13th May 1945

Traffic returns to the “right” side of the road

Throughout the occupation, the Channel Islands had been moved to German time and traffic had been switched from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right. On 13 May 1945, less than a week after liberation, churches in Jersey held thanksgiving celebrations and traffic returned to what most would have considered the “right” side of the road: the left.

“Every church and chapel was filled by men, women and children, many of them wearing rosettes in the national colours,” The Times reported two days later. “A hymn written and composed for the occasion by two Jersey men was sung at many of the services. Thereafter crowds watched the unloading and dispersal of the military and civil stores until midnight, when all traffic on the streets once again changed to the left hand side.”