The main entrance to the tunnel complex known today as Ho8 is situated in the Meadowbank valley in the Parish of St Lawrence and is geographically in the centre of the island.
The rear entrance lies in another branch of the Meadowbank valley known as Cap Verde. Facing the Cap Verde entrance is a brook, alongside which runs the old perquage or sanctuary path that links St Lawrence Church, more than a mile away, with the sea.
The Germans were masters of the art of ‘digging in’, a technique they had perfected during the First World War when their tunnels and dugouts were able to survive massive Allied artillery barrages.
Following the order from Berlin in October 1941 that the Channel Islands were to become an ‘impregnable fortress’, work began to create a web of underground defences and shelters that would have allowed the entire Infantry Division 319, more than 12,000 men and all their arms and ammunition, to sit out any Allied pre invasion bombardment.
The excavation of the tunnel referred to by the German occupiers as Höhlgangsanlage 8 (literally ‘shelter cave 8’) was started on 21 October 1941 at the Cap Verde entrance by the 2nd section of No.3 Company, Pioneer Construction Battalion who were billeted at the Aberfeldy Hotel in Old St John’s Road, St Helier. They started drilling and blasting into the side of the hill but a week later the roof of what had been excavated so far caved in. Even today it can be seen that there is no rock above the first hundred feet or so of the completed tunnel.
The men of the Pioneer Construction Battalion were soon joined by forced labourers from the Organization Todt (OT). These men were Algerians and Moroccans shipped in from France and were billeted at West Park Pavilion, the building which in happier times had been the Island’s principal dance hall. These first workers were followed by Spanish Republicans (who had fled Spain in the wake of the Civil War and were subsequently interned by the French and handed over to the Germans) and Polish, French, Czech and Alsatian Jews. These workers were billeted at Lager Erhenbreitstein which was situated at Fort Regent. The working day for the labourers began at 04.00 and concluded at 19.00. In January 1942 the work was placed in the hands of the German civilian building contractor Karl Plötner and the Organization Todt took the supply of labour over completely from the Pioneers.
In February 1942 the contracting firm of Gremmich began excavating at the Meadowbank entrance, once again using OT forced labourers who were now billeted in their own camp, Lager Schepke, at nearby Goose Green Marsh, half a mile from the complex.
By September 1942 the work had progressed deep into the hillside from both entrances and it was in this month that the first Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war arrived in Jersey.
Regarded by the Germans as untermenchen, literally sub-humans, these unfortunates were treated no better than slaves. They worked under terrible conditions, enduring frequent rock falls that caused serious injuries and even death; they were poorly fed and treated brutally by their OT overseers. Voluntary workers, Englishmen and Irishmen trapped in the Island and some locals, also worked in the tunnels as plasterers, carpenters and electricians, earning more than four times the rates of pay being offered by the States of Jersey for similar skills. They were also entitled to extra food rations.
During the excavations, thousands of tonnes of rock, mostly Brioverian shale, were dumped into Cap Verde and nearly 6,000 tonnes of concrete were used to line the tunnels. The complex was planned as an Artillerieunterkunft (underground bombproof barracks) store and workshop to service the Island’s heavy guns and anti-aircraft weapons.
Late in 1943, with the threat of an Allied invasion of Europe looming, the decision was taken to convert the half-completed complex into an emergency casualty clearing station.
Inside Ho8, under the direction of Medical Officer Dr Köster, storerooms and quarters were converted to wards with double-decked wooden bunks able to cope with up to 500 patients. These wards were equipped with hot and cold running water, centrally heated and air-conditioned. At each entrance gas-proof airlocks with elaborate filters were installed to ensure clean air for the patients.
There was a telephone exchange, an engine-room with a 30 kilowatt emergency generator (the complex usually drew its electricity from the Island’s domestic supply), two coal-fired boilers to supply the central heating and hot water and two air-conditioning plants.
From the medical point of view there was a fully-equipped operating theatre, recovery room, a dispensary and medical stores. Food was supplied from a kitchen fitted with two coke-fired ranges. Despite its size there were quarters for only three permanent (male) medical orderlies since it was intended that, in the event of an invasion, doctors and other medical staff (including the Deutsches Rote Kruz nurses usually staffing the Soldatenheims) would be transferred from the existing, above-ground, facilities. Two escape shafts, lavatories, wash rooms, pre and post operative wards and stores for food and medicines completed the complex. The water supply came from a large sump, 30 feet deep, holding 16,000 gallons. The entire structure was built from inception on a slight slope and the drainage system, which carried any underground water away by gravity, was well able to cope with the complex’s new role.
Sealing off the finished tunnels (carried out largely by Italian prisoners-of-war since Italy had ceased to be Germany’s ally in 1943) was finally completed by January 1945, long after it became clear that the Allies had no strategic interest in the Channel Islands.
Despite elaborate preparations to counter bombardment and invasion, Ho8 was never called upon to fulfil its function. The Allied landings for whose casualties it had been converted, never came. The German forces surrendered without firing a shot at 7.14 am on Wednesday, 9 May 1945, and a British medical unit took over Ho8 which was gradually stripped bare by officials and souvenir hunters.
The States of Jersey opened the tunnel complex, stripped of all its contents, to sightseers in July 1946 and maintained the complex until 1961 when, in an historic court action, the ownership of the complex passed to the present owners, it having been decided that property owners in Jersey not only own the land within their boundaries at ground level but also that same land as it extends below the surface whether or not it includes water, oil or tunnels.
Before the war the small côtil, or sloping field, above the entrance was known as Mal Coeur Côtil because it was so hard and stony to dig. The hundreds of forced and slave labourers who toiled for two and a half years underneath it would have understood.
