Object in focus

Edward Le Put was born in St Helier on 27 January 1924, the eldest child of French-born George Yves Marie Le Put and Bluette Gabrielle Marie Varaillon, who was from Jersey. His early years were shaped by both hardship and resilience. His mother died in 1935 when Edward was just 11, leaving behind Edward and his three younger sisters: Gabrielle, Yvonne and Monica. The family lived at 5, Winchester Street, and Edward attended St Mary and St Peter’s and Vauxhall Schools.

By the time of the Occupation, Edward was working as a hotel employee at the Sarum Hotel on St John’s Road. In June 1943, aged 19, he married Vivienne Jacklin, a shop assistant. Their life together during the Occupation was shaped by frequent moves, with addresses on Hastings Road, Val Plaisant and Clairvale Road recorded on their identity cards.

On 10 June 1944, Edward was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for receiving stolen goods. This sentence, and its consequences, remain murky. There is no entry for him in the register of political prisoners held at Jersey Archive, and his name does not appear in the main prison register either. Yet just 20 days later, on 30 June, a letter from the Attorney General to the Constable of St Helier requested that Edward and three other men have their convictions ‘inscribed in the local Police Records’. That same day, Edward appears to have been deported from Jersey, although no official record confirms this.

Image: Edward’s sentence of six months’ imprisonment for ‘two cases of receiving stolen articles’. Edward was deported on the same day, 30 June 1944, as the letter is dated

The confirmation comes, instead, from Edward himself. In the scrapbook he kept during his internment, he recorded his journey on the back of a chocolate wrapper, under the heading ‘From Jersey to Swiss German Frontier’. This chocolate wrapper gives us our only continuous source for his route through Occupied Europe.

In pencil, Edward noted place names, dates and observations as he was moved from one location to another. He states that he left Jersey on 30 June 1944 and spent a week in St Servan prison in St Malo, before being transferred to Camp Margueritte, part of Jacques-Cartier Prison in Rennes. He noted that the prison was bombed and shelled on 7 July, an event corroborated by the experiences of three other Channel Islanders who were almost certainly deported alongside him: Harold Le Druillenec, Louisa Gould, and Berthe Pitolet, as well as Thomas Daly, with whom Edward was sentenced.

It is a fragmented but deeply personal account. Some of the names are misspelled or hard to read; some details are lost where the wrapper has been folded or torn. But it is clear, compelling, and irreplaceable.

On 3 August, Edward began a long and gruelling train journey across France. Each stop is listed in his camp logbook, though parts of it are now illegible. Berthe Pitolet famously escaped during the bombing of Rennes, which Edward refers to, but the others did not. Thomas Daly escaped the train, but Edward continued on, arriving at Belfort on 15 August.

Whether he was held at Fort Hatry prison, as Harold Le Druillenec was, is unclear. But since Le Druillenec remained in Belfort for ten days before being sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp on 1 September, it is likely that Edward, too, was detained in the city before being transferred to Giromagny Internment Camp nearby.

What happened next might have hinged on luck or circumstance. Le Druillenec was sent to Neuengamme; Edward went instead to Marlag und Milag Nord, a camp used for civilian and military internees, where he was placed in Barrack 19, Room 6. Research by Dr Gilly Carr for the Frank Falla Archive led to the discovery of a nominal roll from December 1944 which confirms Le Put had arrived at Marlag from Giromagny in September, and assigned internee number 1603.

Issued by the YMCA’s War Prisoners’ Aid organisation, the scrapbook Edward compiled at Marlag und Milag is a deeply human document. Alongside the chocolate wrapper and camp notes are original cartoons and drawings, many of them Edward’s own, as well as poems, postcards, theatre programmes, and affectionate inscriptions from fellow prisoners, including his barrack mates. A drawing titled Rêve d’avenir (“Dream of the future”), dated November 1944, is dedicated to Vivienne. It shows a hopeful domestic scene imagined from the confines of a prison camp.

Alongside these creative expressions, the scrapbook also contains rare visual testimony in the form of photographs. There are images of Edward and Vivienne, but also of his campmates – fellow internees captured in fleeting, often candid moments of shared endurance. Particularly striking are pictures taken inside the camps themselves, including group shots from Giromagny and Marlag. One of these images – a portrait of Edward and his campmates – also appears in the wartime diary of Guernseyman Clifford Tostevin, confirming their shared internment in Marlag. These links between individuals offer a human thread through a fragmented and often hidden history.

Marlag was liberated in May 1945 and Edward returned to Britain, possibly via Brussels. A cutting from the Guernsey Star of 19 June 1945 lists him among those who had served prison sentences and returned to the UK. Photographs and notes in his book indicate that he initially stayed at the Displaced Persons Camp in Bridge of Weir, Scotland. He went on to settle in the Liverpool area with Vivienne, and the couple had two children, George and Ann. Edward died in Lowton, Warrington in 1988.

Yet significant parts of Edward’s story remain unknown. His name is absent from Jersey’s political prisoner logbook, and there is no formal record of his deportation – only the fragmentary evidence he left behind. We cannot say with certainty why he was sent to an internment camp rather than a concentration camp, as others were. We do not know how he was selected for deportation, or why some men sentenced alongside him seem to vanish from the official record altogether. Even details about his imprisonment in Jersey before deportation are unclear. These silences raise troubling questions: how many other Islanders were deported without documentation? How many more stories like Edward’s risk being lost entirely? His scrapbook helps us to fill some of these gaps, but it also highlights that the official record remains incomplete.