The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Page 12
They would be ashamed to tell of it, but I am not. I don’t much care for people—never have, never will. I got my reasons. I never met a man half so true as a dog. Treat a dog right and he’ll treat you right—he’ll keep you company, be your friend, never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against them.
You should know what some Guernsey folks did to their pets when they got scared the Germans was coming. Thousands of them quit the island—flew off to England, sailed away, and left their dogs and cats behind. Deserted them, left them to roam the streets, hungry and thirsty—the swine!
I took in as many dogs as I could gather up, but it wasn’t enough. Then the States stepped in to take care of the problem—and did worse, far worse. The States warned in the newspapers that, because of the war, there might not be enough food for humans, much less for animals. “You may keep one family pet,” they said, “but the States will have to put the rest to sleep. Feral cats and dogs, roaming the island, will be a danger to the children.”
And that is what they did. The States gathered them animals into trucks, and took them to St. Andrews Animal Shelter, and those nurses and doctors put them all to sleep. As fast as they could kill one truck load of pets, another truck load would arrive. I saw it all—the collecting, the unloading at the shelter, and the burying.
I saw one nurse come out of the shelter and stand in the fresh air, gulping it down. She looked sick enough to die herself. She had herself a cigarette and then she went back on in to help with the killing. It took two days to kill all the animals.
That’s all I want to say, but put it in your book.
An Animal Lover
From Sally Ann Frobisher to Juliet
15th May, 1946
Dear Miss Ashton,
Miss Pribby told me you would be coming to Guernsey to hear about the war. I hope we will meet then, but I am writing now because I like to write letters. I like to write anything, really.
I thought you’d like to know how I was personally humiliated during the war—in 1943, when I was twelve. I had scabies. There wasn’t enough soap on Guernsey to keep clean—not our clothes, our houses, or ourselves. Everyone had skin diseases of one sort or another—scales or pustules or lice. I myself had scabies on top of my head—under my hair—and they wouldn’t go away.
Finally, Dr. Ormond said I must go to Town Hospital and have my head shaved, and cut the tops of the scabs off to let the pus out. I hope you will never know the shame of a seeping scalp. I wanted to die.
That is where I met my friend Elizabeth McKenna. She helped the nurses on my floor. The nurses were always kind, but Miss McKenna was kind and funny. Her being funny helped me in my darkest hour. When my head had been shaved, she came into my room with a basin, a bottle of Dettol, and a sharp scalpel.
I said, “This isn’t going to hurt, is it? Dr. Ormond said it wouldn’t hurt.” I tried not to cry.
“He lied,” Miss McKenna said, “it’s going to hurt like hell. Don’t tell your mother I said ‘hell.’ ”
I started to giggle at that, and she made the first slice before I had time to be afraid. It did hurt, but not like hell. We played a game while she cut the rest of the tops off—we shouted out the names of every woman who had ever suffered under the blade. “Mary, Queen of Scots—Snip-snap!” “Anne Boleyn—Whap!” “Marie Antoinette—Thunk!” And we were done.
It hurt, but it was fun too because Miss McKenna had turned it into a game.
She swabbed my bald head with Dettol and came in to visit me that evening—with a silk scarf of her own to wrap round my head as a turban. “There,” she said, and handed me a mirror. I looked in it—the scarf was lovely, but my nose looked too big for my face, just as it always did. I wondered if I’d ever be pretty, and asked Miss McKenna.
When I asked my mother the same question, she said she had no patience with such nonsense and beauty was only skin-deep. But not Miss McKenna. She looked at me, considering, and then she said, “In a little more time, Sally, you’re going to be a stunner. Keep looking in the mirror and you’ll see. It’s bones that count, and you’ve got them in spades. With that elegant nose of yours, you’ll be the new Nefertiti. You’d better practice looking imperious.”
