For part of our project we had a visit from survivors that were alive during the Jersey occupation. Our group had the incredible chance to meet 89 year old, Joan Tapley. For the session she sat and spoke to us about her time in Jersey during the occupation. Joan was a child when Jersey became occupied she was 6 years old when this happened, she was a lone child which meant that she was very close with her parents and she even said so herself that they used to tell her everything. She used to live on the North Coast which meant she witnessed lots of bombing around the island which a the time meant that the germans wanted to invade. The British government became weaker by the day which meant that they pactiaclly resulted into giving Jersey away.
She went on to explaining that later on around June 1940 all the houses around the island put up white sheets which meant they had surrendered down to the germans. She watched 30 odd planes fly over the island as they began to mark their territory. Joan also told us that lots of innocent people were killed that day like farmers and other labour workers along the avenue, this was the moment that the islanders knew they were not in good hands.
The germans arrived and began making rules, like introducing curfews, not allowing people near cliffs nor on beaches and giving everyone a ration food book so people knew how much to eat and on what days they’d get more. The curfews for the summer was nobody allowed out past 10 o’clock and in winter it was 9 o’clock in the mornings nobody was allowed out till 6am in summer and and 7am in winter. This is when Joan and her family began to realise the restrictions and how this felt more like an imprisoment than anything else. Islanders were not allowed lights at night, they used dark paper to block out the lights Joan said so herself that the “only advantage was to see the stars” The rules became more stricter as they went on, farmers had to inform authorities about what they were planning on growing and how many off, they didn’t have tea so they had to ‘substitute”, which is what the germans wanted people to say, it with parsnips and ginger.
Later on that year germans changed the currency over here to pfennigs, which wasn’t exactly easy at the time as people began to worry about food shortages and people from town began to struggle. Joan told us a story about how families that began to run out of food they would all go to fields and collect corn without the germans knowing and had to hide it very well as the German officers would often go randomly and check peoples homes. Authorities would also ask people what was in their bags so around this time a lot more woman became ‘pregnant’ due to stuffing corn bags up their dresses. Joan’s family actually ended up having so much corn one time that her grandma made her a mattress filled with it so that when Joan went to sleep she felt some weird things on her mattress to later discover it was filled as it was probably the best hiding space.
As the session came to an end Joan spoke about Liberation day. On the 8th the day before it was announced that the war was over, her father had gone to work like normal and then came home early due to the news. The town was completely emptied and everyone went home and gathered back later. The 9th of May came and everyone got in their trucks, cars and vans and set off to meet in town. Joan said all these cars appeared out of nowhere which she assumed had all been hidden whilst Jersey had been occupied as they were not allowed to have cars either. There was cheer and smiles and happiness in the atmosphere which hadn’t been like that for a while now.
Last but not least Joan told us a story about her dad who encountered a starving German who was very ill. He had come to the house and begged her father for an egg, as food shortages was still happening on the island he refused to give him and egg and due to him being German there was some resraint the German then left. Her father dwelled on the situation as he’d told him that he hadn’t spoken to his family in 3 to 5 months so he chased the German as he was leaving and gave him the egg.
