Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2009 | Page 50

life

THE ISLAND AT WAR 1939 - 1945

Photograph supplied by Mr T Blow - Street party in Belle Vue Road, Cowes.

included in Hitler’s plan to invade Britain
with Sandown Bay selected as a possible
landing place.
The Island was the first place to get a
Home Guard Auxiliary Unit, the first
organised resistance unit in Europe, the
plan being that in the event of Britain
being invaded, the men would stay behind
after the population was evacuated.
Only Dover recorded more air raid alerts
than the Island, here the sirens sounded
1,600 times and a total of 1,748 bombs fell
on the towns and countryside. An 5.25
inch AA gun on the Island shot down an
enemy plane seven miles up in the sky and
the battery crew were mentioned in the
national press but named only as an AA
battery in the south of England. Another

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claim to fame was the Island’s link to
PLUTO, the Pipe Line Under the Ocean,
with a camouflaged pipe line across the
Island and pumping stations at Shanklin
and Sandown for the fuel supply to the
Allies’ invading forces.
Before D Day thousands of craft were
assembled in the Solent ready for the
invasion, fortunately after the Island’s
famous spy, Dorothy O’Grady, had been
caught and sentenced to death at her trial
in 1940, though the sentence was reduced
to 14 years imprisonment after an appeal.
But there’s one unsolved mystery in the
Island’s story. It appears that after the
war, a Dr Lawrence met a German who
claimed he was one of a party of German
soldiers from Alderney who raided the

lower radar station at Woody Bay during
the war and captured prisoners. But
when the man’s story was checked in the
station’s log book, the pages for the date
he mentioned were missing so there was
no proof that the raid took place. But
Adrian Searle tells me that he followed
up the story and talked to the man’s son
who assured him that a full account of the
raid is locked in a safe in Frankfurt to be
released when his father dies.
And there are two other versions of the
story, one that German soldiers were put
ashore by dinghy from an E-boat near
the radar station where they killed some
Canadian soldiers before being picked up
later by a U-boat.
The second version is by a Kevin Dakin
whose late mother told him a story of
when she was a Wren on the Island in
1944. It appears that when a young
soldier guarding a searchlight unit
disappeared, it was supposed that he'd
fallen off the cliff. But some time later a
Red Cross postcard came through saying
he had been snatched by a German raiding
party and was a prisoner of war.
If it happened, security forces made
sure no evidence was left behind after the
war. Perhaps one day some one will solve
the mystery."
I am most grateful to the following
people who helped me research ‘The
Island at War’ or have written to me
especially the staff of Carisbrooke Castle
Museum and the Isle of Wight Record
Office, Adrian Searle, Roy Brinton,
Charles Taylor, Mark Stedman, Tom
Blow, Tom West, evacuees Francis Sallis,
Jennifer Nicholls and Laura Hunt and
members of the Women’s Land Army, the
Home Guard and the Civil Defence.

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