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Army Technical School (Jersey). |
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St.
Peter’s Barracks, Jersey, Channel Islands, 1938 – 1940. |
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Contributed by Trevor Stubberfield
(52A). |
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Page 1. Introduction by Trevor Stubberfield (RIP) |
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With the increasing mechanisation of equipment used by
the British Army, came the need for the skilled technicians needed to
maintain and repair it. The existing
Army Technical Schools were fully manned so a number of new establishments
were needed. One such was set up in 1938 on the island of Jersey in the
Channel Islands. It was based in St.
Peter’s Barracks and trained apprentices who were to serve in the Royal Army
Service Corps and The Royal Army Ordnance Corps. With the declaration of war in 1939, as a British
militarised zone, the Channel Islands were a potential target for invasion by
German forces. In June 1940 the threat
materialised and a hurried plan was put in place for the evacuation of all
military personnel, including the apprentices, along with those of the
civilian population who wished to leave. Elsewhere on the site we have accounts by
ex-apprentices of their time spent on training in Jersey, plus a group photo
of the trainee electricians who returned from Jersey to join the Arborfield
Army Technical School, but the account that follows is a graphic tale of the
evacuation of the island as seen through the eyes of a child whose father was
an instructor of apprentices at the school. The name of the school is included in the centre-piece
of the ‘Army Apprentice National Memorial’ located at the ‘National Memorial
Arboretum, Alrewas, Staffordshire. |
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The Army Apprentice
National Memorial. |
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Photo © Trevor Stubberfield. |
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A.A.N.M. centre-piece with the name of the Army
Technical School, Jersey, to the left of the outer ring. |
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Photo © Trevor Stubberfield |
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The
account that can be found on Page 2. has been included by kind permission of
its author Marc Yates. Marc
is the founder of the web site ‘History Alive!’ and ‘Jersey Military Tours’. The Source and Copyright © is acknowledged as the
property of Marc Yates and should not be copied without the express
permission of the author. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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Published: 8th February 2019. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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Page 2. The evacuation of Jersey, C.I. |