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Migration Stories: Henry James Langlois

Henry James Langlois was born 27th April 1927 on Guernsey in the Channel Islands. At the age of 13, with the fall of France to the Nazis, the Channel Islands were evacuated. Henry arrived in Weymouth and was sent by train to Wigan with other Channel Island children.  

On passing the farms, he wondered what the black and white animals were that he kept seeing; he had only ever seen Jersey Brown cows before!  

When in Wigan he was taken in by Mrs Lee of Ellis Street and sent to Whelley School. Half the school had been taken over by air raid wardens, so the school day was cut in half with boys taught for one half of the day and girls, the other. In French classes, he corrected the teacher – having learnt French from his grandparents – on the pronunciation of ‘boison’ and was moved to gardening!  

After leaving school at 14 he tried to join the navy but without a signature from a parent (his father was fighting abroad, and his mother was still in occupied Guernsey) he was not allowed to join. The British merchant navy also turned him down but upon leaving the Cunard Offices in Liverpool someone suggested the Dutch Merchant Navy. Although he was nervous to join as he spoke no Dutch, the merchant navy welcomed him with one sailor telling him: ‘you can join us, you are one of us’, meaning an evacuee from overseas. The ship he was posted to transported aviation fuel for the war effort and by 1944 he transferred to a new ship, the Fort Schuyler where he witnessed a similar ship, staffed by the Norwegian Merchant Navy torpedoed and exploded with no survivors.  

The Fort Schuyler was rammed in harbour meaning Henry had to find work in New York for a few weeks but was soon back on the waves. His combat role was loading an Oerlikon anti-aircraft gun and when he started, he could not even lift the ammunition crates. By D-Day he was transporting fuel to Avonmouth when word came through that the invasion had begun.  

After the war he was remobilised in the British Merchant Navy and posted to the Royal Mail Ship ‘Lafiane’ to run mail to South America and back to Britain.  

He met his Barbara while serving in the Merchant Navy whom he married in 1949. With two children in 1952, he was persuaded to settle down in Barbara’s hometown of Wigan. Henry later moved to the South of England.  

by Carl Langlois