James Bond's Boyhood Adventures 1

By Pueros

Chapter 1 – Invasion

(Jersey, Channel Islands, June 1940)

The U.S. state of New Jersey, first settled by the Dutch but taken over by the English in 1664, was named in honour of Sir George Carteret (1610-80), a former lieutenant governor of his native Jersey in the Channel Islands. Sir George had served in the Royal Navy and fought for the royalists during the English Civil Wars. In 1663, with several others, he was given proprietorship of Carolina and in the following year, in conjunction with Lord Berkeley, was granted part of what is now New Jersey.

It is not commonly known that the future 007 was born and brought up on Jersey. It is the largest and most southerly of the Channel Islands, part of the last vestiges of the Duchy of Normandy, inherited from William the Conqueror, still attached to the English Crown, and the origin of the eponymous cattle and woollen garments. In 1940, James Bond was a 13 years old schoolboy on the island, part of the British Isles despite being only 10 miles west of the French coast

Constitutionally, the Bailiwick of Jersey is a dependency of the English Crown, owing allegiance to the Sovereign as Duke of Normandy, but without incorporation into the United Kingdom, being self-governing in internal matters, although the U.K. is responsible for defence, overseas representation and international affairs generally. The island has its own legislative assembly, called the States of Jersey, and separate local administration systems, fiscal and legal regimes and courts of law. The Bailiwick is not represented in the U.K. Parliament and therefore British Acts of Parliament only apply if it is expressly and mutually agreed that they should do so.

In Jersey, there are no political parties, cabinet or prime minister. Government is carried out by committees, which are made up from independent elected members of the States, comprising the Lieutenant Governor, the Bailiff, Senators, Parish Constables, Deputies, the Dean of Jersey and the Attorney and Solicitor Generals. The Lieutenant Governor, as the resident representative of the Crown, attends the States on occasions but takes no part in debates. The Bailiff, who is appointed by the Crown, is the President of the Assembly and acts as its Speaker. He is also President of the Royal Court. Although, he has no political power, he has the right of speech, which is traditionally only exercised for the purpose of ensuring orderly debate. He also has a casting vote, which, by tradition, is used to maintain the status quo and which allows the assembly to reconsider the matter at a later date. There is also a Deputy Bailiff, who acts in the Bailiff's absence. The Attorney and the Solicitor Generals are the Law Officers of the Crown and are nominally appointed by the monarch. They have the right to speak but not to vote. Points of law raised in debate are often referred to them for explanation and clarification.

Pretty dark haired and eyed James wore traditional uniform when attending his school in St. Helier, Jersey’s capital on the island’s south coast, where many streets carry old French appellations and many shop fronts boast the ancient names of their founders. His attire comprised red cap and blazer with badges, red tie with school crest, white shirt, short grey trousers, extending to just below his groin, grey socks and polished laced shoes. Like most islanders, the boy was bilingual, his local French, called ‘Jerriais’, being as good as his English as, at the time, the former was the island’s official language.

James and his family did not live in St. Helier but resided instead in the parish of St. Brelade in the pretty seaside village of St. Aubin on the opposite side of the eponymous bay. St. Aubin has its own navigable harbour and so, instead of taking the bus, the boy would occasionally, when the weather forecast was good, sail his little dinghy across the bay to reach school, invariably accompanied by his best friend David, who was the same age, and his similarly featured younger brother John, aged 11.

James and John Bond were very popular with their school contemporaries, by whom they were known as JJ1 and JJ2 respectively because both, by eccentric family tradition, had middle names also beginning with the letter ‘J’. Their popularity stemmed from their pleasant characters, always loyal, kind and courteous, with no-one seeming to mind their academic and sporting prowess because they were always humble about their achievements.

James and John came from a happy middle-class family. Their father was normally, before being called up for military service in England, a writer of books on natural history, especially birds, albeit the feathered variety as opposed to the type with which one of his sons would later become famously connected. They possessed a pretty cottage, with lovely garden, close to the harbour. However, many people were now evacuating Jersey for the British mainland as neighbouring France was being crushed by German invasion. It only seemed a matter of time before the island also fell under the Nazi yoke. Nevertheless, the young Bonds’ mother decided not to flee, not wanting to desert her beloved home and believing that the enemy occupiers would be honourable. She was to be quickly disillusioned in this belief.

The British considered that the Channel Isles would be of no strategic importance to the Germans but the enemy had other ideas. On the 20th of June 1940, a radio message from Berlin to commanders in France stated “The capture of the British Channel Isles is necessary and urgent!". The officer assigned for the invasion was Admiral Karlgeorg Schuster of the German Navy, the Kriegsmarine. He sent out reconnaissance aircraft to try to establish the amount of opposition that he could expect.

