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Edited Transcript of Margaret Le Cras interviewing Mrs Evelyn Bryce

My father had been working for Wade, he had been working for this firm, and during the war, of course, he started delivering the coal, and of course you had to have tokens, for one bag of coal, and there was no electricity to speak of, so it was cold, a lot of the trees were cut down, and he was delivering out west, and quite often there were some tokens missing, but they turned out as fresh meat. So we had fresh meat , which the farmers just killed, quite a lot of them had done, pigs, or…
I………. Well, my uncles were farmers, and, put it this way, there was never a pig that had a litter of more than seven or eight piglets, I mean, the days of them having fourteen or fifteen stopped during the war, so the piglets were you know, sort of fed out at different places and looked after and killed eventually.
Evelyn Bryce. They did that in England too, my brother-in-law told me that, his father was a butcher
I………. Seven or eight in a litter, never more.
Evelyn Bryce. That’s right. If there were ten the other two were unaccounted for.
I………. Oh well, people had to do the best they could, eh?
Evelyn Bryce. My father had a greenhouse with tomatoes, and some people had grapes, had greenhouses broken into, so, ours had been as well, and they decided they would stay there at night, to keep watch, so we didn’t have anything stolen, because people, who ever it was, — we never knew who it was, we just assumed it was the Germans, - and we didn’t go, when we knew there was somebody in the greenhouse in the dark, so I don’t know who else went , besides him, but my father and brother were there one night, I was there during the day, sometimes the Germans would come to buy, and that was how I first knew about a killo, and I have never forgotten what a killo was.
I………. They would have been metric.
Evelyn Bryce. I had to weigh them out, but they never tried to steal them, or be dishonest, or anything like that.
I………. Was there a big change-over of Germans in that area? Did they change, did you see fresh faces, or did you see familiar faces?
Evelyn Bryce. No, it was always the same ones.
I………. Yes, it was like that where I was. You got to know them.
Evelyn Bryce. Yes, they used to come…
I………. You were familiar with them? They knew who you were and..
Evelyn Bryce. I thought afterwards, well I was eighteen, and these young men…
I………. They could have taken advantage? Quite easily?
Evelyn Bryce. They were really polite. But I thought afterwards, perhaps that’s why they came, because, a young lady, just sitting in a house, but my mother was always there, but, they were polite. In fact , there was one place, along the coast, where there was some German air force, and the officer, a real gentleman, not a Nazi, and he spoke English, perfect English. And he would bring tea to my mother, and also bread, and he brought some [ ]
I………. Well, you see, I would have walked from the Bas Courtils to near the Padins, and we would have been five or six years old, and we went on our own, five girls, and it was considered quite safe to walk that far, I think there had to be trust on both sides, really.
Evelyn Bryce. We had a greenhouse there, and they said could they use it, because we weren’t allowed to have the water for the greenhouse, if they could use the greenhouse, they could use the water, and we could have some of the food from there, but they didn’t, they never used it, or they might have used it without getting much from it.

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