
13 St Ou en’s Windmill, Gra ntez deportees who were swallowed up in Hitler’s terrible prisons and camps on mainland Europe.
Personal testimonies, a huge collection of contemporary photos and artefacts all help bring
Café, while around the bay you can see another The former windmill known as Moulin de la Campagne, the ‘mill in the
the extraordinary and lastingly traumatic story to life.
k casemate for a 10.5cm gun. A store for fishing country’, looks out over the broad lowlands and sandy littoral of St Ouen’s
rns out on close inspection to have performed Bay. It forms a classic lookout spot – and so thought the Germans when
e duty as a reinforced shelter for a searchlight. they established a howitzer battery, Batterie Ludendorff, immediately to
the east. Brought into service as an observation post for the battery,
the granite-built mill was armoured against attack, its upper half
was pierced with rectangular slit windows, and it was fitted with a
tall concrete cap whose slitted gallery gave a 360° field of vision.
P5 MAP - section 3
2 5
24 Jersey Turbot bunker’, St Catherine
The east coast stronghold known to the Germans as ‘Resistance
Nest Mole Verclut’ lies against the landward end of the
breakwater at the north end of St Catherine’s Bay – another
potential landing place for an Allied raid on Occupied Jersey.
1 St Helier This casemate was fitted with a captured 10.5cm French
See page 6 field gun, similar to others in Jersey (see 14, 15 and 17), but
adapted to fit against the cliff, with a rock tunnel connecting
the ‘business end’ of the casemate with the interior bunker.
2 Hear local fisherman has established Jersey Turbot, rearing
turbot in tanks inside the bunker tunnel system. Guided tours
of the bunker and tunnels are available to visitors on request.
1 St Helier
St Helier, capital town of Jersey, was naturally a focus
of activity during the Second World War, with many
Occupation sites and memorials to be discovered.
Here is a selection:
P7 st helier MAP
ST Helier map
The Occupation Tapestry, a work of art that echoes the Bayeux Tapestry
to me and the other slave workers Several of the paving stones along the city centre thoroughfares of York
Street and Charing Cross are inscribed with quotes from eyewitnesses to
(Battle of Hastings) and the Overlord Embroidery (D-Day landings), is a by the people of Jersey.’ the German Occupation (reproduced around the rim of this map). They range
wonderful achievement. Its twelve panels took 4 years of painstaking John Dalmau, Spanish forced labourer from islanders to prisoners-of-war and slave labourers, and together make
crafting, each panel created by volunteer needleworkers from one of a powerful and memorable statement about the resilience and generosity
Jersey’s 12 parishes to depict the story of the Occupation. Panel 1 (Trinity of the human spirit in times of desperation.
Parish) shows the build-up to the outbreak of war, Panel 2 (Grouville)
German troops marching through St Helier on 1 July 1940, Panel 3
(St Helier) a clandestine session with a crystal set and the BBC, Panel 4 G Freedom Tree, St Helier Waterfront
(St Peter) some wartime transport – a gas-powered van, a baker’s ‘I thought that if I was going to be
horse and cart. Panel 5 (St Saviour) demonstrates the shifts the killed, I would rather be killed for Behind the SAS Radisson Hotel near the Elizabeth Marina
Islanders were put to – queueing, patching clothes, hiding a pig from
the German farm inspector; Panel 6 (St Lawrence) shows Jersey
a sheep than a lamb.’ On 9 May 2005, the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the Channel
Islands, HRH Queen Elizabeth II unveiled Richard Perry’s striking Freedom
schoolchildren learning German and riding on a German army lorry, Albert Bedine, Islander, recognised by Israel Tree sculpture. The bronze tree stands 20 feet tall and carries 30 oak
Panel 7 (St Ouen) Nazi propaganda films at the cinema, and Panel 8 as ‘Righteous Among Nations’ for saving the life leaves and twelve acorns – one for each of the parishes of Jersey. It stands
(St Brelade) two sides of the coin – collaborators, and also loyal Islanders of a Jewish woman in a granite-paved public space named La Pièche de L’Av’nîn, the Place of
daubing road signs with ‘V for Victory’. Panel 9 (St Mary) depicts
the Future. This name, and the symbolism of the tree as an emblem of
concentration camp prisoners and deportees, Panel 10 (St John) the
fresh growth and continuity, point Jersey away from the past while still
Normandy horizon in flames on D-Day, Panel 11 (St Martin) the starving
acknowledging its power and presence.
Germans watching Islanders unloading Red Cross parcels from SS Vega
(see ‘A’, above), and the final panel (St Brelade) shows the liberation
of Jersey on 9 May 1945.
The Occupation Tapestry was unveiled by the Prince of Wales on Liberation
Day, 9 May 1995, the 50th anniversary of the Island’s liberation.
