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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Bernie Hawkins and has been added to the website on behalf of John Stay with his permission and he fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Down the High Street of an Isle of Wight town in the winter of 1943 came a small army band playing a popular march. Shop and office staff, customers and clients were drawn to the windows in the gathering dusk. A platoon of soldiers followed the band — a few of the toughened men training (as was later known) for the invasion of Hitler’s Citadel Europe the following summer.

That was all there was to the little parade — except that each of the dedicated, disciplined marching men carried on his shoulder a small child on their way to a Christmas party at the Town Hall.

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