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David Martel interviewed by Becky Kendall of Radio Guernsey at the Guernsey Museum March 2005, transcribed from CD by John David Nov 17th 2005

And going back to the end of the Occupation, like, we could see that after D-day, we were hoping to be relieved soon after, but as it happened the Liberation didn’t come for ten months after the landing in France, then it was announced on the radio, we heard it on the radio that the Channel Islands — Mr Churchill spoke — and the Channel Islands would be freed the following day, so I got up, and I decided to go to the White Rock on my bike, with a friend, to see the troops land at the harbour. On the way there, I was riding a bike, it was a bike, the tyres were poor, and they had a patch over the top, and as I was riding down the Catiers, by the Catiers farm, the bit of canvas that was on the tyre jammed in the front forks, so I finished up over the handlebars into the road, and they called the ambulance to come and see, and the ambulance came out, which was a baker’s van
I………. The ambulance was a baker’s van?
The other one might have been occupied. The ambulance was a baker’s van and they laid me in this baker’s van and took me to the hospital, and I was in hospital for a whole week, so I missed all the landings and everything that went on. The only fortunate thing about it was that all the army chiefs and all the local dignitaries came and visited everybody in the hospital, so one met the likes of Brigadier Snow, and the big chiefs, up at the hospital, and he passed a remark as to what had happened to me, and I had to explain that I had fallen off my bike. Fortunately apart from cuts and bruises and that I wasn’t badly injured.
I………. So your only injury through all the Occupation was on Liberation Day?
Was on Liberation Day. So I’d waited five years to see the troops land, and I never saw it.

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