大象传媒

Memories of Graham Buckingham

Edited transcription of a taped interview with John De Jersey

On one occasion I was working with Graham on a boat near Woolworths, we were working down the engine room and we saw the officer come on board, he had a brand-new leather jacket, he stowed that away in the wheelhouse, or he thought he had anyway, but after he had gone, Graham said 鈥淚 fancy that鈥� so this again mysteriously disappeared and found its way into the bushes where the old bus station was, and of course there were a lot more bushes then so it was easy to hide anything, and we were back working in the engine room when the officer came on board and we could hear him ranting and raving upstairs, and so he came down to us and said 鈥� has anyone been on the boat鈥� and we said 鈥渘ot that we know of, we鈥檝e been down here all the time鈥�. He said 鈥淪omeone鈥檚 stolen my leather jacket鈥� we said 鈥渁re you sure you know where you left it 鈥� we鈥檒l give you a hand to look for it 鈥� Of course we didn鈥檛 find it and he went off ranting and raving, that ended up with Graham going down after dark and retrieving the jacket. I don鈥檛 know exactly what happened to it after.

Well at that time Graham had escaped from the Germans, and when he had escaped he actually he was going down the Avenue under escort and they were going to be deported to prison in Europe there and he shot off, as the guards walked past him he pretended to tie his shoelace and as soon as he was clear he shot off up through the Canichers and made his way into the country. This was on the Friday and on the Sunday he turned up in our garden, I was going out to feed my rabbits when I heard him call out my name and I was quite surprised to see him there, so I got him into the house quickly and we gave him some food and then we said he could stay with us of course.
What we decided was, we showed Graham, there were seven exits, seven ways of getting out of the house, If anything happened he could go straight through into the bedroom, because the old house years ago the people that lived there had a maid and they had a chauffeur drove the horse and cart and that, horse and carriage, and I think the maids room was one half of the loft and the chauffeur, the horse driver, was the other half, there were plenty of escape routes. You could go right through the roof, and there were doors the other side, and there were back stairs, quite a fascinating house. The house was right at the bottom of the Villocq, it looks entirely different now, I later named it Courtil Jean, and it has changed quite a lot. It鈥檚 still called the Courtil Jean but its changed completely. Modern.
Graham said he was going to escape in a canoe. Well we waited for a dark night because he had asked me to help him get it down, he had it stored in a shed down at Portinfer. We got down there on a dark night, and when we went to get the canoe, which was made of canvas, unfortunately it was rotten and our fingers went through, so despite the weather being too bad for him to go, the canoe was not safe enough for him to travel in so we went back and had a word with my parents who said he could stay with us provided he did not show himself outside until after dark, you see, and this is what he did, he stayed with us for several months we used to go down Graham and I some very dark evenings to a friend of ours down at the Trachieries at l鈥橧slet, Nelson Duquemin whose daughter was Gertie Duquemin who took part in a lot of the shows that we had during the war, and she was a marvellous singer, very nice lady, and she was always terrified when we went down because she thought we might get caught.
When the German Gestapo arrived at the house and the two of them walked in and said I was making crystal sets, unfortunately there were a couple of them available and so they knew very well that I was doing it, Graham at the time he saw them come in, he took out his handkerchief, pretended to blow his nose, and he picked up a bunch of grapes, walked out past these two Gestapo chaps, and he disappeared into the field until after dark, and he returned to the house,
Whilst in the prison I had a message to say that someone knew where Graham was hiding, so I got a message back home, which I could do because, my method was to stuff some cotton wool in my ear and complain that I had ear ache and wanted to go to the chemist, and the chemist I would go to happened to be my uncle who was Mr Carr茅 from the chemist in the Bordage, and he would then take the message to my mother you see, and Graham then moved to his sister鈥檚 place, he was washing a glass sweet jar when it broke and it cut his main arteries, and that鈥檚 how he eventually finished him, he kept saying he was too weak to be put back into prison.

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