This day, May the 9th, is our national day in Guernsey - our Liberation Day! Some folk in the UK are surprised when they learn that these British islands were under Nazi occupation for 5 long years, 1940-1945. Early in the Occupation an RAF plane had dropped leaflets over Guernsey containing a personal message from King George VIth promising “We will return...”, feeding the hope that would be finally fulfilled on the 9th May 1945.
The final few months of the Nazi presence in Guernsey were the worst, especially after D-Day. According to one eye-witness, Mrs Irene Dunk, who was the wife of Rev Gilbert Dunk, minister of Eldad Elim Church in the island's capital St Peter Port, both the local population and the occupying forces were cut off from outside supplies in a siege situation and starving. Only the arrival of the Red Cross ship the Vega at New Year 1945, bringing food parcels from Canada and New Zealand for the local people, brought any degree of relief. In a small booklet published some years ago, Mrs Dunk, who went on to live until aged 100, tells of surviving for three weeks along with her husband and their small child, on a diet of parsnips alone before those vital supplies were received.
Finally, the Allied Force 135 arrived off St Peter Port on May 8th, 1945, but even then, things were tense and frightening. The Commandant, a fervent Nazi named Admiral Huffmeier, had vowed that he would never surrender. There was a real possibility that the Allies might need to fight their way ashore against an opposed landing. When his deputy, a Leutnant Zimmerman, told the force to withdraw or else they would be fired upon, Brigadier Snow, the Force Commander, replied that if the Admiral fired upon them today, they would hang him tomorrow! Thankfully Huffmeier was over-ruled by his subordinates and the next day British troops poured into St Peter Port to be mobbed by grateful islanders.
We thank God for the freedom we enjoy today. When Gilbert Dunk stood cheering in the crowds at North Esplanade that first Liberation Day, a local preacher whom he knew grabbed his shoulder and yelled excitedly “this is the Lord’s doing and it is marvellous in our eyes!” (Psalm 118:23). God had heard their anxious appeals for deliverance and had brought them through great trials to eventual liberty. Through all the long years of deprivation and loss there had remained that hope for freedom, and a heart cry of prayer for its fulfilment. On this day, 76 years ago, that answer came.
The present pandemic is hard, and the virus a deadly enemy. Let's take hope from the fact that the long and terrible ordeal of our parents did end, and ours will too. When it does, it will be marvellous in our eyes too.
