Sidney Ashcroft was sentenced to hard labour and deported in May 1942, the day before his 21st birthday.
He never saw the island – or the mother he was trying to protect when he assaulted the officer – again.
And since that day Sidney’s family had never known his fate and his mother, Charlotte, spent her life waiting for her son to come home.
Recently Occupation historian Dr Gilly Carr set about trying to solve the mystery of what had happened to Sidney – one of the so-called Guernsey Eight who were deported to prisoner of war camps for defying German rule during the Occupation.
‘When I first saw Sidney’s photograph in the Occupation Museum there was something about him that haunted me and made me want to find out more about him. I felt he and I had unfinished business.
‘When I think about Sidney my overwhelming desire is to seek justice for him,’ said Dr Carr.
After trawling the archives, the historian found Sidney’s port-mortem certificate, and her search ended in Straubing in southern Germany, where the young Guernseyman had died of TB in a prison hospital a week after VE Day.
He had later been buried in a mass grave.
Sidney’s second cousin, Chris Roberts, who joined Dr Carr on the trip, which was shown on the BBC’s Inside Out programme, said: ‘It is an appalling thought that Sidney just disappeared into the maw of Europe. He hadn’t even reached his 21st birthday. It gave me great concern that his remains were unknown. I had to try to find him.’
A memorial stone has now been placed at the grave site.
A GUERNSEY minister has described a move to divert States funds to set up a new reciprocal health agreement with the UK as ‘barking bonkers’.
The island lost its agreement in 2009, meaning that tourists travelling to Guernsey, and Sarnians heading to the UK, have to take out health insurance.
Jersey and the Isle of Man, meanwhile, managed to renegotiate their contracts with the UK after the agreements came under scrutiny at the same time.
Now Deputy Jan Kuttelwascher has lodged a requete – the Guernsey equivalent of a States proposition – to divert £500,000 from the tourism fund to set up a new reciprocal health agreement.
But Commerce and Employment Minister Kevin Stewart described the move as ‘barking bonkers’ and said it was the most ‘crazy idea I have heard since coming into the States’.
He added: ‘If we lose our promotional spending our ten-year plan could suffer and there could be serious implications for our strategic air and sea links.
‘You do not go and raid a successful department’s budget.’
But Deputy Kuttelwascher said Jersey and the Isle of Man had managed to renegotiate their reciprocal health agreements and Guernsey was now ‘the odd one out’.
She added: ‘This is a tourism issue. I know people who do not come here because of the lack of a health agreement. It is an obstacle to our competitive position and to islanders with uninsurable chronic conditions.’
