I tried to smile. ‘The thing is, they’re my friends.’
Michael re-lit his cigarette and handed it to me. I took a long drag and held the smoke in my mouth. Seconds passed. I remembered to breathe. I tried again. My head felt hot.
Michael sighed. ‘With friends like those, who needs enemies?’
And unfortunately he had a point. I should’ve seen that. Why didn’t I realise? On an island this small, your friends and your enemies quickly end up the same.
15th December 1965
Tape: 2 (A side) ‘The testimony of C.A. Rozier’
[Edits from transcript compiled and corrected by E.P. Rozier]
Hé bian, Emile, we live so close on this little island, friends and enemies live side by side. The English must wonder how we do it. They have all that open space whereas we are pocket-sized. So why did the Germans even want us, eh? Why couldn’t they just bomb us and leave be? That would’ve been so much the better. But instead they had to come and live amongst us, they came and took our homes, they got right under our skin, as close to us as our own flesh and blood, so close we couldn’t breathe.
Reckon all of us remember when and where we got our first glimpse of the jodhpurs and the jackboot, and you know what shook me most? His handsome face. Underneath that queer-shaped helmet, glittering in the sun, he had a fine chiselled chin and greenish eyes. They was a colour I’d not seen before or since.
‘Hello,’ he said, with a whisper of a smile. Then ‘What are you doing here?’ like I was the trespasser!
Cor là, that made my little head spin, all right, but then I was a good few feet above him and I’ve never had much head for heights. I was perched on that old stone wall at the back of the Royal Hotel, doing my own reconnaissance. I’d heard from our neighbour Blanche Gaudion (that font of island gossip) that the Germans had arrived and were meeting with our local States deputies. That’s when I saw the swastika for myself – they’d had one whipped up by Creasey’s and paid for in full. I sat there for hours, keeping lookout, expecting gunshots and more bloodshed or drama, and to tell the truth I was disappointed. The only noise came from the planes high up in the sky. Over the next few days we saw hundreds of Junkers, Dorniers, Heinkels and Messerschmitts landing at the airport. I was no mechanic, but I made it my business to learn the differences between them.
Whoever said Hitler wasn’t planning an invasion is a fool. Just look at the guns, planes and troops that poured onto this tiny island. The War Office reckoned we were of ‘no significance’, but the Germans didn’t agree. They covered the island in concrete soon enough, and anyone who has seen that very special species of vandalism blighting our beautiful coast cannot deny it. Look what they did at Pleinmont!27 The Germans made this little rock their own and the Bailiff shook their hands and promised we’d offer no resistance. That’s not what you’d expect from such a stubborn and independent people, is it? Of course, you could say that we had no guns to fight back, but we could have made our own bombs, or booby-trapped our homes.
Still, better to live a martyr than die as one. You know who told me that? That German with greenish eyes. His name was Unteroffizier Anton Vern,28 and the next time I saw him he was standing in our parlour.
He was tall and thin, but very dignified, not at all what I’d expected from my comic books. He called our father ‘Sir’.
‘You have nothing to fear as long as you do what we ask,’ he said. ‘We are required to print notices informing the population of the new military occupation of the island. The Bailiff and Attorney General have agreed to this new order. You are ordered to assist us and I hope you can see it is in everyone’s best interests.’ We listened carefully as Vern moved about the room, light as air, making little gestures.
‘We are not pointing a gun to anyone’s head. We are all merely following orders. Yes?’
Pop slowly nodded.
‘Good. We have control of the newspapers, but we cannot presume everyone will read them, therefore we shall display notices in prominent public places. I have yet to identify these places.’ He turned back and smiled at me. ‘I find your small