A rather random post this morning – one that was inspired as I started doing a bit of tidying around the place, a task now temporarily abandoned.

Take a look at this pic – I quite forget how I came by the original.

The photo was taken, I think, outside Jersey’s Opera House in Gloucester Street. A couple of things date it to within a year or so, notably the posters on the wall for the 1948 film ‘Broken Journey’. The Opera House was, at this period in its history, primarily a cinema.

What of those pictured? On the left is Cyril Gill who, before he came to Jersey, competed for Great Britain at athletics and was the lead-off member of the sprint relay team that won a bronze medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics (possibly the last time a GB team got the baton round 🙂 ). 

He is shaking the hand of Harry Askew who was born in Barrow-in-Furness and came to Jersey as Head of Victoria College for a couple of years at the end of the 40s before continuing his teaching career in the north-east of England. Harry was also a top athlete and came 9th in the 1948 London Olympics at long jump. To this day he holds the Jersey long jump record of 7.29m.

Together Cyril and Harry formed the Jersey Athletics Club after the War.

The lady is (I think) Harry’s wife Beth.

The suave gentleman on the right? Almost certainly David Niven, no stranger to the Island. Niven saw active service during WW2 and acted in a film set in 1940 in the occupied Channel Islands – Appointment with Venus (Island Rescue in the US).

One almost-discarded photo, so many stories it hatches.

Regular readers may recall the remarkable story of Jersey girl Nan Le Ruez, her Occupation diaries and how it worked out for her in the years afterwards. If not, please visit Part 1 of her story, and Part 2.

Happily Nan has now reached the age of 100 and apparently shows little sign of packing it all in yet. This is how her niece Sue reported the occasion in the local newspaper over the weekend.

Edit 2nd August 2016. I’m sad to record that the wonderful Nan Le Ruez passed away on Saturday 30th July 2016, aged 101.

Some years ago Geoffroi, a Jersey criminal, was sentenced to be thrown off this rock to his death. At the appointed time, and in front of a large crowd the sentence was duly carried out. But to everyone’s astonishment Geoffroi survived and swam back to shore.

There ensued a great debate among those present. Some said that he should be set free, others that the sentence had not been properly carried out. Geoffroi declared that he would prove his innocence beyond doubt by repeating the feat.

He did so, but with less success, dashing his head off a rock and being killed. The place is named after him to this day.

This afternoon the scene was somewhat more tranquil.

There was little opportunity for active resistance during the German occupation of the Channel Islands 1940 – 45. The smallness of the islands and the sheer numbers of the occupying forces would have rendered such action futile.

The legendary Bailiff of Jersey during those long years, Alexander Coutanche, walked the thin line between cooperation with the Germans and intervening, protesting and negotiating on behalf of the people without bringing greater oppression on their heads. In this way the population were treated tolerably well under the circumstances.

Although direct action against the occupiers was out of the question there were many acts of passive resistance which frustrated the Germans to a greater or lesser degree. One of these was siphoning off available labour for ‘essential’ civilian work, such as road building and improvement. One such result is La Route du Nord from St John’s Village to Sorel, a beautiful, wide sweeping road going from nowhere to nowhere.

Another was the road ‘improvements’ along Chemin des Moulins (Waterworks Valley), a beautiful road indeed but probably less used now than in its heyday when a number of working water mills made it a hive of industry. The roadside walls along the valley are of tip-top quality and must have tied up fit tradesmen for many months. An enduring legacy to Jersey doing the little it could to slow the march of Nazism.

Further to Letizia’s comment below, here’s the Fawlty Towers sketch in question 🙂

And for Jenny, ‘Don’t tell him Pike‘ 🙂

The States of Jersey Police have never been great when it comes to major crime. We are a fortunate island and bad stuff doesn’t happen that often but when it does the investigation is normally a mess.

Young Finnish au pair Tuula Hoeoek was found battered to death in a muddy field in December 1966 and her murderer could well be still among us for all the progress that’s been made. The ‘Beast of Jersey’ Edward Paisnel stalked the lanes by night and assaulted and raped children for 11 years before he was apprehended in 1971 – for running a red light.

In November 1993 the world’s Press set up camp at the bar of the former Caesar’s Palace nightspot at Greve de Lecq on Jersey’s north coast. Down the road the bodies of Nicholas and Elizabeth Newall, wrapped in tarpaulin, were being dug up. They say the smell would have knocked out an elephant. They’d been there for six years.

Nicholas and Elizabeth

In October 1987 they’d gone missing from their home, having earlier the previous evening enjoyed a meal with their sons Roderick and Mark at the Seacrest, near Corbiere. (Great restaurant that was, now apartments.) The sons, who had returned to England the day after, returned and co-operated with the missing persons enquiry

Roderick & Mark

Months later it turned into a murder enquiry. The remains of a bonfire with blood-stained clothing was discovered nearby. At last a forensic examination was done on the house – extensive blood marks, scrubbed clean, were found. A search for the bodies was now begun and people were marching and poking everywhere for months. Mediums were brought in, and the finest UK search dogs. Nothing. Only when Roderick was trapped into a confession and was arrested and extradited back to Jersey did he lead the police to the bodies.

