School life under German occupation. Potato flour

Education took a little while to organise, because the States of Guernsey didn’t really know at first how many children were left in the island. So after they’d sort of done their sums, the schools were organised. They had to find teachers too, because most of the teachers had gone with the schools. They found teachers and they found the school. The Germans had occupied the Forest School, so we couldn’t use that, so I had to go down to the school at St Pierre du Bois. It was a mixed school. I’d been used to going to boys’ schools, but, suddenly we had a mixed school.

I remember the teacher telling us that in order to make the bread, or the flour go much longer, we would put potatoes in the bread. She said, “Of course, now when you slice a loaf,” she says, “You’re not going to find a big potato stuck in the middle — it’s all going to be chopped up, so this sort of thing, for example is potato flour.” It’s very, very good for you, too! I mean, people spend a fortune these days in health shops buying this sort of thing. So this was mixed with the flour to make the bread go a bit further.
FRED GALLIENNE

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