Hitler's British Isles, page 17
Carrageen moss, a soggy, reddish-brown seaweed that could be harvested in abundance at low tide, was used in a number of recipes, most frequently as the core ingredient of a traditional Irish blancmange. Pearl and Gwen Smith would scour the beach at Cobo, hauling back as much moss as they could carry to the kitchen at Les Pieux and doing their best to wash the sand off, although never entirely successfully. Then they would take it out into the garden and lay it out on a low table with a wire mesh across the top, leaving it to bake and bleach in the sun. Their mother would place the moss in a muslin bag, along with some milk and a little bit of sugar or syrup, and bring it to the boil on the stove. The resulting dessert bore a passing resemblance to a genuine blancmange, although however much Mrs Smith sweetened the mixture, it always tasted vaguely of saltwater. Nonetheless, carrageen moss puddings soon became an Occupation staple, and for those who couldn’t harvest the seaweed themselves, Cumber’s, the chemist on the high street in St Peter Port, began stocking a pre-made carrageen jelly.
For heavy smokers, the weekly ounce of tobacco permitted under rationing was far from sufficient, and a variety of alternatives were tried, including rose petals and watercress leaves. Ersatz tea, meanwhile, was brewed using everything from bramble leaves and dried clover heads to parsnips. One popular option was cubes of baked sugar beet, which made for a rather sweet, refreshing drink with the addition of boiling water.
Unsurprisingly, the new diet didn’t always sit well in the stomach. At one time or another, almost everyone was struck down with a bad case of diarrhoea, known colloquially as ‘Occupation Disease’. There were various theories as to the cause. Some blamed the new bread, others the large quantities of fibrous vegetables. Either way, there wasn’t much they could do other than let the illness run its course.
The shortage of supplies brought about a curious inversion of the traditional class structure, with wealthy town-dwellers suddenly worse off than the cash-poor farmers who had the space and resources to grow their own food. At his school in St Helier, Leo Harris and his fellow townie friends resented the fat, well-fed farmers’ sons who always had the largest sandwiches in their lunchboxes.
Leo’s father John was lucky that his farmer friends were very generous, offering him the odd hunk of meat or slab of butter whenever they had some to spare. Other town-dwellers began moonlighting as casual labourers, and were happy to be paid in kind. Stanley Ruez worked for the Midland Bank in St Helier, but since the majority of their business was concerned with accounts on the mainland there was very little for him and his colleagues to do. Every day after lunch, Stanley would leave the office, roll up his shirtsleeves and cycle over to one of the nearby farms, offering to milk the cows or muck out the pigs in exchange for a bottle of milk or a few vegetables to take home to his family.
It wasn’t only foodstuffs that were running short. In February, the supply of soap ran out and islanders were encouraged to wash their hands with wood ashes or sand instead. In time, a replacement product was imported from France but it was far from popular – it failed to lather when mixed with the Channel Island water, and left an unpleasant slimy residue on the hands. By April, there was no leather for soling shoes, and cobblers began using wood instead. This didn’t do much for comfort, but children appreciated the cheerful clacking noise they made, especially since it added extra authenticity to their attempts to mimic the marching of the German soldiers in their hobnailed jackboots.
More than ever, younger siblings were dressed and shod in hand-me-downs, and a number of boys were sent off to school in their mother’s old flat-heeled shoes, desperately hoping that none of their peers would notice. When one girl grew out of a pair of shoes, her parents simply cut off the toes, leaving her feet to protrude over the front of the soles. Many children’s clothes were patched with non-matching fabric, and when woollen garments were outgrown they would be carefully unravelled and then reknitted into something else.
Keeping a kitchen operational could be a challenge when broken crockery and cooking implements were virtually impossible to replace. After extensive use, enamel saucepans would eventually burn through, and the holes had to be plugged using little disks of cork, held in place by a tiny nut and bolt, which were imported from France. Often, though, it was a case of making do with what you could find around the house. Six-year-old Christine Du Feu was forced to give up the little wooden spade she took to the beach in the summer when her mother’s final cooking spoon split in half. One of their neighbours, meanwhile, had recently broken the last of their cups, so they drank their bramble tea out of a jam pot.
