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I returned home to Suffolk early in 1942 and found everything had changed. This was now the front line. The beaches were tank-trapped and mined and the sands where we had played were out of bounds. Airfields had been built and there was a battery of Ack-Ack guns in the field behind our houses, leading to some very noisy nights. We had frequent ‘Hit and Run’ raids from German fighters, which machine-gunned everything in sight, but fortunately, as this was a country district, there were few casualties. Life on the land went on, but much of the work was being: done by the Land Girls. who had taken over from the men who had been called up.
It was only in later years that we realised that much of the top security in this area was concerned with the RAF. Station at Bawdsey Manor, about 4 miles down the road from us.. Even before the war this had been a top security establishment. It later transpired that this was the power-house of the development of Radar, which has had such important implications not only in the defeat of the Luftwaffe, but in world-wide communications since then. This was all very "hush-hush" at the time, of course and all sorts of rumours were rife in the area about magic rays which could bring down enemy planes. They weren't far wrong !

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