Enthusiasts face battle over plan to retrieve German guns
Friday 5th February 2010, 2:29PM GMT.
Another German gun about to go over a Jersey cliff during the post-Occupation clearance. (0912272)
THERE has been strong resistance to plans to bring back from Jersey two guns used in occupied Guernsey.
Guernsey Armouries plans to charter an RAF Chinook helicopter to retrieve two five-ton Second World War German gun barrels from the bottom of a cliff in Jersey. They are among a batch dumped in 1946.
The Channel Island Occupation Society Jersey branch has recovered seven guns over the years, two of which are now in Guernsey.
However, Jersey Scouts activities committee chairman Nic Michel has written an open letter to Jersey officials warning that it would be disrespectful to the history of the island to take any more.
‘Out of respect for all who suffered during the Occupation, I believe the guns should stay where they are,’ he wrote.
‘From a historic point of view, I believe that moving any more of these guns is wrong. My family were in the island during the Occupation and my father, who died last year, often recounted the joy they all felt when they saw the guns that had been the objects of oppression for so long being thrown over the cliffs.’
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Chairman Nic Michel is right. Who needs a constant visual reminder of vile dictator Hitler and his ilk. Anything to do with him and his decrepid followers should be buried forever, out of sight, or deeply submerged as the case may be. It’s the kind of so-called ‘history’ that we don’t need. If money is to be spent, far better to spend it on extra hospital facilities, etc, for the living or, at the very least, spend it on creating memories of the heroes of the times, not the disgusting perpetrators of death and destruction. What next? An annual re-enactment of the Todt workers being force marched to their deaths at the end of the Alderney breakwater??
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I am an American Veteran, but from Vietnam Era. History is History, bring the guns up. World War II Veterans are dying off very rapidly and within 10 t0 15 years all there will left are the memorials and other such historical items. Bring up the guns.
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I agree with expat.
All these things do is remind us of when the Germans were here, do we really need to keep stareing down the barrel of a gun (and the like) that killied so many of our soldiers and civillians?.
Send them to the depths to be alongside the murdering scum that used them.
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I don’t see that returning these guns to Guernsey serves any purpose. I appreciate what Alan Large says, and if there weren’t any monuments already on the island I would agree with him. However we already have many reminders and monuments of the Second World War across the island (the numerous bunkers, watchtowers, underground hospital, memorials etc) that both honour those who gave their lives, as well as the more sombre memories of the Occupation. I cannot see the benefit in investing large sums bringing some old guns back here.
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Agree with Nic Michel. The guns being dumped is as much a part of history as their use by the Nazis, so leave them be.
Alan, they don’t need to be returned to the island, and can serve as memorials where they are.
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