The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

We would have come out all right if not for John Booker. He’d drunk more than he’d eaten at dinner, and when we got to the road, he forgot himself and broke into song! I grabbed hold of him, but it was too late: six German patrol officers suddenly rose out of the trees with their Lugers drawn and began to shout—Why were we out after curfew? Where had we been? Where were we going?

I couldn’t think what to do. If I ran, they’d shoot me. I knew that much. My mouth was dry as chalk and my mind was blank, so I just held on to Booker and hoped.

Then Elizabeth drew in her breath and stepped forward. Elizabeth isn’t tall, so those pistols were lined up at her eyes, but she didn’t blink. She acted like she didn’t see any pistols at all. She walked up to the officer in charge and started talking. You never heard such lies. How sorry she was that we had broken curfew. How we had been attending a meeting of the Guernsey Literary Society, and the evening’s discussion of Elizabeth and Her German Garden had been so delightful that we had all lost track of time. Such a wonderful book—had he read it?

None of us had the presence of mind to back her up, but the patrol officer couldn’t help himself—he had to smile back at her. Elizabeth is like that. He took our names and ordered us very politely to report to the Commandant the next morning. Then he bowed and wished us a good evening. Elizabeth nodded, gracious as could be, while the rest of us edged away, trying not to run like rabbits. Even lugging Booker, I got home quick.

That is the story of our roast pig dinner.

I’d like to ask you a question of my own. Ships are coming in to St. Peter Port harbor every day to bring us things Guernsey still needs: food, clothes, seed, plows, feed for animals, tools, medicine—and most important, now that we have food to eat, shoes. I don’t believe that there was a fit pair left on the island by the end of the war.

Some of the things being sent to us are wrapped up in old newspaper and magazine pages. My friend Clovis and I smooth them out and take them home to read—then we give them to neighbors who, like us, are eager for any news of the outside world in the past five years. Not just any news or pictures: Mrs. Saussey wants to see recipes; Mme. LePell wants fashion papers (she is a dressmaker); Mr. Brouard reads Obituaries (he has his hopes, but won’t say who); Claudia Rainey is looking for pictures of Ronald Colman; Mr. Tourtelle wants to see Beauty Queens in bathing dress; and my friend Isola likes to read about weddings.

There is so much we wanted to know during the war, but we were not allowed letters or papers from England—or anywhere. In 1942, the Germans called in all the wireless sets—of course, there were hidden ones, listened to in secret, but if you were caught listening, you could be sent to the camps. That is why we don’t understand so many things we can read about now.

I enjoy the war-time cartoons, but there is one that bewilders me. It was in a 1944 Punch and shows ten or so people walking down a London street. The chief figures are two men in bowler hats, holding briefcases and umbrellas, and one man is saying to the other man, “It is ridiculous to say these Doodlebugs have affected people in any way.” It took me several seconds to realize that every person in the cartoon had one normal-sized ear and one very large ear on the other side of his head. Perhaps you could explain it to me.

Yours sincerely,

Dawsey Adams

Juliet to Dawsey

3rd February, 1946

Dear Mr. Adams,

I am so glad you are enjoying Lamb’s letters and the copy of his portrait. He did fit the face I had imagined for him, so I’m glad you felt that way, too.

Thank you very much for telling me about the roast pig, but don’t think I didn’t notice that you only answered one of my questions. I’m hankering to know more about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and not merely to satisfy my idle curiosity—I now have a professional duty to pry.

Did I tell you I am a writer? I wrote a weekly column for the Spectator during the war, and Stephens & Stark publishers collected them together into a single volume and published them under the title Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War. Izzy was the nom-deplume the Spectator chose for me, and now, thank heavens, the poor thing has been laid to rest, and I can write under my own name again. I would like to write a book, but I am having trouble thinking of a subject I could live happily with for several years.

In the meantime, the Times has asked me to write an article for the literary supplement. They want to address the practical, moral, and philosophical value of reading—spread out over three issues and by three different authors. I am to cover the philosophical side of the debate and so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga. You can see I need help.

Do you think your literary society would mind being included in such an article? I know that the story of the society’s founding would fascinate the Times’s readers, and I’d love to learn more about your meetings. But if you’d rather not, please don’t worry—I will understand either way, and either way, would like to hear from you again.

I remember the Punch cartoon you described very well and think it was the word Doodlebug that threw you off. That was the name coined by the Ministry of Information; it was meant to sound less terrifying than “Hitler’s V-1 rockets” or “pilotless bombs.”

We were all used to bombing raids at night and the sights that followed, but these were unlike any bombs we had seen before.

They came in the daytime, and they came so fast there was no time for an air-raid siren or to take cover. You could see them; they looked like slim, black, slanted pencils and made a dull, spastic sound above you—like a motor-car running out of petrol. As long as you could hear them coughing and putt-putting, you were safe. You could think “Thank God, it’s going past me.”

But when their noise stopped, it meant there was only thirty seconds before it plummeted. So, you listened for them. Listened hard for the sound of their motors cutting out. I did see a Doodlebug fall once. I was quite some distance away when it hit, so I threw myself down in the gutter and cuddled up against the curb. Some women, in the top story of a tall office building down the street, had gone to an open window to watch. They were sucked out by the force of the blast.