Memories of the Organisation Todt Slave workers in Guernsey

Edited transcript of a taped interview with Herbert Nicholls
The Organising Todt, they were dressed in khaki, and they had the swastika, red band with a swastika, now they were all building people, and they were the ones that organised the slaves and that, and they were quite nasty, they were different from the mainstream German troops that were here. Yes, I think that there was even different nationalities, sort of taskmasters, if you like. Those prisoners, slaves, whatever you want to call them, they definitely had a raw deal. Cement bags, no shoes, cement bags tied round their feet, cement bags over their heads and over their shoulders and that, to protect them from the rain. A cement bag is quite good, it’s about six layers. And of course they had dysentery as well, they had a rough time, and when they built the railway, because the railway came right through, all along the coast, and of course they wouldn’t ask you, they just go through your property, and where I’m living, in my cottage they passed right within twenty feet of the house, the rails was right in the front garden, and they knocked the walls down and just leave them like that. And they had to keep ahead of the bunkers, because they had to bring all the cement, that’s why they kept them close to the coast, so that they did not have far to carry the cement. They took all the sand behind the coast like l’Ancresse and all the bays, and it was for their bunkers
At the bottom of the Guet at Cobo there’s some bunkers there, five or six bunkers, and it was all the slave labourers used to dig the holes and put the concrete in, and when they started pouring the concrete, they were all shuttered up, and have a big chute on the top, and a huge perhaps more than one concrete mixers, and they used to work day and night, they’d have arc lights and pour the concrete continuously, wouldn’t stop until it was finished.
And I was in my Grandmothers this day, she lived in a little cottage by the Post Office, near the seaside, all huddled round the fire, tiny little fire, practically no heat, and only a candle for the lighting, we used to call them candles, but it was diesel, in a bottle, you know the salad cream bottles, well bottles similar to that with a little top, and you get the lace, shoe lace, with a hole in and fill it up with diesel and of course it used to smoke, horrible smell, and very little light and you used to have to keep pinching the wick to get the carbon off to get a bit of light. Anyway in the porch, I heard this sort of shuffling noise in the porch, and I went out to see, what we call a porch was a kind of little building on the back door, little porchway there, and there was this figure huddled there, huddled up, only you know sort of crouched, and I had a look, and so I told her, and she came round and had a look, and he was a young Frenchman, not much older than me, he must have been perhaps fifteen or so, and it was a bitterly cold day, it was round the Christmas period they were putting the concrete in these bunkers and it was sort of hail showers and cold and absolutely frozen, and she started rubbing his hands and she brought him by the fire, and I think he came there in desperation he couldn’t go no further, and she rustled up a bit of food somehow, a bit of soup or something, and she gave it to him, and she said — because she could speak French —and she said “make sure you come tomorrow” and she kept him, kept him some little thing, probably she went without, because she was like that. And they were terrified, they could have been even shot, if they had been mixing with the population, and if he heard a little noise, she used to put an old rug over him, and get him warm every night, he must have come four or five times, I suppose.
At the K.G. Five there was a slave camp there, and they used to have to find their own way there, and how, he didn’t stay long, I suppose they were shift workers and they were moving in and out all the time. From the bunkers, the building site, they were up and down there all the time, it was like shift work, and he never stayed long, he’d sort of get warm, have his little bit of food, he was gone. And she’d always give him a peck on the cheek, she called him her little boy. Never knew his name, he hardly ever spoke. Never knew his background, or anything.
And he came this particular evening and he had a tiny little parcel wrapped in newspaper, a piece of string round and about an eighth of an inch thick and he gave it to her for a present, and it was a piece of soap, you know, how soap is nearly finished before you dump it, and it was a piece like that. Where he had it from I don’t know, he just said that’s for you. And that was her Christmas present, and we never saw him again after. And we used to hear all sorts of stories that sometimes they died working on the job and they just used to throw them in the chutes, but whether that’s right I don’t know, but they seem to think it did happen.
It seemed a lot of excitement when they were building the bunkers, they’re all over the island. I would think there’s a few hundred. When you go along the coast you see these grassy mounds, well more than likely its all bunkers under there. They fill them in and grass them over.
They lived in them, they were armed, there were guns in them, and they could shell over the beach, like the ones at Grandes Rocques, they faced to the South West, and the others, they would face to the North West, they had, like, cross fire, and all along the Fort Hommet.

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