Morale of the German forces at the end of the occupation of Guernsey

Mr Donald Board interviewed by Margaret le Cras.
Edited transcript of tape recording of the interview

Things got very bad towards the end, and they got very depressed, they didn’t want the war, they’d tell me we want to be home with our families. They got very depressed, in fact there were quite a few suicides, and there were two from the battery I was with. There was one who was billeted in the floor above the kitchen, he committed suicide, he…
I………. Sad, isn’t it.
Mr Board. He put his rifle, laid on his bed, put his rifle, tied a piece of cord from the trigger to his big toe, and put the end of the barrel in his mouth.
I………. Oh, dear, dear, dear.
Mr Board. Now there’s something about that I would like to tell you. His name was Untofficier [?Einmal] that was his name. Now on one of the occasions when Theo was over here, and Paula his wife, I said, Untofficier Einmal, his relatives, would like a photograph of his grave, he said he’d like to see it, I said I wouldn’t know where it is, we’d just have to go around to all the cemeteries where there’s Germans buried. So I took them around, and we went to
I………. St John’s would have been the closest church, eh?
Mr Board. We never went to St John’s, we went first of all to the military cemetery at Fort George. He wasn’t there, and I took them to the one along Jerbourg road, on the left, there were foreign workers buried there as well, the Germans had built a lovely …
I………. Sort of memorial, eh?
Mr Board. …rest, with a big wooden carved laurel wreath on the wall, they made a lovely job of that. But he wasn’t there. I took them to St Saviours,
I………. Because they had some just inside the new cemetery, eh, little white crosses?, as you walked in, on the right, I remember them well..
Mr Board. He wasn’t there.
I………. You didn’t go and approach the officials?
Mr Board. No, if I couldn’t have found him, I would have. But anyhow, I thought, there’s the Foulon. So we went to the Foulon, and on the right, on the opposite side to the Cherubis sailors, there were some there, but he wasn’t there. So we thought, that’s it. So we came out, and then on the right, which is now the extension of the cemetery, it was just a field, then. But against the wall I saw some graves. So I said, There’s some more up there, so we went up, and he was there. So I took photographs, several, and I got them processed, and I sent the photos and the negatives to Theo, and he passed them on to his people. I was pleased with that.
I………. You did well. Because like those at St Saviour’s, after a few years they dug them up, didn’t they, and sent them back home. Because nowadays they bury local people, and I go quite a lot there. It always seems strange to see proper graves there, because when I was a child it was always white crosses. To us, it was always the Germans, that was the German bit.
Mr Board. The other thing, it reminds me, the Cherubis funeral. I said to Theo, I’d like to go to the funeral. He said, “Thats ok, you go”. To cycle from the Longstore to the Foulon is a long way, but we went. I’ve got the original programme, so that was that. Oh yes, getting back to the depression of the soldiers, and that,
. But anyhow, going back to the last few months, they were really getting very depressed, and one morning, when we went over to the officer’s canteen, on the wall there was a big portrait of Hitler, and it was smashed, someone had thrown a tumbler and just smashed it up.

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