“The German Führer decreed that from that point on, any Allied commandos who were captured, whether in uniform or not, were to be treated as terrorists and summarily executed.”

By Eric Lee

ON FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 1940, residents of the Channel Island of Sark watched as a formation of German bombers streaked overhead on their way to strike neighbouring Guernsey. 

Their attack on St. Peter Port there, which caused considerable damage and the loss of many civilian lives. Days later, the German military, which had just finished defeating France, began landing on the Channel Islands. It was the start of a five-year occupation. 

Though British Prime Minister Winston Churchill vowed to “set Europe ablaze,” on the Channel Islands there was little organized resistance. 

Local governments did what they could do to keep the peace and care for the civilian population. When necessary, they cooperated with the occupiers. In Guernsey, for example, this included turning over a list of the island’s few Jewish residents when the Germans requested it. They were duly rounded up and taken to the death camps, from which they never returned.

On tiny Sark, authority was concentrated in the hands of Sybil Hathaway, the Dame of Sark. A German speaker herself, she encouraged the island’s children to learn the language of the Nazi occupiers. But like many, she quietly resisted as best she could, including by listening to the BBC on an illegal radio, as the Germans had confiscated all the sets on the island.

The Allies had little intelligence about what was happening in the occupied Channel Islands, though it was clear that the territories, which lie a few miles off the west coast of Normandy’s Cherbourg Peninsula, were being fortified by the Germans as part of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. As for the fate of the thousands of British subjects who lived on Jersey, Guernsey, Sark and the other, smaller islands, little was known.

Only much later was it discovered that on the island of Alderney, the SS had established concentration camps, where slave labourers mostly from Eastern Europe would eventually be held. Hundreds died there working on the Nazi forifications. The island has been referred to as the scene of the greatest mass murder ever carried out on British soil.

Although Britain was hard-pressed to spare the men or resources to retake the islands until the end of the war, as early as July 1940 small groups of specially-trained commandos began a series of pin-prick raids on the German forces stationed there. One of those raids, code-named Operation Basalt, would end up having an impact far beyond its small size.

In the autumn of 1942, Major Geoffrey Appleyard was the commander of the Small Scale Raiding Force and was given the mission to land a dozen men on Sark to gather intelligence about the German presence on the tiny, two-square-mile island. If possible, they were to return to England with live prisoners for interrogation.

On the night of Oct. 3, Appleyard and his men made their way to Sark on a Motor Torpedo Boat known as “Little Pisser.” Outfitted with specially-silenced engines, the small craft delivered the team undetected. Upon reaching the island, the squad scaled the Hog’s Back, a promontory jutting out into the sea, and began their search for Germans.

Appleyard had very little to go on. In fact during their training for the raid, the group was forced to map out the operation using a recreational hikers guide to the island, along with home movies from Appleyard’s own family, which had holidayed on Sark before the war. Low-grade photo reconnaissance showed what seemed to be a machine gun nest, but which later turned out to be a 19th-century cannon.

The first group of buildings the raiders searched was empty. They continued to move about the island, coming to an isolated house perched on a cliff known as La Jaspellerie. They broke in and awakened a sleeping British woman, Mrs. Frances Pittard. Upon seeing the uniformed men, their faces blackened, she imagined them to be firemen and asked if the house was in flames. 

After learning that the intruders were in fact British soldiers, Pittard offered details about the situation of the islanders, including news about deportations of civilians to Germany. She also told them where they could find the enemy.

In the nearby annexe of the Dixcart Hotel a small group of German engineers, recently arrived on Sark, were asleep. A single sentry patrolled outside. One of Appleyard’s men, a Danish commando named Anders Lassen, was ordered to kill the lookout, which he did silently with his commando knife.

The five Germans inside the building were sleeping soundly; their weapons had been left in the hall outside their rooms. They were roused — some with some difficulty — and taken outside in various stages of undress. The order was given to bind the prisoners’ hands. When the captured Germans realized that this was not the long-awaited Allied invasion but only a small raiding party, the prisoners began shouting and resisting their captors.

There were over 300 German soldiers on Sark, many of them in the neighbouring Stocks Hotel, less than 100 meters away. 

Appleyard gave the order to shoot at any of the Germans who tried to flee; shots were fired. In the end, only one prisoner remained in the hands of the commandos, Obergrefreiter Hermann Weinreich, who was the commander of the small group of engineers.

With the alarm raised, the commandos and their captive dashed down into a wooded ravine and up the other side. They were desperate to get back to Hog’s Back and their getaway boat before the German garrison turned out in force. 

The commandos had already been on the island for some three hours, and the motor torpedo boat needed to leave under cover of darkness. They made it down the cliff just in time.

On the ride back to England, the commandos mulled what had just transpired on Sark. Lassen expressed concern that shooting at captured Germans whose hands were bound could be seen as a war crime. He even suggested that they return to the island and remove the ropes from any bodies they left behind. Appleyard rejected the idea.

They made it back safely to Portland Harbour in Dorset, where the raid was considered a huge success. Appleyard was soon summoned to London, where he had a private interview with the Prime Minister in his room in the House of Commons. 

“What have you been up to, my boy?” asked Churchill as he put his arm around the young officer.

Obergrefreiter Weinreich, meanwhile, was whisked off for interrogation at the notorious London Cage. According to reports, he provided a trove of intelligence about German defences, not only in Sark but also along the French coast where he and his men had recently been stationed.

Back on Sark, the Germans awakened to a scene of carnage, with several of their soldiers dead. The Nazi propaganda machine kicked into gear and immediately denounced the British commandos as war criminals, pointing to the defenceless prisoners being mowed down with their hands tied as proof.

Reprisals were carried out against the people of Sark, including Mrs. Pittard; many were deported to Germany.

More significantly, the raid led to Hitler’s infamous Kommandobefehl or “Commando Order,” issued on Oct. 18, 1942. Furious over what had happened on Sark, the German Führer decreed that from that point on, any Allied commandos (not just British ones) who were captured, whether in uniform or not, were to be treated as terrorists and summarily executed. Word of the new policy was sent out to Hitler’s generals on every front.

Some of those generals understood that the Commando Order was clearly illegal and ignored it; others carried it out with enthusiasm. Over the next three years, dozens of captured British Commonwealth and American commandos, air crew, soldiers and sailors were executed under the terms of the policy. The Commando Order was cited in a number of the Nuremberg tribunal cases, including that of Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command, who co-signed the order.

Many people in the Channel Islands were critical of raids like Operation Basalt, in part because they couldn’t understand the reason for them. It’s only now, when we can read the results of the interrogation of captured German prisoners, that we can fully appreciate just how necessary the raids were. Without the intelligence collected from these prisoners, the Allied forces landing in Normandy nearly two years later would have been much less well prepared.

None of the British officers involved in the raid on Sark survived the war. And of the other ranks, all have died in decades since with one exception. Corporal James Edgar just celebrated his 100th birthday in May 2020.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eric Lee is the author of Night of the Bayonets: The Texel Uprising and Hitler’s Revenge, April–May 1945. His other books include The Experiment: Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution in 2017 and Operation Basalt: The British Raid on Sark and Hitler’s Commando. He lives in London where he works as an author, journalist and political activist.