A Sweet on Liberation Day in Guernsey

Edited transcript of a taped interviev, made 5/5/05

I was at home in Rouge Huis Avenue, St Peter Port, with my daughter Jenny, because I had a feeling that I was pregnant. But then someone came to tell Jenny come down, tell Mummy to come down to La Porte, there were some soldiers at La Porte. I still had my hair in my curlers. Jenny was dressed, she had a big Union Jack that we had hidden, she was running up and down with that, we went down to la Porte, and sure enough, there were soldiers, but they were correspondents and they’d arrived early in the morning before the ordinary landing and they’d come up Petit Port steps. I was very surprised that they’d come up Petit Port I couldn’t think why Petit Port steps wasn’t mined. They either took their lives in their hands or something. Anyhow that’s the way they came up and we met somebody later that came up the same way, early morning.
We went down the Collinette and we saw them, and we went back home and dressed ourselves properly, we were still in ordinary morning things, put on what decent clothes we had, and we went up to see, I took Jenny up to see the boats from the Cotils look-out, we weren’t down the harbour, we could see it all from the lookout.
We turned the corner of the Richmond hotel, and I couldn’t believe my eyes, along the avenue there they were parked, it was full of soldiers, they’d marched the soldiers up from the harbour, and dismissed them, and they were all standing at ease in the avenue of the park.
They were just like a regiment of soldiers, all standing around, and they came across the park, between us, and we were surrounded by soldiers. Further along, in the terrace of houses, at the other end, somebody was coming out with a tray of tea.
Whether they had saved up something — some people had saved a packet of tea for Liberation day, anyhow they were coming out with a tray of tea, and there were several hundred soldiers. We got there, and different ones came across, and they wanted to know all about how we’d been, and one of them gave Jenny a sweet, and she turned to me and said “What do I do with it, Mummy?” I said, “it’s a sweet my love, you’ve never seen one before. You eat it.”

When we went to look at the lookout, at the Blue Mountains, there were several boats outside. We were the only ones there, we turned and came back up the little hill outside Castle Carey, and half way up I felt most peculiar and I fainted. I went completely off, I was laying down on the footpath, I really felt dreadful. I felt then, well definitely I’m pregnant. I was. I went to the Doctor the next day.
I was quite close home, about a quarter of a mile away. Anyhow, I sat there for a while. Jenny was very quiet, very calm, she didn’t cry or anything. She waited with me, an I sort of picked myself up again, managed to struggle home, and my husband was there, he had come up from the harbour, he said it was mad there, crazy mad, people wanted to get somewhere to touch them, you know, he said it’s a good job you weren’t with me, you might have done just the same and it would have been very awkward. He just took one look at me and said “Straight into bed”, and he put me to bed and gave me a cup of tea and an aspirin and that sort of thing, and I had a sleep.
In the afternoon, of course, there were all of the people down on the harbour. It was very, very high tide, and we sat over by what was called the Old Harbour in those days, it’s the Marina now, and the tide was way, way up, and a big boat came in, and how it just managed to get through the Old Harbour mouth I don’t know, without touching, everyone was just sitting waiting for it to have a crash, you know, and it crept through, and it came over the harbour, right up against the wall by Woolworths, and the soldiers on board, and the sailors on board, were all handing out cigarettes, throwing them over the barbed wire, we couldn’t get absolutely close, they were right close to chat to us, everybody was overwhelmed,
They were throwing chewing gum as well, all sorts of things. It was wonderful. Everyone was thrilled to bits. We went and sat in the flight of steps up by Marquand Brothers, not the Pier Steps but the other ones, further along, a whole lot of people sat up there, in the sun.
I don’t know if we went home in the middle, we were down there all the evening
We kept meeting people we knew, all the people we knew. We were all comparing notes, and my husband was a big person in the St John Ambulance, before the occupation he had uniform, but it was put away, he ferreted around and found a cap, and a haversack, and he filled the water bottle, and he went around reviving people that were fainting. Wonderful weather, absolutely perfect.

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