大象传媒

Well the Germans came in 1940 and they took over for 5 years. I lived in St Helier, Jersey and before the Germans occupied I worked as an apprentice on the ships. Now everything had changed and it wasn鈥檛 very nice.

You were restricted. Evenings had a curfew so you couldn鈥檛 go anywhere. No radio. No newspapers. Couldn鈥檛 take any photos. You were only allowed on the beach at certain times because it was a military Zone. Children were taught German at school. Now you had to drive on the other side of the road and the food was awful ! I remember we had no bread, food ration was a shillings worth of meat to feed one family for a week. No bread, the bread in the beginning was very coarse and then we didn鈥檛 have any. No cigarettes, except on the black market.

Nichts ist verboten (Nothing is Forbidden)
I actually worked for the Germans because I was an apprentice so all of their boats that came in we had to go on. That meant I had a pass to go onto the docks and a pass to go onto the ships and it happened that I sort of got out and about that way. Still it was frightening, it was frightening as you never knew what was going to happen next.

One day a German boat came in bringing supplies for Jersey and Guernsey and all the other islands. The fitter that I was working with, you never called them by their Christian name always their surname, Johnson and also my workmate Birch went aboard. While we were there the Germans that were on the boat had gone to the Soldatenheim which is what we would call the YMCA equivalent. When they came back they were drunk and were undoing all the scuppers. Birch and me we told them not too but anyway. When the tide receded out in the harbour the boat went down on the sand and when the tide came in it sunk because the scuppers were all opened up. I鈥檓 telling you this story because we had told them not to do that and they had said 鈥淣ichts ist verboten鈥� (Nothing is forbidden). So they could do what they liked.
Anyway the next morning I go into work and Johnson wasn鈥檛 there and Tom Birch wasn鈥檛 there and this German鈥檚 van like a jeep pulled up and copped hold of me and I was taken to a private house which was used by the Gestapo. Not told why. Questioned by the Interpreter, mostly Austrian we had a lot of Austrians in Jersey. 鈥淲here were you when the boat went under?鈥� etc. Actually a day and a half all the time cross-questioning in this private house. When I went back to work next morning Birch was there and the reason the Germans let them out of prison was because of the fact that when they questioned them they had said exactly the same as I did and there was no way that I knew they were there.

Another time when I was back on board working on one of the engines, getting water and oil through, we had a look down and there were bananas. I hadn鈥檛 even seen a banana for so long. My workmates told me to get a hacksaw blade off a machine. Well I had this bag so I went down the hole and sawed away, loads of sawdust was filling the air and I got 3 or 4 bananas. I put them in my sack on this bike and took them back to the workshops and put them in my locker. Well we were searched as we went out and that was the end of that, never did have a banana.

It felt like a big game.
They would take your bikes, no cares, quite a game with them. I stole a bike back and when I got home my mother said 鈥淲here did you get that bike鈥� and I said out on the road. She was cross and kept saying you mustn鈥檛 do that and I said well, I鈥檓 not taking it back now! I suppose it was all a big game.

In our workshops they also made medals for the Germans, Iron Cross, 1st class, 2nd class and so on. Well I was only young and I had another apprentice with me and I had an Iron Cross, 1st class round my neck, trying this on. An officer came in started talking to us in German and he said to me 鈥淒as ist gut鈥� (That is good) and he asked me what is that for and I showed him that we were actually making them in our workshop. He was so bad tempered and he grabbed hold of the ribbon and well, that was the end of my Iron Cross.

They weren鈥檛 all bad. I belonged to the school of physical culture and one day we were in the gym exercising on this old exercise bar and there was a bang, bang, on the door. We opened it and in came this German, this strong man and after looking at the equipment he said he was going to Deutschland and would see what he could do. Well he went to Germany on his leave and, with his own money, brought back a parallel bar, stainless steel, chalk etc. all out of his own pocket, not all bad. They did shut us down but that was because we started banging the coconut mats and bits were coming off and going on their smart uniforms. They asked us to stop and we didn鈥檛 and when they came out they looked like porcupines with all these bits on them. We were laughing and laughing and so what did they do? They shut us down, 5 or 6 weeks in total.

It鈥檚 hard to remember but I do
Worst was the slave labour, hard to understand. Didn鈥檛 really know exactly what they could be like, it鈥檚 hard to remember but I do.
In the beginning wasn鈥檛 too bad but they used slave labour when they decided to build fortifications. They brought people from Spain, they couldn鈥檛 return because Franco was in favour of the Germans so they couldn鈥檛 go back to Spain because Franco would put them back in prison. We had a lot of other people come in.
Germans were making a Railway line and you鈥檇 go down there and they would be there beating those poor people, they had sores on their faces, they were all malnourished. From prison camps they were building the Underground hospital and if they died they just buried them there. Alderney was the same.

One night I was called to go out to the manor house of a very old family in Jersey. The Germans had a wooden fire in the manor and it caught alight and they were burning down. They鈥檇 got the fire out but we had to go down to see what was the matter with the West wing of the manor. Well, we got there and the German soldiers had stripped out all the pictures, all the paintings of the family鈥檚 history and set them alight. In place of the family鈥檚 pictures and paintings the German soldiers had put in their own.
I鈥檝e been back lots of times and looked at the manor and thought should I tell them what happened. That I was there. I鈥檝e gone right up to the door but鈥�

What you ended up with.
The first thing the Germans did was to go into the banks with a locksmith, open up all the safes and see what was in there. They took everything, all the money, everything. Then they took over the houses. The people had been evacuated and they took over their furniture, moving it around the houses as they wanted. After the war had ended, people had to move it all back again, that鈥檚 if the German鈥檚 hadn鈥檛 shipped it all out.
People had to rebuild their whole lives, photos, everything. They had nothing.
Everything changed but you got through it.

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