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Whilst planting out cabbages at 4am one morning in 1941 my mother, Mino Gibault, made a decision that was to save our lives.
Soon after the Germans occupied Jersey in June/July 1940, there was an order that all radios had to be handed in at the parish hall. Just before this my mother had bought a second hand radio but had not yet obtained a license for it so she only handed in the first radio and hid the second in the house. We children did not know of this radios existence. Mother would secretly listen to the news and pass it on to others. But when asked where she had heard it she would reply vaguely and something like ‘oh I don’t know in the market perhaps’.
Local news spreads rapidly and she heard of people who had been caught with radios and been arrested and taken away and dealt an unknown fate (it was not until after V.E day we realised that they were sent to concentration camps). Mother was worried about our future should she get caught, so there and then she took the radio from its hiding place under the stairs put it in a tin and hid it under a cabbage (it remained there until after the occupation).
At about 7.30 am we were having breakfast when a German officer, two soldiers with fixed bayonets and two civilian men suited in grey arrived at the house to search it. My two brothers and I were made to sit on the settee in a row; I held my little Jack Russell terrier in my arms with one hand over her muzzle to stop her barking, as the German officers had threatened to shoot her if she did not stop. One of the soldiers stood guard over us whilst the others went straight to the cupboard under the stairs where the radio had been hidden. They found nothing, apart from a few tins of food. Even my little brother aged only 8 at the time helped repair the bedding and tidy up the house. The only other person apart from my mother who knew where the radio had been kept was her best friend. Mother never spoke to her again. It was long after that I discovered why we crossed over to the other side of the street if she was coming our way. After that we were a marked household if there was any trouble we were one of the first to be questioned.

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