Live in Jersey and want to do something different this bank holiday, or during the week? Why not see if you can find out something new and have fun exploring this St Brelade Liberation Trail?
St Brelade Liberation 80 Trail
Compiled by Alex Fearn
To
help celebrate the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Island of Jersey, be
a St Brelade Occupation Detective and learn about some of the amazing
Occupation stories. So, can you find these sites located in the Parish of St
Brelade and answer the questions?
And
why not upload your own selfies along the trail to:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/stbreladeliberation80
1.
St Aubin
2.
Ouaisné
5.
The Noirmont memorial stone
9.
German cemetery memorial plaque in the St Brelade’s
churchyard
10.
La Corbière
St Aubin
The
trail starts at the Parish Hall and a short distance away is the Sacred Heart
Church. There is an anchor laid into the granite which is halfway up the front
of the church between the main door and the belfry.
The
church is open during the day and the details are on a notice inside. In
December 1939, whilst working on the church, a French stonemason heard the news
of a major British Naval victory off Montevideo in South America, in which the
German Navy had been forced to scuttle Hitler's pocket battleship Graf Spee.
This inspired him to incorporate the anchor design into the stonework on the
front of the church. He kept this a secret, and his family revealed the story
only after his death in 1956.
What
is the name of the man who put it there?
Ouaisné
The
trail continues down to the main car park. On the German built sea wall just
along from the steps along from the main car park and slipway there is an
inscription. The Kehl & Co Panzermauer inscription on the flat top of the
wall confirms the building contractor and year that the wall was built. This
relates to the German construction efforts made during the Occupation. There
were 24 main construction firms employed by Organisation Todt in Jersey, the
majority of 22 were German. 2 were French and one was Kehl and Co, Germany. The main depot for this company was at Les
Blanches Banques. It ran the construction projects including the tunnels at St
Aubin, and all the fortifications from St Aubin's Fort to La Carriere Point, St
Ouen's Bay
What
is the year mentioned as part of the inscription?
Noirmont
Point
The
trail follows on to this important site, being the location of a German Naval
artillery gun battery – Batterie Lothringen. The batterie is named after the SMS
Lothringen, one of the pre-dreadnought battleships of the German Imperial Navy.
This
was the only Kriegsmarine Batterie in Jersey. It was manned by 178 men of the
3. Batterie, Marine Artillerie Abteilung 604. This site includes places to
remember and also notes some of the allied sacrifices which took place in the
seas around the parish’s southern coastline. This entire area is now also the
Island memorial to island lives lost in World War Two.
RON
34 & PT-509 granite memorial. This is on the eastern side of the main car
park area, down the little path next to gun emplacement number 2 gun. This
memorial commemorates the loss of the US Navy Patrol Torpedo Boat PT-509 during
the naval action which took place on the 9th of August 1944, just off the south
coast of the island of Jersey. This was when the US Navy Squadron, Ron 34,
intercepted a German convoy in the early hours of the morning, firstly at La
Corbière and then along the south coast to Noirmont point. During the fierce engagement
which followed, the PT-509, the "Sassy Sue", was lost, PT-503 and
PT-507 were damaged and 16 US Naval personnel lives lost.
On
the granite memorial, how many rectangular stripes are there around the star?
Whirlwind
memorial plaque
A
plaque commemorating two pilots who were lost not far from this spot at
Noirmont Point. Squadron Leader Robert S. Woodward, D.F.C., R.A.F. in a
Westland Whirlwind (P7105) and Warrant Officer Donald B. MacPhail, R.C.A.F. in
a Westland Whirlwind (P6987). These were lost during an air attack. Four German
ships were sunk and another ship was brought into harbour very severely damaged.
The action was seen by the Corbière assistant lighthouse keeper, Peter E.
Larbalestier.
What
RAF squadron is mentioned on the plaque and what was the date the aircraft was
lost
The
Noirmont memorial stone
Who
is mentioned as acquiring the land on the main memorial stone?
Winston
Churchill Park
Following
the trail down to St Brelade’s Bay and the main car park. There is a Winston
Churchill memorial plaque in the park.
What
is the full name of Churchill mentioned there?
St
Brelade’s Church
Moving
along to the western side of the Bay, the trail commemorates island resistance
and bravery and remembering the German military lives lost.
Lucy
Schwob/Claude Cahun and her lifelong partner Suzanne Malherbe / Marcel Moore. Cahun and Moore were both artists and
collaborated on work. With the prospect of a Nazi invasion of Jersey looking
very likely in 1940, they refused to evacuate back to England. Instead, they
decided to mount an underground resistance campaign following the German
occupation of the Island in June 1940. Their campaign involved propaganda in
the form of fake news sheets – authored by listening to the BBC on an illegal
radio and then translated into German by Moore. Their two-person campaign
against the regime lasted a risky four years and provoked the German
authorities who spent years looking for the perpetrators. Finally, in the
summer of 1944, the Gestapo entered their house to investigate them. Cahun and
Moore ended up in prison in St Helier and narrowly avoided a sentence of death.
They remained in jail until 9 May 1945, when Jersey was liberated. Look for a
plaque on the gable end of house they lived in, also wording on the grave with the
Jewish star in the St Brelade church cemetery.
What
are the three dates mentioned on the plaque on the side of the house that that
lived in located on the slipway road?
What
is the inscription on their headstone in the St Brelade’s churchyard? (Go to the
Perquage gate and look north to see a gravestone with a Jewish Star of David on
it)
John
de La Haye memorial
John
de La Haye rescuing the downed P38 Lightning pilot Second Lieutenant Kelly
Moutray. An allied plane crashed onto the cliff above Bouilly Port on the 7th
of January 1945. It was a Lockheed Lightning P38-J. y Moutray was piloting the
aircraft without radio in heavy snow showers. This led him to lose his way over
the French coast and when he saw the island, thinking it was the Isle of Wight,
he was surprised when the flak opened up. The plane came down above the
graveyard close to Les Creux. Lt Moutray was able to bale out and landed in St
Brelade's Bay. He was able to reach a rock but unable to heave himself
completely out of the water. This was
witnessed by 18 year old John de La Haye. He expected the Germans to make a
rescue effort, but they just lined the shore.
John secured a float from the top of the beach and swam out the 300
yards to the rock. Lt Moutray was nearing exhaustion and was injured with six
bullet wounds to his leg. The float had
broken up and John felt he could not safely pull the heavily built Lieutenant
to the shore so he decided to wait for the tide to ebb. After another failed attempt by a German
soldier to swim out to the rock, and with dusk approaching the Germans sent out
a boat and illuminated the area with a searchlight.
The
memorial plaque for John is in the St Brelade’s churchyard
What
it his date of birth on the plaque?
German
cemetery memorial plaque in the St Brelade’s churchyard
How
many German soldiers are mentioned on the plaque? (It is near the slipway gate)
La
Corbière
The
final stop of the trail is the lower car park at the bottom of the slope at the
south western edge of the Parish. This commemorates the slave workers used to
build the German defences. This car park has a concrete flat area which is actually
the roof of one of the German Bunkers, K1. This housed a 10.5cm emplaced field
gun and this, together with the other bunkers here, formed one of the most
heavily defended parts of the German coastal defences. On the roof if you look
very carefully, is the embedded pickaxe imprint.
What
direction is the handle facing?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment