THE Second World War officially ended in Europe exactly 80 years ago this May.
But months earlier the Germans realised that the game was up.
The previous June the Allies had arrived in Normandy, in August they had liberated Paris and in March 1945 they were crossing the Rhine.
By Christmas 1944 victory seemed inevitable and thoughts were turning to the peacetime future. But people in Jersey were starving. They had already been suffering food and fuel shortages while the occupying troops were well fed. But when the Americans took St Malo from the Germans on 8 August 1944 the situation got even worse.
St Malo had been the last trading port for the Channel Islands and was temporarily out of action, so all supply links to France were severed. Substitutes were essential to try to bolster ever-dwindling rations and resourceful Islanders had become used to creating them.
Tea was made from carrot, nettle or bramble leaves and coffee from parsnips or ground acorns. Sultanas and currants were made from dried sugar beet and sea water provided salt.
A jam substitute could be made by boiling turnips or carrots for hours and then adding a little sugar. Cuttlefish and ivy provided toothpaste.
The average adult man is said to need to consume around 2,400 calories per day and the average woman around 2,000. But people in the Channel Islands were only getting 1,137 calories. That figure then dropped as low as 900.
When Islanders who lived through the Occupation are asked their memories of the time, an abiding one is often the hunger.
So when the SS Vega sailed into Jersey’s waters on 30 December, they must have felt as if their ship had come in.
SS Vega was a Red Cross vessel, and was more welcome that Christmas than Santa Claus. And it was carrying more precious cargo than gold, frankincense or myrrh – parcels of food, fuel, medical supplies and clothing for people in desperate need of all of them.
The delivery was slightly late for Christmas but was only the first of many. For several months afterwards the Vega continued bringing in shipments of supplies. By the end it had delivered almost half a million food parcels.
The ship was allowed in after appeals to the German authorities by the Bailiffs of Jersey and Guernsey. In October, Jersey’s Bailiff, Alexander Coutanche, and Victor Carey, the Bailiff of Guernsey, had asked the German authorities to permit the Red Cross to deliver food consignments for the Islands’ civilian populations.
On 8 December 1944 they eventually got a reply. A Red Cross ship was to leave Lisbon on Thursday 7 December for the Channel Islands, weather permitting. It was due to call in Guernsey first.
In the late evening of Wednesday 27 December 1944 it arrived at St Peter Port harbour in Guernsey and in the early evening of Saturday 30 December it berthed at the end of the Albert Pier in St Helier.
Unloading the parcels in Jersey began on New Year’s Eve. Sailors from the German navy, the Kriegsmarine, took charge of the operation, passing them on to 35 members of St John Ambulance.
They then took them to Martlands store in Patriotic Street, now the site of the multi-storey car park, which was used as a sorting area.
That first delivery comprised 119,792 standard food parcels, 4,200 invalid diet parcels, four tonnes of soap, five tonnes of salt, 96,000 cigarettes, medical supplies and some children’s clothes.
Each parcel was intended to provide a person with an extra 462 calories per day. It was not until the SS Vega’s third visit that supplies of flour and yeast arrived.
Until mid-February 1945 Islanders had had little or no bread, but the flour and yeast helped add another 987 calories to their daily diet.
The Vega’s sixth and last voyage to Jersey was in June 1945, a month after the war had ended and the Island had been liberated.
After all it had done, some might have thought the ship deserved to be cherished and restored – a lasting memorial to its work in saving the islands from starvation.
But there was to be no such gratitude. In August 1945 it travelled to London where it was repainted and its Red Cross insignia were removed.
Nine years later, in a final irony, it was sent to Germany. It was broken up for scrap in the German port of Travemünde.
But it can still be seen in St Helier. Just inside the Royal Court building in the Royal Square there is a large, detailed model of SS Vega – still bearing its Red Cross markings and flying the Red Cross flag.
