An Occupation in St. John's by Nelson Fauvel

For the 75th Anniversary of Liberation year, I've unearthed another Occupation tale for the reader.

An Occupation in St. John's by Nelson Fauvel

I was ten years old at the beginning of the Occupation and living with my parents and sister at the Hollies, St. John's. My father was an engineer at the Harbour in St Helier, looking after all the machinery and making sure it all worked smoothly. He once built a turbine at home which, situated on the north coast, as we were, would catch the strong north winds and, connected to a car dynamo, would charge up a battery. This we would use for lighting when the electricity would go off because rationing was quite severe especially towards the end of the Occupation.

We used to pack an old oil drum with saw dust with a hole right through the middle This I would light and the heat from the sawdust burning from the inside outwards would be enough to cook our food I used to enjoy doing that We used to keep about twenty-four rabbits for food and it used to be my job to collect the rabbit food from the hedgerows in a hessian sack thrown over my shoulder.

We were lucky in that we were country folk, with family and friends on farms. We could help out in the fields at harvest gleaning the fields for corn so that we could make flour. Town people were not quite so lucky and many of them were very thin by the end of the Occupation.

We lived in the curfew zone which meant that we had to be in the house earlier than those further inland and there was a strict black-out Once; when our curtains were not drawn quite as securely as they should have been, a German soldier knocked on the door, very angry. He fired some shots over the house just to scare us. It was very frightening.

As a youngster I used to go out scavenging around St John's looking for spent cartridge shells etc. Once I found a complete belt from a machine gun. This unfortunately was confiscated one day when the Germans searched our house just in case we had a crystal radio set.

They didn't find the crystal set, but they did find the belt. I've still got a few empty shells in the house somewhere.

We also used to play tricks on the Germans, pointing them out to others when they were supposed to be hiding behind hedgerows while training. We also picked up the leaflets dropped by the Allies giving us the real news of how the war was going. Father used to hide them all in the piano!

From our house we could see the men building the new North road, which the States organised to save men from working for the Germans.

My grandparents set up and run St. John's Hotel which is now just a pub. One day they were given 48 hour notice to quit as the Germans wanted to use the building. All the family chipped in and helped them move all their belongings and furniture to various points around the island, in farms and houses owned by other members of the family. I remember moving boxes right down from the attics to the carts below

My grandfather had built a recreation ground near his hotel with swings and roundabouts and a slide. That used to be a good playground before the Occupation, but during it, the Germans took half the field and it wasn't so much fun anymore.

Our brother was born in 1941 and, as we were much older, we had to look after him a lot of the time. My parents called him Anthony Winston - very patriotic! He had one of those big old-fashioned prams which used to have a secret compartment underneath – very useful if you wanted to get something past the German sentries.

One day when my father was unloading food from a barge at the harbour, he discovered that there was ammunition on board, too. He refused to move it and promptly went home, quite a way from the harbour to St. John's. The Germans, however, followed him and threatened him with deportation for him and all the family if he didn't return. He didn't have much choice, so he went back with them in their "black maria". He was furious after that and we made sure we kept out of his way!

On Liberation Day I was let loose in town. I was working at La Motte Street School at the time, where Philip Le Feuvre (Social Security) House is now. The other young lads and myself were allowed to run around the town, seeing everything that was going on I saw the first sailors stepping off the boat at St. Helier. I was also there when the Union Jack was hoisted at Pomme D'Or.

We also followed the soldiers who were climbing up to Fort Regent to hoist the flag up there, but we didn't go all the way, we decided it was too far' Quite a crowd did follow them though!