WWII

Islanders in Kitbags

29th November 2023

'Dedicated to more than 230 Guernsey sailors, soldiers and airmen who made the supreme sacrifice during the Second World War.' A list of the Guernsey servicemen and women whose biographies and accounts of their wartime experiences, often accompanied by photographs, are covered in this book by Richard Allisette, published by the Guernsey Press in 1985. There are copies in the Priaulx Library.

Laufen

17th November 2015

Group of Channel Islands internees at Ilag VII, Laufen, Bavaria, Summer 1944.

The Children's Home during the Occupation

17th November 2015

From the Guernsey Evening Press, October 19, 1945. 'Exiled children made a mansion their home.' The evacuation of the children to Bury and the fate of the Home itself under occupation.

Prospectors marooned, November 1947

Henry Hudson from Priaulx Library Collection

'Aircraft wreckage used for fire to keep out cold.' From the Star.

Don't kid yourself: mines, shells, bombs, November 1947

'Mines, shells, bombs, flung from dump: work of hooligans.' From the Star.

Herm is blown up by a mine, 4 January 1952

In view of the recent spectacular controlled detonation of a WWII bomb off Guernsey, here is a rather less controlled episode from 1952, in which the 28 inhabitants of Herm were incredibly lucky to escape injury or worse. 'Will you tell your husband when you go ashore that there is a mine somewhere off the Herm coast. Tell him to try and get a rope round it and pull it in; it will be quite harmless. It's been in the sea since the war and the firing mechanism will be rusted up.' Insurance did not cover damage by rogue mine, but the States stepped in to do the repairs, which were considerable.

4 July 1944: Von Euch, fuer Euch, Kameraden!

Warning Fermain Bay Carel Toms Collection Priaulx Library

Guernsey, a poem by Oberleutnant Burkert. From Deutsche Guernsey Zeitung, the newspaper of the occupying forces. The photographs above and below from the Library Collection show mine warnings at Fermain Bay and anti-landing defences at Saints Bay.

War Pictorial News, July 9, 1945; Die Deutsche Wochenschau, August 1, 1940

War Pictorial News, which ran from 1940-46, was produced by the Ministry of Information in Cairo, for distribution to allied troops in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

May 1945 - The last days : extracts from the Reverend Ord's Occupation Diary

The Library is very pleased to hold a copy of this precious record of the Island's most difficult time. At the end of the Diary the Reverend Ord muses on the nature of the relationship of the Islanders with their German occupiers and thanks God for His mercy.

The Harvey Family

Newlands, the Harvey house, from the Priaulx Library Collection

Throughout the occupation of Guernsey (1940-45) Winifred Harvey (1888-1976) kept a diary, which has been edited and published under the title The Battle of Newlands, and which is still in print. In keeping her diary, she followed a family tradition; the Harveys have left behind them comprehensive records from the middle of the 19th century, so detailed that their lives could virtually be reconstructed from them, and much of that material is here at the Library. Their house, Newlands, is illustrated in the photograph above, from the Library Collection.

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