German restrictions on everyday life in Guernsey

Mrs Stella Le Tissier interviewed by Margaret Le Cras 25/4/05

I………. You would have had the curfew, wouldn’t you?
Mrs Le Tissier. The curfew was at nine o’clock in the Winter, and ten o’clock in the Summer, and in the midsummer, eleven o’clock, but you didn’t have to be out after. We sort of sat outside perhaps in our gardens, but you weren’t allowed on the roads or anything. There was nothing. When my husband used to come, and we were courting, he had to go home to be home at eleven o’clock, in the daylight. Coming — he lived in Retot Road, and by the time he got here, he said at Vazon and all that way there was barricades, and they let him through, and sometimes they asked for his identity card, to know who he was,
I………. The closer he got to Vazon, the more the Germans would have recognised him, probably?
Mrs Le Tissier. That’s it, but it was always different ones. At the beginning as well — this is so funny — There were so many restrictions, but we can honestly say, the Germans didn’t molest us. They left us alone, but we were, like, rats in a trap. We respected the Germans, and when they asked us anything, we replied, - I was seventeen, well, you know, a young girl, seventeen, anyway, we respected them, and they left us alone. The never molested us, but when they asked us, which direction to go, we were a bit naughty, oh yes, “You go that way” and then it wasn’t. Nicht — that’s all I know in German “That way — go”. They went that way — but they were supposed to go [the other] that way. That was our little part in the war! One of the things they did, as soon as they came, at that time, there was no dogs on leads, none at all, but they made the order that all dogs were to be on leads but there weren’t many dogs. But there was one family near home, and they used to go hunting on top of Pleinmont. Rabbit shooting. And when we were going to Chapel one Sunday morning, Dad and I, this gentlemen said to my dad, “Albert, what do you think, we must put leads on the dogs now, what will they do next, they will be leading us on a lead”, but they didn’t, you know. But it was so funny, you know.
I………. People wouldn’t have put dogs on leads, dogs would have been allowed to roam, eh?
Mrs Le Tissier. That’s it, you see, and, I suppose. Due respect to what they were putting mines all over the place, and the dogs would go on the mines and would be killed. Because I think they really liked animals, you know, they were like us, they were human.

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