Watchtowers - Richard Fleming

Around the coast, grey watchtowers stand.
Our island heritage, some say,
while others fail to understand
why they remain here to this day
and have not been bulldozed to dust
through pragmatism or disgust.

What strange attachment do they feel,
the offspring of the Occupied,
to symbols of Germanic zeal
and ruthless power misapplied?
Those former times are past and gone.
Beyond these shores the world speeds on.

Richard Fleming

Last Tuesday 1942 - Tony Gardner

Hans was here last Tuesday
He came in to talk with me
He spoke about his mother
Back on the farm in Germany
I saw a tear as he talked of home
And sipped his warm, weak tea.

He told of his life before the hate
And the madness caught alight
How as a bewildered sixteen-year-old
He was called from the farm to fight
After a while he left for the cliffs
Of Torteval last Tuesday night.

Early on Wednesday morning
I heard the English bombers fly
I heard their deadly discharge
Hit the cliffs, and all the sky
Was bright with those fatal flashes
Which ask not "Who?" or "Why?"

Hans was here last Tuesday
Where is his spirit now ?
I hope his gentle country soul
Is back behind his plough
Back on his farm in a peaceful world
Where the war can't touch him now.

Tony Gardner

Mayday - Stephen A. Roberts

there's too many bank holidays in May
they should be spread out more, I hear some say

but to imagine that Hitler had held on 'til summer
so that our Liberation day had better weather?

wishing he'd slowed the steamroller from the East
seems a bit controversial to say the least

(OK I'm just joking don't get me wrong
the war had already gone on too long...)

Stephen A. Roberts

Preoccupation - Stephen A. Roberts

First Dornier arrives says the in flight mag
it could be a headline from a different Tag
and still produces a shiver of recognition
some 75 years since the submission

I know that I should let it go
it was a long long time ago
but my preoccupation
with the Occupation
is driving me insane
what do I hope to gain?

Stephen A. Roberts

Harbouring Doubt - Joan Etoile

There's something wrong these days with our transport links
So many cancellations and complaints it all stinks
If the Germans turned up now we wouldn't get away
We'd queue up at the harbour to find Condor was delayed

There would be widespread fear and consternation
The States would have to postpone the evacuation
Us donkeys would be condemned to Nazi rule
All because we missed the boat to Poole

As long as the tide wasn't too far down
The Germans would march right into Town
Goose stepping along our Eastern Front
Free to enslave us all they want

Maybe some of us could pose as day trippers
to make good our escape on the Commodore Clipper
While the rest of us could slip away unseen
While Jerry was searching for Pier 17...

Joan Etoile

War Images, An Exhibition, The Square, Guernsey 2010 - Trudie Shannon

Two old women stoop over handbags,
Dowagers prominent humps blessing alternative vision.
They gaze with opaque eyes at photographic images
Of war, in a foreign land.
Sunlight gleams on perspex distorting and distancing the photographs
Into dreamlike nebuli.
There is an absence of time, present here as
Bombs drop lucid memories into trapped screams
Upon furred tongues in dry mouths.
They do not stop for long, these Liberation witnesses.
They cannot dwell or cope with Revelations scars on other shores.
Suddenly cracked words break like waves in the heat haze.
"Is there a box"? she asks her friend
And rummages in her handbag for her purse
Suddenly the Blitz metal souvenir flies skyward
An acrobatic element glinting in its timeless beam of light.
They walk on, exhibition photographs bearing their reflections
Two old women walking between bomb sites in Afghanistan.

Trudie Shannon

I'm so sorry, Guernsey - Tony Bradley

Born a bit later, I didn't suffer the war
only witnessing the damage, left behind
the wrecking of homes and families,
the disease and destruction of body and mind.

Plymouth, 1950, still blackened from the bombing
was reeling still, years after the trouble
I was born at 3, Clarendon Terrace
but 1, 5 and 6 were just piles of rubble.

The grown-ups had anxieties still in their heads
some women saved things, without knowing why
string, and jars, in boxes under the beds
and fearing the siren of death from the sky.

Children were viewed as the future, now safe
my brother and I were brought up with a swagger
encouraged to glorify, and brandish spoils of war,
a helmet, a Luger, or a German dagger.

Maybe 'cos they sensed the grown-up's old fears
young boys' bravado made them act the fool
I remember you'd get a seething six of the best
if you drew a swastika on your note-book at school.

Imprisoned on your own island, it must have been worse
the enemy's robbery and threats must have been numbing
I'm in shame now, how, in ignorance, we played. .
"quick, in the loft, the Germans are coming . . . ."

Tony Bradley

9th of May 1945 - Lyndon Queripel

If the Germans had won the war
I overheard some one say
We'd have no date to celebrate
No Liberation Day

If the Germans had won the war
We'd be driving on the right
And there would be a curfew
After nine o clock at night

If the Germans had won the war
And were in complete control
For sure there'd be a law
Against playing rock and roll

If the Germans had won the war
It would be a real drag
Having to fly a swastika
For our island flag

If the Germans had won the war
Without a shadow of a doubt
You'd never see a Guernsey Jew
But you'd see a sour kraut.

Lyndon Queripel

When Jackboots Echoed - Ian Duquemin

Churchill planned to bomb our lands
The stepping stones for German feet
As jackboots echoed through the town
Upon our cobbled street
Flags of Deutschland dressed the poles
And young men spoke in different tongue
When radio released the news
To put right all the wrong
Soon the ships came to our shore
And rifles lowered down at ease
Shouts of freedom, songs of joy
All hailed our appease
The barren fortress island freed
Surrounded with its many towers
Jackboots now our history
But Guernsey always ours!

