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I was four years old in September 1939 and in a boat on a small lake in Sussex with my parents when people came running to the bank and told us that war had broken out. We went home that day to Hampshire where my father was Vicar of Kingsclere.

My father had been in World War I and was keen to join up again but was deemed too old. Being a rural area, we saw little enemy activity but one night bombs rained down just outside the village. Next day we viewed a crater in a road. The mystery of why the village was targeted was solved when a German pilot was shot down and he asked if the Kingsclere oil wells had been hit. It appeared that German spies had been aware that there had been experimental drilling there in the early 30’s (but nothing had been found!). One of my father’s parishioners, an Admiral Ritchie, had sent his children to Canada to be safe during the war so we inherited his governess. She held a class in our vicarage for my twin sister and myself and a few local children. After a while, Admiral Ritchie’s house was reopened and our governess moved back there. For a short while we went there daily — sometimes in a pony and trap — but later we went to the village school.

Highlights of the time there were air raid practices when our headmistress, Miss Lanham, demonstrated what we should do by getting under her desk. Being a rather large lady, the cover provided by it would have been barely adequate!

Evacuees from Portsmouth arrived but had their own teacher. We were not encouraged to mix and everything that went wrong seemed to be blamed on the visitors.

At home, on the few occasions we heard the siren we gathered plus evacuees (army families mainly) in my father’s study because it had large internal wooden shutters — although we did have a large cellar. As a treat we were given specially saved maltesers.

Near our vicarage there was a barn owned by Colonel Stevens which was turned into a canteen for servicemen. Many of these were the Americans who had commandeered the local racing stables. Their large vehicles seemed alien and rather frightening to us but they were very generous to the local population — one Christmas all the children were invited up to the camp for Christmas lunch.

Tragedy unfortunately struck during this time — some black Americans had come from some other stables a few miles away to drink at the local pub. White NCO’s said they were improperly dressed and sent them back to their camp. They returned with guns and from behind tombstones in the churchyard shot across at the pub killing the landlady and several Americans. Going to school the next day a more knowing friend showed us where bullets had chipped the bricks on another friend’s house and an impression in the grass where they had laid one of the bodies — the guy must have been very tall.

I have memories of two splendid morale-boosting and fund-raising parades. One of these was marching as a Brownie on ‘Wings for Victory’ day.

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