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There was a German soldier who I believe must have been about the equivalent of a Regimental Sergeant Major, and who always used to stop to chat to me as I went along, and he spoke pretty good English, and he said I looked like his son. You’ve got to remember the Germans were a long way from home, and they had families too, and they hadn’t seen their children probably for several years, and I reminded him of his son, because in those days I had blue eyes and nice fair hair, and a lot more of it as well! But one day I was going past Le Manoir at the Forest, and there were some tall pine trees in those days and the Germans had built a lookout post which stretched just above the pine trees so they had a good clear view of the south coast. This was after D-Day.

Not long after D Day I was going past and he stopped me. “Oh, come and have a look”, he said. So he took me to the bottom of this lookout post and he started walking up, and he said “Follow me”, and I hesitated, because I knew what had happened, we all knew that D-Day had taken place and the fact that the Allies were getting a foothold in Normandy. So I wasn’t too sure, I thought was he going to throw me off the top. Strange what goes through a child’s mind.

Anyway he had seemed friendly in the past and seemed reassuring enough, so off I go. We got to the top and there were two German soldiers there and immediately they saw him they clicked their heels. He said “Look out there!”, and I looked out and I could see there was a fleet out there. Well I knew what it was, they all looked black specks but I knew exactly what it was.. So I said, “Oh yes, yes, can I go down?”, so I went down. I thought if I say I know what it was he would say “well, how do you know what’s going on?” because we weren’t allowed to have radio sets, or wirelesses as they were in those days.

Probably I was about the only Guernsey person who actually saw some of the Invasion fleet. So that was something quite interesting.
FRED GALLIENNE

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