Such everyday struggles made domestic life a stressful business for the wives and mothers who were expected to keep putting food on the table, and clean sheets on the beds, despite increasingly difficult conditions. But the islanders could see the funny side too. During one of the Lyric No. 1 Company’s performances, the Brache sisters sang a defiantly cheery song that their father had composed on the subject.
Nothing’s going right at all, the home is gone to rack
For we cannot find a cup or dish without a crack!
Father’s hair is whiter, he’s got two stone lighter,
Still he whistles every day.
Mother cannot do her washing ’cause she’s got no soap,
All she’s been able to do is put it all to soak!
Still we’re happy all the day, we never get the blues,
Singing on our way.
The island newspapers turned out to be the saving grace of many families when they opened ‘Exchange and Mart’ columns. When Joan Blake began planning her forthcoming wedding in Guernsey she was determined to make the cake herself, but try as she might she just couldn’t get hold of enough flour. In the end, she placed a notice in the Guernsey Evening Press, asking if anyone could help her. A few days later, she received a little envelope marked ‘Wedding’. Inside was a handwritten note signed by a Mr G. Symons in St Sampson, who was willing to offer a 10-pound bag of flour in exchange for some packets of cigarettes. Joan wrote back at once to arrange the trade.
Sometimes the pairings of items sought and offered were distinctly incongruous: ‘a goat for a bicycle; a dozen eggs for a pair of shoes; salt for a tennis racket or perhaps a fowl for a couple of packets of razor-blades,’ as Jerseyman Arthur Kent commented wryly. In fact, the ‘Exchange and Mart’ columns soon became a much-loved feature of the daily papers, in large part due to their entertainment value. ‘Someone wants a kitten and offers a tin of sardines in exchange,’ wrote Mrs Le Bideau. ‘The kitten would appreciate this.’
Once again, Frederick Brache had his finger on the pulse when he composed the popular ‘Barter Song’, sung by his daughters during a performance of Anchors Aweigh at the Lyric.
Some folks never buy or sell,
But they get things just as well.
‘How is it done?’ you’ll say.
Look up your press to-day.
They’re you’ll find it’s swop, swop, swop,
For things we haven’t got.
Everybody wants to swop,
Swopity-swopity swop!
Although rationed goods were not technically allowed to be bartered, there was an easy workaround for those desperate to get hold of them. By adding the words ‘or what’ to the end of the list of items they would accept as payment, an advertiser could be fairly certain that they would receive at least a handful of offers that were not strictly in accordance with the regulations.
If all else failed, there was always the black market, where almost anything could be purchased if you could afford the outrageously inflated prices. Mrs Le Bideau recounted an amusing, and almost certainly apocryphal, story in her diary: ‘An old country woman staggered into the town on foot. Once arrived there she went up to the policeman. “Please, can you tell me the way to the market?” “Which market?” “The black market.” And, alas for the honour of our local police, they know far more about that much-frequented place of merchandise than they should.’
Joking aside, few islanders were really so innocent and naïve about the existence of black-market trading. Those who abstained altogether, whether out of principle or simple lack of funds, were probably in the minority. Nonetheless, resentment remained towards those wealthy, well-connected people who seemed to be able to get anything they wanted. One of the Brache sisters’ most popular songs was a cheerful ditty called ‘Underneath the Counter’, which described a cornucopia of exotic delights – rhubarb, peaches, raspberries, melons and cream – followed by the refrain, ‘but not for you or me’.
The prevalence of under-the-counter trading meant that normally law-abiding islanders suddenly found themselves embroiled in acts of criminal deception as they attempted to avoid discovery by the German authorities. Those with small children learned that their prams could be adapted to include a secret compartment underneath. Once the Germans cottoned onto this, they began stopping women in the street and demanding they rouse their sleeping babies so that they could search for contraband goods.
