​​The camp housed French, Spanish and North African forced labourers. Those workers constructed and operated the sand-gathering railway on Grouville Common, which was vital for the construction of the many concrete fortifications then being built around the Island.

​The camp made use of the pre-existing buildings of the Grouville Holiday Camp which was opened by the Oxenden family in the 1930s. It was taken over by the British Government in 1939 and surrounded by barbed wire to intern German, Austrian and Italian civilians who had been working in hotels at the outbreak of WWII. A sign was erected at the entrance stating, ‘Concentration Camp’. With the arrival of the German Forces, the tables were quickly turned, and the camp was used to house the few British troops caught in the Island on 1 July 1940.

​When the site became an Organisation Todt (OT) labour camp in December 1941, it had no official name. Some of the Spanish Republican inmates ironically Christened it ‘Lager Franco’. Lager Franco was the only forced labour camp to have a dedicated air raid shelter, which still stands beside the golf course clubhouse.

​The camp was abandoned in early 1942 when the workers were moved to a purpose-built camp on Grouville Marsh named Lager Wick, which is another point of interest on the Forced Labour Camps Trail. By the autumn of 1943 the remnants of the camp were in ruins, with much of the fabric having been removed by German Forces, presumably for firewood.