Art returns after 72 years

A WORK of art is back in Guernsey more than 72 years after it was made here.

A highly detailed pencil drawing of Berthelot Street, drawn by German soldier Heinz Schreirer during the Occupation, has been returned to the island by Mavis Wheatley, 82.

'My father was Salvation Army Adjudant Arthur Ashby and after the war we came over to reopen Clifton Hall. I was only 10 and my sister, Pauline, was eight.

'We stayed for two years and then we left for Wimborne in Dorset. I went to school in nearby Poole.'

During a Sunday afternoon meeting of the Salvation Army an unusual visitor arrived.

'It was Heinz, who was now a prisoner of war. After being in Guernsey during the war he was now in a POW camp at Corfe Mullen. He came to the meeting – POWs were allowed to come – because he had been a Salvationist in Schaffhausen in Switzerland.'

Heinz became a regular visitor and then a friend to the Ashby family.

'He used to come and talk about his time in Guernsey to the family. He used to draw animals and little books for Pauline and me. Materials were scarce and sometimes he used to draw on toilet paper. I remember that he said that he had a four-year-old son called Jurgen back home. He gave the drawing of Berthelot Street to my father and it was hung up on my parents' wall for years.'