One woman was cycling home with a packet of illegal butter in the basket of her bike when a friendly neighbour warned her there was a German patrol doing spot checks a little further along the road. In desperation, she shoved it into her knickers, hoping that the elastic would hold it in place. Fortunately, the Germans only checked her basket and didn’t notice the trickle of melted butter oozing down to her ankle, but by the time she got home at least half of it had been lost.
Baron Hans von Aufsess, the administrative head of the Jersey Feldkommandantur, saw it as his duty to discourage black-market trading. When a large haul of contraband was seized from a French doctor – including ham, beef, flour, sugar, and more than 1,000 kilos of potatoes – he commandeered an empty shop window and put the goods on public display, along with a placard marked ‘Help Defeat the Black Marketeers’. But the sight of crowds of desperate islanders staring at the vast array of goods clearly pricked his conscience. ‘In the sleepless watches of the night the hungry faces of all those poor people gazing so longingly at the unimaginable piles of foodstuffs again passed before me,’ he wrote in his diary.
The deprivations of Occupation were emotional as well as practical, and for many people loneliness was the hardest thing to bear. For over six months now, islanders like Ruth Leadbeater whose families had evacuated to England had been totally cut off from their loved ones. But early in 1941, thanks to the efforts of the International Red Cross, a special postal service was established whereby short messages could be transmitted to and from the mainland via Switzerland.
Fifteen-year-old Margaret Chalker had recently left school when she got a job working as a typist in the Guernsey Red Cross Bureau. The little office on Market Square, in the heart of St Peter Port, was always a hive of activity – the more striking because of the empty, boarded-up shops all around it.
Islanders would be allocated their messages alphabetically, typically once every six months, with a notice placed in the local papers – as well as in the office window – indicating who was entitled to send one the next day. Margaret was one of a dozen typists responsible for taking the people’s handwritten messages, checking that they contained no more than twenty-five words, and then copying them onto the official Red Cross stationery.
The messages were supposed to stick strictly to personal subjects, although occasionally people managed to get around this by the use of coded phrases – ‘Mother Hubbard is sick’, for example, to indicate that they were running out of food. The typing girls would of course see through such ploys but they generally let the messages pass, as long as the hidden meanings weren’t too obvious.
At the end of the week, one of the girls would be charged with the task of delivering the pile of slips to Grange Lodge, for censorship by the German authorities. Margaret dreaded the days when this responsibility fell to her, and would always hand over the tray of papers and rush back down the stairs as quickly as possible, doing her best to avoid the flirtatious overtures of the young soldiers who attempted to engage her in conversation.
When the replies came back from the mainland, little cards would be despatched alerting islanders that a message awaited them, and advising them to call at the office to receive it at a specific time. One of the girls in the office would always read it first so they knew what kind of a reaction to expect. In among the friendly greetings and expressions of familial love were messages announcing the death of a loved one in a bombing raid or while serving overseas. The girls always felt awkward prying into these private expressions of grief and sorrow, especially when the recipient was someone they knew.
The Red Cross bureaus were supposed to be for family communications only, but Jersey teenager Bob Le Sueur managed to get a message out to his bosses in England. Ever since the evacuation crisis, he had been running his branch of the General Accident insurance company without any contact with his superiors, and he had no way of letting them know how he was getting on. But since the Southampton office was based at an ordinary street address, Bob gambled that the German censors would assume it was a residential property. He began composing a message to his branch manager, Eric Thorpe, that he hoped would pass for family business. ‘Dear Uncle Eric,’ he wrote, ‘Health good. Still the same job. Quite busy. New staff.’
When Bob finally received a reply – in equally guarded code – it was clear that the manager was not sure how to interpret his message, in particular the reference to ‘new staff’. He must have thought, Bob deduced, that the Germans had taken over the business. Fortunately, Bob was able to set him right, and by virtue of this rather stilted back-and-forth communication, to reassure him that the office was in good hands.
