It was a cold, hard winter and on several occasions the people of Wynsdown found themselves snowed in, cut off from the outside world by the drifting snow that made the lanes all but impassable. Its inhabitants were stoical about such winter conditions and with a few exceptions life in the village continued much as usual. When the older children were unable to get down to Cheddar because of the snow, Michael Hampton commandeered the church hall and set up trestle tables so they could continue with at least some of their lessons. Farmers struggled to look after their stock and once lambing started in earnest they were out in the fields at all hours of the day and night. The occasional thaw reduced the tracks and footpaths to deep squelching mud which, with the return of the frost, became hard rutted furrows laced with iced puddles.
The children, particularly the younger ones, revelled in the wintry days, longing to be out in the snow sledging, building snowmen or making ice slides on the frozen pathways. The older inhabitants were less delighted by a fresh fall of snow, struggling to the village shop or edging fearfully along the slippery roads. Dr Masters had to set more than one broken wrist when a trip to the hospital was impossible.
Miss Edie had managed to find Charlotte some sturdy walking boots and a heavy overcoat. With the socks and gloves they knitted from another unravelled jumper, Charlotte was able to brave the outdoors.
On weekday evenings she stayed at home. There was plenty to keep her busy with school work, making and mending clothes, and an added pleasure: she was learning to play the piano. Miss Edie had caught her one afternoon trying to pick out a tune on the piano in the sitting room. They seldom used the room as it was cold and what little fuel there was for the fire came from their ‘sticking’ excursions, when she and Miss Edie ventured out together to the small spinney at the end of the lane with an old wheelbarrow, to gather any fallen twigs and dead wood they could find. They had just returned from one of these and Charlotte was stacking their haul beside the fireplace. As she had so often before, she looked across at the piano that stood in the corner of the room, but this time she opened the polished lid and touched the keys.
‘I can teach you to play properly,’ came a voice from the door, and Charlotte spun round guiltily to find Miss Edie watching her. ‘Would you like to learn?’
Charlotte’s face creased into a smile. ‘I’d love to,’ she said and her lessons had begun.
At the weekends she spent much of her time at Charing Farm. There were always jobs that needed doing there and she loved to help Mrs Shepherd with the hens and in the kitchen. Often, when Billy had finished his work, they took the two young dogs out over the hills, roaming the fields and woods, completely happy in each other’s company. Billy knew the hills like the back of his hand. He led Charlotte down tracks and woodland rides where the dogs went mad among the trees in search of rabbits. He took her up steep paths to a hilltop from where she could see out across the countryside to the Bristol Channel, the sea a shining polished steel in the winter sunshine. On one occasion they emerged at the top of Cheddar Gorge and peered down into the deep ravine, carved out by an age-old river.
One Saturday afternoon they had wandered further than usual. It was a bright winter’s day and as they’d set out, a pale blue sky arched over the greys, browns and scrubby greens of the winter hills. For a while shafts of sunlight warmed their faces as they wandered over the fields, climbing stiles and following muddy tracks and paths across the hillside. Charlotte, aware of a new lightness of heart as she watched the dogs chasing each other through a stand of trees, thought she’d never been so happy. She had a home with Miss Edie, she had a dog called Bessie and she had a friend in Billy. She could walk out across hills that stretched into the distance and come home to a warm fire and a warm welcome. The war seemed a world away.
She looked across at Billy, striding along beside her, and knew a sudden burst of affection for him. His thick, curly, fair hair sticking out from under his cap, his strong hands grasping the thumb-stick he always carried, his shoulders broad under his waterproof jacket, now all so familiar to her. As if feeling her eyes on him, Billy stopped and turned to her.
‘What?’ he demanded, his blue eyes searching her face.
‘What, nothing.’ Charlotte felt the colour rising in her cheeks and, looking away, added, ‘I’m getting cold.’
‘Come on then,’ Billy said as they emerged from a copse out on to the upland once again, ‘we should get back.’
The weather was changing. A sharp wind knifed across the hillside and dark clouds looming from the west obscured the sun, presaging rain.