Mrs. Maugery came to visit me in hospital and I asked her who Nefertiti was, and if she was dead. It sort of sounded like it. Mrs. Maugery said she was indeed dead in one way, but immortal in another way. Later on, she hunted up a picture of Nefertiti for me to see. I wasn’t exactly sure what imperious was, so I tried to look like her. As yet, I haven’t grown into my nose, but I’m sure it will come—Miss McKenna said so.
Another sad story about the Occupation is my Aunt Letty. She used to have a big, gloomy old house out on the cliffs near La Fontenelle. The Germans said it lay in their big guns’ line of fire and interfered with their gun practice. So they blew it up. Aunt Letty lives with us now.
Yours sincerely,
Sally Ann Frobisher
From Micah Daniels to Juliet
15th May, 1946
Dear Miss Ashton,
Isola gave me your address because she is sure you would like to see my list for your book.
If you was to take me to Paris today, and set me down in a fine French restaurant—the kind of place what has white lace tablecloths, candles on the walls, and silver covers over all the plates—well, I tell you it would be nothing, nothing compared to my Vega box.
In case you don’t know of it, the Vega was a Red Cross ship that come first to Guernsey on 27 December, 1944. They brought food to us then, and five more times—and it kept us alive until the end of the war.
Yes, I do say it—kept us alive! Food had not been so plentiful for several years by then. Except for the devils in the Black Market, not a spoonful of sugar was left on the Island. All the flour for bread had run out about the first of December of ’44. Them German soldiers was as hungry as we was—with bloated bellies and no body warmth from food.
Well, I was tired to death of boiled potatoes and turnips, and I would have soon turned up my toes and died, when the Vega came into our port.
Mr. Churchill, he wouldn’t let the Red Cross ships bring us any food before then because he said the Germans would just take it, and eat it up themselves. Now that may sound like smart planning to you—to starve the villains out! But to me it said he just didn’t care if we starved along with them.
Well, something shoved his soul up a notch or two, and he decided we could eat. So in December, he says to the Red Cross, “Oh, all right, go ahead and feed them.”
Miss Ashton, there were TWO BOXES of food for every man, woman, and child on Guernsey—all stored up in the Vega’s hold. There was other stuff too: nails, seed for planting, candles, oil to cook with, matches to light a fire, some clothing, and some shoes. Even a few layettes for any new babies around.
There was flour and tobacco—Moses can talk about manna all he wants, but he never seen anything like this! I am going to tell you everything in my box, because I wrote it all down to paste in my memory book.
Six ounces of chocolate
Twenty ounces of biscuits
Four ounces of tea
Twenty ounces of butter
Six ounces of sugar
Thirteen ounces of Spam
Two ounces of tinned milk
Eight ounces of raisins
Fifteen ounces of marmalade
Ten ounces of salmon
Five ounces of sardines
Four ounces of cheese
Six ounces of prunes
One ounce of pepper
One ounce of salt
A tablet of soap
I gave my prunes away—but wasn’t that something? When I die I am going to leave all my money to the Red Cross. I have written to tell them so.
There is something else I should say to you. It may be about those Germans, but honor due is honor due. They unloaded all those boxes of food for us from the Vega, and they didn’t take none, not one box of it, fo
r themselves. Of course, their Commandant had told them, “That food is for the Islanders, it is not yours. Steal one bit and I’ll have you shot.” Then he gave each man unloading the ship a teaspoon, so’s he could scrape up any flour or grain that spilled on the roadway. They could eat that.
In fact, they were a pitiful sight—those soldiers. Stealing from gardens, knocking on doors asking for scraps. One day I saw a soldier catch up a cat, and slam its head against a wall. Then he cut it off, and hid the cat in his jacket. I followed him—till he come to a field. That German skinned that cat and boiled him up in his billy can, and ate it right there.
That was truly, truly a sorrowful sight to see. It made me sick, but underneath my sick, I thought, “There goes Hitler’s Third Reich—dining out,” and then I started laughing, fit to die. I am ashamed of that now, but that is what I did.
