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I was 8 years old when war broke out and did not really know what was happening until later when my two sisters decided to join the NAFFI, my brother was in the ATC just waiting to join the RAF. My father had fought in WW1 and was too old for active service so joined the Observer Corps.
We were a Canadian family and my first real memories were of getting up in the morning to find one or two Canadian soldiers asleep on the sitting room floor or sofa. These were sons of my parents friends in Canada. We lived on a smallholding and these soldiers had been told our door was never locked and there was always a welcome day or night. My father was a full time member of the Observers and sometimes worked a night shift if some of the part timers were ill. One night when he was working my mother felt uneasy about being alone with only me in the house, but not wanting a soldier to be locked out (we never knew when they were on leave), she locked the door but put a note out to say the key was under the door mat. She never lived it down.

Henry was a Swede who lived near us in Canada who was to say the least massive but a gentle giant who liked to have a drink, and on his way back from the Railway Inn would yodel all the way home. The villagers always knew when Henry was on leave as his voice carried miles.
After Dieppe we did not hear from many of our Canadian friends.

We lived between two railways and were always worried that German bombers would see the glare of the fire in the engine.
We kept a couple of cows, a few pigs and many hens so we had our own milk, cheese, pork, bacon and chicken. My mother was a very good cook as all ladies were in Canada so we lived very well despite rationing. I was the envy of my school friends, always having chewing gum and sweets from the soldiers when they came on leave.
There were two brothers who were semi recluse who lived not far from us and after the war told me that they were worried what would happen to their money if the Germans invaded as they did not trust banks and kept their money in notes in the house. As there was real silver in florins and halfcrowns they would go to the local shops for a box of matches or similar paying with a 拢1 note. With the change in silver coins these were collected, put in tins and buried in their garden.
When ever they bought any thing after the war it was paid for in green halfcrowns and florins.
My sisters met and married their husbands in the war, my brother had signed up for 20 years when he enlisted.
The story below might or might not be true.

When my brother came out of the RAF he brought certain items out which he should not have done including a hand grenade. We had an outside toilet at the bottom of the garden and with his graturity my brother had an inside toilet installed. He tried to get my father to use it but father prefered to sit in the old one smoking his pipe and reading the paper. The hand grenade started to rust and my brother looked at the toilet and decided to kill two birds with one stone. He tossed the grenade at the back of the outside toilet and stood back. There was a bang and when the dust had settled there sat father with the toilet seat around his neck. My brother ran to him and told him what he had done not realising that father was inside. Father, wiping the dust off his face, said 'Thank the Lord for that, I thought it was something I had eaten'.

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