Turning back to the spinney, Billy whistled for Jet, who had been snuffling about in the undergrowth further down the hill. Charlotte shivered and began to call Bessie. Neither dog came back and Billy gave an angry shout.
‘Jet! Come here, dog! Where are you?’ Jet did not reappear. Nor did Bessie.
‘Damn dogs!’ Billy strode back to the copse and went in among the trees, calling and whistling. Charlotte went further out on to the hill, screwing her eyes against the wind as she called, trying to catch sight of either dog. She couldn’t see them and she wandered further across the open hill, her feet sinking into the deep mud of the track, calling and calling, but no dogs came back.
Billy came back up the hill to join her. ‘Any luck?’ he called.
‘No, can’t see either of them.’
‘Trouble is, one leads the other on.’
Billy set off along a rough path that skirted the edge of the trees. ‘They could have come out of the wood on the other side,’ he called back. ‘You wait here in case they come back this way.’
Charlotte waited, stamping her feet to keep warm. The sky continued to darken and she could feel rain on the wind. She didn’t like being here alone on the hill by herself. It was a bleak place with no houses in sight, and though she knew she was only a mile or two from Wynsdown, she wasn’t sure in which direction. She wished Billy would come back. She tried calling Bessie again, but heard nothing but the wind through the dark branches of the trees. Then, suddenly, in the distance she heard a faint bark. It came from the opposite side of the copse, in the direction Billy had taken.
He must have found them! she thought, and I’ve got Bessie’s lead.
Glad to be moving again, she set off along the path that Billy had taken. On the far side of the trees it wound away up the hill and in the distance she could see Billy, standing, silhouetted against the sky. There was someone with him, but Charlotte couldn’t see either of the dogs. She began to run, her breath misting out in front of her as she struggled up the hill.
‘Billy!’ she called. ‘Billy! I heard them barking. They’re down the other way!’ Billy didn’t turn and as she neared him she realised that the other person was a man in uniform and that he was armed with a gun, pointed at Billy.
‘Now then,’ said the soldier, looking at her over Billy’s shoulder, ‘who’ve we got here then?’
‘That’s my friend Charlotte. I told you, we’ve lost our dogs.’
‘Yes, I know. You said. But you shouldn’t be up here at all.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘This is MOD land, now.’ The soldier had lowered the gun and he waved a hand, encompassing the hill behind him. ‘Military. You kids better get out of here, sharpish. Where d’you say you come from?’
‘Wynsdown,’ said Billy, pointing back across the hill. ‘About three miles that way.’
‘Long walk then,’ said the soldier, squinting at the sky. ‘You’re going to get wet!’
At that moment they heard more barking and saw the two dogs burst from a thicket further down the hill, happily chasing each other.
‘Better get your dogs then,’ the soldier said and stood and watched as Billy and Charlotte hurried down the path to grab their joyful dogs and snap on their leads. The rain was falling in earnest now as they set off along the track that led across the hill and over the ridge towards the village. When they reached the top of the rise, Billy paused and looked back. The soldier was still where they had left him, standing in the rain, watching them.
By the time they reached Charing Farm they were soaked to the skin and freezing cold. Her boots, caked in mud, made Charlotte’s feet leaden and she’d plodded the last half-mile, wondering if she’d ever get home. The dogs, wet and covered in mud, were banished straight to the stable, where Billy and Charlotte rubbed them down and fed them before going into the welcome warmth of the Shepherds’ kitchen.
‘I can’t imagine what you were doing staying out there in this dreadful weather, Billy,’ scolded Margaret. ‘Didn’t you see it closing in? Poor Charlotte’s turned blue!’
‘We did, Mum, but the dogs took it into their heads to go rabbiting and we lost them.’
Margaret Shepherd sighed. ‘Well, you’d best get yourselves dry. Give me your coat, Charlotte, and I’ll put it to dry by the range. Did you tell Miss Everard you were coming to us?’
‘I said I was going to take the dogs out with Billy.’
‘Well then, let’s hope she’ll guess you’re safely here with us.’
‘Mum, where’s Dad?’
On their way home Billy had said, ‘I think we should tell someone about that bloke, Char. It’s a bit strange, suddenly finding him up on the hill.’
