A Guernsey man has revealed to his family a secret he has held for 66 years – that he worked on a classified project in a World War Two bunker.

Keith Tostevin broke his silence on his 80th birthday when he went back inside for the first time since 1957.

He had just started working as an apprentice electrician when he was given the secret mission, work for the States of Guernsey, by his boss.

“We were told not to say anything about it and we didn’t,” he said.

Mr Tostevin gathered his family at the bunker at Pleinmont Point for a photo when he told them the story.

He said: “In the earlier weeks of joining I was asked to go into the boss’s office and he said, ‘you two have been selected to go and work for the States of Guernsey on a secret project’.

“You are not allowed to tell anybody and don’t tell any of the workmen that it is confidential work.”

Mr Tostevin said they eventually went up to Pleinmont Point and an estates official opened up the building and we walked through the building and I vaguely remember we want electric lighting here, here and here.

“I have not been in that bunker for 66 years.”

No reason was given for the secret scheme and he still is unsure what the purpose of his work was.

He said: “All I’ve got is that clue that somebody spoke to me many years afterwards and they said to me that it was for a senior executive from the States of Guernsey to go and work in if the nuclear bomb had gone off – those were their words.”

Subsequent conversations with experts have told him that “around that time” the civil defence were putting monitors all along the south coast in case there was any radiation from France.

“Putting these censors up so that if radiation came from there the authorities would have been notified,” he said.

(Source BBC)