Bob Le Sueur is a 99 year old man who is a survivor of the war, and is well known among the island for his involvement in assisting escaped Russian prisoners, in Jersey, during the second world war.

Bob Le Sueur was 19 when the island was occupied by the Germans, and 24 when they were finally liberated. Throughout the time Jersey was taken over, Bob got to work and helped to shelter 8 different Russian escapees from the Nazis who were hunting them down. One of these Russians was Feodor, also known as Bill, who had before been harbored by a woman named Louisa Gold. Bob knew Lousia through the company which he worked for, and found out that she had taken in the Russian after her son Edward was killed in action, telling Bob that, “she had to do something for another mother’s son.”

However a few years later she and her brother Harold were both arrested by the Germans and sent to separate camps to be murdered. From that point on, Bob made it his responsibility to hide Bill. At first he kept him in a filing room at his offices, told him not to go near any of the windows and took him food regularly. He later moved him between various addresses before settling in a flat occupied by two conscientious objectors sent over from the mainland.

Later Bob was able to shelter other Russians in the many remote houses he knew.

Bob’s stories

He told our class a story of when his friend Bill got so drunk off of strong apple brandy that he crossed his arms, started kicking his legs and sang very loudly a song from Russia, loud enough to hear out in the streets. Ofcourse, at that exact moment of time a German troop was making their way down the street right next to the house where Bill was singing loudly. But thankfully the German soldiers were singing themselves too, so before they could notice the Russian singing Bob and his friends manage to quiet Bill by shoving a washcloth in his mouth.

Bob also mentioned that they were able to get his Russian friend, Bill, an illegal registration card. When I asked him how one could get an illegal registration card back then, he explained that if you lost a registration card, you could easily go down to the registration office and come up with some excuse about loosing it, and they would give you a new one. Once you had the duplicate card, the extremely skilled would have been able to carefully remove the image and replace it with a picture of the person who would want to use it illegally. There was a purple stamp which was placed half on the card, half on the image, so it would have been hard to replicate. However, Bob said that there was this one girl in particular, who couldn’t have been too older than myself, was skilled when it came to copying the stamp, so she would sketch in the other half of the stamp on the picture so it looked like the real thing.

He recalled the time when two German Bomber planes flew over Jersey and released two cylinders attached to parachutes. At first he thought they were bombs, but later found out that they were messages to the commander chief of Jersey. However, the Commander had already left the island with his family, so the messages were delivered to the Bailiff so he could do something about it. The Germans threatened that if Jersey did not surrender within 24 hours they would carpet-bomb the island, which is when they bomb one area intensively. This would have been devastating for the tiny island, and no doubt would have left numerous casualties. This is one of the factors which lead to the island being surrendered.

Cutting to Liberation Day, Bob was telling the story of when he and his friends were on their way to get a good spot to watch what was happening. They were cycling on their bikes with their makeshift tires made of tightly pulled garden hose, when suddenly one of Bob’s tires snapped. It made a sound similar to a pistol shot, sending everyone in the surrounding areas to panic. There were two people who dropped to the ground, and two German solders, both who held rifles, turns towards him with guns pointed. He mentioned remembering thinking to himself ‘ It’s Liberation day and these are the last seconds of my life.’ At that moment it would have been terrifying, but Bob was laughing when he was telling us this story.

He did say that we had wished he had shook the hand of one of the German soldiers on that day, one which was obviously starving, young and about to be taken as a prisoner of war. He even asked our class if he should’ve done it, just out of courtesy, however it would’ve been too early to be seen with the enemy, so he didn’t. He said that he always felt a bit of regret for not showing that boy some compassion, even if he was fighting for the Nazis.