Francisco Font

Francisco Font was born in Barcelona in 1919. His mother died when he was a child. As he grew up he became very politically aware. In 1936 he witnessed fierce fighting in the streets of Barcelona against Franco’s soldiers. As the Spanish Civil War started, he left his home at Provenza 135, Barcelona, and joined the 153^rd Brigade, fighting in Belchite and Aragon.  In Aragon his battalion was almost completely wiped out by Franco. Francisco and his brigade fought a rearguard action against the combined forces of the Spanish, German and Italian armies through the Pyrenees, slowly being pushed back towards the French border, as the tide of the civil war increased against them. Font crossed over into France.

Without the necessary papers, Font was quickly arrested by the French. He was placed in an internment camp and, suffering from typhoid, was transferred into a hospital for treatment. To avoid being delivered back to the camp once he was well, he escaped from the hospital and made his way to Brieve-La-Gaillard, to find a cousin. Not understanding the circumstances of his predicament, they suggested that he return to Spain. After France fell to Germany, Francisco was arrested by the Vichy French authorities and sent to La Rochelle as a slave labourer, to work on the construction of the U-Boat pens.

In August 1941 he was sent to Jersey [editor’s note: records show that this was January 1942] with a transport of 1,500 Spanish Republican slave workers, working initially in the Tunnels under the Jersey hills. The conditions in the tunnels were horrendous and he realised that he would die there if he couldn’t get out, so he set about a deliberately started being incompetent at his job. The Germans moved him outdoors, setting him to work operating heavy machinery on Gorey Common instead. In time he was moved again, to Lager Immelmann in St. Ouen, working on the sea wall fortification. During this period he met local Jerseywoman Kathleen Fox at a dance.

In October 1943, suffering from malnutrition and overwork, a truck drove past and a Spaniard threw Francisco a loaf of bread from the vehicle. He hid it under his clothes but it was spotted by an OT guard who questioned what he had. Unwilling to get his colleagues into trouble, he said that he had stolen the bread, and the guard started beating him. He fought back and was subdued when a two more OT guards joined in the fight. His punishment was to be sent to Norderney camp in Alderney – where conditions were much worse than in Jersey – he arrived in Norderney camp in October 1943.

Francisco witnessed first-hand the brutality of the SS guards towards the workers on Alderney, including a crucifixion on the gates at Sylt concentration camp. Many of the workers who didn’t have shoes bound their feet in cement bags. One day whilst Francisco was working in the harbour, unloading cement from a barge, a young Russian worker stopped to adjust the cement bags around his feet, as he had no shoes. Seeing that the Russian had stopped working for a moment, an SS guard shot the Russian, killing him immediately. An argument then ensued between the shooter and an SS soldier, who had been in a machine gun position overlooking the harbour, about whether it was appropriate to shoot a slave worker on a work detail. The young Russian’s body remained where it fell on the work site for several hours, before being removed. The labourers had to work around it.

After D-Day, Francisco was shipped out of Alderney on a transport to Jersey, where he was put to work in Fort Regent; he then remained until the end of the war. He was reunited with Kathleen Fox, who found him to be emaciated after Alderney, with his hair shorn.

In 1945, after the Channel Islands were handed back to the British, Francisco was told that he would be deported to France en and then to Spain, where he had fought against the Franco regime who were now running the country. If he was sent to Spain, he would likely be jailed or shot, so he jumped off the ship in Guernsey in August 1945 and found work there. Kathleen Fox, then aged 19, came over to Guernsey, accompanied by her father, to be with Francisco on 14 September 1945. Francisco and Kathleen sought the advice of a British officer named Major Cotton to find out how he could legally stay in Guernsey. Major Cotton suggested that they get married immediately, giving them the five shillings they needed for the civil ceremony, out of his own pocket. The marriage allowed Francisco to stay in the Channel Islands, but they had to stay in Guernsey until 1953, until Francisco finally received British citizenship. Once the citizenship was in place, he could finally move back to Jersey where Kathleen’s family came from, without fear of deportation to Spain. Francisco and Kathleen had two children, Linda and Gary; Linda was born while the couple were still in Guernsey.

Francisco died on the 11^th of May, 1981.

Source of information:

Interview with Francisco Font, Imperial War Museum, made in 1976 by Solomon Steckoll. Recording reference IWM 24699.