The Channel Islands At War (28 page)

Conditions varied from Island to Island, although it is generally true that Guernsey, the poorer Island, with more troops and Todt workers, and responsible for Alderney and Sark, suffered the worst. There they 'are well on the way to starvation', said a Sarkee, who saw queues for potato peelings (at 3d a lb), and people coming away in tears because they were sold out. Sawdust was sold to be boxed and used as fuel, and people seemed to be living mainly on
root crops and potatoes. John Le
ale told General M
ü
ller in May 1941, "that there has been a most noticeable increase in the death rate and in the number of days lost in sickness in recent months.'

Christmas 1942 found Mrs
Tremayne
in a distinctly unfestive frame of mind. She had had to sell household goods for food. Domestic goods were largely unobtainable as were clothes and shoes. Deportations and reprisals after the Basalt Operation had made matters worse, and 1942 had been 'the saddest year of my life'. There were no cards, parties or presents, although she found q bottle of wine and cooked a chicken. Above all, there was no wireless to hear the Christmas broadcasts. By New Year, 'all our cupboards
are
empty'. 1943 was the same: a year of steadily deteriorating rations, and worsening health conditions, in which transport was limited to bicycles and horse drawn vehicles, and 'our clothes are all in tatters'. St Peter Port was like 'a dead city, all the shops are empty, most of them have shavings or coloured papers in the windows to keep up appearances'. Winter brought its miseries as the lack of food, fuel, clothes, and lighting began to take hold. Men started to faint at work, and hours had to be restricted. 'We have been on our uppers for months now', wrote Mrs
Tremayne
: it's very cold and wintry here today, and there is quite a lot of illness about. Heavy colds, bronchitis, pneumonia, due mostly to the lack of nourishing foods. Sugar and fats we miss most terribly ... it's a case of slow starvation. We all lack energy, and feel we want to stay in bed, we do at least keep warm there.' At Christmas time 1943 she desperately wished it would be their last occupation winter; Mrs Cortvriend went to hand out her meagre gifts passing the houses of evacuated and deported neighbours, and as she returned in complete darkness she could hear German voices raised in song from the house at the top of her road. The carol was 'Holy Night, Silent Night". A little further on she met a boy in a blue belted gaberdine coat who reminded her of her evacuated son. He told Mrs Cortvriend they were having sugar beet pudding and a rabbit for Christmas dinner, and they wished each other 'Merry Christmas'.

By March 1944 a note of desperation began to be heard in Mrs
Tremayne
's writing, i believe they are sl
owly starving us to death', she
wrote. Illness was widespread due to lack of food. Potatoes had given out, and the bread ration was insufficient. All they had officially was 3 ozs of butter, 3 ozs of sugar, 6 ozs of flour or oats a week, and 3 ozs of meat, 2 ozs of coffee, and 1 oz of salt a fortnight. There was a daily half pint of separated milk. Winter had seen a reduction in the butter ration. On Easter Sunday 1944: 'Things are daily getting worse in the food line, it is almost famine now and people are looking old and gaunt. Here in Sark we have no fresh meat, not even tinned to take its place, no fish, no potatoes, no vegetables, no flour and insufficient bread. So how can we last much longer?'

In fact, the worst was still to come, and was by no means to be ended by the arrival on five occas
ions of a Red Cross ship, the SS
Vega,
with individual parcels and other supplies.

To say the Islanders had little understanding of wartime privations, as Morrison did, was to add insult to injury. Nor should it be forgotten that diary writers rarely come from the poorest classes. The poor suffered more for they had no hidden reserves, and no cash for the black market. Many of them were unemployed, or had to cope with extra relatives after the disruption of family life brought about by evacuation and deportation. Molly Finigan paid tribute to her mother for keeping a family extended in numbers by the exigencies of war. 'Food', she wrote, 'that's the main topic I seem to remember from the war years'.

