​​Upon arrival in St Helier, Jersey, John was given a cursory medical examination and sent in a large group of workers to Lager Udet forced labour camp, in the parish of St Brelade. In his memoirs he recalled workers were allowed to leave camp to find food, but it was very hard to come by. Desperate hunger led four Algerian workers to eat poisonous hemlock from which they died on 27 February 1942.

​John’s first job was working on construction of St Brelade’s Bay sea wall. Startingat daybreak, workers foraged in hedgerows sometimes to find food left there the previous evening by ‘kindly Jersey people’. One day John was accused of throwing away petrol, which was strictly rationed. Despite pleading itan accident, he wrote: ​‘I suffered three terrible months of ‘special treatment’ at Elizabeth Castle…where I worked all day with a pint of clear soup as the only food and slept standing all night, due to the fact that I was allowed about two square feet of floor space in the cell – shared with others condemned for similar offences. At any time during the night we were taken out int the yard and there made to run round and round. If any man went down he was soon helped to his feet with a few cracks of the whip. Amid the laughter of the German guards, every night men died. Others were found dead when the cell doors were opened the next morning. A young Frenchman, almost a boy, died standing next to me. His last words were: “Maman! Maman!”

​By the end of three months at Elizabeth Castle, I was little more than a crawling skeleton, full of sores and weals. I was taken back to Lager Udet and dumped from the top of a lorry and left on the ground. The giant [Polish man] Chepka slung me across his shoulders and carried me back to the barracks where I devoured all the food that came within my reach.’

​Unsurprisingly, John later sought medical assistance in camp Lazaret (Hospital) where ‘the sick waited until death came to relieve them of their sufferings.’ There he witnessed camp Kommandant, Herr Schultz, set his dog on Soviet workers ‘and with his whip started knocking the other about until none was alive.’

​John was sent to Alderney in early 1943, where he experienced more horrors. He was liberated in Guernsey, where he remained and married.