He’s obviously desperate to talk to me because he left me a note saying so:
Do you need a gardener?
If so, please call M. Priaulx on 237678.
How amazing is that? If I need a reason to keep living it’s definitely Michael Priaulx. I love him, I think. Nic said I didn’t know anything about feelings but now I do. I definitely understand what all those words mean. You fall for someone because you lose your balance. You have a crush on them because you’ve been squished. I love Michael Priaulx, for sure. He can honestly smash me to bits.
Property of Emile Philippe Rozier
The Director-General of the BBC
Broadcasting House
Portland Place
London
W1A 1AA
Dear Sir,
I am writing with regard to the television documentary ‘Lying with the Enemy’ aired on Sunday night last.
I was outraged and appalled by what I felt was a grossly inaccurate depiction of Guernsey and its people during the Second World War, pandering to only the lowest sensibilities. It would of course be impossible to convey the full tragedy of our five years spent under German rule in a mere 60 minutes, but you clearly approached the subject with an agenda, and the result was a crass simplification of a complex history. You stirred up the usual controversies but had no fresh material as the basis for your claims, instead hoping to titillate your viewers by dwelling on subjects such as the apparently ‘all too common’ liaisons between local women and German soldiers.
Although I do not deny that these liaisons occurred, I would like to alert you to the presence of French prostitutes, brought onto the island for the sole purpose of ‘servicing’ the troops. How lusty do you imagine us natives to be? For the most part Guernsey housewives devoted all their energies to finding ways to clothe and feed their families. My own mother, for example, was reduced to working as a laundress, pressing and mending officers’ uniforms to earn extra money. When asked what she thought about this so-termed ‘horizontal collaboration’, she said most people on the island were too exhausted to involve themselves in illicit sexual liaisons. She pointed out that those that did were often the very young and naive, or the poor and ill-educated, and they were not won over by charming ‘officer gentlemen’ but more worn down by their own desperate circumstances.
Most islanders had no idea when the Occupation would end. Many believed the Germans were here to stay. By 1942 we were surviving on less than 1,000 calories a day. It was a terrible time, but our personal circumstances were not nearly as pitiful as those of the foreign labourers brought in to build Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, many of whom perished in the most appalling conditions. Your film was replete with lingering shots of the bunkers and towers, and yet barely made reference to the human cost of building them.
Had you taken the time to interview a diverse cross-section of islanders you might have come closer to the extremely complex truth, instead of making such extraordinary claims whilst consistently underplaying genuine acts of what you called ‘petty resistance’ such as the harbouring of banned radio sets, or the theft of food or fuel. Let me assure you these crimes resulted in very serious penalties on more than one occasion. Perhaps they are not grand acts of heroism when considered against Great Britain’s apparently impeccable war record, but they are memorable when set in the appropriate context, which is something you consistently failed to do. Guernsey is a tiny island, and with such a dense concentration of enemy soldiers it was impossible for any large-scale resistance movements to develop.
The hardship of life under German rule varied from household to household, but, generally speaking, the constant fear and deprivation led to bitterness, resentment and exhaustion. By 1945 both soldiers and civilians alike were in a desperate and humiliated state. One German officer compared the island to a ‘sanatorium’ for the sick and wounded. In real life people had lost their health, their livelihoods and their property, children had lost the chance of a decent education, whole families had been destroyed.
Furthermore, I would like to point out that Guernsey was six million pounds in debt after the Occupation, and there has been no compensation for islanders who were deported or imprisoned by the Germans. It is thus perhaps a drama, but one that is continuing.
I am appalled at how standards have slipped into the gutter and I have grown tired of these poorly