As we explored in Saturday’s Press, Sark’s experience of occupation was unique in many ways, and its celebrations and commemorations 80 years on are very much a reflection of this.
Preparations have already been going on for months and so many events have been organised that the programme has filled both days of the liberation weekend. But before that busy weekend, there will be a poignant commemoration on the west coast which will recall what happened on 8 May 1945 when islanders gathered there in the evening to light a bonfire of celebration, fuelled by materials covertly gathered in the preceding days. The original fire was lit, with the help of Dame Sibyl Hathaway, by five-year-old David Baker.
This event has been timed to coincide with a national VE Day initiative, which will see more than a thousand beacons lit across the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man.
The flames are intended to represent the ‘light of peace’ that emerged from the darkness of war in 1945, while bringing the nation together in one unique moment. The hymn I Vow To Thee My Country will be sung as a way of ‘honouring the many sacrifices that secured our freedom’, according to pageant-master Bruno Peek, who has previously organised beacon tributes for Queen Elizabeth II’s golden, diamond and platinum jubilees, as well as the millennium celebrations.
All these beacons will be lit at 9.30pm and in Sark, this will be followed by a procession to the Sark prison, where a flame from the beacon will be ceremonially locked up until Sark’s Liberation Day – 10 May.
That is when the celebrations will get into full swing, with the arrival of the Chelsea Pensioners and Gurkhas and the unveiling, at noon, of an 80th liberation plaque outside the new Sark Art Gallery and Museum on The Avenue, where work is already well underway to establish a garden of commemoration.
This will be followed by an afternoon-tea style street party, a sing-along with Ray Lowe and then, on the Avenue Green, the Gurkhas’ traditional khukuri display, utilising their traditional knives.
The celebrations will then move onto the Millennium Field at 6.30pm, where there will be live bands and a marquee with a bar. Another procession will bring the flame from the prison at 8.45pm to the field, where a Liberation beacon will be lit at 9pm.
During the day, the Princess Royal will pay a visit, arriving by helicopter and meeting with ‘the liberated’ – those islanders who were present on the original day of liberation in 1945.
While she is touring the island, she should be able to see HMS Medusa moored off Derrible Bay. The harbour defence motor launch was the first Allied warship to be positioned off Omaha beach in Normandy for the D-Day landings in June, 1944 and is paying a visit after having spent the previous day in Guernsey.
Contrary to the information published in the official programme, the vessel will not now be mooring at Creux Harbour and will not be joined by the Rummy III, due to tidal considerations and harbour operations.
Perhaps the most colourful event of the whole weekend will be the cavalcade on the Sunday, which will leave the Millennium Field at 11.45am and head over to St Peter’s Church in time for a 12pm service.
‘We’re encouraging people to dress up 1940s-style,’ says organiser Sandy Hunt.
‘There’ll be decorated tractors, bicycles, invalid carriages, prams and walkers and anyone can take part. There’ll also be a Willys Jeep, which is being brought over – it will have to be towed into position but then it has special permission to be driven for the cavalcade itself.’
The cavalcade will be led by ‘Winston Churchill’, played by former conseiller Paul Williams.
After the service, the cavalcade will head back to the Millennium Field where prizes will be awarded and at 1.45pm, there’ll be a picnic and food and drink in the marquee, which will also host a sketch from The Dame Of Sark – the play by William Douglas-Home which was first staged in 1974.
The entertainment switches from stage to screen for the final event of the programme, as the 1951 British movie classic Appointment With Venus is shown in the Island Hall. Largely filmed in Sark, it stars David Niven and Glynis Johns and tells the fictional story of a plan to rescue a prize cow from the island, under the noses of the occupying forces.
Joyce Southern will be intimately involved in the celebrations and commemorations this year, as with many previous years. She was born during the Occupation and is too young to have any of her own first-hand memories of the original liberation, but she is a member of that dwindling group of Occupation survivors known as ‘the liberated’.
‘I think there are only seven of us left now on Sark who were here on that day,’ she says.
‘I’ll just be going with the flow on the day. I went over to Guernsey to see the King and Queen last year and met with them at Les Cotils, and I’m looking forward to meeting the Princess Royal during her visit this year, hopefully.’
A new exhibition will open at Easter at the old island hall, which details Sark’s experience of occupation and liberation. It will remain open during this year’s visitor season.
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