25th August 1945

Jersey’s military government is dissolved

The Channel Islands’ political recovery from the Occupation of the Second World War was swift, even if the physical scars of the Germans’ extended visit remain. After 90 days of direct British military rule, the interim military governments handed control back to the people, and civil service staff resumed the roles they had held before the start of the war.

Lieutenant Governors return

Sir Arthur Edward Grasett was sworn in as Lieutenant Governor, while on Guernsey, Major-General Philip Neame VC, who had travelled from the mainland on the destroyer, Brocklesbye, arrived with his family at St Peter Port just before noon to assume the same role.

Grasett, a Canadian by birth, had been been posted to Hong Kong at the start of the war, and was head of the European Allied Contacts in the expeditionary force that invaded France in 1944. In the week before his arrival in Jersey, he had enjoyed an audience with the King at Buckingham Palace, during which he was appointed to his new role, knighted and invested with the KBE.