K is for Küstenstellung

While I was over in Alderney earlier in the year I managed to get round to a few old childhood haunts and get some photography and filming done before they get any more derelict, although the German concrete is still pretty solid stuff, not apparently suffering from the concrete-cancer 60-year rule. From time-to-time I'll post bits up here as they may have interest to war gamers, and are militaria - of a sort?

There are lots of military structures on Alderney, and - indeed - all the Channel Islands, and many of them are German from the World War Two period, part of the Atlantic Wall, although, acre-for-acre (hectare-for-hectare) the amount of concrete poured on Alderney by the Nazis exceeds the other islands, and - according to the plans, were far from finished, against the near completed, planned-works on the other islands, leading to the rumor Alderney was one of the possible Hitler 'bolt-holes'.

More likely that as the northern-most island, and de-populated for the duration, it was expected to break any invasion force steaming down the channel and/or as the least easy to invade, provide support for the other islands if they came under attack?

Nobody knows, and the nature of totalitarian regimes and the inherent paranoia that comes with illegitimacy, is that all sorts of shenanigans goes on which can't be properly explained . . . ever! Suffice to say it bristled with armaments and would have been a cushy-post for the fat-knackers of the 'lame, late & lazy', sorry; 'second line' troops!

This is a small infantry squad position on the southern shore of the eastern tip of the island and seems to be for the watching of a small inlet with a sandy beach that would have been an ideal commando-landing point - the entire German crew of the nearby Casquettes lighthouse having been captured by commando's earlier in the war!

It has - in part - been dug in the wind-blown sand captured in a hollow of the granite outcrop, but would have been part-blasted out of the granite too, the rubble (and sand) being useful for the concrete mixer! While there were slave labourers on Alderney, there were also OT (Organization Todt) workers, and soldiers would have been expected to labour, certainly in the early days of the occupation.

In recent years the States of Alderney (local government - Alderney is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey) have been putting these signs up for tourists, the drawing is credited to someone I don't recognise, but obviously not copyrighted as it's public, but kudos to TGD. Colin Partridge did a lot of the early work on Alderney's fortifications, but I was told there are now two 'camps' and they squabble, so least said; soonest mended!

Note the guy (Fallschrimjager?) firing the 5cm mortar, and how the mortar seems to be self-supporting, on a very small base-plate? Note also how the rounds are piling-up next to the SF machine-gun, and no-doubt; rolling off the wall? Both are points we will return to in a minute. Why are the gunners tolerating a giant hedgehog in the way?

There is a small concrete sign which I assume is Position Funfzehn? An iron barbed-wire picket was set in it originally, but, despite being galvanised, its proximity to the rocks has resulted in salt spray sending it back to the molecule gods as rust dust!

Stairs lead into the prepared trench and you can see immediately the parallels between this post's subject and the old Airfix 'Costal Defence Post' toy, and indeed; you could use this post to convert that inaccurate plaything to something more realistic. The following video starts at this flight and moves down the left-hand branch of the trench - toward the viewpoint here.

I won't waffle-on about the video, it's to get the geography set in your mind's eye, and then we'll look at it section by section below, I came to a grinding halt when I found the connecting trench between the MG post and the fire-trench had filled with a few inches of what was probably half-rainwater and half sea-spray, leading to an interesting, bubbling, brackish, green micro-biome! But I was wearing my new dessert-wellies so I couldn't go paddling in it! I was also wearing my Indie' hat - thanks Shane!

So; we go back to the stairs, and moving toward the camera in the left-hand picture, and round the corner away from the camera in the right-hand picture, to get to the shelter-bay.

The lines in the walls don't line-up, or meet over the whole position, so will be part of the shuttering for the concrete-pour, rather than any structural feature, but could prove to have practical uses, the lower ones would hold duck-boards if the system temporarily-flooded at the time (but with slave-labour available, bailing out would not take long), while they could carry cables for comm's, lights or pre-laid demolition charges?

The little holes in the walls, of which there are three, are probably for grenades or ammunition, hot-food would have been brought out to the position, cold-food or emergency rations; carried by the soldiers, while bedding - if there was any - would have been shared on a hot-mattress system.

