From Jeff Le Caudey.
IT was interesting to read Alan Nicolle’s memories (JEP, 18 April) of the Occupation, especially of his father helping with the Red Cross flour deliveries to a store in Commercial Buildings.
That store was number 20 and was my father’s haulage and storage firm, Le Caudey Bros, which used to deliver flour to the 40 bakeries around the Island before and after the war. We lived in the flat above.
The flour was provided by the Red Cross societies of Canada and New Zealand. The 2 cwt sacks were unloaded from the Vega onto flat-bed horse-drawn trollies provided by farmers and merchants – our own horse had been injured and died due to the German air attack in 1940.
The queue of trolleys, each one guarded by a German soldier, stretched right up Commercial Buildings. It was my job – I was 14 at the time – to jump up and check each load.
Meanwhile, around 40 men had been sent down to us by the Labour Department to help with the unloading and stacking. At the same time our workforce loaded up the two lorries we had been allowed to keep – one powered by Gasogene – and began deliveries to the bakeries Islandwide.
At night our store with its precious contents was guarded by a policeman and a St John Ambulance man (representing the Red Cross.) They used to make themselves comfortable in front of a couple of sawdust fires which we had burning most of the time for heating up water and cooking. No, there was no gas!
I can only remember one incident of Germans breaking into a bakery and stealing bread. My brother Doug and I had to turn out in the middle of the night, accompanied by a policeman, to deliver flour for the baker at First Tower. He needed to turn out a replacement batch of bread by morning.
10 St Helier Court,
Val Plaisant,
St Helier.
