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Woman's 'ordinary' aunt hid WW2 commandos from Nazis

Jon Lockhart
BBC This is an image of Liz Walton looking at the camera. She has short white hair in a bob and she is wearing pink and green spectacles. She is sitting inside on a grey sofa.BBC
Liz Walton said she's "very proud" of what her aunt did

"To everybody else [she] was just a little ordinary Guernsey lady" an islander has said of her late aunt, who hid British commandos in her shed during the Nazi occupation.

Liz Walton has been exploring evidence of the heroic actions of Ada Le Poivedin, using boxes of old photos, newspaper cuttings and documents she had, as well as historical records from an ancestral research company.

She found Ada and her husband Walter Bourgaize hid the elite soldiers in 1941 after a failed raid due to "tides they think were bigger than expected".

Liz said she had "heard all the stories" as a child but "the exciting thing has been finding the documentation that proves them".

The image shows a woman's hand holding a ringbound scrapbook with black-and-white newspaper cuttings stuck inside.
Ada kept in contact with one of the commandos for years

Liz said: "The occupation came, and she and my uncle ended up hiding these two commandos that had been left during a raid."

The commandos later surrendered to the Nazis and Liz said "my uncle kept a pistol and a map and a couple of other bits they left behind in a biscuit tin".

One of them kept in contact with the couple "until they passed", Liz said.

"He was at their golden wedding celebrations."

This is an image of Liz sitting on a grey sofa and leafing through a ringbound scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about her aunt Ada.
Liz had been researching Ada's story for years before finding more information on genealogy website

Liz also learned about her aunt's work in World War One, when Ada volunteered for the Salvation Army in France in 1917, supporting soldiers in British camps by providing meals for them.

Liz said workers like Ada were "supposed to be like mothers and sisters to the troops".

Ada stayed on with the Salvation Army after the war, working for the grave visitation service where she would take bereaved relatives out to find the final resting places of family members.

This is an image of a woman's hand holding a black-and-white photo. The photo shows an army tank. A man is standing in front of the tank resting his arm on it. Three people are sitting on top of the tank.
Ada (top right) is pictured sitting on a British tank in France during World War One

While Liz's research began after Ada died in the 1980s, it was supplemented more recently with information from Ancestry.

Liz said that Ada was "from a very ordinary working class family, she wasn't a wealthy woman".

"Life for women like that was quite limited" but she said Ada "found it in herself to actually go and do these things".

"I'm very proud of what she did," Liz said.

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