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The Insley family: Return to St Malo

Although I have traced my mother’s forebears back to Richard ROBINSON who married Jane GROCOCKE in Barkestone, Leics. in 1633, the early members of my father’s forebears, starting with Joseph INSLEY (baptised 1673) came from just over the county boundary in Staffordshire. My great-grandfather Edward INSLEY, the son of an agricultural worker, was born a few miles away in north Warwickshire in 1834 and went to the USA before he was 20 years old. He became a partner in a timber business during the early years when the railways were expanding and railway sleepers were in great demand — where he ‘made a fortune’. After having returned to visit his family in Warwickshire a few years later, he returned to the USA to find that his partner had gambled and lost everything — all of their money and their timber business! Edward decided to return to England for good, but in 1860 decided to try again by moving to St Malo in Brittany, where he established a business to export hens’ eggs and, later, other farm produce to England. That business thrived and three generations later I was born there, in St Malo, in 1928.

My sisters and I came over to school in Shropshire and we were safely there in Oswestry in September 1939 during the early months of the war. In early June 1940 my parents and grandparents, who were all still living in St Malo, were given warning by a friend at 5 o’clock in the morning, that the advancing German forces would probably arrive in two or three hours’ time. Fortunately, as a result of my father’s business connexions with the Port Authority, he was able to arrange that both my parents and grandparents would escape, two hours later, on what was the last ship to leave St Malo for England. Their luggage allowance was only one suitcase each, and as a result they lost everything — homes, business and all of their savings.

After D-Day on 6th June, my birthday, I was very keen to return home to St Malo with my parents as soon as that was possible. The Allied forces liberated St Malo in August 1944, but we had to wait until the summer of 1946 before we were able to return home for a visit.

When planning our visit we knew that there would be no question of being able to hire a car so we took our bicycles. One day my father and I decided to cycle to Cancale, 10 miles along the coast from St Malo, and renowned, pre-war, for its oysters — which perhaps some visitors may know. As we were cycling along a small country road, we saw a woman in the roadside field who was wearing a simple harness and pulling a small single-furrow plough being pushed by her husband. My father and I stopped to look at the couple in astonishment, and then we heard a shout from the man who called out ‘Monsieur Insley’ before he came running to speak to us. The man had looked up when he heard English voices and, as he was soon telling my father, he recognised him as he had often sold his potatoes before the war to our family export business in St Malo. The farmer then explained that, towards the end of the war, the German soldiers had taken all of the fit horses, and that any old horses which were unable to carry out farm work were killed to be eaten as horse meat. As the field had to be ploughed, the farmer explained that he and his wife had no alternative but to plough the field themselves.

Before the war my grandparents had lived in a large family house from which there were lovely views of the surrounding countryside and as far as the old city of St Malo. We knew, from letters which had been received during 1945 with the help of the Red Cross, that this house, ‘Chateau de la Rivière’, had been demolished by the German forces at the time when the officer in command of the German troops in St Malo had announced to the community — as the American forces were advancing through Brittany towards Brest — that he intended to ‘turn St Malo into another Stalingrad’.

This German officer had also decided that, as my grandparents’ house occupied a high vantage point which might, in due course, be of help to the advancing American forces, the house should be demolished. He gave instructions for the house to be shelled, and when my parents and I returned there two years later we found a small piece of walling and a pile of rubble, which was all that remained of my grandparents’ home. Nevertheless, we always felt much gratitude that an old friend of my mother’s had been able to waken my parents at five o’clock that morning in June 1940 and to warn them of the advancing German military forces.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action desk on behalf of Val B.Insley and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

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