00:00on may 27 1962 on the island of jersey two teenage boys died inside a german tunnel
00:06they weren't lost they weren't attacked they were slowly poisoned by the very air around them all
00:12because they had gone looking for a single rusty steel helmet what they didn't know beneath their
00:16feet lay 12 000 helmets stacked up they tower two stories high and those helmets weren't buried by
00:23the germans they were sealed underground by the british in 1945. when the war ended the captured
00:29german equipment was too much to haul home so the british did something almost poetic they stuffed
00:34it all back into the tunnels the germans themselves had dug then sealed the entrances with concrete
00:39let your steel rod underground right beside your defeat 27 years later truck after truck hauled it
00:44back out in 1972 alone one cleanup pulled eight truckloads from a single tunnel but that was just
00:51one of eight tunnel networks beneath jersey the other seven were never fully open why because those
00:57tunnels held far more than helmets one tunnel numbered h03 was a weapons depot rifles anti-aircraft guns
01:05ammunition crates pushed in by the ton the germans dug it in 1941 as an arsenal the british took it
01:12over
01:12looked at it and thought perfect it's still an arsenal just with a new owner another tunnel h13 held
01:19tanks not german tanks french tanks the feared somra s-35 backbone of the french army at the start of
01:26the
01:26war when france fell the germans seized them and shipped them to jersey when germany fell the british
01:33seized the german seized french tanks and drove them into the tunnel seal the doors walk away picture it
01:39french tanks grabbed by the germans then buried by the british three nations fate stacked in one black corridor
01:45and the cannons there were too many for the tunnels the british solution was brutally simple they pushed
01:52them off the cliffs hundreds of heavy german guns shoved one by one down jersey's coastline
01:57today divers still find them gun barrels half buried in the seabit covered in barnacles things that
02:03could once sink a destroyer now home to crabs by now you might be asking how did a tiny british
02:08island
02:09end up with so much german weaponry that's one of hitler's most absurd decisions in 1940 german
02:15forces rolled through france and casually seized the channel islands jersey guernsey alderney the
02:20british didn't even fight back they simply abandoned them these islands became the only british territory
02:25actually occupied by germany in all of world war ii hitler was thrilled photos of british police officers
02:32opening car doors for german officers spread across europe that humiliation went to his head completely
02:38in october 1941 he signed the order turn these islands into an impregnable fortress
02:43then he doubled down ten percent of all the steel and concrete for the entire atlantic wall must go
02:47to the channel islands the atlantic wall stretched six thousand kilometers from norway to the spanish
02:52border and ten percent of its resources were poured into these islands together no bigger than part of a
02:58single district of shanghai his own generals thought he was insane the commander of the western front
03:03gerd von rundstadt objected openly hitler didn't listen 16 000 laborers were shipped to the islands
03:10and dug day and night by 1944 these small islands had excavated 244 thousand cubic meters of tunnels
03:17while the entire 6 000 kilometer atlantic wall all its tunnels combined was only 225 000
03:23the islands dug more than the whole coastline the germans themselves privately called it island madness
03:29and for what the fortress never fired a single shot in anger when the allies landed at normandy in 1944
03:35they simply bypassed the channel islands nobody came to attack the island's german garrison was left
03:42stranded behind enemy lines cut off out of fuel running out of food they held on stubbornly surrendering
03:47on may 9 1945 the day after victory in europe day the last pocket didn't give up until may 23rd
03:54two weeks after the war officially ended the germans left but what they left behind was the real
04:00nightmare a full army's entire equipment guns ammunition tanks cannons motorcycles gas masks
04:07bayonets helmets everything and absurd amounts of it the british stared at the pile and their heads
04:13spun shipping it back home cost more than the equipment was worth destroying it on site would take forever
04:19so bury it underground the german tunnels became the german equipment's tomb the british patted their
04:25hands went home for tea and figured that was that but the island's children thought differently
04:31the very day the germans surrendered the kids of jersey began combing the island
04:35the german bunkers and gun positions became their playgrounds telephone wire uniform scraps
04:40bayonets anything they could rip off they did then traded it in the schoolyard
