Jessie Linda Marriette (later Smith)

Date of birth 16 November 1920
Place of birth Guernsey
Deported from Guernsey
Deportation date 8 November 1940
Address when deported Westwood, York Avenue, St Peter Port, Guernsey
Deported to:
Cherche-Midi Prison

By Gilly Carr

Jessie Linda Marriette was born on 16 November 1920 in Guernsey. At the time of the German Occupation she lived in York Avenue in St Peter Port, and worked as a clerk at the Essential Commodities Office. She was single and lived with her parents, Albert and Linda Marriette.

Jessie Marriette is best known for being deported in the autumn of 1940 because she was the girlfriend of Lt Hubert Nicolle, a British commando who, along with Lt Jimmy Symes, had recently arrived in the Island to spy for the British government. They had gone into hiding after the boat that was supposed to take them back to England failed to show up. The Germans assumed that Jessie and her family were complicit in hiding them, along with a number of other friends and relatives of the two men.  The event has since become known in the Island as the ‘Nicolle-Symes Affair’.

The full story is as follows:

On 4 September 1940, when the island had been under occupation for just over two months, Symes and Nicolle landed at Petit Port on the south coast of Guernsey, in civilian clothes, having been taken across the Channel in a Royal Navy Motor Torpedo Boat. They made their way to the homes of relatives and were sheltered by family and friends during their stay in the island. Attorney General and President of the Controlling Commission, Ambrose Sherwill, was alerted to their presence at an early stage; the men wanted to know if he had a message for the British government which they could take back. Nicolle and Symes intended to return to England three nights after they arrived, but no boat arrived to collect them so they were stuck in the island. Worried for the fate of their family and friends if their presence was detected, and for themselves, as spies, a plan was concocted by Ambrose Sherwill. Sherwill was also afraid that if it was discovered that he had known of their presence, especially given that Nicolle’s father was secretary to the Controlling Commission, then he and his civil servants would also be in trouble. The plan involved finding military uniforms for the two men to pretend that they had been in the island since before the occupation and had missed the opportunity for evacuation and joining up, and had not yet given  themselves up. Rather than being shot as spies, this plan would mean that the men would be taken away as POWs.

Meanwhile the Germans had got to hear that some members of the armed forces were in the island. They announced an amnesty for all servicemen who had remained behind when the occupation began. On 18 October 1940 they put a notice in the paper saying that members of the British armed forces in the island in hiding – and those sheltering them – must give themselves up within three days. If they did so, then the soldiers would be treated as POWs and no action would be taken against those who assisted them.

Uniforms were found for Symes and Nicolle and they handed themselves in. However, the Germans reneged on the agreement and the friends and family of the two men were picked up and put in prison. When Sherwill went to complain, he realised that he, too, was a suspect. Within days, all involved were deported to France.

Jessie later recalled that she was held for a week in Guernsey Prison and was questioned daily, and then released. But later, a plain-clothes interrogator, Herr Lensch, turned up again on 8 November to take her to the airport.

Those deported were Ambrose Sherwill; Jimmy Symes’ parents Louis Symes and Rachel Symes; Albert Marriette and Linda Marriette and Jessie Marriette, their daughter; Wilfred Bird and his adult children Mary Bird (Jimmy’s Symes’ girlfriend) and Walter ‘Dick’ Bird; Emile Nicolle and Elsie Nicolle (the parents of Hubert Nicolle); Hilda Nicolle and Frank Nicolle (Hubert Nicolle’s aunt and uncle); Henry E. Marquand; Bill Allen (the groundsman at the Elizabeth College sports field, who helped shelter the commandos when they were hiding in the pavilion), and farmer Tom Mansell (who was covering for his married brother, Dick Mansell, at whose farm Hubert Nicolle arrived as part of his gathering of intelligence as the Mansell’s farm bordered the airport). 16 people in total were deported.

