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I was 22 years old when I left my families farm in Strete to go to war.

A year later I had no home to come back to. The land my parents had farmed in the village for more than 10 years along with some 30,000 acres around it had become part of the war effort — a massive secret training ground for tens of thousands of US Soldiers

Up to 3,000 people, like my parents, living in the coastal triangle from Torcross to Blackpool Sands and out to Blackawton faced the same ordeal as they were given the shock news in November 1943.

It was all over and done with by the time the news reached me in Italy where I was fighting with the British Eighth Army.

The farm’s cattle, sheep and eight working horses had all been sold and my mum and dad and three brothers moved to a house in Torquay.

The last time I had been home was in September 1942 to get married to my sweetheart Doris at Strete Village Church. I would never again call Strete my home.

By the time the D-Day invasion had taken place and the thousands of villagers allowed back in their homes my dad and brothers had found jobs in Torquay and decided not to return to the rented farm.

I cannot imagine the chaos it caused with all our cattle, sheep, poultry, pigs, horses, tractor and implements. As well as the crop to be lifted and corn to be threshed — all in six weeks.

The US Government put up a memorial to the people of the South Hams who left their homes — a stone memorial which still stands beside the beach at Slapton sands.

A total of six parishes were evacuated just before Christmas in 1943 as the US Forces moved in to start practising for D-Day along Slapton Sands

It would be almost a year before the families were allowed to return — and by that time many of the homes has been burned, shelled, used as military billets and even looted.

I visit the village regularly to lay flowers in the cemetery at the village church

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