‘What was he doing, do you think?’ Charlotte asked.
Billy shrugged. ‘Don’t know, but he was in RAF uniform. I think I’ll talk to Dad about it. You know he’s second to Major Bellinger in the Home Guard. Better not to say anything to anyone till I’ve told him.’
Charlotte had agreed. All she wanted to do was get warm and dry. She didn’t care what some airman was doing on the hill.
‘Dad’s in the village doing Home Guard drill,’ his mother replied now. ‘He’ll be back later.’
It had become a familiar sight in the village, the Home Guard drilling and training several nights a week. After the fall of France, the secretary of state for war, Anthony Eden, had made a wireless broadcast calling for men, aged between seventeen and sixty-five, to volunteer for a local defence force. The response was enormous. Thousands of men who were not in the services due to their age or being in a reserved occupation, flocked to volunteer and the Local Defence Volunteers, soon renamed the Home Guard, was born.
In Wynsdown, as elsewhere, there had been no lack of volunteers. Being a farming community there were plenty of men who had not been called up. They were too important, working on the land in an effort to feed the nation, but the idea of being part of a defence force ready to defeat the invaders when they came, appealed to those who were needed at home.
The squire, Major Peter Bellinger, was the natural choice of leader. He had come through the first war with distinction and he longed to be of military help in this one. His son, Felix, was a pilot in the RAF, and his brother, James, was something hush-hush in the War Office, but Major Bellinger had felt sidelined in the country and longed for more active involvement.
Once his volunteers had been recruited the major did his best to train them into some sort of fighting force. At first the whole village used to turn out to see them drilling on the green, but they lacked uniforms and equipment so it wasn’t long before the novelty wore off and they were left to their own devices.
‘Don’t know what good Bert Gurney with a broomstick’s going to be,’ muttered Ma Prynne to Mabel over a port and lemon at the Magpie one evening. ‘Germans’re going to be terrified of him, I don’t think!’
It was how many of the village saw the local Home Guard, but Peter Bellinger remained undeterred and gradually licked his army into shape. John Shepherd was his second in command and Billy had been keen to join, too, but he was only sixteen and the major had refused to take him on.
‘No, lad,’ he said. ‘You’re doing good work with your father, there on the farm. Maybe next summer, eh?’
Despite the hard winter, the Home Guard kept up their training, sometimes in joint exercises with other branches, putting into use what they’d learned. Local signs had been removed to confuse an invader, but the local lads didn’t need them, they knew their way around their own hills and exercises across the countryside improved their field-craft and more importantly, their morale.
Margaret and the two youngsters were at the kitchen table eating their tea when John Shepherd came in.
‘Ah, Billy, Charlotte. Glad you’re both here. Need to have a word before you go home, Charlotte. I saw Miss Everard, by the way. Said I’d run you home in the car, after tea.’
The two children looked at each other and Billy said, ‘Yes, all right, Dad, we need to tell you something, too.’
‘All sounds very mysterious,’ Margaret said as she took a pot of stew out of the oven and dished up a portion for her husband.
‘No, not really,’ answered John between mouthfuls. ‘Just need to ask them a couple of things, that’s all.’
When they had finished eating he looked round the table and asked, ‘Where did you two go this afternoon?’
‘Up over the top, Beacon way.’
‘Yes, I thought it must’ve been you.’
‘Been us, what?’ asked Billy.
‘Been you up towards the trig. With the dogs.’
‘Yes. We lost them for a while and we were looking for them when this bloke appeared and asked what I was doing. He was in uniform, RAF I think, and he had a gun.’
‘Yes,’ put in Charlotte, ‘and he was pointing it at Billy.’
‘He wasn’t one of your Home Guard blokes, was he, Dad?’
‘No, he wasn’t. Now, Billy, Charlotte,’ John spoke seriously, ‘today you seem to have wandered rather close to a new military installation.’
‘What’s an installation?’ asked Billy, intrigued.
‘The military have taken over an area of land and no one is allowed to go there. We don’t know what they’re doing there, but that doesn’t matter. They’re doing something for the war effort and people have got to stay away. The man you met today was a sentry.’
