CHANNEL ISLANDS FREED

Southland Times, Issue 25670, 12 May 1945, Page 5

CHANNEL ISLANDS FREED

SMALL BRITISH FORCE LANDS JOY OF INHABITANTS ALMOST INDESCRIBABLE (United Press Association—Telegraph Copyright) (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, May 11. Scenes of almost indescribable joy were seen when 30 British artillerymen went ashore on Guernsey, and took over the island from the garrison of 10,000 Germans. A police inspector and a sergeant formed an unofficial reception party at the dockside. They were both choking back tears when the tiny force formed up, fixed bayonets and marched towards the dock gates. Behind the gates was a seething, cheering mob of men and women who overwhelmed the soldiers by hugging and kissing them, shouting: “They are British; we have waited so long for you.” Every house had a Union Jack saved through five long years for this moment. “The joy of these people who have been eating rabbitskins and getting one and a-half pounds of potatoes a week, and who had that morning breakfasted on stewed cabbage leaves,” was almost heartbreaking,” says a correspondent of the Press Association. “One man was smoking a cigarette for which he had paid 28/-. I offered him one and in a frenzied grabbing of hands the whole packet disappeared. All the cats and dogs in the islands have been eaten, and the islanders’ only consolation was that the German garrison was even worse off. They told of seeing German soldiers eating earthworms and grass. “When the Union Jack was run up over the old courthouse one could hear a sob from the crowd. Then they sang ‘God Save the King.’ An ineradicable hatred of Germans is bitten deep into the souls of the Channel Islanders. The grey gauntness of hunger is in their eyes and faces. It is a familiar story in Europe, but these are our own people whose only contact with England has been through little secret crystal wireless sets in the cold, lightless island. Many of the trees had gone for fuel. Farmers almost wept as they described the gradual disappearance of their famous herds. “The excitement intensified during the day, and the crowd almost overwhelmed an American war correspondent. His was the first United States uniform they had seen. Amid all the tremendous scenes of jubilation, the bewildered Germans, mostly oldish soldiers, walked and cycled about the tasks still remaining to them.”