PATHETIC ISLANDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 6, 6 July 1940, Page 12

PATHETIC ISLANDS

JERSEY AND GUERNSEY

VANISHED GAIETY

PAST, PRESENT, AND—?

The tides steal in and slink out again over the sands of Havre dcs Pas. The place is silent, deserted. Death and horror, fire and blood, have marked the coming of the Germans to St. Helier. The Channel Islands are no longer held by the Duke of Normandy, who is also King George VI of England.. With Alderney, Herm, Jethou, and Sark they have fallen into the hands of his arch-enemy. They have been relinquished fr" the time being as of "no military significance."

No merry snouxs and laughter, no screams and splashing are heard at Havre dcs Pas, at St. Aubin, nor at any of the beaches and pools in Jersey and Guernsey; no bathing girls (more girl than costume) display their enticements for general admiration, no bathers lie prostrate on the sands browning in the sun, no crowds saunter leisurely through the neat streets of St. Helier and St. Peter Port, or lounge along the quays and waterfronts. The vivid colour of a garden of. phloxes is all gone; the gaiety, the movement, the very life of the Channel Islands have gone. The soldiers have gone. The steamers from England no longer thread their way through channels of tooth-like rocks. The islands are now cut off from England, and the greater part of the islanders have fled. What of those who could not leave?. Many of them have been mercilessly slaughtered.

Blackpool, Margate, Southend, and Yarmouth drew, their myriads of jolly holidaymakers, filling the beaches to "standing room only." They swarmed out of gloomy canyons of brick and mortar, out of the smoke and steam of industry, fled from the clangour and roaring of machines and the hiss and gas of molten metals in the pouring. So these people came to the sea, to the clean air and the. savour of salt, leaving all their cares behind, them. All these places were reached by rail and road; they called and loudly. But the Channel Islands used allurements. To reach these islands meant a sea passage; to arrive at St. Peter Port or St. Helier in the morning was to land in a country not quite Continental yet certainly not English.

Perfumes, cigarettes, tobacco, and cigars and spirits were here ludicrouslycheap, and ' a bottle of champagne (large) could be bought for eighteenpence. It was so that people using every accent known in the British Isles went to Jersey and Guernsey and went again and again, thronged the beaches, filled the charabancs, wandered through, the lovely lanes, climbed the rocks, fossicked among the pools left by the tide, and ate enormous lobster teas. ' At night they, crowded the dance halls and cinemas and.enjoyed themselves in other ways. Some went by air, for the journey from England was short and the fares moderate. The boat way was the more popular, and that not solely for reasons of economy. Every morning in summer time, especially in this month, rapid steamers landed crowds upon the quays and'returned to bring more crowds, and there, were steamer links with France,. to Granville and St. Malo. • , , Although the Channel Islands, defences were withdrawn together ,with the greater part of their people, the simple-minded questioner continues to ask, Why, if up to now the islands were always garrisoned by British troops? The islands had been taken by Caesar, they were handed over by Charles the Simple of France to Rollo, the Norse pirate, in 912 A.D.; but up to now they had not been invaded. True, in 1781, the French landed at St. Helier in the depth of winter, turned j the lieutenant-governor out of his warm bed, and forced him to capitulate. But he was ignored by the Jersey militia and the 78th Highlanders who fought and beat the French and saved the island. Before that the Jerseymen backed Charles ll's cause and so incurred the wrath "of Cromwell; the naval battle of St. Oven was fought and Elizabeth Castle fell into the hands of Admiral Blake. But the islands had never known anything like this present butchery by the Germans, nor feared it. They felt secure and so their people went about their peaceful avocations. Tourism was one of them, in fact it was, perhaps, their greatest of "exports." Raising early stuff for the British markets was another, and the breeding •of bovine aristocrats was still another. The islands also exported men. The Channel Islanders were never moaners or whiners; they loved their country, but realised its limited land areas. They did not expect it to find jobs for all who stayed at home, and so they went abroad —see their names in any directory in any English-speaking country in the world.. They did not wait for Opportunity to come to them but went after her, and caught her by the skirts. Jerseymen and Guernseymen or their progeny are to be found all over the world, on land and sea. . A sturdy type, speaking generally, they have their native granite in their fibres.

Every foot of fertile soil, every patch of rich pasture in these islands was won, and hardly won, from granite. Before they were defiled by the Germans the islands furnished food not only for their peoples but for Britain. Spring flowers, first ripe tomatoes, beans and peas, and potatoes appearing elsewhere as out of season, came from these islands. Glasshouses covered acres of land and many of these were 500, 600, 700 feet,.and more in length. Tomatoes grown in the open were remarkable for the symmetry of the rows, the exactitude of their height of the plants, the machinemade appearance of the fruit itself, great pears growing against brick walls —miles of walls—were each one carefully tended and enclosed at a certain stage in paper bags. The wealth from this highly-specialised form of petit culture in the Channel Islands must have been enormous. A planting of millions of bulbs at a time for early production was a commonplace on many farms.

Then there were the cows, of long and distinguished lineage. Cows, reared and tended in sheltered parklands in which might stand a sedate house or small mansion with an unmistakable siegneurial air about it. Not a blade of grass appeared to be out of place and the very trees were discreet and proper as elderly maiden ladies. The domestic cow was not. allowed to roam about the paddock as she pleased. She was tethered and had to eat in discs. However, she always seemed to comport herself as a lady and she looked one, and the grazing paddocks were as tidy as.a best room.

Holiness is a characteristic of these islands, for saints' names have been given to most districts, or parishes. Not all plain names like St. John or