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Edited transcription of a taped interview with John De Jersey

My name is John de Jersey, I left school in 1939. I was 14. When the war finished I was 20.
I was born at the Villocq in the Catel, and I left school in 1939 and started work at Baubigny Garage as an apprentice mechanic. My boss evacuated and that left me with no work. My father and mother owned greenhouses so I helped in the greenhouses for quite a while as a member of GUB — Guernsey’s useless so-and sos —
the Glasshouse Utilisation Board, the Germans then started stating what crops they were going to take, and they decided that potato crops were going to be taken and so many potatoes in the greenhouses in the ground and an officer came round one morning and said tomorrow we dig the potatoes so the same evening we got our friends in and we told them if they wanted potatoes, this was after dark, to come along, no forks, and dig them out with their hands and so we all went through the greenhouse and took all the big potatoes out, and earthed them up again, as they left them, and my father sprayed them with the hose that night, and the next day when the Germans came to collect the potatoes they started digging them and of course there was only tiny little potatoes left. They said the potatoes were very small. We said well they don’t grow very well in greenhouses anyway.
After that I decided I wanted to get back into the garage and I went to work at Le Lacheurs in Doyle Road. He was a lovely old chap was that Ozzie le Lacheur, his legs were in irons and the Germans had allowed him to keep his Austin 7 Van which he got around in, and I stayed there for a couple of years and then we were transferred to Ash’s garage at the top of the Grange because they turned the garage in Doyle Road into a wood store. when I was working at Doyle Motors, we had one of Miller's old lorries came in, the Germans were using it, and it had a Perkins diesel engine in, which the Germans said had to go away to be reconditioned. We took it out, it was sent to France, and it came back, looked beautiful, everything was spotless on the engine, we were given the job of putting it back in the chassis, we went to start it, we couldn’t turn the engine over, so we thought maybe it had been bored very tight or something like that, so we put the handle in, which was a pretty hefty handle in those days, there was room on the end of it for two of you to just stand on with one foot each, and they pushed the starter and still it wouldn’t move. The German in charge there said we had to strip it, and nothing had been done to the engine except they had removed the pistons, put them in the sump, and put blocks of wood from the crankshaft to the head, and that was why you couldn’t turn it.
So that finished that truck, it wasn’t put back into use. They were amazing the French, the things they’d do, You’d put a battery in and switch the ignition on, push the starter, and the battery would fall off, acid everywhere. We had quite a few laughs at that, but I think now, that’s it, no more.
And from there we worked at Ash’s for a little while and then the Germans came up from down at the marine area, and they wanted two Diesel mechanics, and myself and my friend Walter were transferred, even though we had never worked on a Diesel engine in our lives. Anyway, we worked down at Moitié’s by the Model Yacht Pond, and that was where I met Graham Buckingham originally, but what we would do, if we were given a job which would have taken hours it would take days, and also little parts which were important to them mysteriously found there way to the bottom of the harbour, probably still there.

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