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Roy and Angela Bougourd interviewed by John Gaisford 12/3/05.
Video recording transcribed by John David 27/9/05

Roy Bougourd. My name is Roy Bougourd, born in Guernsey in 1937 and this is Angela, my wife, who’s also born in 1937, very close in age. I was three years old when the war began, and was evacuated from Guernsey to the UK. Unfortunately my family, although there were only four of us, we were spit up because my brother left from St Sampson’s School with the school before any of us and they were sent of to England and lost track of for a short time. Eventually I went over with my mother and my father stayed in Guernsey to look after the house. So in fact my father became trapped here when the Germans landed and he, my mother, my brother and I were separated for about five years. Eventually in the UK my mother tracked down where my brother was and he came to join us in Baildon, a small village in Yorkshire, fairly close to Bradford but more out on the moors, the Yorkshire moors, which was very nice.
Angela Bougourd. I’m Angela Bougourd, and we were evacuated from Alderney. My dad was a Sark man, but he had a job in Alderney. We were evacuated from Alderney as everybody had to go, and we all went together, luckily enough, and arrived at a great big shelter where they set about finding us a house to go to, and some villagers welcomed us in, and apart from a few pillow-fights on the first night everything went very smoothly.
I………. We have heard people talking about evacuating from the White Rock, and how a boat would go one day, and come back the next day, and that sort of thing, now, from Alderney you had your own boat which came to Alderney to evacuate you?
Angela Bougourd. We had to come to Guernsey. And my dad always told us that before we came to Guernsey many people came to him to ask him to get rid of their dogs and cats, I am afraid. So that was us arriving in Scotland. My dad got a job in a shipyard, John Brown’s shipyard, where he used to go when they built and launched the ships, where he used to sleep on the ships the first couple of nights, with lots of other men. That’s the first part of the Occupation.
Roy Bougourd. Being only three years old, I don’t remember a lot, but there’s like flashbacks that come. I remember being on the boat from Guernsey, presumably to Southampton or Portsmouth or somewhere, I remember we were allocated deck-chairs to sit on and sleep on, and people coming round with blankets to keep us warm, and then arriving in a South Coast port somewhere, and all being shepherded into a large hall with straw palliasses to lay on for the night and eventually we were re-allocated to go North, up to Baildon. As I say, it was quite a small village up there, and we were total strangers, and again we arrived in a large hall which I remember, - it probably wasn’t that large, but we thought it was — and we were allocated a house, sharing with another Guernsey family. It was actually quite a nice house, and we spent many years there. As kids, we were probably quite happy, really, because we soon forgot about Guernsey and got on with living in Yorkshire, and went to school there, and so on. My brother joined us there and there were quite a lot of Guernsey people in that area and other towns around the north of England.
I………. So you, Angela…
Angela Bougourd. Dumbartonshire, yes.
I………. And did you spend the whole time there?
Angela Bougourd. Yes, in the one house, and we went back there a couple of years ago to have a look around, and apart from the little school, which was actually closing on the day we went back, a couple of years ago, everything else had changed, thousands and thousands more houses in the area.
I………. Was your house still there?
Angela Bougourd. Yes it was.
Roy Bougourd. A little row of council houses. We found the air-raid shelter where we used to have to go down into the woods to go, covered over with lots of weeds and things, it did not look half so looming as it did when we all went there. Life was just general when we were there.

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