The Guernsey Children’s Home returns after the German Occupation.

The Guernsey Children’s Home returns after the German Occupation.

Mike Chandler interviewed by Radio Guernsey. The recording transcribed and edited by John David

And when we arrived back, if I can move, just skip on, make a huge leap here, when we arrived back after the war I remember my first meal was gruel, porridge, that was so thin, not mature, and we all sat down at long tables, long forms, no backs on them,
I………. In the Children’s Home?
In the Children’s Home on the Câtel, but don’t look at the Children’s Home as you see it now, Greenfields or Perruque, because it’s far removed from what it was when I came back after the war, there were tin corrugated iron huts there that accommodated the boys and girls in their wards, you know, we used to call them wards, I forget the number of my ward, but they were called wards, but it was dormitories, you see, there were about thirty-five boys in my dormitory at that time, and that’s life I knew until I left school at seven. But another thing I remember as you had the Germans were left behind, some of them, to clean up the mess, and I remember very well walking home from school one dinner time, it wasn’t very far away, and popping into this field where these Germans were working under the oversight of the British forces, and I walked into this shed where they were having their lunch break, about twelve o’clock, and this German put a little bit of salt on his boiled potato, new potato, and said “You like?”, “Yes, all right” so I can claim to have had dinner with some German forces.
I………. You ate with the Germans?
I ate with the Germans. They were ok, they were very pleasant people. Not all of them were Nazi creed or anything like that, they were just following orders like our troops were, Our troops are probably hated in some lands they go to. If I can say Iraq, they’re not very welcome although they are liberating forces. Anyway that’s another story.
But when we got back to the Children’s Home, the Germans had used the Children’s Home, their ordnance corps had used it. There were huge maps on the walls. They left the place I quite a state, there were staff who’d remained over here had been in to clean up before we returned, and I remember seeing all the straw mattresses piled in the drill sheds, and what have you, and there was a smell of the troops about the place, everywhere you went, there was a smell of troops, and I can believe that now because when you’ve been…
I………. What do they smell like?
Well, it was, when troops are on the alert they don’t wash very often.
I………. Ok, I get it
And when the were on gun batteries and all that sort of thing, although they had good washing facilities over here, and you’ve just had German troops sent over here from another battlefield, [and all they had to wash in was their mess-tins] and make their tea in them, and shave, all out in the battlefield, in the trenches, and some of them hadn’t got rid of that habit I don’t think, because you could smell the Germans, left an odour here for quite a long time, even in the bunkers, you could smell the presence, the odour of Germans.

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