Gestapo officer? No, it was my uncle
DURING the five years of the Occupation, my father, Francis Renouf, as a Methodist local preacher, regularly had appointments in the chapels of the then Guernsey (French) and Sark Circuit of the Methodist Church and wrote about this in a card that he sent to my mother and for us boys in Brighouse, Yorkshire, as evacuees. Here is part of what he wrote to her.
The front of the card is also of interest because of the date, I imagine either printed in haste because of the expected end date of the Occupation or the wish to link the Liberation by date with the victory in Europe.
Besides preaching in our Methodist chapels, there were times when Dad filled appointments in other churches, including at least once in the Presbyterian Church (now URC) in the Grange. Soon after he got there and was in the vestry preparing for the service, an elder came in and warned him that there was someone in the congregation who looked as if he could be from the Gestapo (whose headquarters, I think, were close by), checking on what the preacher would say. My father thanked him and assured the elder that he did not intend saying anything about the Germans.
At the end of the service, when he was shaking hands with members of the congregation as they left, suddenly the elder was beside my dad whispering that the feared Gestapo officer was coming towards him. Dad looked and saw that it was one of my uncles, who had never been to the Presbyterian church before and had gone along to be with my dad.
That story expresses for me some of the constant suspicion and dread that must be one of the hallmarks of living in occupied territory.
The text that my father chose to preach on at Rocquaine speaks both of such dangers and of trust in God, ‘who redeemeth thy life from destruction'.
ERIC RENOUF
Address withheld.