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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Laurie Piper from Sidley UK Online Centre and has been added to the website on behalf of Joan Coussens with her permission.

During the war my mother and I lived on our farm alone because my father was in the army. We had an army observation post based on the farm with six soldiers, I Lance Corporal, I Sergeant. They were with us for about a year.

Our farm was in Barnhorn Road, Little Common. On one occasion we had Spike Milligan based there, he was funny — acting the fool all the time. He was very friendly as were all the company and they used to come into our house in the evening to play cards and such. The army supplied their food and they were billeted in the house but used to live in the barn. They cooked their own meals; they had it all very smart.

We got on very well, I was between 13 and 14 years old and found it very interesting — there were lots of air fights overhead all the time so you don’t forget that at all, they had guns there too.

I remember a Spitfire coming down at the bottom of our front meadow, a friend and I went down and rescued the pilot, we took him to Grandma to be bandaged up. He was a Canadian but I can’t remember his name now, I think it was something like Phelps. He didn’t parachute out he crashed right on the edge of a ditch. Grandma did up his head, he said he hit it on the gun sight, and then some of our men took him to the battery headquarters which was in the highlands in those days. He was shot at over the channel but had managed to make it this far before crashing. We didn’t ask anymore about him as you didn’t ask questions like that during the war. This was at the beginning of the war, about 1939-40.

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