63rd Homecoming Day

15th December

Homecoming Anniversary - To commemorate the return to Alderney of the first group of Islanders after WW2, following the mass evacuation of 1940.

To mark the anniversary, on 15 December, of the first islanders to return to Alderney following the mass evacuation of 1940 after which the island was occupied by German forces until the end of the war, Alderney has an annual public holiday.

Returning to the island in 1945 was a time of mixed blessings for Alderney’s population and journalist Angela Giuffrida reported in the Alderney Journal on how islanders went about picking up the pieces.

When people in Alderney gathered at the Butes in June 1940, it was to hear the grave news that France had fallen to the Germans. The population of around 1,400 had to decide, then and there, whether to stay or leave the island.

Total evacuation seemed inevitable: food supplies were low, imports were cut off and it was likely that those who remained would be used as forced labour. Within days, islanders were evacuated to various locations across the UK. Some families went together, others were separated.

But for some people, returning to Alderney after the Second World War was even more painful than their departure. After a five-and-a-half-year absence, evacuees started to make their way back to a place where not only the landscape had changed but where a way of life and culture were far removed from what they remembered.

Although the majority had chosen to be evacuated, some were against it.
One of these was Daniel Le Cocq, grandfather of Royston Raymond. He feared that much more than material possessions were at stake and as the first contingent of islanders returned in December 1945, his fears were proved right.

‘When the war came, his world was shattered,’ said Royston. ‘He opposed the total evacuation of the island, partly because of his deep Norman attachment to the soil and partly because he despised the panic-stricken leadership of the time, which he used to compare unfavourably with that of the Dame of Sark. But my grandmother was very ill and the necessary treatment could be obtained only in England, so he went with the rest.

‘By 1945 a way of life, a language and a system of law and land tenure which had survived since before the time of Duke William had gone beyond recall.’ Mr Le Cocq, his wife and his daughters were evacuated to Edinburgh, where he was employed as a gardener in the Royal Botanic Gardens. Before the war, Mr Le Cocq had made his mark as a successful baker and farmer.
‘He was reduced from being a prosperous and respected pillar of the community to an impoverished refugee. But he settled down uncomplainingly to manual work,’ said Royston.

‘My grandmother never stopped grieving the loss of her beautiful home and centuries-old heirlooms. My grandfather would try in vain to console her.
“They’re only things”, he would say. “At least we’re back and the girls are alive and well”.’

Buster Hammond was 17 when he was evacuated and eventually fostered by a family in Glasgow. Although he was for leaving the island, others resisted.
‘A number of residents, mostly settlers, left as the war worsened,’ he said.
‘We left believing only one person, farmer Frank Oselton, had remained. Years after our return we realised 19 people had stayed. In the week between leaving and the German takeover, Guernsey forcibly removed some at gunpoint. Others hid.’

A day etched in Buster’s memory is 8 May 1945, when Winston Churchill announced that the Channel Islands were to be freed from German control.
‘I particularly remember the joy at hearing Churchill’s broadcast,’ he said.
‘We thought we would be able to go home soon, but we didn’t get back for seven long months.’ Buster was among the first to return to the island in the early morning of 15 December 1945 and remembers his surprise at seeing the influence the Occupation had had on the island’s landscape.

‘We were astounded at the massive bunkers and huge sea walls built to defend Longy and Platte Saline against invasion. There were new, concrete, coastal roads, longer railway lines and four great gun positions in the south-west of the island. There was also an extension to the jetty and huge cranes,’ he said.

As islanders gradually rebuilt their lives, another battle loomed. In 1946, the Butes played host to what later became known as the Battle of the Butes – a ‘free for all’ deemed as being the easiest way of dividing up all the furniture which had been emptied from houses and stored elsewhere during the Occupation. But as people tried to reclaim what was rightfully theirs, a shrewd grapple is said to have ensued.

Merika Clunn was only four at the time but has vivid recollections of being shut in a cupboard by her older brother so that, once battle commenced, the family could instantly stake their claim.  ‘People tried to get stuff to rehouse, so if they saw anything they thought was theirs, they went and sat on it and when the whistle was blown, they took it,’ she said ‘My brother shut me in a cupboard and when the whistle went, someone came along and carried it off with me in it. The doors flew open and the person carrying it had a real shock when he saw me. It was like a real battle – you could take things home and if someone recognised furniture in your house that was theirs before the war, they would end up taking it back.’ But Merika added that, while post-war life was a struggle, in some ways it was very happy.

‘One of the nice things about coming back after the war was that everyone was equal. If you went to Sunday school, you were more or less dressed the same as everyone else. We were on the same level and nobody was singled out – if there was a party, for example, everyone went.'