大象传媒

Michael J Couch was born in 1942. These are some of the family stories which he has heard told and retold:-

The search of our home by Germans. The German who must have noticed the forbidden camera but said nothing.

Dad keeping his crystal set hidden in his bicycle frame.

Auntie Lilly, who being searched had nothing for it but to drop her crystal set into the soup and the friendly German telling her the soup smelled good.

The young German who had seen me at Dad's bike shop and when he returned from leave in Germany, brought a parcel of food for me, sent by his sister.

Mum fined on the spot by the Feldpolizei for cycling the wrong way in Market street.

Dad seeing the severely injured Germans taken into Mont Arrivee hospital after an R.A.F. raid.

A friend having his bike tyre valves confiscated by the Feldpolizei for cycling two abreast.

Dad coming across a young German soldier with his horse as he lay in the grass playing a flute at the Quaker cemetery in the Greenlanes.

Dad having to go out after curfew to fetch an ambulance for me when I was scalded by sugar beet boiling on the hearth. The ambulance was horse drawn.

Soaking Red Cross biscuits to make them swell to fry in skimmed milk.

Auntie Lilly, going round her potato crop to take some before the Potato Board came to assess the crop.

Dad, collecting illicit milk when the Milk Board arrived so that he had to be bundled out of a window.

Friendly Germans would ask Dad if he had heard the news but Dad was always wary in case it was a trick.

The priest who when asked if he would officiate at the burial of some Germans killed in a raid, replied that he would be happy to bury the whole German army.
The priest who played a hymn to the tune of the German anthem, telling the congregation to remain seated and then played one to the tune of the British anthem while they were told to stand.

Auntie Lita and Uncle Eddy having a German officer billeted on them and being afraid to respond to his friendly gestures.

Auntie Lilly still living for a while in the military zone at Jerbourg, would find Germans coming in uninvited to sit by her fire. She shooed them off.

The German official who had prepared a list of houses for requisition and who included one with the name, 'Please shut the gate.'

A crowd listening to a German band and tricked into doing a Nazi salute which later appeared in The Signal as 'English, saluting Hitler in London.'

Mum and Dad watching the first German planes to arrive as they flew low across the sea and skipped up over the cliffs to reach the airport.

The first German Mum and Dad met, as he got out of his car and politely asked for directions.

The Newspaper vendor - Billy Rowswell? - giving away papers with instructions for the Islanders, on the first day of the Occupation, With the words, "It's for nuffing, its for nuffing."

Germans asking directions to Buckingham Palace. Germans thinking they were on the Isle of Wight.

Mum having baby shoes made for me from her pair of kid gloves.

Roasting sugar beet to use as breakfast 'cereal.'

Dad and his brothers' depression on hearing the day before Liberation, that the German command had ordered the guns to be manned.

As a bicycle mechanic, Dad had to stop whatever he was doing to repair any bike brought in by a German. He usually managed to get payment in cigarettes rather than marks.

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