The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
‘We remember lockdown – without food’
It is 75 years since Jersey and Guernsey were liberated from Nazi rule. Antonia Windsor looks at the parallels – and contrasts – with today
Seventy-five years ago today, the population of the Channel Islands came to the end of a five-year lockdown when the British Navy arrived to free them from the Nazi occupying forces a day after
Germany’s formal surrender at the end of the Second World War. A major party had been planned for this year, but it will of course have to happen online, as the islanders face a lockdown of a different kind.
Nobody saw the occupation coming. In early 1940, these sunny British Isles were promoting themselves as a wartime tourism destination, the perfect bucket-and-spade beach holiday for those having to abandon annual holidays further afield. With attractive pink granite cliffs strewn with wildflowers, golden sand beaches and renowned local produce, the Channel Islands were a favoured destination for UK holidaymakers in the 1930s. I have photographs of my paternal grandmother with her stylish bob, leaning on the sea wall in front of Elizabeth Castle with my grandfather (they enjoyed their holidays to Jersey so much that they encouraged my father to move there with them in the 1960s, and it is where he met my mother, a Jersey girl).
Islanders thought they might have a bomb or two dropped on them, but in that sunny spring of 1940, nobody dreamt of an invasion. By early June, however, when the German army had crossed the Seine, islanders began to panic – could an evacuation be completed before the Germans arrived on the French coast? Jersey is just 40 miles from the port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany.
“There was hysteria in the days before the Germans arrived,” says 99-year-old Bob Le Sueur, who was 19 at the start of the occupation. “The British stiff upper lip somehow seemed to have disappeared. A lot of people were jostling to get on the boats, not to do their bit for the war effort but just running from danger.” The decision of whether to go or stay was a difficult one and many, including Bob and my maternal grandparents, decided to stay.
“It meant five years of being cooped up with no freedom to express yourself,” Bob continues. “You couldn’t trust your closest friend because, if that person was arrested and interrogated, they might give you away. It was a false kind of life that everyone here had to live.”
If life was hard for residents, spare a thought for the thousands of Russian slaves used as forced labour during the occupation. They were among the 12,000 or so prisoners-of-war sent to Jersey to build the fortifications that litter the island, though other nationalities were granted more privileges than the Russians. Bob played a major part in assisting any Russians who escaped, and in 2013 was appointed MBE by the Queen.
“Now, 75 years later,” he observes wryly, “we are prisoners again.”
Jersey is currently completely locked down, with no passenger services in and out of the island by boat or plane and just one daily lifeline flight to Southampton. Anyone who does arrive there is subject to 14 days of quarantine, while locals are allowed out for a two-hour window each day to shop or exercise. “The difference is that we have enough food,” says Bob. “During the occupation we were desperately hungry. All the time, we thought of food. Children leaving school were two inches shorter than normal at the end of the war.”
As in the current lockdown, experiences were different in town and country. “It was hard for townies who lived in flats or houses with tiny back gardens,” says Bob, “as I did with my parents. In the country, they had fields for growing vegetables and space for hens. Most town people exercised their imagination, though. I
JERSEY
10.30am Virtual States Chamber sitting. Watch live at statesassembly.gov. je or tune in live on BBC Radio Jersey.
11.30am Live formal address from the Bailiff. Message from the Queen read by the Lieutenant Governor; and service led by the Dean. During this part of the celebrations, the Union Flag will be raised at the Pomme d’Or Hotel, and there will be renditions of