大象传媒

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My Aunts, Phyllis and Vera nee Fitzjohn were young married women at the outbreak of war. The two sisters and their husbands were fortunate enough to each own a small car and with some friends they regularly enjoyed camping weekends around Bedfordshire. Tents were heavy canvas with large flysheets, which at the outbreak of war were camouflaged.

As petrol became more and more precious they devised a scheme where they could continue their camping weekends. They kept their tents in a barn, one raised high on stones to keep it dry and free from vermin at Church Farm, Whipsnade.

Both husbands worked at Vauxhall in Luton and had reserved occupations so were not called up, and so summer weekends could still occasionally be enjoyed under canvas on Bates鈥檚 farm. On these weekends they cycled to Whipsnade from Luton.

On one weekend the young women heard a low flying plane and ran out of the tents to see what it was. They looked straight up at a German plane and could see the pilot looking at them. He flew off having seen these young women in their summer dresses, but they thought that if they hadn鈥檛 run out, or the men had been outside, they may all have been killed, as the pilot would have thought that their camouflaged tents belonged to the army.

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