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This story has been added to the web site by CSV Volunteer Rachel Newland on behalf of the author Ruth Dunstan. It is a letter written by her late husband Bob Dunstan who was a journalist with The West Briton.

Invasion alarms were not uncommon in Cornwall in the summer of 1940, but here was an occasion in 1944, while the Allied armies were battering their way to the Rhine, when the country - now seemingly safe from enemy landings - was thrown into a state of alarm.

It was a foggy November night when a Coastguard auxiliary, from his lonely duty post at The Lowlands, the remote headland between The Manacles and Coverack, telephoned his station officer at Porthoustock with some startling news. From outside in the dense fog he had heard the sound of ships' engines and anchor chains rattling, and foreign voices shouting. He, in fact, feared the Germans were preparing to land.

Home Guardsmen in battle array were already thronging the village square at St. Keverne, the Naval and Military authorities at Falmouth and Plymouth had ben alerted, troops and armoured vehicles were rushed to the area from all over the country, and road blocks were set up.

There was no reply to telephone calls to the Lowlands coastguard watch but because, it was revealed later, the occupant had left after carrying out standing orders in case of invasion - cutting the telphone wire and taking with him confidential documents relating to shipping movements.

Fears grew that an enemy landing might be imminent, and large armed forces occupied the high ground overlooking the Lowlands to repel invaders. British destroyers and corvettes were said to be hastening to the scene.

Led by a coastguard watcher who knew the area intimately, the soldiers, moving in single file along the rock-strewn path, quickly took up defensive positions behind granite boulders and outcrops of rock.

Came the November dawn, and tensely the troops watched through the white blanket of mist, with bated breath and fingers itching on triggers. To many old soldiers in the Home Guard it must have recalled First War dawns, with men crouched on muddy firesteps waiting for the officer's whistle to "go over the top". Presently, however, the watchers felt the first stirring of a breeze, and the fog slowly crept away seaward - to reveal, to everyone's relief, a convoy of Allied merchant ships, peacefully at anchor under the protective wings of their naval escorts!

Contact was soon made with the ships, which were blissfully unaware of the emergency their arrival had created. It was later revealed that the convoy, having missed its bearings in the dense fog, had been heading for the treacherous Mancle rocks when a look-out in the leading ship raised the alarm. Orders were given to drop anchor and wait for the fog to disperse.

The emergency measures were soon cancelled and the troops returned to their stations and the Home Guardsmen to their village homes. So ended the invasion that never was.

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