But the shelter will only take three lying down, while the curve of the roof would make sitting uncomfortable, it is really for protection under bombardment, and is definitely one of the features partially cut-out of the granite outcrop.

The recess seen in the video (to the right/opposite the shelter-bay) which looks like a blocked-door would probably have held either a rifle-rack or a notice-board?

The Machine-gun post; the mounting plate for the sustained-fire medium-MG has now been obscured by illustrated nature and viewpoint tourist-information boards! Again there are two small recesses at either end of the crescent-trench . . . ammo and/or grenades seem obvious, maybe signal flares? Landline radio-telephone's would make some sense, but two in the same trench?

The other hollow is described as a shelter, and it would be useful as such if you saw the enemy firing a bazooka in your general direction, but it's quite shallow (under the water!) so I suspect it was for the crew to shove, shovel or kick the empty cases as they built-up, so they weren't trying to stand on the equivalent of elongated marbles! Indeed - it looks like it may have had a removable wooden tray/liner?

Note also the texturing on the large concrete glacis at the front of the MG-position, you see this a lot in the fortifications on Alderney, where the last pour was mixed with broken granite chunks, and then washed or brushed before it had set, leaving an uneven surface, which - from a ship's binoculars - would have matched the stony cliff in front of it.

The right-hand (left hand shot) corner of the fire-trench has a little nook with a raised floor, as it’s the point of the position closest to the little cliff (you can scramble up and down it), it would have had a good view of the frontage and the inlets to either side and could be seen by positions further along the cost in both directions, although the MG gunners were actually higher.

While over on the left (right-hand shot) we have the other nook, with a plate in front of it which takes us back to that photo' of the chap with a mortar. We find a smaller indentation, about an inch/inch and a bit (40mm) deep, which seems to have held the base-plate through a combination of gravity and tight fit; as there's no sign of fixings - on site, or in the photograph of the chap holding it?

Cropped, turned up the other way and re-annotated, to give you an impression of how it was set to face attacking forces, the unit is spread out in line, the main communication trenches are presenting a minimal profile bring almost straight and it then curves round the back of the granite outcrop to a near impregnable shelter, a battleship could take it out, but nothing else, and that would be a lot of effort for a platoon or sub-platoon of maybe six-to-eight men?

I've 'emplaced' a modern section of ten men, but with the flooding it was hard to tell if the front trench could be fired-over, along it's whole length, if only the two nooks are usable, then a garrison of six-to-eight is sensible, if the whole front trench is a fire trench you could easily find un-crowded work for about twelve? The other trenches are too deep for fighting/firing from.

Returning to the Airfix play set; if you remove the hexagonal pill-box (and use it as a pill-pox) and fill-in the gap, remove the old corvette's gun and convert its pit to match the MG-post here, and pile some rocks on the smaller, oblong shelter, you'll have a very similar position! Of course; it would be easier to scratch-build something in an expanded polystyrene tile!

Given the size and cheapness of my camera, and the vibration of the Fokker I happened to be in (and it WAS a Fokker, Mr. Brown) on the way out, not a bad shot. You can see the small sandy beach which might have appealed to a handful of 'cockleshell heroes' on the left and how close to the cliff the position is; you can see - briefly - the gray-stone edge in the video at one point.

The light was poorer on the way in! You can see the larger beach is well covered by the garrison at Fort Houmet Herbé. The lighthouse in the background is not the one involved in the commando raid.

A final point - while this is the only one of its type on Alderney, there are similar constructions and - more widely - these positions will be typical of the kind of stuff constructed in Russia for the winter defence-lines, or around the Stalingrad salient - then - pocket's perimeter; in the Western dessert during the lulls between pushes; in Italy (Monte Casino) and which would have been peppered across Northern France and on the line into Germany after the Rhine-crossing.

Forty laborers, five carpenters and a cement-mixer could build this in a day, two if the floors are a separate, first pour - not perhaps; when you're digging granite though! And tanks can't crush these like they crush earthworks by turning on/over them.