Jeanne Elizabeth Margaret Le Messurier Mitchell died at the end of January.
Two weeks before the Occupation of the island in 1940, Mrs Le Messurier Mitchell, then eight-year-old Jeanne Foard, was evacuated to Rochdale with her school.
She was later reunited with her parents who travelled around the UK during the war as her father served in the Royal Air Force.
‘She related the story of how her father just bundled her up and said, “you know, don’t worry, little one, we’ll find you”, and she was just bundled on a ship and gone,’ said her son Simon Mitchell.
‘From all the safe environment of a a peaceful island and knowing everybody, having so much family around her and so much that’s safe and stable, to be all of a sudden bundled off without parents and to arrive in the UK to a completely different environment.
‘She was put on a train, having never seen a train before, let alone been on a train, and found herself in Rochdale.
‘From Mum’s experience it was quite traumatic.
‘I appreciate that everybody was in a bit of a chaotic state, but I got the impression, you know, caring for young children who’ve suddenly been disrupted and ripped out of their lives it was not what we would call standard.
‘There weren’t great levels of care. Mum never went into it too much, but you got the feeling that it was a rather unsympathetic environment.’
Despite her experiences, it was something that remained a big part of Mrs Le Messurier Mitchell’s life and something that she spoke about with her children.
‘She didn’t go into huge amounts of detail about it, but it clearly had a massive impact on her life,’ said Mr Mitchell.
‘For the Guernsey children that were evacuated, these days they would have had God knows how much support and therapy, but it was very much, well, that’s it, get on with it. I think there were definitely things in mum’s life that were traits of that experience.’
After the war Mrs Le Messurier Mitchell and her family moved back to the island, where she set up the island’s first speech and language therapy service in 1955.
‘As a 24-year-old to be the first speech and language therapist, but also to have to set up your own practice as well, because that was the only way she was going to do it, is amazing,’ said Mr Mitchell.
She met her husband in Guernsey, before leaving the island with him in 1963 after he had joined the RAF.
She supported him and their three children, alongside working as a speech and language therapist for the NHS until she retired in 1997.
You need to be logged in to comment.