The principal hospital bunker built by forced labour for the German occupation forces during the Second World War lies in a central position in the island, on the south side of Longis Road concealed behind earth cover opposite the present cemetery gates, and reached by a now-incomplete former loop road. It was supported by two surviving bunker dressing stations for casualty assembly at opposite ends of Alderney, one at Rose Farm and the other at Whitegates.
The hospital bunker is the only one of its type in the Channel Islands, designated type 118b in the schedule of designs for the permanent fortification programme, having 2 metre thick reinforced concrete walls and roof.
The bunker contained 30 bunks for patients and an operating theatre capable of dealing with major operations.
Based on the earlier West Wall design, the bunker was modified in the second year of the war to incorporate a part basement comprising four chambers for the heating and ventilation equipment, accessed by the two trap doors in the floor of the first entrance and adjoining gas lock.
This was a large bunker which required some 1,440 cubic metres of concrete in its construction, in addition to which it was provided with an attached Tobruk pit at its eastern end for upper observation and close defence, reached by an external steel rung ladder. Both entrances were directly protected from inside by armoured machine-gun embrasures, enabling the occupants to cover the approaches to the bunker by firing through the outer grille doors. Faded red cross emblems can still be made out above the entrances.
This substantial hospital bunker was built for the German army. It is shown under construction and completed in 1943 on successive RAF photo reconnaissance sorties, and thereafter camouflaged by earth cover and netting. Nevertheless, it was dangerously close to the pattern of heavy shellfire laid down by the British battlehip HMS Rodney in the two hour-long bombardment of the adjoining Battery Blücher in August 1944. On that occasion there were just two German fatalities. The site of the former German military cemetery was accessed from Valongis, behind the Strangers' Cemetery.
