‘Still a lot to discover about Occupation life’
NEARLY 77 years after the end of the Occupation, new information is still coming to light about the experiences of the people who lived through it.
Channel Islands Occupation Society president Phil Martin is currently researching the lives of slave workers who were brought over to build the fortifications.
‘I’m doing a project at the moment, we’re trying to find out what happened to a lot of the forced labourers who came to Guernsey. I’m trying to find out where they came from and their stories.
‘There’s a lot of work to do, and some of our younger members, those in their 40s and 50s, are taking up the banner as well.’
Mr Martin was re-elected as president of the society at a packed AGM recently, and he said he was ‘quite chuffed’ with the result, and that it was ‘nice to be appreciated’.
Effectively it was the society’s 61st AGM because last year’s had to be curtailed because of Covid.
After so many decades the desire for new information burns just as bright and Mr Martin said it was important to educate people.
‘Our challenge is to carry on researching.
There’s going to be a point when we’ve gone that information will still be coming to light, but unfortunately personal reminisces won’t.
‘So it’s our job to carry on researching and hunting for clues, not necessarily on just the fortifications, but the actual paperwork side of the Occupation, because there’s still a lot of stuff that we’ve never seen.
‘We have some members who go to Germany and look in the German archives and the information that they come back with helps to broaden the story.
‘What we’ve got to do as a society is try and reduce the myths.
'There are lot of things that have been recorded in publications that are completely wrong, and we’ve been able to dispel some of those, but unfortunately it’s still in the background.
‘We have a review that we publish every year, Jersey does it one year and we do it the following year. It’s about 150 pages, normally all stuff that has never been in print before.’
The society had humble beginnings.
It started when Mr Martin and Richard Heaume, now owner of the Guernsey Occupation Museum, were just young lads at Elizabeth College.
The young Mr Heaume had decided to start a Friday afternoon school club because he had some collected some relics.
Mr Martin went along to the club and it all progressed from there. Now the two are the longest-standing members of the society.
