Series One, Episode One (Island at War)

Series One, Episode One is the first episode of the first series of the television drama "Island at War".

Plot summary

In the opening scene a St. Gregory fisherman (later revealed to be chief constable Wilf Jonas) is lobstering off the coast of Normandy when he encounters a British patrol fleeing the Battle of Dunkirk. He agrees to rescue them but as the soldiers swim to his boat they are cut down by German machine-gun fire.

Back at the St. Gregory Parliament the Bailiff is reassuring the senate that France's surrender to Nazi Germany (June 18, 1940) and the occupation of the Norman Peninsula, just 8 miles across the channel, will not affect life on agrarian St. Gregory when it is announced that the British, rather than reinforcing their garrison, are withdrawing completely to leave the island defenseless. The showing of the newsreel of the Wehrmacht marching beneath the Arc de Triomphe, sparks public and private debate whether to remain as patriots ("fleeing would be treachery") or evacuate by boat to safety in England.

As the German invasion looms the aging Bailiff and Senator Dorr speak from the balcony of Parliament, urging calm but neither endorsing nor discouraging an official evacuation. The news strains (or breaks) family relations among the Dorrs, Mahys and Jonases, and erodes social order; looting and profiteering take hold and there is a run on the bank.

Tragedy strikes when the Luftwaffe, having mistaken the tomato lorries parked by the pier for troop carriers, strafes and bombs the port, killing several dozen, including Urban Mahy. A German reconnaissance plane then drops leaflets announcing the protocol for the island's surrender: white flags hung from every structure.

The Dorrs, now reconciled, the Mahys, lead by the widow Cassie, and the Jonases, having discovered that their son still on the island (only the daughter evacuated), await the German occupation with the resolve to carry on.

In the final sequence we meet Baron Heinrich Von Rheingarten, the German Commandant who arrives with a battalion of landsers to take possession of St. Gregory "in the name of the Chancellor of the Third Reich". He quickly establishes his credentials as a cultured member of the old Prussian aristocracy, through his courteous treatment of his presumptive peers, the Dorrs, and an appreciation for the local architecture. An efficient officer (he wastes no time in requisitioning the Bailiff's car and "finest hotel on the island" (the St. George) for his staff) he also finds humor in his chauffeur's confusion with the right hand drive on the vehicle, "other side, Muller".

In the final scene he addresses the assembled German troops from the balcony of the Parliament building, now draped in swastikas. His Nazi salute and accompanying "Heil Hitler" strike an ominous note and close the episode.

References