The big taboo
I was in Guernsey twice last year. The first time to visit my Grandfather, the second time to bury him. It is not surprising, I suppose, that in the last few months I have thought a great deal about him. And in particular how, like all of us, he was a product of his time.
The most significant historical event he lived through was the occupation.
It was an experience which left its mark on him in small ways for the rest of his life. For example, he hated to throw things away (his rubbish bins were "green" long before it became fashionable) and to waste food was virtually a crime.
It was usually when we were out wa]king somewhere together, that he would mention in a fragmentary way some wartime incident. Like when he blundered through the darkness of the curfew holding a precious bowl of watery soup near Les Camps du Moulin, or those dangerous moments when he would try to tap out the powder in the German shells he was forced to make.
His death, combined with the recent release of more "information" about that immensely difficult time, makes me think about how the war's effects on Guernsey were so different to those of the mainland.
The devastation inflicted on English towns and cities by the Germans in the early part of the war was appalling ("Coventry", for example, got adopted by more than one language as a synonym for total destruction). But the facts that the mainland was never invaded and that the Allies finally overcame the Nazis have allowed the UK to see itself, in an uncomplicated way, as one of the victors.
And of course Channel Islanders, and for that matter the rest of continental Europe, also won that victory. But their endurance of occupation sets them apart -- making their experience of victory less straightforward.
I briefly attended St Martin's Parish school. Only much later in England did it seem strange to me that I had played happily in a schoolyard with a German bunker in it. Or that I once lived near a coastline with dozens of German clifftop gun emplacements. To someone of my generation (I was born late in 1959) they were just parts of a landscape that looked as if they had been there forever.
The Nazi occupation created a set of formidably permanent monuments for itself on Guernsey's granite. But for a lot of people born after the war it's easy for them to become just another landmark, no different from the Martello towers or Castle Cornet.
But I'd guess these "landmarks" must be there in the back of every islander's mind as a constant reminder of a time of oppression which has, by and large, been forgotten. No - more accurately - swept under the carpet. After all, we were always told that Channel Islanders were lucky... That Hitler wanted the islands to be a model of benign Nazi rule...
It is true that the unspeakable evil of the Nazi occupation of Europe was not replicated here. Why is it, however, that instead of talking about what occupation really meant in the hearts of Islanders, that newspapers in the UK are more interested in hearing again the stale accusations of collaboration?
Is it possible that the UK has still not admitted its own failure of responsibility to "...our dear Channel Islands". It is easier to invite Islanders to point the finger at each other than to face the fact that the UK more or less abandoned the islands till after the war was finished, albeit for very good reasons. It's as if the UK was a guilty parent, who to ease its own sense of culpability simply says that "you were lucky -- nothing really happened". But there's no denying it. Something happened to Guernsey and the other islands which was unique in the British Isles.
Is it that this history has been undervalued and marginalised; never really dealt with or talked through properly as if it were some kind of family taboo that's best not to mention?
Do the bunkers and gun emplacements ever appear in your dreams? You might think it's a crazy question. But they are there in your head, as part of your experience and the experience of your families in a way that is totally different to people on the mainland. They are a reminder of something that should be talked about in a more humane way than has been achieved so far.
I never really asked my Grandfather what he thought of the bunkers. (See what I mean...) I wouldn't want them removed. And I don't think my Grandfather would either - they'd take half the cliffs he loved with them too. I wonder today if, for him, they stood as stern and disturbing monuments of the occupation. Or, as I'd prefer to think, perhaps they reminded him of freedom.
I'll never know for sure.
(c) Peter Kenny 1997
