Bad behaviour of billeted German Officers in Guernsey

Edited transcription from a taped interview with John De Jersey

What I haven’t said so far, I think it was about 1942 we had two — they came round to billet —Germans in our house, we were forced to take in a German officer with three stars who was a chef and his chauffeur, they were in the organisation Todt. Now he and his chauffeur stayed with us for quite a while, they were quite reasonably behaved for a while, and then he started inviting other officers in and they had drinking parties, and I was trying to get to sleep one night, and I couldn’t get to sleep because of all the noise going on, I went down and complained, this really upset them, because in the book known as “I beg to report” the police book, the story is in there, it is not quite right, because when we got up in the morning, my mother’s best china was all smashed on the floor, there was a terrible mess, and there were thirteen bullet holes in the room, I think they said there was about eleven in the report, but we looked for my mother’s china, and I said to my father, Right we’re going to report this so he went to the local police and this is how this report got in the book, I went to the German police, and when I got back the room was as clean as a new pin. Nothing to be seen. I went up the lane, and a lady who I knew said “what are you looking for, John”, and I said “well we’ve had some problems down at home, the Germans who we’ve got billeted on us had a party and fired bullets through the room and they’ve smashed my mother’s best china and we can’t find, it they’ve cleaned the room out.” She said “Well I saw two Germans putting something into the hedge up the road” so I went and had a look and it was my mother’s china. Well we showed this to the German police and this officer was then taken into prison, had his three stars removed, and finished up as the cook in the slave camp, and his chauffeur was sent to Russia.

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