大象传媒

This is an excerpt from my mother's story of her life. Her name was Geraldine Poulton
In the summer of '39 Dad's twin sister Connie, husband Harry Hughes, son Tom and daughter Mary made their second visit to Jersey. He was a bank manager in Buenos Aires and he had six months' home leave every five years, spending it first with relatives in Carshalton and Belfast and then with us. Grandma also joined us for part of the time. They stayed at Les Arches Hotel at Archirondel Bay and they came and took me out there every day. Uncle Harry always bought a car for the holiday, had it shipped over to Jersey and sold it again when they left. It was a wonderful summer but on 3 September came the declaration of war. Everyone had known it was coming, everyone had hoped against hope that somehow it would be averted. I shall always remember Auntie Connie rushing down the steps of La Casita (the family home) shouting, 'It's come! It's come! It's war!' to the others, waiting in the car. Like Dad, Uncle Harry had volunteered in 1914, involving himself, at considerable expense, in a war which, as an Argentinian ex-patriate, he could quite honourably have avoided. He too had endured the horrors of the trenches but had always said that if they wanted him again, they'd have to come and fetch him. Connie, who had been a VAD Nurse, was filled with dread, for Tom was of military age and was then reading Chemistry at Manchester University. His parents pressed him to abandon this and he returned with them to Buenos Aires. Three months later Betty (stepmother) gave birth to her only child. Dad had always longed above all things for a son but when he came back from the Nursing Home, 'Why are all you wenches girls?' he asked ruefully. I felt so sorry for him, knowing how much it meant. But he took great pride in Angela, a lovely, very contented baby. His family was now complete and we were all happily settled in Jersey. He had succeeded in rebuilding his life.

