German Military Underground Hospital
Guernsey’s World War 2 German Military Underground Hospital is the largest World War 2 tunnel complex in Guernsey. Construction of the Underground Hospital started in the winter of 1940, the first winter of the German Occupation of the Channel Islands. It has a floor area of 75,000 square feet and used some 15,000 tons of concrete and was never finished.
The metal framed beds are the original beds which were here from 1944 and were used and the wooden beds are exact copies of the wooden ones which were in use here. It has one unfinished section and an unfinished third entrance which has been marked in brown on the plan of the hospital at the beginning of the video. It was made to accomodate 500 patients under normal conditions and double that in an emergency.
The channels in the floors are to deal with the damp and these were never properly finished. The 75ft escape shaft has a reservoir built into one side of it which could hold thousands of gallons of water. The water was pumped into it from a nearby well and gave the Underground Hospital an independant source of water. The kitchen was near a ventilation shaft to allow the smell to escape the compound.
23 Organisation Todt slave workers died during it’s construction, 17 of which died in one explosion and it is rumoured that their bodies were just thrown into the setting concrete. The hospital only ended up being used for six weeks and the wards were occupied by German troups which were wounded at the D-Day battles in Normandy, France in June 1944 and were taken by ship mainly from Cherbourg to Guernsey in the Channel Islands and to the hospital.
After the war 8 tons of drugs and other medical supplies were found in the storeroom. It was opened to the public as a museum on the 29th July 1954 and is still open to this day and well worth visiting.
Guernsey was the most fortified place in the whole of the Atlantik Wall. During World War 2 the Channel Islands were occupied for five years by Adolf Hitler’s German Nazi forces. They bought in thousands of Organisation Todt slave workers which were forced to build this and hundreds of other fortifications around Guernsey and live in terrible conditions.
Guernsey was liberated on the 9th May 1945 and Liberation Day is celebrated every year on the 9th May. This video will be one of many uploaded during 2010 to celebrate 65 years of the Liberation Day.
This was filmed using my old 8mm format video camera, a Sony TR640E which has a night vision feature. This was required because it is too dark inside the Underground Hospital for my digital camera and some areas are totally dark.
Credit to : MrBooojangles