Rationing was introduced in July 1940, and for six months or so the commodities involved and quantities allowed were not unreasonable by wartime standards Rationing then included 12 ozs meat, 4 ozs of butter, 4 ozs of sugar, 4 ozs of cooking fat, 4 ozs of tea, 3 ozs of salt, and 6 ozs of flour a week. But as the years passed the commodities declined and even disappeared, and the amounts were reduced. Meat fell to 8 ozs and by the summer of 1941 to 4 ozs a fortnight. Cooking fat had gone by early 1944. Tea fell to 1 oz by April 1941, and ended in October that year. Butter was cut in December 1943 to 2
½
: ozs in spite of the usual protests. The ration was not restored to 3 ozs until May 1944, and was to disappear again at the end of the year. Sugar fell to 3 ozs a week although children were allowed an extra 5 ozs. Salt fell to an oz a week.

Milk was rationed from October 1940 on Guernsey and August 1941 in Jersey. Children up to 14, expectant and suckling mothers, and invalids were allowed two pints a day of fresh cream milk, but ordinary users were restricted to one pint subsequently cut to half a pint of separated milk, while the Germans kept the creamed milk for themselves setting up their own dairies where cheese was made. To obtain creamed milk, Molly's mother, walked uphill to St Martins every Tuesday and Thursday pushing a pram containing two large milk cans. Fish rationing began in May 1941 in Guernsey and June 1942 in Jersey. Twenty per cent of the catch was preserved for the Germans and this rose to 60 per cent by late 1944. Catches were always inadequate because of the general restrictions. Potato rationing began in December 1941 with an allowance of 10 lbs each cut to 5 lbs in August 1942 and by the end of 1944 there were none.

Time after time diarists complained about the inadequate bread ration. Rationing began in February 1941 with 4 lbs 10 ozs allocated to each adult a week reduced before long to 4 lbs 8 ozs. Special allowances had to be made for heavy workers, male and fe
male, of 6 lbs 2 ozs, and 5 lbs
6
ozs respectively. Then from April to August 1943 came an illegal reduction in rations cutting them to 3 lbs 10 ozs. All agreed the quality of bread declined. Molly Finigan said husks and even maggots were found in it, and Julia Tremayne remarked the bread was so atrocious that"... some weeks we need a pick axe to divide it, even the hens leave it.' Later these rations of bread were to cease completely in February 1945.

The effects of this prolonged poor diet are obvious. Everyone on Sark from Sibyl Hathaway to Mrs Tremayne lost weight. Doctor Rowan Revell on Guernsey was worried by early signs of malnutrition including lassitude and dizziness, and although actual deaths from malnutrition were disputed by the Germans at the time, and by some historians since, contemporaries were in no doubt such deaths occurred. In the winter of 1944-5 Maugham said that in January in St Helier, 78 deaths were recorded, the highest figure for 15 years. Lack of proper diet must have made a contribution to lowered powers of resistance with rations providing less than half the necessary calories towards the end of the war.

Some alternative sources of nourishment were available depending on where you lived, and on your income. Although Hathaway, Coutanche, and Carey may have lost weight, it is clear their home lives were considerably less disrupted than other peoples. They kept heating and lighting. Even though Mrs Coutanche had the contents of her meat safe rifled, by and large the ruling class escaped requisitioning and looting. Those who lived by the black market or worked with the Germans for higher wages did not go short; nor did criminals and hoarders unless they were caught. When in January 1945 private stocks of food were forbidden, some remarkable collections of tinned goods were unearthed by Feldpolizei raids. Islanders benefited whenever they could from black market produce. Barter began to play an important part with people selling domestic items in return for food.

On Guernsey, the special aid society established a barter market with a charge of 6d per exchange. Stolen goods circulated, and Todt officials and other German employees brought tobacco or cigarettes to exchange for good quality clothes and even antiques. In June 1941, the states stepped in to ban over 36 items from these markets.

The better-off did help on occasion. Mrs Tremayne referred to several personal gifts at times like Christmas from Hathaway. In 1943 she was given some rug wool, leather and a packet of candles. On one occasion, when she heard all the stored grain and potatoes might be seized, Sibyl Hathaway organized the future seneschal, her farm manager, and a carter, to take a cart to the village hall during the German's evening mealtime when only one man was on guard. They got away with a ton of wheat, according to her memoirs, and this was ground and distributed by the baker with normal rations. Many of the potatoes were hidden in a cellar directly below the Hathaways' drawing-room. Mrs Coutanche provided wood for the Blampieds when they were ill. On rare occasions even the Germans were prepared to be kind. Molly and Joyce Finigan were told by them where they could get thick barley soup at the back of a house at Castle Carey.

