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I only know one that wasn’t nice. When our supplies were getting very, very low the Germans used to have for their own use, a store in Truchot, where Strangers that used to do the mineral waters was. The Germans used to store their potatoes there. The sacks were all rotten and potatoes would fall out and roll on the ground. Well, it was great fun for us after school to go if we knew there was a boat in, and everybody knew if there was a potato boat in! We’d go and pick up the potatoes that rolled on the floor. Mind you, they weren’t particularly nice ones because half of them were rotten anyhow and if you’ve ever smelt a rotten potato, it’s ghastly.
But anyhow, in the Truchot sometimes there was an awful big fat German soldier on duty guarding the potatoes. I found out afterwards that his name was Otto and he was horrible, he would chase us and he had a whip and he would crack it. I don’t know that he ever hit anybody with it …Otto was a sergeant down on the docks, that was really his place but he had come up to oversee the offloading of potatoes he was absolutely awful, even to his own men, but that’s the only one I came across who was not nice.
RUTH WALSH

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