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‘As a farmer I was in a reserved occupation but in June 1940, as we were just hearing about Dunkirk there was a call to form the Local Defence Volunteers. The enthusiasm was amazing. In fact I have never known anything like it.
‘We thought that German parachutists were going to drop on Coombe so armed with pitch forks and a few shot guns we set out to defend our land. When things were better organised I became an officer in the Woodstock company of the LDV. I had been in the officer cadet corps at school but that was my only military qualification.
‘We had a meeting every week to be updated on event and to arrange any training. We had to railway bridges over the railways in our area and we used to guard these every night. To start we used to sleep in the local pub when not on duty but eventually we converted a shepherds van so that those not on duty could sleep as we had to do a full days work after our turn on guard duty.
‘The initial enthusiasm gradually dissipated but we were always aware of those overseas. I ran the ‘comforts fund’ which sent little luxuries to those serving overseas. The demand was for cigarettes but also sent items such as gloves. We also used to write letters and we discovered how much all this was appreciated later.
‘At one stage we had 2 rifles and 5 rounds between the 30 men. We used to joke that if the enemy landed we would have enough ammunition to shoot ourselves provided we stood in a nice straight line.
‘Equipment arrived steadily. We acquired a Browning sub-machine gun at one stage but the Lee-Enfield was our main weapon. I was sent to Onerbury in Shropshire in 1943 for some field training. This involved having live ammunition and explosions around us. It was quite frightening.
‘We were able to able to build a rifle range on the Duke of Marlborough’s estate which is still visible. We also built a grenade range when they supplied us with the Mills36 grenade. Tragically, the very first man panicked after he had pulled the pin. He dropped the grenade and just stood there. The officer in charge threw himself on the bomb and was killed instantly.
‘In December 1944 we received the order for the Woodstock company to stand down and we all just went back to our jobs. It was good that we did our very little bit as living here in rural Oxfordshire you really would not know there was a war on. Although we never had any reunions I am the last survivor of our company.’
This story was submitted to the people’s War site by a volunteer from CSV Oxford on behalf of Geoffrey Green. It is the edited transcript of a taped interview and he gave written permission for the material to be edited and published.

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