Reply typifies propaganda that was pumped out in the Occupation

The anonymous writer paints a fictitious picture of Guernsey under German Occupation, a sort of milk and honey account where kind Germans wanted to be ‘friendly’, the rules were ‘fair’ and they were in fact generally gentle souls who were even wont to ‘stop alongside a cyclist struggling up a hill in the rain, offer him a lift, put the bike in the back and invite him into the warmth of the cab’. I hope readers will realise that this is revisionist nonsense and it actually rather typifies the propaganda that was pumped out in the Occupation.

What I wrote about the Occupation and informant hotlines was based on the facts at the time. The island was ruled with an increasingly iron fist, and as time went on it was not uncommon for people to be dragged from their houses and many were sent away, never to return. We often had visits to our house by prominent individuals at that time, including John Leale, Ambrose Sherwill and Raymond Falla. I remember hearing stories from them and others of the savagery and the duplicity that was the occupiers’ modus operandi, and I saw it with my own eyes as well on a number of occasions. An important weapon in the German High Command’s armoury to subdue the population was informant hotlines. Make no mistake about it, the hotlines sowed huge resentment and fostered fear. I understand that the ill feeling it engendered is such that the files relating to this and other very sensitive issues will remain locked until 2045.

My grandfather, Frank Barton, wrote a page diary every day throughout the German Occupation, and it paints a picture exactly as I described in my previous letter. To my knowledge, it was the only such daily diary to have survived. It is an extraordinarily detailed and factual account of what happened. Looking through those hundreds of pages spread over five books – one book for each year – it charts the true horrors of life under German Occupation, and not the highly misleading revisionist portrayal offered by ‘name and address withheld’.

DIANA CHESNEY (NEE CHILCOTT)

Les Prevosts Farm,

Les Prevosts Road,

St Saviour’s.