The British had failed to announce that the Channel Islands had been demilitarised and the reconnaissance photographs indicated lorries lined up at the quaysides in St. Helier and St. Peters Port, the capital of Guernsey, second largest of the Channel Islands. Thinking militarily, it did not occur to Schuster that the lorries would only be loaded with potatoes and tomatoes. German intelligence reports also indicated that British troops were still present on the islands, which was not the case. At 6.45 p.m. on the 28th of June, six Heinkel bombers of the Luftwaffe attacked the harbour of St. Peter Port with bombs and machine guns and thirty people lost their lives.

James and John were home when they heard bombs drop across the bay. They ran, with their mother, into the front garden to see St. Helier receive the same simultaneous treatment as St. Peter Port, although this time the casualties, ten civilians, were less. Over the next few days, with the populace now panicking, evacuation took on greater urgency, with a total of about 10,500 departing Jersey and 19,000 leaving Guernsey before the German forces arrived.

Two days after the bombing, at about midday, in one of four reconnaissance aircraft flying over Guernsey, Hauptman Liebe-Pieteritz observed that the island’s airport seemed to be deserted and decided to investigate. He landed on the runway to confirm that no-one was about. On returning to Luftwaffe headquarters in Cherbourg, the pilot reported the fact and, that evening, a platoon of air force ground soldiers arrived in Guernsey to obtain the island’s capitulation.

On the morning of the 1st of July, Dornier aircraft flew over Jersey dropping leaflets giving an ultimatum to the islanders. They demanded that white sheets should be hung out of windows and white crosses painted in Royal Square, the heart of St. Helier, and elsewhere to denote surrender.

A reconnaissance aircraft later flew over and, observing that the demands had been heeded, landed at Jersey airport to formally accept the submission to Nazi control. German assault troops flew in later during the afternoon and the long terrible occupation had now begun. It would be nearly five years until the islands, the only part of the British Isles to be captured by the enemy during World War II, providing Goebbels and his propaganda ministry with plenty of ammunition, would be free again.

James and John experienced a mixture of emotions as they and their mother waited for the Germans to arrive. They were ashamed at Jersey’s meek submission, although they recognised that there was little that could be done to prevent conquest. The 13 and 11 years olds also tempered fear for the future with intense excitement at the prospect of making the enemy presence on their island as uncomfortable as possible. Their interest in so doing might have been less if they had been aware of the current sufferings of Pierre, a French boy who lived just to the south, across the Gulf of St. Malo in Dinard.

(Dinard, Brittany, France, July 1940)

Dinard was and is a fashionable resort, famous for its crayfish and lobsters, many excellent hotels and splendid bathing beach. The town is located on the estuary of the River Rance, opposite the port of St. Malo. However, Pierre was presently thinking of none of the worthy attributes of his hometown. The pretty brown haired and eyed 14 years old had been suspended naked from the ceiling of the cellar of the substantial building newly appropriated by the Germans to be the local Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo, headquarters.

Pierre had been caught red-handed deflating the tyres of a German army vehicle and had accordingly been taken to the newly installed local Gestapo leader for appropriate chastisement, which the officer, ranked Hauptsturmfuhrer, believed should be of sufficient barbarity to be a salutary lesson for the population of Dinard. The man had already carried out many atrocities in the name of the Third Reich and Aryan supremacy, acquiring in the process a taste for castration.

Before the start of the war in 1939, the Hauptsturmfuhrer had been involved in gelding male Jews, the original ‘final solution’ for the eventual elimination of that race, which was later superseded by even more drastic and fatal, but quicker, means. He had gained so much pleasure in the more brutal, non-clinical methods, that he had introduced emasculation into the regular interrogation and punishment sessions necessitated by his subsequent wartime career in conquered territories. There were already over a hundred new Polish eunuchs as a result of his previous activities in Warsaw.

The Hauptsturmfuhrer proposed to conclude Pierre’s awful time in the basement of the new Gestapo headquarters by having the boy’s testes removed. However, he had also decided to grant his 15 years old son, an Oberjunker, or senior cadet, in the Hitler Youth, currently holidaying with him, his request to practise for the first time his own punishment and castration techniques.

The excited uniformed German 15 years old approached the door of the cellar, inside which the terrified naked French 14 years old awaited his fate. As the former turned the door handle in order to gain access, he smiled at the delicious realisation of what was to happen over many subsequent hours.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld then opened the door to enter the cellar.

(To be continued in chapter 2 – ‘Occupations’)