Then the blow fell. In the summer of 1940 the Germans overran France and the Channel Islands were declared an Open Town, not to be defended. German occupation was inevitable and the islanders were given the choice of leaving, with what few posessions they could carry, or staying on under German rule. I went to school in the morning where we were all summoned to the hall and told to go home, pack a bag and go to the harbour. Our family, of course, chose to leave but it meant losing everything. With a six month old baby and all her impedimenta we could take little of our own. We were also virtually penniless as there was a great run on the Banks and Dad and Peggy (older sister) were owed nearly a month's salary. We sailed on the Archangel (bombed and sunk by German aircraft the following year), boarding her from a quay crowded with people and their abandoned cars, bikes and prams. I remember our next door neighbour breaking the necks of all the birds in his aviary, rather than leaving them to starve. It was a long and tedious journey for we steered a zigzag course, escorted by a Destroyer. Two protective aircraft sometimes circled overhead. The evacuation ships were obviously thought to be sitting ducks for the Germans but we were not attacked. I met two women on board from Amsterdam, wives of diamond merchants, who had fled to Jersey and were now having to flee again. I wondered if they had a fortune in diamonds concealed about them.
We were expected at Weymouth, where arrangements had been made to receive us, but instead we docked at Southampton where the authorities, taken unawares, hurriedly summoned up buckets of water for us to drink and big hunks of dry bread. We were hungry enough to be glad of it. We were taken to a Sports Centre with a large ballroom upstairs where we were each given a blanket and invited to sleep on the floor. When we woke in the morning we found that every inch of the floor and the stairs was covered with sleeping bodies, more ships having come in during the night. There were a lot of crying babies and toddlers and with so few facilities, the smell was horrible. Eventually we were told that we were all to be taken to a refugee camp, but Dad decided that we would go on our own to Leamington (the family's former home). This was against orders as we had no documentation but we managed to slip away unobserved to the station, after sending a telegram to Betty's mother. Kindly as ever, she managed to put us up at very short notice until we were able to find our own accommodation.
Dad soon found us a house in Leamington. He was lucky as housing was scarce, the town being a haven from the anticipated bombing of nearby Coventry and Birmingham, much of which were soon to be flattened.
Our Leamington home from '40 to '45 was 159 Rugby Road, next to the pub on the corner with Guy's Cliffe Rd. It recalls memories of the Blitz, of wailing sirens and wave after wave of German bomers flying through a sky criss-crossed with searchlights. The noise of bombs and ack ack guns was so shattering, it was hard to believe the targets were eight miles away in Coventry. Inevitably, some stray bombs did cause fatalities quite nearby.
Dad and I worked for a few months at the Lockheed Works, he as a Draughtsman, I in Stock Records. Soon Dad was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers and I joined Peggy in Public Health at the Shire Hall in Warwick. There I kept the Births Register and recognized the signature R M Butler on some of the birth notifications. I wrote at once to our dear 'Nurse', my mother's friend, who had become head of the Nurses' Home at Shirley and who proved as kind and hospitable as ever. Dad achieved rapid promotion and for most of his service had the rank of Major with the position of DCRE. He served mostly in India, Persia and Iraq but also in Lebanon (Baalbek, Beirut), Syria (Homs, Damascus), Palestine (Nazareth, Haifa), and Egypt (Alexandria).
While we were in Jersey Peggy had become engaged to Raymond Tanguy, who worked in his family's Dairy, Wines and Provisions business. He and Peggy had already chosen a secluded site with beautiful views of sea and cliffs where they intended to build their home. Ray left his Jaguar car in the care of his family who all stayed in Jersey. Sadly, he was destined never to see them, or it, again. He joined the RAF and he and Peggy were married in Spring '41. The following year he was captured and held prisoner by the Japanese in Java, a terrible fate which he did not survive. His family were Jersey people but if we had chosen to stay, we would probably have been deported to a camp in Germany. This was the fate, in September '42 of over 2,000 who were not Channel Islands born and it was done on Hitler's express orders as he was angered by British internment of suspected German spies in Iran (then Persia). A total of 1,186 were sent from Jersey alone.
In December '42 I joined the WAAF and worked in a Fighter Command Operations Room as a 'plotter'. Peggy joined the WRNS and on VE Day (May '45) she married 'Mac', Richard McDermott, an American serviceman. On receiving her telegram I got leave to attend her wedding at Portsmouth in the morning and travelled up to London in the afternoon to enjoy the unforgettable Victory celebrations.
In December '45 I sailed to Bombay in the Empress of Australia. The food, elegantly served in the 1st Class dining saloon, was truly marvellous, a revelation after wartime rationing. I loved Bombay and enjoyed a wonderful social life. There were dinner and dance invitations every night, many of the dances being held on the flat roofs of hotels. But there was great unrest in the city, hostility to British rule and at last the Quit India riots necessitated a curfew. Buildings were set on fire all over the city. These were visible from the roof of the Astoria Hotel, where we lived and when we went out we saw mobs looting and rampaging through the streets. We once had a narrow escape from one such yelling crowd who pursued our open transport, hurling stones. Bombay was finally thought too dangerous and we were sent to Changi, Singapore, which had been fairly recently liberated from the Japanese. Malaya proved to be a beautiful, jungly country but the intense, steamy heat, combined with too little food made me feel weak and exhausted. The Mess food was infested with maggots and weevils and I survived on canned Christmas pudding, later supplemented by mixed grills in Changi village, paid for by one Roy Cox (future husband), whom I first met at Changi Education Centre and whose pay as a Sgt Navigator (a qualification acquired earlier, in Canada) made it possible for him to afford these expensive treats. The cost of living, post-Occupation, was ruinously high.
Given the chance to fly home for demob as second navigator instead of going by sea, Roy decided not to tell his family that he would be home sooner than expected. On arrival, he telephoned home, thinking to delight his mother with his big surprise. But it was his brother who answered and stunned him with the news that his mother was dead. The family had radioed the ship he would have travelled on but, of course, to no avail.
Dad, Betty and Angela returned to Jersey after the Liberation and Dad later became Assistant States Engineer. He was kept busy at work for some time overseeing the destruction of the Germans' massive system of fortifications and at home getting La Casita completely refurnished and redecorated. A lot of furniture disappeared during the Occupation, some commandeered by the Germans and some, no doubt, used as firewood during the harsh winters without fuel. Dad bought at auction sales and was careful to keep all receipts as it was not unknown for 'disappeared' furniture to be spotted by its pre-war owner in the home of someone who had bought it in good faith.

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