The Red Cross message service brought back a fragile connection with the quarter of the Channel Islands population who had evacuated before the Occupation started, as well as – by extension – to some of the ten thousand young men from the islands who were serving with the British forces. But while these occasional brief messages were extremely welcome, they were a poor substitute for real human company. No one knew how long the war might last, and in the meantime life would have to go on.
The islands had been all but denuded of men of military age, presenting something of a dilemma for young women, who at some point or other were invariably subjected to the advances of a smart German soldier. The majority did their best to keep the enemy troops at arm’s length, fearful of breaking a deeply held taboo concerning fraternisation with the enemy – something which, as far as many islanders were concerned, was unpatriotic and tantamount to treason. Confident young women would toss their hair defiantly when they were assailed by appreciative whistles, as if to say, ‘Not a chance!’ Others would simply walk on, staring straight ahead, seemingly oblivious to the unwanted attention. The Germans called them Gespenster (ghosts). And then there were the women – just how many remains a matter of debate – who, as Mrs Le Bideau euphemistically put it, went ‘over the border’ with the Germans.
Some simply fell in love, innocent Juliets to their equally besotted German Romeos. Others were, perhaps, a little more calculating. Despite intense social opprobrium, the girlfriend of a German officer could find her quality of life enhanced significantly, being wined and dined in style while her neighbours struggled to get by on meagre wartime rations. When their lovers went on leave to Paris, they could fetch luxuries such as lipstick and silk stockings – not to mention real soap – that were all but unobtainable on the islands.
It was women such as these who earned themselves a new nickname that was soon being whispered on every street corner: ‘Jerrybag’. The level of hostility directed at them was extreme, outstripping even the venom directed at suspected collaborators and quislings. But censure wasn’t reserved only for those who were seen as deliberately working the Occupation to their advantage by selling their bodies to the enemy. Even naïve love-struck teenagers were subjected to harsh criticism. ‘Some of the Sark girls are walking out with the German soldiers,’ wrote hotelier Julia Tremaine in disgust. ‘Silly little asses, I feel I would like to shake them.’
In Jersey, Leo and Francis Harris took a very dim view of Jerrybags. If they ever saw a local girl walking arm-in-arm with a German soldier, or sunbathing with one on the beach, they would stare at her angrily. When a new boy arrived in Leo’s class at school whose mother was known to ‘fraternise’ with the German officers, the entire year group shunned him, refusing to speak to the poor lad and mocking him whenever he made a mistake in class. The bullying eventually got bad enough that the boy told his mother about it. She in turn told her German friends, who paid the school’s headmaster a visit. At the next morning’s assembly, the head told the boys to treat the new arrival more kindly, well aware that if the bullying continued the whole school could be closed down.
One Jerseywoman – the aptly named Gloria Love – became such a social pariah that she was eventually forced to quit the island altogether. She made no secret of her relationship with Colonel von Schmettow’s adjutant Walter Zepernick, alias ‘Zep’, and delighted in riding about town in the bright red convertible Peugeot coupé that he had requisitioned from the island’s inspector of motor traffic. Their boozy parties at Grey Gables, a grand house situated on the hill above the charming St Aubin’s Bay, often carried on into the small hours of the morning, fuelled by a mixture of champagne, chartreuse, cognac and red wine.
When Zepernick was killed on his way home from France by a bomb hitting his train, Gloria took up with von Schmettow’s chief of staff, Hans von Helldorf, instead. As far as her fellow islanders were concerned she was the worst kind of Jerrybag – unprincipled, self-serving and unashamed, the perfect target for their resentment and righteous indignation. One local club refused to allow her in – von Helldorf promptly had it shut down – and when she took to the stage in a local cabaret show the audience rose from their seats and walked out in protest. Clearly, Gloria was never going to be accepted by society again. Eventually, she decided to cut her losses and move to Guernsey.