That is all I have to say. I wish you well with your book writing.
Yours truly,
Micah Daniels
From John Booker to Juliet
16th May, 1946
Dear Miss Ashton,
Amelia told us you are coming to Guernsey to gather stories for your book. I will welcome you with all my heart, but I won’t be able to tell you about what happened to me because I get the shakes when I talk about it. Maybe if I write it down, you won’t need me to say it out loud. It isn’t about Guernsey anyway—I wasn’t here. I was in Neuengamme Concentration Camp in Germany.
You know how I pretended I was Lord Tobias for three years? Peter Jenkins’s daughter, Lisa, was dating German soldiers. Any German soldier, so long as he would give her stockings or lipsticks. This was so until she took up with Sgt. Willy Gurtz. He was a mean little runt. The two of them together benasties the mind. It was Lisa who betrayed me to the German Commandant.
In March of 1944, Lisa was having her hair done in an upsweep at the beauty parlor, where she found an old, pre-war copy of Tatler magazine. There, on page 124, was a colored picture of Lord and Lady Tobias Penn-Piers. They were at a wedding in Sussex—drinking champagne and eating oysters. The words under the picture told all about her gown, her diamonds, her shoes, her face, and his money. The magazine mentioned that they were owners of an estate, called La Fort, on the island of Guernsey.
Well, it was pretty plain—even to Lisa, who’s thick as a post—that Lord Tobias Penn-Piers was not me. She did not wait for her hair to be combed out, but left at once to show the picture to Willy Gurtz, who took it straight to the Commandant.
It made the Germans feel like fools, bowing and scraping all that time to a servant—so they were extra spiteful and sent me to the camp at Neuengamme.
I did not think I would live out the first week. With other prisoners, I was sent out to clear unexploded bombs during air raids. What a choice—to run into a square with the bombs raining down or to be killed by the guards for refusing. I ran and scuttled like a rat and tried to cover myself when I heard bombs whistle past my head and somehow I was alive at the end of it.
That’s what I told myself—Well, you’re still alive. I think all of us said the same each morning when we woke up—Well, I’m still alive. But the truth is, we weren’t. What we were—it wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t alive either. I was a living soul only a few minutes a day, when I was in my bunk. Those times, I tried to think of something happy, something I’d liked—but not something I loved, for that made it worse. Just a small thing, like a school picnic or bicycling downhill—that’s all I could stand.
It felt like thirty years, but it was only one. In April of ’45, the Commandant at Neuengamme picked out those of us who were still fit enough to work and sent us to Belsen. We rode for several days in a big, open truck—no food, no blankets, no water, but we were glad we weren’t walking. The mud-puddles in the road were red.
I imagine you already know of Belsen and what happened there. When we got off the truck, we were handed shovels. We were to dig great pits to bury the dead. They led us through the camp to the spot, and I feared I’d lost my mind because everyone I saw was dead. Even the living looked like corpses, and the corpses were lying where they’d dropped. I didn’t know why they were bothering to bury them. The fact was, the Russians were coming from the east, and the Allies were coming from the west—and those Germans were terrified of what they’d see when they got there.
The crematorium could not burn the bodies fast enough—so after we dug long trenches, we pulled and dragged the bodies to the edges and threw them in. You’ll not believe it, but the SS forced the prisoners’ band to play music as we lugged the corpses—and for that, I hope they burn in hell with polkas blaring. When the trenches were full, the SS poured petrol over the bodies and set fire to them. Afterwards, we were supposed to cover them with dirt—as if you could hide such a thing.
The British got there the next day, and dear God, but we were glad to see them. I was strong enough to walk down the road, so I saw the tanks crash down the gates and I saw the British flag painted on their sides. I turned to a man sitting against a fence nearby and called out “We’re saved! It’s the British!” Then I saw he was dead. He had only missed it by minutes. I sat down in the mud and sobbed as though he’d been my best friend.