The bodies were buried in the woods behind the Moulin de Lecq pub

Roderick served 12 years of his sentence and was released in 2006. Mark, charged only with covering up the murders, served three years. 

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm (Leonard Cohen)

So true love does exist. OK, I’m convinced. But the Nan Le Ruez story is far from complete. As we saw in Part 1 her happy first marriage produced four sons. All were born in the south of England at places where her husband was stationed. But, as is the way of things, Alfred died, suddenly in 1985 in Spalding, Lincolnshire and left Nan a widow.

Rewind to that happiest of days in Jersey’s history 9th May 1945. The day some thought would never arrive. One of the first British servicemen to come ashore was Sub-Lieutenant Jimmy Cooper. By chance he exchanged a few words with the lovely Nan Le Ruez, one of many in the overjoyed and welcoming crowd of islanders. Though they went their separate ways neither quite forgot that brief encounter.

Nan was eventually persuaded to publish her diaries. In them she mentioned the young soldier she had spoken to on the quay that first Liberation Day. She now put out an appeal on a radio show to see if he was still around. Jimmy Cooper heard about this from a friend, and got in touch with Nan. He was married and living in Scotland at the time and Nan met both Jimmy and his wife. Later, after Jimmy’s wife died, he got in touch with Nan again, eventually proposing marriage. She accepted.

They were married on 27th November 2004 in Spalding, Lincolnshire nearly 60 years after that first brief encounter. Happily the event was captured nationally as well as locally. You can see Nan and Jimmy on this YouTube clip which also contains rare Occupation footage as well as celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Liberation. Towards the end it features snippets of my personal hero Bob Le Sueur. It is well worth watching.

Nan and Jimmy spent nine happy years together. Sadly Jimmy died last year. Nan herself is still going strong, lives in Spalding, and will be 99 next month.

I’m grateful to my good friend Sue Le Ruez, Nan’s niece, and her sister Gill for keeping me straight on Nan’s story. Sue has been one of Jersey’s top distance runners over very many years.

Will you make me some magic with your own two hands?
Will you build an emerald city with these grains of sand?
Can you give me something I can take home? (Jim Steinbeck)

Sometimes I think ‘love’ is a bit of an illusion, a chimera, something that many search for and indeed sometimes seem to find, only to discover that the emerald city is only a figment of our imagination.

Then along comes a story that sets me right. Twice. 

Jersey girl Nan Le Ruez lived through the first World War, though she will have known little enough about that conflict. By the time WW2 broke out she was a young woman of 25, engaged to be married. As the Germans marched across Europe towards Britain it became clear that the Channel Islands would not be defended in the event of an invasion. 

Many people had an agonising decision to make. Leave or stay. Nan’s fiancé Alfred du Feu, a Methodist minister, decided to go to England to continue his work. No matter – he and Nan would soon be reunited. Wouldn’t they? 

Nan was a member of a well-known farming family in St Peter, Jersey. From the early days of the Occupation she kept a daily diary in a series of exercise books logging events as they happened.  Many are the accounts of the Occupation, very few are contemporaneous, simply because of the eventual lack of writing materials. Nan tells us of daily life, how life on the farm and in the Island generally changed for the worse. 

Nan was a lay preacher, still in training, and throughout her writing her faith shines through quite beautifully. But as month follows month, year follows year, she agonises over Alfred.  She misses him desperately. Communications in those years were limited to short Red Cross letters and she hears little or nothing from him. Does he still love her? Will he wait for her? Sometimes she is in the depths of despair and only her faith keeps her believing. 

Nan’s diaries were only unearthed in recent years when she was persuaded they might be of interest. With only a light edit, and still with her sister Joyce’s original illustrations they were eventually published. Knowing that the words are as written, without hindsight, makes them all the more poignant. 

Jersey was eventually liberated five long years later in May 1945 and the diary ends. Leaving the big question which every reader must ask out loud. Were Nan and Alfred reunited? Did it work out for them?

OK I’ll tell you. Yes. They were married, lived happily in Cornwall and had four sons. What a happy ending – to Part 1.

The morning of 9th May each year in Jersey is given over to happy celebration, re-enactments, speeches and song. But later on Liberation Day a quieter and poignant ceremony takes place.

At Westmount we remember the slave and forced workers who lost their lives during the German Occupation. The slave workers, chiefly Russians, were treated appallingly and inhumanely. The death rate was high. On the other hand the forced workers, though deprived of their liberty, were at least paid and treated like fellow humans.

Today the three biggest local bigwigs were in attendance – the Bailiff, Lieutenant-Governor and First Minister. They laid the first wreaths. They were followed by representatives from Poland, France, Belgium, Spain, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Algeria and (yes) Germany. Many more followed on from worthy organisations and individuals, including one remembering the 21 islanders who never returned from Nazi concentration camps.

It’s a strange fact that, the longer since the actual events, the more determined it seems the Island becomes to remember them.

Before the ceremony