Jersey school days under Nazi occupation relived
16 minutes ago
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Robert Hall
BBC News, Jersey
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Rod Bryans
François Le Maistre shared his memories of German soldiers hunting through houses looking for hidden radio sets - such as the one his family had
Starting school at any time is a daunting experience but when François Le Maistre started he did so while his island home was occupied by the Nazis and he did not speak a word of English.
Now 88 years old he returned to Les Landes School to share his experience with the current pupils.
"Bouônjour. Coumme est qu'ous êtes? I'm sure all of you will understand that is Jèrriais. That's all I spoke. That was the only language I spoke when I came to this school in January 1944," he told pupils.
"None of us who came from the country spoke any English. We we were like friends, all of us in school, because we were all, and had been, occupied by this time, for a long time."
Mr Le Maistre told the pupils: "Mum and dad, they had a vegetable garden. They had chickens. They grew things like swedes and carrots and potatoes and peas and beans.
"Now, the people in town had nothing, and for a great part of the war, a lot of the people in town were starving.
"I remember, we had five Red Cross parcels and you know the thing that I liked the best was a tin called Klim... it's milk spelt backwards, isn't it, and it was dried milk and we loved it!"
He said: "When the Germans first came, all the radios were taken away.
"They went through houses, everybody's houses and your radio was confiscated.
"Alongside our big farm kitchen, we had a big fire. On each side, we had two big armchairs. Those armchairs were stood on carpets.
"Underneath the carpet on the right hand side of the fire was a small trapdoor, and that's where my parents hid the crystal [radio] set."
Rod Bryans
François Le Maistre alongside his cherished tin of Klim, powdered milk
Mr Le Maistre said: "Towards the end of the war, after the D-Day landing, the Germans knew that things weren't going well for them in France. They were much more mellow. Much calmer.
"From my memory I never had a German threatening any of us kids, they never stopped us, waylaid us, nothing like that, and in the 1950s they came back to kind of apologise for what they had been doing during the occupation."
He said: "[On Liberation Day] there was a huge crowd of people, lots of kids of our age. It was the joy of the crowd, you felt uplifted. There were celebrations by the school too.
"I'm going to be 88 this year. I lived through it all, and its a great privilege to still be here".
'How lucky we are'
For the Les Landes pupils of 2025, hearing the wartime stories from a former pupil, and seeing the objects that were important to him when he was their age, was something they said they would not forget.
Orla said: "We hear the stories about World War Two, but we don't hear from the people who have experienced it. So it's really nice that they're sharing that with us."
Milly and Dillan said they would remember the occupation stories
Dillan said: "I think it's really important. To know how lucky we are, and also so we can't make the same mistake again."
Evie said: "I think it's amazing that we can still hear about these types of things…and when they're gone, we can pass them down more generations. So it will never be a story that's forgotten."
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