When the Tommies came down out of the tanks, they were weeping, too—even the officers. Those good men fed us, gave us blankets, saw us to hospitals. And bless them, they burned Belsen to the ground a month later.
I read in the newspaper that they’ve put up a war refugee camp in its place now. It gives me the shivers to think of new barracks being built there, even for a good purpose. To my mind, that land should be a blank forever.
I’ll write no more of this, and I hope you’ll understand if I do not care to speak of it. As Seneca says, “Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.”
I do recall something you might like to know for your book. It happened in Guernsey, when I was still pretending to be Lord Tobias. Sometimes of an evening Elizabeth and I would walk up to the headlands to watch the bombers flying over—hundreds of them, on their way to bomb London. It was terrible to watch and know where they were headed and what they meant to do. The German radio had told us London was leveled—flattened, with nothing left but rubble and ashes. We didn’t quite believe them, German propaganda being what it was, but still—
We were walking through St. Peter Port on one such night when we passed the McLaren House. That was a fine old house taken over by German officers. A window was open and the wireless was playing a beautiful piece of music. We stopped to listen, thinking it must be a program from Berlin. But, when the music ended, we heard Big Ben strike and a British voice said, “This is the BBC—London.” You can never mistake Big Ben’s sound! London was still there! Still there. Elizabeth and I hugged, and we started waltzing up the road. That was one of the times I could not think about while I was in Neuengamme.
Yours sincerely,
John Booker
From Dawsey to Juliet
16th May, 1946
Dear Juliet,
There’s nothing left to do for your arrival except wait. Isola has washed, starched, and ironed Elizabeth’s curtains, looked up the chimney for bats, cleaned the windows, made up the beds, and aired all the rooms.
Eli has carved a present for you, Eben has filled your woodshed, and Clovis has scythed your meadow—leaving, he says, the clumps of wildflowers for you to enjoy. Amelia is planning a supper party for you on your first evening.
My only job is to keep Isola alive until you get here. Heights make her giddy, but nevertheless she climbed to the roof of Elizabeth’s cottage to stomp for loose tiles. Fortunately, Kit saw her before she reached the eaves and ran for me to come talk her down.
I wish I could do more for your welcome—I hope it may be soon. I am happy you are coming.
Yours,
Dawsey
Juliet to Dawsey
19th May, 1946
Dear Dawsey,
I’ll be there the day after tomorrow! I am far too c
owardly to fly, even with the inducement of gin, so I shall come by the evening mail boat.
Would you give Isola a message for me? Please tell her that I don’t own a hat with a veil, and I can’t carry lilies—they make me sneeze—but I do have a red wool cape and I’ll wear that on the boat.
Dawsey, there isn’t one thing you could do to make me feel more welcome in Guernsey than you already have. I’m having trouble believing that I am going to meet you all at last.
Yours ever,
Juliet
From Mark to Juliet
May 20, 1946
Dear Juliet,
You asked me to give you time, and I have. You asked me not to mention marriage, and I haven’t. But now you tell me that you’re off to bloody Guernsey for—what? A week? A month? Forever? Do you think I’m going to sit back and let you go?
You’re being ridiculous, Juliet. Any half-wit can see that you’re trying to run away, but what nobody can understand is why. We’re right together—you make me happy, you never bore me, you’re interested in the things I’m interested in, and I hope I’m not deluded when I say I think the same is true for you. We belong together. I know you loathe it when I tell you I know what’s best for you, but in this case, I do.
For God’s sake, forget about that miserable island and marry me. I’ll take you there on our honeymoon—if I must.
Love,
Mark
From Juliet to Mark
20th May, 1946
Dear Mark,
You’re probably right, but even so, I’m going to Guernsey tomorrow and you can’t stop me.
I’m sorry I can’t give you the answer you want. I would like to be able to.
Love,
Juliet
P.S. Thank you for the roses.