Jersey Occupation Diary

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This remarkable book is based on a diary which the author added to daily throughout the five long years of the German Occupation of the Channel Islands. The reader senses that this regular activity acted as a kind of solace, that writing down the day's happenings and her changing feelings, Nan Le Ruez was talking to herself, to her absent fiance Alfred, and to God. The author was immersed in the great Channel Islands traditions of Methodism and was a committed Christian. She had been engaged to be married in 1938; the arrival of the Germans in 1940 effectively separated her from her fiance until 1945. At first, no one expected the war to last as long as it did. Month by month, year by year, the Occupation dragged on and conditions grew worse. After the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944 the hoped-for Liberation took almost another year to arrive.--- excerpt from book's back cover