大象传媒

Winter 1943/44

It was a very weather, snowy and icy. We lived in a vicarage; there was a knock on the door. It was a sergeant from the paratrooper asking if about a dozen of his men could camp somewhere in the vicarage. My father said that they were welcome to stay in the dis-used stables. So they all camped there and in the stables loft and cooked food in the stable yard outside on a camp fire. They were all men from a variety of countries and they all spoke either French or German and were used to being dropped behind enemy lines.

They hadn鈥檛 been in action for a few months, so for something to do they were sent out to live off the land and travel back to base. The weather invited some of them to our Christmas party and we made friends with one young man called Hugh Firminger who was only 19 and I fell in love, I was about 15. Hugh came in to help me and my sister Isabel on the day when my father fell off his bicycle and smashed his le=g badly, he went to hospital. Later that day they all left, Hugh promised to write to me: I only received one letter form him which I answered but it was returned back to me with 鈥渦ntraceable鈥� written on it, so I presumed he had been dropped behind enemy lines again and most likely died in France.

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