After the black market, the main sources of extra food were scrounging and theft, and the use of substitutes which sound picturesque, but were in many cases quite revolting. People looked in dustbins and on rubbish tips for potato peelings. They went to glean from the harvest fields. Molly Finigan remembered collecting acorns for coffee which was also made from parsnips (parffee), dandelions and lupin seeds (roasted and ground). Tea was made from blackberry and camellia leaves, shredded and baked carrots, garden mint, lime blossom, and green pea-pods. Tobacco came from cherry and chestnut leaves, rose petals, coltsfoot and clover. Blackberries were particularly in demand as a fruit, for jam, and for their leaves. Tom Jehan, a friend of the Finigans, whose father was killed in August 1944 trying to defend his potato crop, made pocket money by collecting them.

As vegetable substitutes, nettles, sorrel and bracken were used, and those vegetables that were available found new uses in the form of puddings. As fuel supplies declined food often ended up in an uncooked and runny form on plates. Cakes were made from potato flavoured with dried grapes, and rissoles from swedes and turnips. Seaweed was used for jellies, and every sea creature from spider crabs to ormers gathered whenever possible.

One source of food was received with very mixed feelings. Red Cross parcels were sent on by deported Islanders from their camps in Germany where, by all accounts, the diet at least was better than that in the Islands. When Islanders heard of these parcels, 'it makes our mouths water', and great was the joy when at Christmas 1943 they began to arrive. The vicar sent cigarettes and chocolate to Sark in November, and in January there was an even more welcome gift. I have had, said Mrs
Tremayne
, '2 ozs of real English Brooke Bond tea sent to me by our vicar at Biberach, what a godsend it was, and almost sixteen people have had a cup of honest-to-goodness tea out of it to gladden our hearts'. In March 1944 she heard that parcels were expected to arrive, and speculated on the odd circumstance that with Britain only 60 miles away their first outside help should come from German camps. These parcels did no more than scratch the surface of want. The next month Mrs Tremayne saw a letter in the paper from a dentist's wife thanking people who had sent bits of nourishing food to her husband when he was ill.

The same day she noted the disappearance of candles. 'God, what shall we do?', she wrote. Life was made more miserable by the gradual elimination of virtually every household good, except toilet paper for which unwanted tomato packing-paper was used. Goods were bartered away, could not be repaired, or simply wore out. Soap was scarce by early 1941 and died out, leading to an increase in skin diseases, and body lice carrying typhus. Salt was virtually unknown by early 1943, and could only be obtained from sea-water in which cooking was often done. Crockery, cutlery, pots and pans, cleaning implements and preparations, glassware, and stationery items were among necessities that became luxuries and then disappeared. Above all, both health and pride were undermined by the situation regarding clothes and shoes. Rationing was introduced in September 1940 after the Germans had brought up much in the shops, but it was of little use. By ear
ly 1941 the authorities in St He
lier were appealing for clothes for poor children and women. Clothes became unobtainable and were made from curtains and rags.

Cotton, darning wool, and wool itself, except that obtainable from unravelling old or holed garments, were unobtainable, preventing proper repairs. 'Our clothes', wrote one commentator, 'are hanging together with the aid of safety pins'. Householders found vital items of clothing stolen in the night, and one person found all his shoes stolen and had to go to work in bedroom slippers. In one case a man was fined for stealing 2 lbs of wool, officially stated to cost 8s a lb, when the shop price was 24/- a lb.

The loss of footwear was most grievous. There were no waders for fishermen or heavy boots for farm workers. Novel substitutes for leather had to be found by spring 1941. One woman said, 'I am soling my boots with those rubber mats that come off pub counters and have 'Pony Ales' and 'Guinness Stout' written on them, so I must be careful when I kneel not to show my soles.' Ordinary shoes rose from 8/1 Id to 25/6d a pair. Clogs were imported from France, but they cost 35/-. Otherwise people had to repair their shoes with bits of wood, and the lanes echoed to the rattle of wooden clogs and shoes. Getting a pair of shoes was no easy matter. Mrs Tremayne found her feet wet through at the end of 1943, and applied for a permit to buy a new pair. She was told she would have to wait six months, and when she eventually got them they were men's, several sizes too big.