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The Germans search for illicit radios in Guernsey

Edited extract form a taped interview, May 2005

John Bougourd

The only person of our family who was left in Guernsey was my uncle. Now my mother had a bungalow. My grandmother lived at a house called Bridge House at St Sampsons, on the Bridge, and my uncle had just bought a big place at l’Ancresse. Anyway, the long and the short of it was he had to sell one of them during the war to live on, as there wasn’t an income. He was a radio Salesman and engineer, and obviously the Germans would not let him, so he got salt water from the sea, boiled it, and sold salt. That was his occupation. This is a side tale what he told me, this was at St Sampson’s, behind his shop. The original building had been used as a butchers shop, back in the eighteen nineties, and there were stables. Now he set up his radio equipment up above the stables, and he had his salt-making equipment, but he also — in those days radios operated on a big battery, a 9 volt battery, and what they called an accumulator, a glass bottle, with acid, and those had to be charged regularly. Now those who had secret radios would bring theirs in and have them charged and he would put them in a bucket of salt, and they would walk out with their bucket of salt, having purchased a bucket of salt. Anyway, one day - the Germans were very very strict on any of their men fraternising or having access or doing anything unauthorised, and this German soldier came in, came upstairs, took his bayonet out of its sheath, and started poking it down into the buckets. Now with being a stable this was where the hay was kept, and the doors were always kept open because of the fumes, and there wouldn’t be a smell, and my uncle thought, right, if he hits one of the accumulators that’s it, I’m off to Germany, so he grabbed hold of this soldier, and threw him out of the double doors, down onto the concrete, where he broke his leg. Herbie then got on to the commandants office and said that an unauthorised search was being made and the man had accidentally fallen out of the door and would they come and fetch him and take him to hospital, so they took him away to hospital, Herbie got rid of all his batteries, and when they came back and investigated — nothing. So this guy was taken to hospital , and they repaired his leg, and then out in the channel there there is a fort, it was an ak-ak centre, and he was sentenced to six months out there. Herbie was lucky.
They were so fussy apparently. That was Herbie’s peak story during the war, when he nearly got shipped away.

John Bougourd

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