Visitor Carolyn Ward and her two children came to Herm last week to see where her father and grandfather helped set up the Pigeon Post service over 60 years ago.

CAROLYN Ward came to Herm last week to see where her father and grandfather helped set up the Pigeon Post service more than 60 years ago. Her father, James Birch, was a pilot in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. When he was demobbed, his search for work somehow brought him to Herm, where A. G. Jeffries had just taken over the lease.

Herm was in a very bad state and workers set about sorting out the sewers and water supply and other repairs. Mr Birch’s wife, unenthusiastic about such a basic lifestyle, remained in Guernsey, where she worked as a teacher.

Mr Birch’s father, Captain Walter Birch, came to the island to visit his son. It was around this time that Mr Jeffries was trying to set up a postal service in Herm.

The island wasn’t allowed its own post office and all mail had to go through Guernsey, so Mr Jeffries set up the Herm Pigeon Post. Captain Birch, on holiday and with time to spare, volunteered to design the stamp. He came up with the black and orange one that collectors have made famous.

In 1949, Mr Jeffries had become ill so sold the lease to the Wood family. James Birch, who had been a good friend of Mr Jeffries as well as an employee, decided his time in the island was at an end.

He rejoined the RAF, this time as an air traffic controller, and moved his family back to England.

Carolyn, from Romsey, in Hampshire, brought two of her children, Kim, 12, and Christopher, nine, (pictured) to see Herm for the first time.

‘I often wonder just how different my life would have been if Mr Jeffries hadn’t sold the island,’ said Carolyn. ‘My father intended to stay here for quite a while, so probably I would have been brought up here and maybe stayed long enough to bring my own children up here.’

Although she ended up being a teacher like her mother, Carolyn feels her life could have taken another path. ‘I would have had a very different childhood,’ she said. ‘We ended up being an air force family and moving around a lot, but I expect I would have liked being a Herm child.’