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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 Marc Yates. |
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The Source and Copyright © of this material is acknowledged
as the property of Marc Yates and should not be copied without the express
permission of the author. ___________________________________________________________________________________ |
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Page 2. |
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76 Years Ago – Memories of a 5 year
old boy. |
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Seventy-six
years ago, in the preceding two weeks before the Channel Islands were
occupied, it was pretty clear that the Germans would be arriving soon. My
grandfather (George Yates) was a career soldier, and at the time, he had a
“home” posting with his young family. His father had himself been a soldier
in the Royal Artillery who had been posted to Jersey about thirty-five years
previously and had married a local girl, my great-grandmother (but that is
another story). |
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A
few years ago, my father, Silvanus Yates, wrote down what he remembered about
that time, when he and the rest of the family were evacuated to England with
the British military forces in the Island. Here is an extract of what he said
(and which has not hitherto been published): |
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“During 1938, the British Army had set up
a technical school at St. Peter’s Barracks in Jersey to train boy soldiers
from the age of fourteen as artificers for the Royal Army Service Corps. They
were to be trained as motor mechanics, fitters, electricians, turners,
joiners, coppersmiths, in fact all trades needed to keep a mechanised army
mobile. They also received tuition in English, Maths, Geography, Technical
Drawing etc. My father was a sergeant instructor at
the school and we lived in married quarters at the barracks right next to the
perimeter fence at Jersey Airport which was adjacent to the barracks on the
north and east sides (see photo below). |
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St. Peter’s Barracks. |
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My first recollection of the war was a
Sunday afternoon tea. My parents were entertaining the corporal telephonist
from the Adjutant’s office and he was entertaining us with his account of how
he had received the VERY IMPORTANT ORDERS from brigade office that morning;
what the Adjutant did, what the Commandant said and so on. It was September
3rd 1939. My not quite five year old ears heard
words like Germans, war-footing, enemy action, bombers, air-raids for the
first time. It all seemed very exciting!! One of the next things that comes to mind
is that my father having to do some night duty with a squad of 6 to 8 men
armed with rifles and two Lewis guns to defend the airfield in case of enemy
attack. Slit trenches were dug around the edge of
the football field in front of our quarters. Things were coming to a head and
although I didn’t know it at the time, Dunkirk had fallen, the Germans were
well into Normandy and were attacking St. Malo and advancing along the
adjacent coast towards Cherbourg. |
My mother said that tonight we must sleep
in the slit trench. No problem. No sense of fear or anxiety. Mum knows best.
All the kids have to do this I suppose. Quite exciting really. Isn’t it
marvellous that five years olds have complete confidence in grown-ups!! I was
5 years 9 months and my brother was 21 months old. Obviously the barracks and
the airfield were considered to be prime military targets. I remember being woken up by boots
jumping into our trench and laughing and loud talking and people saying “Ssshh, the children!!”. There
was a mini-Dunkirk operation going on and the local boats were bringing
British troops from St Malo to Jersey and
the boots that had woken me up belonged to 3 of these soldiers just
arrived. Years later my mother told me
that it hadn’t been too much of an ordeal and that sometime during the night,
the bar of the Sergeants’ Mess had been cleared and the contents distributed
amongst the occupants of the slit trenches to keep their spirits up. This was the night of the 18th-19th June
1940. ….. Very early in the morning we went to the harbour and boarded the
S.S Brittany with the British Army regulars and the boy soldiers from St
Peter’s Barracks. ………” |
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S.S. Brittany.
18th – 19th June 1940. Evacuation of troops and civilians from Jersey. |
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So
although my paternal grand-parents evacuated with their two young sons, my
paternal great-grandmother stayed in Jersey, as indeed did my maternal
grand-parents and my mother, who was also a small child at the time. (I will
pass on some of her recollections in due course.) The
British Government had originally intended
to defend the Island and many troops had arrived in Jersey from the
16th, but with the surrender of France imminent, it decided to demilitarise
the Island and hence why forces’ families like my grandfather’s started to
leave on the 19th, together with soldiers who had arrived only days before.
The last of the military forces left on the 21st June. 23,000 of the 50,000
civilian population registered to evacuate in ships organised by the British
Government, but in the subsequent days, only 6,600 chose to do so before the
last boat finally sailed from St Helier, leaving a civilian population all
but cut loose from Britain. An
uneasy calm returned to the Island, and it was declared an “open town”, but
this was not properly communicated to the Germans who were now in full
control 15 miles away in France. On Friday the 28th June, the German
Luftwaffe bombed and machine gunned both Jersey and Guernsey, killing and
wounding many islanders, in an attack designed to test the Islands’ air
defences, a prudent step for any advancing force in the absence of knowing
that the Islands were now defenceless. After
a nervous weekend for Islanders anticipating further attacks, the Germans
dropped an ultimatum in the early hours of Monday the 1st July demanding that
the Jersey surrender by 7am the next day. The States of Jersey held an
emergency sitting in the morning and agreed to comply with the ultimatum. It
was ordered that the ultimatum be translated and printed for distribution
around the Island. By 4.30pm, the first Germans had landed at Jersey Airport
(a day earlier than expected), and without any resistance, and for a large
part of the population in the countryside, unaware of the ultimatum, five
years of occupation began. |
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Copyright ©
Marc Yates. (Author). |
‘History Alive!’ and ‘Jersey Military Tours’. ___________________________________________________________________________________ |
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Editor’s Note. |
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Having
communicated with Marc recently regarding his article, the good news is that
there is a very good prospect that a much fuller, more detailed version,
relating more about the evacuation and where and how the apprentices,
military personnel and their families fared on their return to England, is in
the offing. We will have the chance to
publish it here, on site. As
usual, all updates of the site can be followed from ‘The Messages’
page so ‘watch that space’. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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Photo Added 15th May 2020. |
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The
photo has been contributed by the author of the article, Marc Yates, who
comments……… ‘I have a treat for you in the form of a
photo of the Technical School Staff in Jersey in 1940 - must have been just
before the German Occupation here’. Marc’s
Grandfather, George Yates, is in the rear rank, 11th from the left. He was a Sgt.
Instructor at the school. |
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To view an enlarged version of the photo, click the
arrow below. |
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First Published: 8th February 2019. Latest Update: 15th May 2020. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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