About
Battery Moltke in an uncompleted coastal artillery defense system located in the North West of Jersey in St Ouen. The sight contains bunkers and gun emplacements that were originally designed in order to protect St Ouen’s bay in case of an attack which the Island was under the occupation of Nazis.
My own image.
one of the original guns can still be seen there today, and could originally be rotated to fie in any direction
The Channel Islands occupation society preserves and operates a few of the bunkers as museums, however the exterior sites remain available to see at all times.
The channel islands occupation society is an organisation made up of volunteers that study the occupation of Jersey and Guernsey and seek to raise awareness of this in order to educate the public on World War 2, and the effect of it on the Channel Islands. The CIOS manage many German fortifications and archives on both Channel Islands. The Jersey branch has operated since 1971.
Our Day
We began our morning by meeting a member of the CIOS, who began by telling us the history of the sight. We then went on to see the gun emplacements, where we were told that the original gun placed there was actually French. After learning about the artillery and how it’s purpose was to defend the coast, we went on to view the main bunker that had been turned into a museum type attracting filled with many artifacts and information. The underground bunker had many different rooms. We were able to see things like original objects from the occupation such as radios, typewriters and even newspapers. The most interesting thing I saw was were the Red Cross food parcel packaging that the islanders received by the end of the war.
After seeing where the soldiers operating in the bunkers would sleep, I then went on to see a memorial dedicated to all the forced workers brought to the channel islands. Here I learnt that may polish, Russian, French, Jewish and Spanish republicans were forced to work in Jersey for the Nazi officers in order to build the bunkers. In this section of the bunker we could see a figure who was meant to represent a forced laborers, surrounded by a lot of rubble. This was especially interesting because it allowed you to really be able to empathise with what there people had to go through, an how difficult it must of been for them to have their freedom stripped away from them.
After we had finished looking around the main bunker, we then went on to see other fortifications that were still standing around the same sight.