Those deported were sent in two groups. First of all, Rachel and Louis Symes, the three members of the Bird family, Emile Nicolle, Frank Nicolle and Jessie Marriette were flown on 8 November 1940 to Dinard and then Paris, where propaganda photos were taken of them in front of the Eiffel Tower before they were taken to Cherche-Midi Prison. On 13 November, Albert and Linda Marriette, Henry Marquand, Hilda and Elsie Nicolle, Bill Allen and Tom Mansell were taken by sea, first to Jersey (where they spent the night in the local prison), then St Malo, then Caen Prison. Later, all but Linda Marriette and Hilda Nicolle were taken to Cherche-Midi on 20 November. While Sherwill wrote that they stayed in Caen, Marquand remarked that they arrived in Cherche-Midi around 14 December. On 7 November, Ambrose Sherwill was flown separately to Paris. On 8 November he was taken to Versailles Prison, and on 15 November 1940 he was taken to Cherche-Midi.

No written account has yet been found of Jessie’s experience of deportation and imprisonment in her own words, but we do have some family stories passed on by her daughter.  Jessie told her there were Jewish girls who she met in Cherche-Midi, and she made a record of their names and address so she could get in touch after the war. She never heard from any of them again. She also passed on a story which reflected her love of singing. Jessie used to perform at the Lyric Theatre in Guernsey. When, in Cherche-Midi, she saw her father arrive, she sang the song that she had been performing at the Lyric (‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’) as loud as possible to get his attention and to say that she was all right. The song was so important to her that it was later played at her funeral many decades later.

We know from the diaries of two other members of the group, Ambrose Sherwill and Henry Marquand, that Cherche-Midi Prison was very cold, with insufficient food. The sound of various nearby church bells and the prison clock bells kept prisoners awake at night. All of the group would have been consumed by worry, stress, hunger, and the suspense of waiting to discover their fate. While most of the group were kept in solitary confinement, Jessie Marriette was put in a cell with Mary Bird. Mary later recalled that Jessie became hysterical upon entering Cherche-Midi and screamed when the cell lights were turned off for the first time.

The group was finally released on 29 December 1940 and allowed to go back to Guernsey. On 18 January 1941, the Bailiff received a letter about the group, stating that Ambrose Sherwill could no longer retain his job as Attorney General and President of the Controlling Committee, and that Wilfred Bird (a States official), and Emile Nicolle and Frank Nicolle (both civil servants) were excluded from holding public office. The letter further said that Mary Bird had given ‘insignificant evidence’ and could be further employed, and that Jessie Marriette had given ‘truthful evidence’. This accords with oral testimony from another member of the group who heard Jessie tell the Germans everything. Jessie’s daughter later confirmed that this was true. She stated that because all the stories that the Germans received were contradicting each other, she thought she should just tell them everything.

We know very little about what happened to Jessie immediately after her release from Cherche-Midi, but it is possible that she, too, was released from her job. Her registration form of December 1942 reveals that she was no longer working as a clerk, but was occupied instead with ‘home duties.’

Jessie later had a relationship with a member of the German navy, Ernst Kredel, whom she eventually married in 1947. Jessie helped him come to the UK after the war. The couple originally met at a dance show that the local theatre company put on. However, the relationship did not last and they divorced. Jessie moved to New Zealand when their daughter was 11 years old. She married a dairy farmer, Fred Smith, with whom she settled in Karamu, Hamilton, New Zealand. In an interview in 1985, Jessie described the experience of being in Cherche-Midi as ‘so shattering, it has lived with me all these years’. Jessie Marriette died in 2015.

The Frank Falla Archive would like to acknowledge the help of Jessie Marriette’s daughter, Gerlinde Stradwick, in filling in the gaps of her mother’s life.

Sources

Bell, W. 1998. The Commando who came Home to Spy. The Guernsey Press Co.: Guernsey.

Marquand, H.E. Unpublished papers, courtesy of the Creasey family.

Sherwill, A. 2006. A Fair and Honest Book. Lulu.com.

Wood, M. and Wood, A. 1955. Islands in Danger. Macmillan: New York.

Map

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