Tale of survival on Jersey during Nazi occupation
Dancing with the Enemy by Diane Armstrong, Harper Collins, $35
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.. .. .. .. .. Diane Armstrong has written a compelling novel. She portrays the best of people under duress and then sometimes the worst. Perhaps Dancing with the Enemy could be termed Jersey’s answer to The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel society set in the neighbouring island of Guernsey during the same period of Nazi occupation.
The Channel Islands are made up of a group of islands of which Jersey and Guernsey are the largest. They gained their independence in Norman times and have kept their independence maintaining their own system of government. They are situated closer to France, but regard themselves as closer to Britain. Although they have their own languages English is the language in common use.
Realising that they did not have the manpower to defend the islands early in the war Britain evacuated thousands of the islanders. But many with their livelihoods endangered remained.
In June 1940 flotillas of Nazi troops stormed into the harbours of Saint Helen and Saint Pieter Port. It was estimated there were two islanders to every armed Nazi.
What followed for the Islanders was a desolate period of isolation, cruelty and extreme hunger.
Diane Armstrong has researched this period meticulously and has written her novel concentrating mainly on two true stories, a doctor who had remained to care for his patients and a young boy, Tom, who with his friends had photographed salient German positions and planned to escape to England with this information. But that was thwarted.
The story is told through Xanthe Maxwell, a young doctor, traumatised after the suicide of her friend and colleague. Xanthe comes from an over-achieving family. She realises her stress levels are not good and, after a throwaway remark form her mother about a long-lost relative who went to Jersey as a nurse and was not heard from again, she decided a month on the island of Jersey to assess her future might be what she desperately needed.
As it happens the house she rented for a month belonged originally to the Doctor Jackson of the story. While cleaning the rather rundown accommodation she accidentally dislodges an old picture, behind which her sharp eyes detect something else. Removing a couple of bricks she is able to put her arm in and finds an old manuscript, Doctor Watson’s account of the five years of the Nazi occupation.
This with some side stories of Xanthe’s becomes the basis of the novel.
I could not put this novel down. The folks of Jersey lived through such a cruel and isolated period of time — some coping, others not always as one might have hoped. Although the author admits to some characters being fictionalised for the story the main characters and events are true.
It is a book to be bought, shared, but one you will want to keep. — Margaret Reilly