Given the regular and intrusive medical checks required, and the compulsory abortions performed, it would also have made sense to have an in-house clinic for the women in the brothel. I have taken another liberty with the historical truth by inventing such an infirmary, which also treated soldiers. In reality, soldiers who had contracted venereal diseases were treated in the general hospital, which had been requisitioned by the Germans. According to evidence, venereal diseases were rife.

I have no idea if certain women were reserved for officers, and others for the rank and file, but have assumed that would be the case. Although the SS were not present in Jersey, the Channel Islands had been earmarked as a place of rest and recreation and it is possible that Maximilian List, the SS Kommandant, or other SS officers, visited Jersey, although how often, and for how long, is guesswork. It is unlikely that Dora would have been allowed to nurse in the Revier; on the other hand, German wounded were evacuated to Jersey after the Normandy landings in 1944 and emergency hospitals and convalescence facilities would have been required. They needed nurses.

How Dora and the other women survived the emotional and psychological strain of sexual enslavement is conjecture. The scars of sexual violence run deep. Given how little was understood or recognised at the time, its trauma would grip for a considerable period.

Much of the detail of Joe’s life in Lager Sylt is based on the accounts of its inmates and witness statements. After the Normandy landings, the prisoners from Sylt and the OT camps on Alderney were evacuated to rebuild the Atlantic defences in Europe. The Minotaure was one of the ships, containing prisoners, which sank in the process, on 3 July 1944, with the loss of 250 lives.

La Ferme de l’Anse is a fiction, as are its precise co-ordinates. That Joe found refuge in the farm is perhaps a little fanciful: a battery was built close to la Coupe in December 1944 and most houses left empty were either requisitioned by the Germans or looted by locals. On the other hand, some escaped prisoners did evade capture for the duration of the war. I wanted to give Joe a break – he had been the victim of enough abuse since childhood.

The following primary and printed sources were used for the research for the novel:

Addy, C. Limpet Stew and Potato Jelly: Lillian Aubin Morris’ occupation Recipes (Jersey Heritage Trust, 2014)

Anonymous (Marta Hillers), A Woman in Berlin (Virago, 2008)

Briggs, A. The Channel Islands: Occupation and Liberation 1940–1945 (Batsford, 1995)

Bunting, M. The Model Occupation: The Channel Islands under German Rule 1940–1945 (HarperCollins, 1995)

Carr, G. Legacies of Occupation: Heritage, Memory and Archeaology in the Channel Islands (Springer, 2014)

Carr, G., Sanders, P. and Willmot, L. Protest, Defiance and Resistance in the Channel Islands: German Occupation 1940–45 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014)

Ginns, M. The Organisation Todt and the Fortress Engineers in the Channel Islands (Channel Islands Occupation Society, 1994)

Jersey Archives (WO 208/3741)