D Pomme D’Or Hotel, Liberation Square ‘There was no discussion about whether to help
C Monu ment to Freedom, Liberation Square 0870 486 7462 www.pommedorhotel.com the escaped labourers or not. They just
The Pomme D’Or Hotel stands along the north side of Liberation Square. couldn’t help themselves.’
Known as the Liberation Sculpture, this very fine monument to freedom One of Jersey’s best-known hotels, when the Germans occupied the island
caused huge controversy in the island. The original design of the sculptor, in July 1940 it was commandeered and used from then on as the German Stella Perkins, Islander and Occupation veteran,
Philip Jackson FRSS – seven islanders waving a UK flag - was altered by the Naval Headquarters in the Channel Islands. One of the best-known series recognised by Russia for assisting slave workers
Occupation and Liberation Committee of the States of Jersey to show a of wartime photographs, on display inside the hotel, shows the scenes at
group of doves being released as a symbol of peace. This drew the cynical the Pomme D’Or on 9 May 1945. A huge crowd packed the square in front
observation that far from releasing the doves, islanders suffering wartime of the hotel to hear speeches from local dignitaries and British officers
deprivations would have had them for dinner. When unveiled by the Prince gathered on the balcony, and to see the German swastika flag pulled down
of Wales on 9 May 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the and replaced by a Union Jack. ‘I have to do something for
Channel Islands, the sculpture had had its flag reinstated, and one of figures
had become a British soldier. But are the Islanders joyously unfurling the
another woman’s son.’
flag, or clinging onto it, or throwing it away? E Victory ‘V’, Royal Square Louisa Gould, Islander, who perished at Ravensbruck having
been denounced for hiding an escaped slave worker
Hidden among the paving stones of Royal Square – look carefully!
Penalties for defying the Occupation forces or engaging in acts of
subversion were severe. The Jersey islanders, nevertheless, found many
‘There was no discussion about whether to help individual ways of expressing their recalcitrance. A careful inspection
the escaped labourers or not. They just of the paving stones in Royal Square reveals the shape of a large ‘V
couldn’t help themselves.’ for Victory’. It was laid there during the latter stages of the war by ‘All we could think of was that every
St Helier stonemason Joseph Marie Le Guyader under cover of repair work
Stella Perkins, Islander and Occupation veteran, he was carrying out to the pavement of the square – a witty, cheeky
day we were alive was a bonus.’
recognised by Russia for assisting slave workers raspberry blown at the invaders, right under the heels of their jackboots. Vincente Gasulla Sole, Spanish forced labourer
2 Fortifications at Eliza beth Castle, 10 Jersey War Tu nnels, St Lawrence 19 MP3 tower, Rouge Nez
St Au bin’s Bay At Les Charrières Malorey in St Lawrence parish; follow the signs Directions: see No. 18
Access at low tide on foot along the causeway from West Park from A11 at Tesson Mill in St Peter’s Valley. Opening times and details
slipway or by ferry 01534 638888 01534 860808 www.jerseywartunnels.com 20 Reinforced F ield Position a nd searchlight
11 K ernwerk Battle HQ, L’Aleval shelter, Plémont Bay
3 Anti-ta nk gu n case mate, Millbrook, Off B55 at Plémont Bay; parking place just beyond the holiday
St Lawrence Around the premises of the Living Legend visitor attraction camp at the end of C105 road
at Le Grand Aleval, at junction of C124 and C112 just north
Off Victoria Avenue, the St Aubin’s Bay coast road, near the east of Le Coin Varin.
end of Coronation Park. Opening times: see www.ciosjersey.org.uk 21 Case mates, Gr ve de Lecq
4 Gu nsite Café, Beau mont 12 Heavy machine-gu n turret bu nker, B40 (‘Le Mont de Sainte Marie’) and B65 (‘Le Mont de la Grève
de Lecq’) converge on Grève de Lecq beach
Val de la Mare, St Ouen
Gunsite slipway on St Aubin’s Bay, on La Route de la Haule in
St Lawrence. Café 01534 735806 Opposite Sunset Nurseries and Tropical Bird Garden, on La Rue du 22 La Cr te fort, Bonne Nuit Bay
Moulin behind St Ouen’s Bay.Opening times: see www.ciosjersey.org.uk
B63 (off A8/A9) leads to a car park at its junction with Le Rue
5 Anti-ta nk wall, Beau mont 13 St Ouen’s Windmill, Gra ntez des Platons; from here footpaths lead down to the shore and
Near La Haule slipway on St Aubin’s Bay, halfway between the La Crête Fort. You can hire the fort as a self-catering property
Gunsite Café and St Aubin’s Harbour Off Rue du Couvent, a narrow lane connecting C106 from Jersey Heritage Trust www.jerseyheritagetrust.org
(Le Mont Rossignol) and B64 (La Route du Marais)
P9 MAP directions