February Create: Why You Should Never Lie To Your Children
Created | Updated Feb 24, 2013
February Create: Why you should never lie to children
There are two children kneeling down. The girl, my aunt, dark haired, wearing a natty little hat and a distinctive 1940s-esque coat, and a boy, my uncle, tow headed, wearing a smile of sly delight, an expression I know well. This is one of my favourite family photos. It reminds me of my favourite story about my uncle, as told by my Granny, his mother. Or at least what was my favourite story until I heard about how he was thrown out of school for writing rude limericks about the teachers and thrown out of the army for painting his entire uniform white. Sadly I those stories were part of his eulogy. My aunt, who I knew much less well, also died last year.
But in the photo they’re feeding pigeons, and for various reasons not least the fact my Granny told me so, I’m almost certain this puts the children on Trafalgar Square. This in turn means the photo was taken just after the Second World War. I know this because of the ages of the kids, which is somewhere in their tweens I think, and the fact that there was no way they were on Trafalgar Square during the war. There’s no way they were on Trafalgar Square during the war because during the war they were imprisoned on the Channel Islands by an invading German army.
The Channel Islands, for the geographically challenged among us, are a group of islands far closer to France than Great Britain proper. They are nevertheless more or less British soil, albeit British soil with various quirks that make them an attractive residence for the rich and tax adverse these days. My father’s father’s family lived on one of the islands, Jersey, from the late 18th Century (and possibly longer – it’s a grey area I really should investigate further) until nearly all the younger generation, including my Grandfather, left. Not being rich or having a job with which to avoid tax, they needed the work mainland UK might give them. Or New Zealand. I have a lot of second cousins in New Zealand. The Internet tells me.
At the time of the photo, however, there were a few family members still there. My Great Grandparents and some Great Aunts, mainly. And this led to the most spectacularly mistimed holiday ever, because my aunt and uncle were visiting them when the Germans invaded the islands in June 1940.
I’ve been looking it up, the occupation. Apparently they would have had time to get out between the British army leaving the islands to fend for themselves and the arrival of the Germans but didn’t. I don’t know why. They were on Jersey, where most people elected to stay, so perhaps that had something to do with it. It’s probably also true that that early in the war and only a few weeks after the retreat from Dunkirk, people still didn’t quite believe anything would happen to them.
Whatever the reason, there they all are on Jersey when the German army turn up and start shelling, the Germans not being aware that the islands were left open to all comers. The islanders decided to show that they were willing to surrender without a fight by hanging white flags/ white sheets/ white whatever out of the windows. But to avoid frightening the children, they were told it was holiday and the white flag was the flag of the Channel Islands.
This proved to be a mistake.
As the German boats got nearer and nearer, neighbours came rushing up to my Great Grandparents, who were, I dunno, hanging around the harbour in a state of gloomy acceptance or something. “What the unprintable are you playing at??!!! Are you trying to get us all killed????!!!!!!!!!” the irate neighbours are reputed to have said, and dragged my family to look at their house.
From an upstairs window a large Union Jack hung.
Everybody turned to look at uncle, which just goes to show they knew him well and who I strongly suspect was using his trademark slyly delighted smile when he said, “Oh well, your flag is very boring. I swapped it for ours from the attic instead.”
