大象传媒

Mrs Irene Gosset

Transcribed and edited by John David 25-26/3/2005 from video recording of an interview with John Gaisford and an audio recording with Rosie Mere

I was just seventeen when we were occupied, I was sixteen when the war broke out.
I did not go back to work next day, that would have been a Friday, because things were very unsettled, and my mother and I slept under the kitchen table, my father just had to take his luck because there was nowhere else to take shelter, because we didn鈥檛 have things like air-raid shelters, we never thought in the island of Guernsey that we would be touched by the war. The Sunday, we went to Church in the morning and the service was cancelled for the evening, then we heard that the Germans had landed at the airport. My father, who worked in the grocery trade, went to work on Monday morning, but the rest of the family, all the females, stayed at home, because we鈥檇 heard such dreadful stories about what had happened on the continent with the German forces. I remember going to the top of my grandfather鈥檚 garden and watching these enormous black Junker planes flying over, we heard of course afterwards that they were full of troops. My father came home at lunchtime and we asked him what it was like in Town. And he said, 鈥淥h, everyones going around as usual鈥�.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.