Guernsey | War Museums

As you might expect, Guernsey has its fair share of museums. We chose to concentrate on just two:

La Valette Underground Military Museum is on the coastal edge of St Peter Port and is a tunnel complex built by slave labourers during the German Occupation. The tunnels served as a refuelling station for U-boats, and one of the huge oil storage tanks can still be seen.

The museum is packed with memorabilia from both World Wars and the exhibits include uniforms, medals, WW2 posters detailing the evacuation of the Channel Islands in 1940 and Red Cross food parcels delivered by the SS Vega towards the end of the war when the islanders were close to starving.

The German Occupation Museum, tucked away off a main road, is an absorbing museum founded by an islander who was a child during the Occupation.

The many exhibits do their best to convey what life was like on the island between 1940-1945 – from informers’ letters to a horse’s gas mask to a rare chunk a stone painted with a V for victory.

Both of these museums brilliantly convey a sense of what life under Occupation must have been like.

For further reading, try The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The film version form 2018 is also quite good.