The history of my family is massively based around the occupation, there were six people from my direct family that were alive during the occupation, this was my grandmother and great grandmother and her husband, and my grand father and great grandfather and his wife. There is a plethora of stories about things about my grandfather during the occupation a she lived very actively and hated the Germans ans wasn’t afraid to act upon that hatred.

The first was when he was about 15 him and his friends got wind of a Pig that a group of high ranking Jersey officials and a few of the high up Nazis within the island were fattening up to have a feast, once they had confirmed this they all (about 8 of them) all marched up to Queens valley woods where the pig was being kept. Going up there a few of them including my grandfather had their rifles with them, this is significant as if the Germans had seen them with their guns they would have been shot on sight, but they took them with them anyways as they thought the Germans might have tried to kill them to get the cow as they were just as hungry. Once they had the pig they took it back to Gory and it butchered then shared out the meat between as many people as they could.

Another story from my Grandfathers time in the occupation was that he was a fisherman the whole time with his dad, he used to row the boat out into Gory bay. He had been doing it for years before the occupation but because of the rationing and the hard conditions within the final year of the occupation he had to stop as he didn’t have the energy to do it any more.

The final main story is the one about the relationship between my grandparents as they had both known each other for years before as her mother was the fishmonger that my granddad and his dad brought their catch to. During the occupation they started seeing each other and their relationship became official on liberation day at the end Albert pier when they could see the american warship coming in to liberate them.