For over eight months, the local population and the 28,000-strong German garrison suffered increasing hardship, as food, heat and clothing ran out, and disease and starvation set in.

On 8th May 1945, came the announcement of the surrender of Germany, and in his famous speech (which the Germans permitted to be broadcast to the population), Winston Churchill promised that “our dear Channel Islands” would also be freed.

The end finally came on the following day, on 9th May, when an Allied task force, headed by HMS Bulldog, arrived off St. Peter Port in Guernsey, to take the surrender of the overall Kommandant of the Channel Islands, Vice-Admiral Hüffmeier, before sending a detachment to Jersey under HMS Beagle to accept the separate surrender of the land forces there.

In the months that followed, the Royal Engineers were charged with disposing of the German ordnance, and generally making the islands safe again.

It was a huge task, as there were not only hundreds of artillery and light field pieces, machine-guns, flamethrowers and rifles, but also over 20,000 tons of ammunition and 68,000 mines, not to mention mile upon mile of barbed wire to remove. The ammunition and other explosive ordnance, together with the more transportable weapons, were consigned to a watery grave at “Hurd Deep” off Alderney. The larger, anti-shipping artillery weapons, which were mounted on open platforms, were moved by road to their disposal point. In Jersey, this involved towing the weapons to the 200 ft. cliffs at Les Landes, and shunting them over the edge. Some have since been retrieved from the rocks below, and may be seen on display at the Society’s fortification sites at Noirmont Point and Les Landes.

Other weapons, usually in the form of beach defence guns, remained in situ in casemate bunkers until the early 1950s, when they were cut up for scrap. At the same time, other steel fixtures and fittings in the form of steel doors, pipe work, cupolas and armoured shields were removed. After being stripped of practically anything of value, the bunkers were sealed by the Island authorities, and largely forgotten, until 1977 when the Channel Islands Occupation Society embarked on an ambitious preservation programme.

The Society has now restored eight fortification sites, which may be visited by the public at advertised times. This is a remarkable achievement, especially when it is considered that, twenty-five years ago, German fortifications were still viewed as “scars on the landscape”, and that very few, if any, of the present-day European organisations dedicated to this kind of activity even existed.