A former Nazi radio operator who smuggled food to a struggling family in Guernsey has been reunited with them nearly 80 years later.
Rudi Schoberl, 96, risked being killed himself when he decided to give food to widowed Netta Hallett and her eight children.
Aged just 23 at the time of the war, he was sent to the Channel Islands in 1943 and sent messages to Hitler’s pilots using the renowned Enigma machine.
Mr Schoberl and other Luftwaffe recruits were banned from talking to locals, but he exchanged his cigarette rations for food for the family, despite himself not having much to eat.
Ms Hallett and her family were extremely grateful for the sacrifice made by Mr Schoberl and remained close with him until the British territory was liberated in 1945.
Rudi Schoberl (pictured, during World War II) risked his life by giving food to widowed Netta Hallett and her eight children on Guernsey
Mr Schoberl was detained on the island for a year after the war had finished with a number of other German troops, who were told to get the island back in working condition.
He was sent to a prisoner of war camp in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, where he was held for two years, but the Hallett family never forget him.
They even wrote to him while he was in captivity and received food package from the family, including Guernsey butter which had become one of his favourites, and told fellow inmates it had come from his ‘Guernsey mum’.
Mr Schoberl was released in 1948 and decided to move to Essex after being encouraged by his mother to stay in England.
He opened up the UK’s first Volkswagen garage and kept in contact with Netta and the family.
The last time he went to visit Guernsey, but now the great-grandfather has gone back for the first time in 43 years accompanied by daughter Carol Mallis, granddaughter Kelly Israel, 38, and great-granddaughters Xanthe, six, and Ariadne, three.
Rudi Schoberl (left, aged 96) with Margaret Batiste (standing) and Loretta Winterson (right), who Mr Schoberl gave his rations to during the war
Rudi Schoberl (left) and Loretta Winterson (right) are reunited for the first time in four decades
They spent several days with Netta’s daughter Loretta Winterson who was a 13 year-old girl when he helped her family.
Lorretta, 86, said: ‘He did so much to help my mum – our dad died just before the war started and the baby wasn’t born yet.
‘He was so good to us and he’s wonderful even now, at his age.
‘He risked his life with so many of the things he did for us.
‘If he’d been caught, they would have shot him. Those little things, they didn’t tolerate.’
The 96-year-old, who now lives in a care home in Banbury, told relatives how he and other Germans were forced to eat cats, dogs and rats to stay alive, spitroasting them on an open fire at their encampment at Little Chapel.
Mr Schoberl said: ‘I think back and I wonder how I got away with it. My whole life was just helping people, I have no regrets.’
He also said that he helped another family in occupied France before being sent to Guernsey.
His mother also had a caring streak as she took food to Russians at a prison camp near the family home in East Germany.
She was caught twice and warned that a third would see her sent to a concentration camp – but she carried on delivering goods and managed to avoid detection.
Rudi Schoberl’s registration and service book during World War II. He was stationed in Guernsey and occupied France during WWII