DOB 28/12/1938
Diana was the first to arrive of the second batch of people we interviewed and photographed. Her father was a potato merchant and they lived at No.8 the Esplanade.
Obviously just a youngster she vividly remembered the Germans "marching up and down a lot." Always smiling, Diana was a lovely, self effacing woman. At some point I asked "what was the most awful thing you saw?"
A memory surfaced and she became caught in the moment, there were tears. We all did. It was something that happened often in the interviews. Old memories would remerge and you could see how the very emotion of the original witnessing had driven them down deep. Now, once again freshly exposed, they re-experienced that strong emotional pull.
"It was the slave workers marching from the harbour to the camps at St Ouen's. I was standing (as a young girl) by the Grand Hotel. They were in such a dreadful state. Their feet were bound in rags. I heard them "singing I love to go a wandering."
She remembered the Germans checking the doors at curfew. Rattling the door handles to check they were locked.
Being innocent and young she said that these were some of the happiest days of her life because of the great sense of community that existed.
Her school was FCJ and the Germans would drop in to inspect the school on an ad hoc basis.
She remembered collecting buckets of seawater from Westpark poured onto flat trays for the salt.
All of these small details added up to one of the most memorable periods of her life and Diana was at pains to point out as were the others that it was the adults, the parents, her parents, who bore the brunt of having to protect and provide for the children. She also felt that it tempered those who survived and prepared them for life in a way that nothing else has.
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