- Group of women have remained friends since the Occupation
- They were all around 13 when the Island was liberated
- Each year they get together on the Thursday before Liberation Day
AMONG the many Islanders who will be celebrating Liberation today will be a group of women whose friendship was formed more than 70 years ago.
Eileen Amy, Freda Sheppard, Joan Pierce, Raie Binet and Peggy Welfare who met during their school years and through the Girl Guides, have kept in touch ever since.
For the past 20 years they have met up on the first Thursday of every month.
Originally there were other members of the group, but time and ill health has diminished their number.
On Thursday, the girls met for afternoon tea at Mrs Pierce’s Beaumont home, and memories of those days came flooding back to the friends, who were around 13 years old at time of the Liberation.
Their conversation was filled with anecdotes of living under an occupying force and memories about the day that the end of the war was declared as well as Liberation Day itself.
‘I remember everyone was out walking and going to places where we had not been allowed for the last five years,’ said Miss Amy. ‘And everyone was talking out loud and freely.
‘You couldn’t talk easily before in case you were overheard and now everyone was talking.
‘You couldn’t walk with more than two in a group either, and now everyone was out together.’
The friends also remember being at Pier Road and seeing the now-free forced labourers. ‘They were leaving the camp which was just along from where Pier Road car park is now,’ said Miss Amy.
‘They were all young, but they looked like old men.’
As the friends excitedly chatter and reminisce it’s easy to see them as the young schoolgirls they once were, but they will all have their own individual ways of celebrating today.
Mrs Sheppard said: ‘I will be outside the old Harbour Office where I stood with my father on Liberation Day.
‘We could hear the soldiers coming from the harbour, but we couldn’t see them, and then they turned up. I know exactly the spot where I was on that day and I’ll be there.’
However, Mrs Binet said: ‘I will be sitting at home quietly and thinking about the day, I prefer to remember it that way.’
Mrs Welfare who was pictured in one of the famous Liberation photographs of Islanders greeting troops will join Mrs Pierce to celebrate.
‘I’ll be making a big bean crock and all the family will be coming to that,’ said Mrs Pierce.
Miss Amy, who said that she too will make a big bean crock for her family in the afternoon, added: ‘In the morning I will be going down to Liberation Square.’
