Guernsey Press

A trip down St Saviour’s tunnel

DURING the 1960s Guernsey was a favourite destination for sixth-formers from Northern Ireland seeking summer jobs. I was one of those eager teenagers and, in 1967, I was on my second visit, working in a timber yard at St Peter Port.

Published

Recently I stumbled upon an online article about a WW2 tunnel at St Saviour’s that was excavated by the German occupiers, using Polish and Russian slave labour, to store weapons and other material, and which is now up for sale. The article brought back a memory of one of my foolhardier adventures during that Summer of Love.

Working alongside me in the timber yard was a man who’d lived on the island throughout the Occupation and who seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the wartime goings-on.

One day he told me about a forgotten tunnel that contained a lot of interesting things and which could be entered through a small hole in a field next to St Saviour’s Church. A couple of days later, together with two school friends, a sketch map my informant had helpfully provided, and a rucksack containing a towel, some rope and a couple of torches, I was on the bus to the location.

It didn’t take us long to find the hole, even though it was partly hidden by a bush, and to lower ourselves down the steep slope below, having checked with a torch that it was possible to do so relatively easily. I went first and as soon as I was standing on solid ground, I shone my torch into the dank darkness. The sight that met my eyes was astonishing. For as far as I could see along the narrow, rough-hewn tunnel were random piles of wooden and metal boxes, ammunition pouches and, instantly recognisable to anyone brought up on a healthy diet of 1950s and ’60s war movies, Wehrmacht helmets. Worryingly, there were also heaps of what looked like pillars of salt, which we speculated might be associated with the manufacture of primitive chemical weapons. On closer inspection we found that everything was in an advanced state of decomposition. The wood and cloth items crumbled to the touch, and in most cases the metal ones were either inseparably rusted together, or only partly complete.

Disappointed we went further down the track, eventually reaching a much bigger space where lots more stuff was piled up haphazardly. Some of it looked promising but on closer inspection I discovered it was in a similar state of deterioration. However, after rummaging around I found one helmet that was intact, though rust-encrusted, and wrapped it in the towel and put it in the rucksack. Then we retraced our steps to the exit, being very careful to stay well clear of the ominous white pillars on the way.

When I returned to Belfast at the end of the summer, I set to work on my trophy, removing the rust without too much difficulty, filling a few small imperfections with modelling clay and painting it an approximation of Luftwaffe grey. On Queen’s University rag day the following spring it, and its wearer, were quite the centre of attention.

The helmet is long gone, but the happy memory of its liberation that summer’s day so long ago lives on.

CHRIS MACCABE, CB LLB LLM,

8, Robin Hill,

Dundrum,

Co. Down, BT33 0NU.