04:45a good condition german helmet was worth more than chocolate among the pupils
04:49the adults weren't innocent either german motorcycles and bicycles were publicly auctioned
04:54prisoners cooking pots and oil lamps were snapped up by locals short on supplies
04:58the enemy's mess tins became their mess tins but the children weren't just collecting helmets and bayonets
05:04the government had to issue a public notice all children must hand over any weapons
05:09weapons school children were carrying loaded firearms
05:12every parent meeting on the island now had one topic does your kid have a gun in their backpack
05:17some weapons were turned in but far more were hidden in attics in cellars buried under gardens
05:23and the concrete sealed tunnels became the biggest treasure house of all
05:27the kids found ways to sneak in once two children got lost in a tunnel and didn't come out for
05:32a whole
05:32night authorities panicked and reinforced the seals but you can't stop a bunch of treasure hunting
05:38teenagers they always found new entrances sun tunnels in a soft coastal rock collapse easily at the top
05:45the air doesn't circulate inside rotting wooden supports and moldy military supplies
05:51remember the two boys at the start they died in h02 but not from poison gas not from chemical weapons
05:58the truth is simpler and sadder the day before they went in may 26th someone lit a fire inside the
06:05tunnel
06:06probably other explorers nobody knows for sure the fire didn't catch but it set the old wooden crates
06:11smoltering they burned slowly all night when the two boys crept in the next day the tunnel's oxygen
06:17was already gone it was filled with carbon monoxide colorless odorless invisible by the time you feel
06:24dizzy your legs have already given out the authorities were terrified they poured concrete into h-02's
06:30entrance along with h-04 and h-12 several tunnel mouths were blown up or sealed shut did that stop
06:37it no older kids and adults drawn by word of mouth found other entrances because by the 1970s the price
06:46of german military gear had skyrocketed military collecting had become big business a decent helmet
06:52pulled from h-02 could sell for 25 pounds enough in those days to feed a family for a week
06:57in the
06:58big 1972 cleanup from h-02 alone they pulled out at least 2 000 helmets in presentable condition
07:05the rest went to the scrapyard as metal by the 1980s people thought the tunnels were nearly empty
07:10just rusted junk but things kept surfacing not just from tunnels in islander cellars and attics people
07:16kept turning up german gear hidden decades ago a bayonet falls out during renovation a crate of
07:22shell casing surfaces while clearing a storehouse digesting the leftovers of a war took nearly half
07:27a century can you still find anything in those tunnels today in 2026 almost certainly not even the
07:35best steel soaked in that damp dark unventilated air for 81 years has crumbled into rust that falls apart
07:40at a touch but some things don't rust today the only german tunnel open to the public on jersey is
07:46h08
07:47the wartime underground field hospital now a museum a kilometer long step inside and the temperature is
07:54a constant 17 degrees silent the walls still carry german markings the operating room the ventilation
08:00shafts all still there but this hospital never treated a single wounded soldier the allies never
08:06came to attack the island you stand inside surrounded by concrete with meters of rock above you the floor
08:13beneath your feet was worn smooth 80 years ago by 16 000 laborers pacing it step after step many of
08:19them never left this island alive and those tunnels once packed to the ceiling with helmets rifles and
08:24tanks most of it has been eaten by time what's left is scattered across antique shops and collectors
08:29hands worldwide a german helmet dug from beneath jersey now sells for over a thousand dollars
08:35the thing a schoolboy once traded for a chocolate bar is now hard currency for collectors but i keep
08:40coming back to one thought those two boys who died in a tunnel in 1962 they were looking for just
08:46one
08:46such helmet they didn't know 12 000 lay beneath their feet they didn't know someone had lit a fire in
08:51that tunnel the day before burning away the oxygen they were just two curious teenagers trying to carry
08:57a small piece of the war out from underground the war kept them instead jersey is quiet today
09:03tourists come for the beaches the seafood the gardens few notice that beneath the coastal rock several
09:09tunnel networks were never fully cleared they wait there black and silent like a buried memory
09:14not speaking not disappearing the war ended 81 years ago but what the war left behind still hasn't
09:20been fully dug out maybe it never will be because what's really buried down there was never just helmets
09:27it's the weight of an entire
