Grandfather's First Letter following Liberation

My mother, Sheila de Putron, then aged 17, and her family lived at Pierre Percee Villa in Prince Albert’s Road, St Peter Port. With the imminent German invasion my grandmother, Elsie, my mother, Aunt Jocelin, aged 13 and Aunt Olwen, aged 23, together with her two young daughters, Ann, aged 2, and Janet, aged 4, were evacuated, along with many others to Weymouth, England, aboard a cattle boat.

However, my grandfather, Edwin de Putron, aged 59, saw them leave, hoping he would shortly follow, but this was not to be. He remained on the island, along with Edith, one of his sisters. This is part of their story.

Below is the first letter grandpa wrote to my grandmother after the liberation of Guernsey, 9th May 1945, and encapsulates his thoughts following five years of German occupation. All correspondence during the war via the Red Cross was censored; either by the offending item being inked out or physically cut out from the text.

“69 Hauteville
Guernsey

May 17th 1945

My Dear Elsie

At last we can write. The Germans are caught here. Well, I cannot tell you all what has happened here in one, or two letters, as events followed one on top of the other. After you went I was told that the tenant farmer had cleared off on the first boats and the cattle were shut up in the stable unfed and we had to get them out and feed them. He had left a message with another tenant family telling them that I could carry on and the crops and cattle would pay the rent. When afternoon came I tried to make arrangements to dispose of the cattle, but I was sent for by a States official to explain why I was going away. A telephone message had been received by him advising I had slipped off and Pierre Percee was unlocked with nobody to look after it. I could not find him that day to explain and a message was brought up for me to see the States official the following Thursday. Unknown to you he had told me I should not leave. So you see I knew at once, that Saturday night, I was caught here and would have to go through it alone. The Thursday night I saw him and he ridiculed the idea of my going away and told me I would have to look after the place and carry on and do what I could with the cattle. Sounds very nice, but I little knew what was coming, what I, and I think you will say treacherous work was being done. On the Friday we were bombed. Edith was home and we went up under the trees in the field as machine-gun bullets were flying about everywhere. Well, on the Sunday evening they landed and all communication ceased except for the Red Cross, and you could hardly write anything on them because one woman wrote and she only said she had taken the children to the Red Lion Beach. That meant Grange Court where the Police Department was run, and heavily fined or imprisoned.

About three weeks after, the States claimed the cattle and told me they belonged to them as the tenant farmer had evacuated. Also, the farm, but I received nothing for looking after the cattle or rent for the field, but they charged me the rental value as well as the occupier’s rates. They then started to cut down the trees one after the other but I could not have any of the wood unless bought in the ration rates allowed. In other words, buy your own stuff. Edith went to her home daytime and I went there to dinner but in the evening she came to Pierre Percee and had tea and slept here. Very soon the Jerry’s started to knock things about. Blankets were wanted, beds, linen, then our wireless sets had to be given up although they were returned for a short time and then taken away again.

Our people bombed the airport as you know, and one of the Jerry’s shells caught the dining room roof and exploded, knocking off the ridge tiles and about a dozen slates, cracked all the windows and peppered the walls. The beginning of 1941 the requisition of houses started, putting people out and taking all their belongings. In March 1942, my birthday, the 7th, we all had orders to quit. Carpets, curtains, mats, chairs, etc were to be left behind and what they did not want was in some cases thrown in the road but as a rule you had perhaps a day or two to shift it, if you were lucky to have transport. We all had to shift except the Selrri's. The Besnard’s and I were put up at a house called Escallonia, Mt Durand, the Godwin's went to Charroterie, and the others had to disappear. That meant no rents. Nothing coming in and you will see I have had to live on about 30/- a week since then.

Well, it may be a shock to you but the truth is now that after three years they have had Pierre Percee and all the houses, it is one complete wreck, totally uninhabitable. The two lower cottages no doors, cupboards, windows broke. The large lower house, the same condition. Colborne Cottage no better. Lindsay’s, same condition, Quesnel top place a cookhouse and booze shop. The furniture is where the States took it, Salvation Army Hall, and I am told the Germans took what they wanted of it. I can tell you nothing more. They will not allow me to take any of the crops on the place, but still claim them and say I will have to pay the rental values on them. Houses totally destroyed and they argue the value is the same. The States issued demand notes for rental values on the houses they gave over to the Germans.

I believe that the largest stables in Guernsey are at home. The yard has two, where the greenhouses used to be two up in the field and one where our lawn was, bang in front of the house. A tunnel goes from Besnard’s cottage we believe up to and under our house and one by the pond under the top house (Pierre Percee House, now known as Le Manoir) but the soldiers say it is not safe to go up till they have been examined. As I am writing now, you can hear the mines being blown up one after the other. Everything here is mined. About twenty people have gone up through them.

Goodness knows how many soldiers these islands have cost them. Some thousands of men to keep them going. I can tell you we have seen some cruelty here on the foreign workers. Shot out of hand, heads slashed open with loaded rubber hoses, prisoners kicked in the stomach, fed like pigs and bunched thirty or forty in a small house. You have never seen anything like it. The Russian prisoners are the ones who have caught it the most. I think the Algerians come next.

When we were at Escallonia, on Sunday, at 12 o’clock midday, a German and the States put us up in Hauteville at the top, perhaps you know the place. The one facing down Hauteville, Kilmarna. The Agnews lived there one time just below the Bisson’s. We have a fine front view of the sea as well as plenty of danger. When the fort became the target of our bombers we had pieces of bombs all around us, door blown in. We used to go down in the basement if things were bad. One thing we did see, the Jerry’s shoot down six of their own planes off the harbour in mistake at about 7 o’clock one evening. They were shouting about it and dancing like fools along the front, when suddenly they found out what had happened. You should have seen the tracers. Flaming onions, etc going up to them. One got caught in the wing off the Point and he crashed. Another came down off Herm in a cloud of black smoke.”

My grandmother was able to return in May 1945 but the remainder of the family had to wait until September to return to Guernsey, having spent five years as refugees in Sheffield, England. Both grandpa and my grandmother were there at the airport to meet them on their homecoming. The family had spent five years apart with only the Red Cross letters as a means of communication. However, as time passed only my grandparents remained on the island as the younger members of the family either left to return to the mainland or to live abroad.

During the war Colborne Cottage was used as a telephone exchange by the Germans. In the orchard below Pierre Percee Villa the applehouse had been filled in with concrete and a gun emplacement established above. We have since learnt that there were four hundred soldiers based on the Pierre Percee estate in the five houses and farm. A neighbour, Miss Winifred Harvey, kept a diary which was published in 1995 “The Battle of Newlands” which has provided the family with hitherto unknown information regarding my grandfather, Edwin de Putron, the family home and neighbours during the German occupation.

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