Throughout this book I have woven in the names and stories of real islanders who paid a heavy price for daring to stand up a totalitarian regime. Warning, some of these details make for harrowing reading.
Let’s remember:
June Sinclair
Born 1920, London, United Kingdom.
Arrested for slapping a German officer after he made rude remarks about her and tried to kiss her. Half-Jewish orphan June was deported from Jersey.
Died Ravensbrück concentration camp, 1943. Age 23.
Maurice Gould
Born 31 May 1924, Leicester, United Kingdom.
Arrested for an unsuccessful escape attempt from Jersey, along with his friend Dennis Audrain and Peter Hassall. Dennis drowned. Peter and Maurice were deported.
Died Wittlich Prison, Germany. October 1943. Aged 19.
Cause of death: Beatings. Starvation. Tuberculosis.
François “Frank” Le Villio
Born 13 September 1925, St. Saviour, Jersey.
Arrested aged 19 for stealing a bike and deported.
After surviving the Neuengamme and Sandbostel concentration camps, he died weakened from his experiences of tuberculosis in Nottingham, in 1946. He was buried in a pauper’s grave aged 21. In September 2018, his body was brought home and laid to rest in Jersey.
Canon Clifford Cohu, Rector of St. Saviour Church and Chaplain of the General Hospital
Born 1 January 1883, Guernsey.
Arrested in Jersey for disseminating anti-German news, by sharing BBC news bulletins in the hospital on his rounds and while riding his bike through the streets.
Died at Zöschen Forced Labor Re-Education Camp, 20 September 1944, aged 61.
Cause of death: Beaten to death by guards clutching his only possession, a small Bible.
Charles Nicholas Machon
Born September 1893, St. Peter Port, Guernsey.
During the Occupation, Charles worked as a linotype operator at the Guernsey Star and Gazette newspaper.
Arrested February 1944, along with colleagues, for writing and distributing an underground newspaper, called GUNS (Guernsey Underground News Service). Providing accurate and trustworthy news was vital after radios were confiscated by the occupying forces.
Died on 26 October 1944 in Hamelin prison, Germany, aged 51. Today remembered as an island hero.
Father and Son, Clarence and Peter Painter
Clarence born 2 November 1893, Abingdon, Berkshire, United Kingdom; Peter born 11 April, 1924, St. Helier, Jersey.
Clarence was arrested for illegal possession of a wireless and spreading news; Peter arrested for taking photos of German planes and assembling maps of German fortifications.
Peter died 27 November 1944 of pneumonia in his father’s arms at Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp, aged 20.
Clarence died 16 February 1945 after three days’ travel in an open goods wagon without food or proper clothing, fleeing the Russian advance when the camp was evacuated. He was 52.
Marie Ozanne
Born September 1905, Guernsey.
Marie was a member of the Salvation Army. She is remembered for fearlessly and openly challenging the German commandant for Nazi persecution and treatment of slaves and forced laborers. Marie was banned from wearing her Salvation Army uniform and preaching from the Bible—orders she ignored.
Arrested September 1942.
Died of peritonitis in February 1943, aged 37. She wrote in her diary before her death, “Guernsey is beautiful, so why so much war, darkness and hatred?”
James Houillebecq
Born 24 February 1927, St. Saviour, Jersey.
Arrested for theft of ammunition (in the hope of giving assistance to an Allied invasion force).
Died at Neuengamme Concentration Camp on 20 January 1945, aged 18.
Official cause of death: “blood poisoning.”
George James Fox
Born 22 May 1896, St. Helier, Jersey.
Arrested for stealing food from German barracks to feed his seven children.
Died 11 March 1945, Naumburg Prison, aged 49.
Cause of death: sepsis
Joseph James Tierney, a Sexton at St. Saviour Parish Church
Born 23 October 1912, St. Helier, Jersey.
Arrested for listening to a forbidden wireless and disseminating the BBC news.
Died 4 May 1945, aged 33, Kaschitz in Germany.
Cause of death: Imprisoned in various camps, including Zöschen Forced Labor camp, before being transported in a “death march” cattle truck fleeing Allied advance. Inhumane conditions in the trucks were too much for Joe. It’s believed that he died in a fellow prisoner’s arms.
For a complete list of all the Channel Islanders who were deported to continental prisons and camps, visit this incredibly informative site: https://www.frankfallaarchive.org.