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Mrs Irene Gosset interviewed by John Gaisford and Rosie Mere
Transcribed and edited by John David from audio and video recordings

Essential Commodities had the whole building, very ancient building. If you went in today, the basic part of the building is still there, but it was when we were in the hall — have you been to the building at all? I worked there for three years, and the worst, I think, was the cold. The Hall, where we were, well, it had lovely stained glass window, but it was perishing cold. We used to sit with our feet and legs in very large deep cardboard boxes, with a blanket or car-rug over us, and of course we wore mittens, with just the tips of the fingers, but our hands were covered in chilblains. One winter I lost all my toenails, the soles of my feet were black, fortunately I had a mother who was a good provider, she always kept a bottle of olive oil in the house, olive oil was used for everything, and also cotton wool. We soaked cotton wool in olive oil, and put them inside my socks so I could ride my bike, because you can imagine if your feet go black - I suppose it was a kind of frostbite — it was because of shortage of certain vitamins.
I………. Because you could get olive oil at the beginning of the war because you were collecting your food from France, but before the war I wouldn’t have thought that olive oil was quite so common in Guernsey?
Mrs Gosset. Oh, well, yes, you got it at chemists. My mother always kept a bottle of olive oil, in fact she used to make me drink the stuff, and actually, when I look back, it was quite pleasant with the stuff the poor children were given during the Occupation, that was horrible. It obviously did them good, it was thick brown liquid, these poor little children, up to three years.

Next to that I think it was the cold, we had very little heating, it was bitterly cold, my friend and I used to go out what we called sticking on our bicycles, cycling around the countryside, picking up twigs and that off the hedges, and she had a friend who had a farm out St Saviour’s, and sometimes we would cycle out to this farm, and we would be given a few logs, from one of the trees that had been sawn down. When I think about it the Germans did not object to that because they did have a few Germans billeted on them.

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