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Army Technical School (Jersey).

 

St. Peter’s Barracks, Jersey, Channel Islands, 1938 – 1940.

 

Contributed by Trevor Stubberfield (52A).

 

 

Page 1.  Introduction by  ‘The Editor’.

 

With the increasing mechanisation of equipment used by the British Army, came the need for the skilled technicians needed to maintain and repair it.  The existing Army Technical Schools were fully manned so a number of new establishments were needed. One such was set up in 1938 on the island of Jersey in the Channel Islands.  It was based in St. Peter’s Barracks and trained apprentices who were to serve in the Royal Army Service Corps and The Royal Army Ordnance Corps.

With the declaration of war in 1939, as a British militarised zone, the Channel Islands were a potential target for invasion by German forces.  In June 1940 the threat materialised and a hurried plan was put in place for the evacuation of all military personnel, including the apprentices, along with those of the civilian population who wished to leave.

Elsewhere on the site we have accounts by ex-apprentices of their time spent on training in Jersey, plus a group photo of the trainee electricians who returned from Jersey to join the Arborfield Army Technical School, but the account that follows is a graphic tale of the evacuation of the island as seen through the eyes of a child whose father was an instructor of apprentices at the school.

The name of the school is included in the centre-piece of the ‘Army Apprentice National Memorial’ located at the ‘National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, Staffordshire.

 

The Army Apprentice National Memorial.            

                                                                Photo © Trevor Stubberfield.

 

A.A.N.M. centre-piece with the name of the Army Technical School, Jersey, to the left of the outer ring.

Photo © Trevor Stubberfield

 

The account that can be found on Page 2. has been included by kind permission of its author Marc Yates.

Marc is the founder of the web site History Alive!’ and Jersey Military Tours’.

The Source and Copyright © is acknowledged as the property of Marc Yates and should not be copied without the express permission of the author.

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Published: 8th February 2019.

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