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Army Technical School (Jersey). |
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St.
Peter’s Barracks, Jersey, Channel Islands, 1938 – 1940. |
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Contributed by Trevor Stubberfield (52A). |
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Page 1.
Introduction by ‘The
Editor’. |
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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. |
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The Army
Apprentice National Memorial.
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Photo © Trevor
Stubberfield. |
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A.A.N.M. centre-piece with the name of the Army
Technical School, Jersey, to the left of the outer ring. |
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Photo © Trevor Stubberfield |
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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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Page 2. The evacuation of Jersey, C.I. |