Guernsey resistance to German occupation 'not recognised'
Sharing news today is so simple, a tweet can be seen by millions - but under the Nazi occupation of Guernsey spreading news could lead to deportation and prison.
Now 70 years on, campaigners are calling for those islanders who defied Hitler's orders in this and other ways, to be properly recognised. German armed forces ruled the Channel Islands from June 1940 until May 1945. They imposed a curfew, made everyone carry identity cards, banned the sale of spirits and later banned radios. Islanders broke all the rules, but it was for continuing to listen to his radio that saw one man deported never to be seen again. Joseph Gillingham was one of a number of islanders involved in the Guernsey Underground News Service (Guns). It was a loose collection of people who secretly listened to the BBC News, on home-built or radios they had not handed in, wrote the news down and shared it with other islanders. Often the news would contradict that put out through the Guernsey Evening Press and The Star, which were only allowed to carry war news provided and approved by the German authorities. Occupation of the Channel Islands Mr Gillingham was one of five Guns members who were caught, deported and imprisoned for wireless offences and secretly spreading news. He was deported on 4 June 1944 - just two days before D-Day - and served 10 months in Naumberg prison, south of Leipzig, Germany. On his release date on 2 February 1945, he was allowed to say goodbye to his brother-in-law Ernie Legg, but was not seen again. Searches were unsuccessful and he was officially declared dead in 1947. His family has resisted island authorities and long campaigned for a memorial for him and those like him who resisted the German occupation. Jean Harris, who was five months old when her father Mr Gillingham was deported, said it was important they were remembered even if many of those who would have "really appreciated it" such as her mother were no longer alive. His wife Henrietta had been a part of Guns, but her part was kept secret by her husband and brother so she and her daughter would be safe. They first pushed for a memorial to be erected in 1947. "We've been waiting for 70 years for something to happen, but we're hoping this memorial will go up on the wall and I shall feel very proud and honoured," Mrs Harris said. Her husband Allan is spearheading a campaign to raise about £2,000 for a pink granite memorial to be sited at the White Rock, St Peter Port, alongside other memorials related to World War Two. The resisters who died Tom Remfrey, chairman of the Guernsey Deportees Association, said no one who had resisted the German occupation was put forward for an award after the war. He said many islanders were outraged at the decision, which the authorities said was because resistance was against the spirit of the Hague Convention, which along with the Geneva Convention set out laws of war and war crimes in international war. Mr Remfrey described this as "absolute rubbish" and said Guernsey needed to follow Jersey's lead in marking the impact of the occupation. On Holocaust Day - 27 January - the names of all those from Jersey who died as a "direct cause or result" of the occupation were read out and the event was "properly and honourably attended", he said. Dr Gilly Carr, from Cambridge University, who studied resistance in the islands and said it was a subject that divided Guernsey, but she felt those who had committed acts of resistance should be acknowledged as heroes of the occupation. She said: "The authorities were very worried the Germans would have taken reprisals on the entire community so because this was a very strong line from the island's leaders [not to resist]. "[After the war] it was very hard for people to say actually the resistors did the right thing. "They were disobeying orders and some people thought they really could have got everyone else into a lot of trouble. "[But] it's important to acknowledge those who did resist as many of them suffered in German concentration camps and Nazi prisons on the continent." Most deportees are already remembered on a plaque near to the proposed site of the memorial, commemorating the 1,003 men, women and children deported from Guernsey and Sark during 1942 and 1943. These deportations were ordered personally by Adolf Hitler in response to the British internment of Germans living in the then Persia, now Iran. Those sent first were English-born men and dependents followed by those who served as officers in World War One with the majority taken to civilian internment camps in Germany and France.