Ian Duquemin

Seventy Years and Today - Trudie Shannon

It seems strange that we should talk of celebration
To once more throng the streets for Liberation.
Though I have heard first hand from my Mum
Who was a part of it, the Occupation
The stories of the hardship and the camaraderie
The fears, the lack, the cold, the sharing secretly
The music and make do
Of grey clad soldiers from a foreign land,
Mother's sons, sister's brothers ....
Not all Nazis
How food was scarce and jackboots imprinted everywhere
To think of those who died from malnutrition
Before the Vega brought supplies and salvation
To think of deportees and curfews
And prisoners scantily clad, who died
And were entombed within the concrete that they made.

It's hard for me to take account of sacrifice long past
Yet, we must remember

But need to remember too
That today many millions across the world
Endure the very same
And we turn our heads aside
And in so doing enact our shame.

Trudie Shannon

Freedom - Stephen A. Roberts

Freedom from the crooked cross
The Field Grey unwanted boss
Was Guernsey’s gain and Hitler’s loss
Though he didn't live to pay
The coward blew himself away
Before Guernsey’s Liberation day

Freedom came in '45
The landing of Force 135
Found the locals still alive
And though a heavy price was paid
To have some decent sea walls made
The Guernsey donkey proudly brayed

Freedom seemed so simple then
A triumph over evil men
Sarnia free to thrive again
But time goes on and things have changed
Freedom's meaning is rearranged
To suit the modern day and age...

Freedom rocks - and how!
The 21st century sacred cow -
Money - is the Fuhrer now
End result of work's chore
Needed for a house and more
Of course you need a 4x4!

Freedom means a range of perks
For new fascists in their Mercs
As they get used to island quirks
Freedom to filter if you like
Near suicidal on a bike
Cyclist prays for a car tax hike

Freedom is sometimes wasted on these shores
Some drink 'til they can take no more
Then slump down drunk in a Pollet door
But no-one’s smoking with their beer
Freedom’s strange, even queer
Do you feel free to agree, mon vieux?

Stephen A. Roberts

Tall Trees - Jennywren

Originally published here in February 2012

A row of Poplar trees
backlit by the afternoon sun
Stand, like giants, impressing the young child
While between each one, a man, wearing a tin hat stands .....watching

Watching ... the Father and his child
working amongst their ripening crop
The Father knows their purpose,
He understands

'We must harvest this whole crop today' he says
'It will be a surprise for Mum'
He knows it will not be there tomorrow

Those trees - still there
A constant reminder of that day long ago
Trees so tall, men so small
A lasting impression on a young mind.

Jennywren

Boom - Gordon Arnold

Originally published here in August 2013

A poem about a Canadian WW2 Mine that was found in the Bluebell Woods and subsequently detonated off the Guernsey coast; as seen through the eyes of a father, mother & child.

“There she goes” said the Dad to the child
While his wife just frowned ever so riled
As if saying “she” that war is beguiled
But his eyes, they were wild
Like those of a child

And the child?

Well… He just smiled.

Gordon Arnold

Root and Branch - Peter Kenny

Today's poem is a "Golden Oldie" and was originally published here in March 2012

There’s marching in the Guernsey lane,
my table’s bare, the pattern’s clear:
they will starve us after curfew
they will break us at the table.

I scrape aside the hedgerow scraps
to float along the willow road
to distant bomb-pocked England
near a city I've never seen

where my children stay with strangers
and, forgetting all their patois,
they turn in skies of fractured glaze
and trill their songs with English tongues.

Each night the doves return as crows
and I’m harrowed root and branch
as they bayonet their places
and their mother stands accused

for I tore them from their garden
and I knotted them with labels
like a cherry shedding blossom
I dropped them from my stupid limbs.

Peter Kenny

Boom - Gordon Arnold

A poem about a Canadian WW2 Mine that was found in the Bluebell Woods and subsequently detonated off the Guernsey coast; as seen through the eyes of a father, mother & child.

Boom - Gordon Arnold

“There she goes” said the Dad to the child
While his wife just frowned ever so riled
As if saying “she” that war is beguiled
But his eyes, they were wild
Like those of a child

And the child?

Well… He just smiled.

Gordon Arnold

Root and Branch - Peter Kenny

There’s marching in the Guernsey lane,
my table’s bare, the pattern’s clear:
they will starve us after curfew
they will break us at the table.

I scrape aside the hedgerow scraps
to float along the willow road
to distant bomb-pocked England
near a city I've never seen

where my children stay with strangers
and, forgetting all their patois,
they turn in skies of fractured glaze
and trill their songs with English tongues.

Each night the doves return as crows
and I’m harrowed root and branch
as they bayonet their places
and their mother stands accused

for I tore them from their garden
and I knotted them with labels
like a cherry shedding blossom
I dropped them from my stupid limbs.

Peter Kenny

Tall Trees - Jennywren

A row of Poplar trees
backlit by the afternoon sun
Stand, like giants, impressing the young child
While between each one, a man, wearing a tin hat stands .....watching

Watching ... the Father and his child
working amongst their ripening crop
The Father knows their purpose,
He understands

'We must harvest this whole crop today' he says
'It will be a surprise for Mum'
He knows it will not be there tomorrow

Those trees - still there
A constant reminder of that day long ago
Trees so tall, men so small
A lasting impression on a young mind.

Jennywren