Channel Is W.W.II occupation museum

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 6

Channel Is W.W.II occupation museum

NZPA-APSt Peter Port, Guernsey

In the shadow of occupied France, the Channel Elands were the only British territories to be held by the Germans during World War n.

Most residents of this tiny channel island just off France’s northern coast do not like to discuss the hardships they suffered under five years of Nazi rule which ended on May 9,1945 — the day after V-E Day and the liberation of neighbouring Jersey. One man, however, born in Guernsey in 1945 just as British troops prepared to land, wants his countrymen and the world to remember. Richard Heaume has devoted his life to collecting memorabilia that document the German Army’s painful presence on Guernsey from June, 1940, to May, 1945. Convinced of the public’s need to know, Mr Heaume, aged 40, took an eighteenth century workman’s cottage owned by his family and turned the fruits of his “obsession” into the German occupation museum, one of the island’s most popular tourist sites.

On the fertile farmland where the Heaume family has grazed Guernsey cows for generations, the museum draws some 35,000 visitors yearly. “Our land was close to the airport, and so they dug trenches and put mines all round this very cottage,” said the farmer-curator during a recent interview. “The soldiers were friendly and would give my brother candy. They were human, just like us.” Gandy was an unheard-of treat in days when civilians

were on a weekly ration of one pound of potatoes, two ounces of butter, and a quart of milk. Meat was rare, and islanders risked death when they combed the mined beaches for seaweed and shellfish. Farmers were jailed and fined if caught slaughtering their own livestock, chopping down their trees for firewood for cooking or heating, or threshing their own wheat.

Deportation was a constant threat. Gestapo agents stood in food lines eavesdropping on Guernseymen, and they searched homes at random for hidden food supplies or signs of communication with Britain.

Bicycles and automobiles were confiscated and medical supplies ran dangerously low. As on the nearby island of Jersey, tuberculosis, not previously widespread, became common, as did serious stomach ailments caused by lack of food and recourse to unsuitable food substitutes.

The occupation began on June 30,1940, when German troops landed on the undefended island. An air raid followed, wounding more than a dozen civilians and setting off panic. Though many Guernsey residents had already fled to England, most stayed, never dreaming the war would last so long. In September, 1942, Hitler ordered all islanders not born in Guernsey to be interned in Germany. Except for about a dozen Jews believed to have died in the gas chambers, most deportees returned to Guernsey after the war.

Mr Heaume has been a war buff since he was a child.

“Other kids would play ball, but I would spend my time crawling through the ! bunkers,” he said, referring J to giant concrete block- » houses still rising out of the 4 cliffs. i

His obssession could have ** cost him his life. Besides £ discarded uniforms and cooking utensils, he found live shells left behind when g the Germans surrendered. The museum — filled with weapons, uniforms, a horse-drawn ambulance, Red Cross life-saving food packages, newspapers, maps, and photographs — faithfully reproduces scenes from the everyday life of both German conscripts and ordinary Guernsey families.

One room reconstitutes a bunker, while another shows a family gathered in their kitchen listening to a forbidden 8.8. C. radio broadcast on their home-made radio set, hidden in an egg basket. Because of sabotage, all radios were confiscated in 1940, but islanders risked their lives to build their own.

Also on display are samples of occupation substitute foods including jam made from bitter roots, potato flour, and the mud mixture that, replaced soap when it ran but.

Mr Heaume says he does not want the museum to condemn the German Army, nor reopen wounds that have taken 40 years to heal. Many islanders have given goods to the museum, but Mr Heaume says he would like to hear from former German soldiers.

“I think that the ordinary soldier on duty in Guernsey suffered as much as we did,” he said.