Story of RAF pilot’s Occupation lucky escape is recreated
EIGHTY years after a RAF pilot parachuted into German-occupied Guernsey, a re-enactment of his exploits has been filmed.
Local actor Dave Hyett dressed in full 87 Squadron uniform with a parachute for the short production.
It was a recreation of the events of a night in April 1941 when Sgt Robert Stirling lost his bearings and was running low on fuel while chasing a German bomber towards France.
He was heading back to Exeter, but his compass was broken, and he came down on uninhabited Lihou after baling out of his aircraft, mistaking reflections from greenhouses for the white chalk cliffs of the south coast of England.
Sgt Stirling walked unscathed across a minefield and the Lihou causeway and knocked on the door of Tom and Myra Brouard’s home at Les Bordes in St Saviour’s.
They gave him refuge and fed him meat and boiled potatoes and two cups of coffee.
It became part of the family history, and their daughter, Pat Jenner, was on the Lihou causeway to watch the re-enactment.
‘I love to see this, it’s bringing it back to life and I’m pleased for my mum and dad.
‘Dad told me some bits and pieces. Sgt Stirling had run out of fuel and he walked across minefields and knocked on their door.
‘My father asked him who he was and he explained he was an RAF pilot and he let him in.
‘Robert Stirling wanted to give himself up to the Germans, but my dad said no because it was curfew. He said to give himself up in the morning to the Guernsey Police.
‘The next day my Dad went to phone up the police, but the Germans and the police were waiting at the door when he got back and Robert Stirling was taken off to a concentration camp, and my father was interrogated for two days at L’Eree Hotel by the Germans.’
Sgt Stirling survived four years in the camp in southern Germany, and after the war he went home to Scotland and became a banker.
In the late 1950s he came back to Guernsey for a holiday because he wanted to thank the Brouards for taking him in that night.
An article about the visit was published in the Guernsey Press.
Local history enthusiast Tim Osborne has been piecing together the Occupation story and is voicing the narrative to the film.
He said it was a remarkable episode.
‘It’s such a nice story, it’s not a horrible story, no one died or was killed, it’s just what happened.
‘He was incredibly lucky at night time, jumping out of his Hurricane, landing on Lihou in one piece.
‘The weather was right, the tide was right, he walked across and found his way across the road and knocked on the Brouards’ door.’
Sgt Stirling died in the 1980s and this summer his children are planning to come to Guernsey because they want to see the film and hear more about their father’s escapades.