‘But that bloke wasn’t guarding anything!’
‘You didn’t see what was there because he stopped you from going too close,’ pointed out his father. ‘It’s a military zone now and there are wide boundaries. Whoever is in command up there heard how close you’d been and rang Home Guard HQ. Did you say you came from Wynsdown?’
‘Yes,’ answered Billy. ‘The man asked and I told him.’
‘Well, the message came through to Major Bellinger and we guessed it was you two because they mentioned the dogs. I said I’d speak to you.’
‘And tell us what they’re doing?’ asked Bill excitedly.
‘No, quite the opposite. I don’t know what they’re doing and we’re not going to discuss it. But, and this is important, you are not to tell anyone about what happened today, understand?’
They both nodded and John smiled as he added, ‘It’s top secret and it has to stay top secret.’
It didn’t, of course. Billy and Charlotte weren’t the only ones to be warned off and before long everyone was talking about it. Several people went to look and all sorts of rumours began to fly.
‘What d’you think they’re doing?’
‘Enemy alien camp?’
‘POWs?’
‘I heard it was an explosives factory.’
‘Secret weapon plant. Had it from the brother of a bloke who’s working there.’
‘They’re training spies. You’ll see. Keep our eyes open for them.’
‘How will we know?’
‘We won’t, not if they’re any good.’
‘I reckon it’s another anti-aircraft battery, to help protect Bristol and Weston.’
‘Bet the Home Guard know.’
‘No, they wouldn’t tell them.’
There was certainly activity, men coming and going, lorries arriving and departing, but usually at night. No one knew what it was all about but speculation was rife.
‘You reckon they’re building a POW camp, Dad?’ Billy asked his father one dinner time.
‘I don’t know what they’re doing,’ John Shepherd maintained. ‘Maybe.’
‘But you’re number two in the Home Guard. Can’t you ask Major Bellinger? He must know.’
‘He may do, but if he does, I doubt if he’d tell me or anyone else.’
‘There’s loads of men working on it, whatever it is,’ Billy said. ‘The Morgan twins went to look and saw them. Got shouted at by a guard with a huge Alsatian, so they ran for it. Must be very secret, mustn’t it, Dad, if they’re guarding it with dogs?’
His father shrugged. ‘Which is probably why we don’t know nothing about it.’
Billy remained intrigued, but though he had the feeling that his father knew more than he was saying, he was unable to prise any more out of him. Rumours continued to flourish, but no one knew for sure what was happening in the military zone. Except Major Bellinger.
Peter Bellinger had been informed about what was going on because there could come a day when it affected all the nearby villages. He had been called in to the local Home Guard HQ and had the situation explained to him.
‘Last raids on Bristol were pretty bad,’ the CO said. ‘Once the pathfinders have come over and dropped their flares, the bombers just home in on the fires to drop their load.’
Peter Bellinger nodded.
‘So we’re going to fool them.’
‘Fool them?’ Bellinger exclaimed.
‘Yes. We’re laying out a mock town up on the hill. They’ve modelled it on Bristol; designed a decoy city with fake streets and factories and even railway yards. If they’re heading for Bristol again we’ll put it into action, allowing a little light, the occasional flame to escape as the pathfinders come over. With a little luck they’ll drop their flares on the decoy and the following bombers will do the same with their bombs. Should save Bristol a pasting!’
Peter Bellinger stared at him in amazement. ‘Do you think it’ll work?’ he asked.
‘Better bloody work,’ came the reply. ‘It’s taken enough time, effort and money. The thing is, if it does, it may put some of the nearby villages at greater risk. You and your men must patrol your village at night and enforce the blackout rigorously. If there’s the slightest sliver of light in the wrong place it could defeat the object of the exercise and also destroy your village.’
‘But from the air, does it really mimic Bristol?’ Peter Bellinger couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
‘So I’m told,’ replied the CO. ‘Haven’t been up to see myself. The thing is, your job is two-fold. You have to enforce the blackout and you have to ensure that no one from your area wanders over there to have a look. The perimeter is well guarded, but we must ensure that no civilians get wind of what’s going on.’
‘They’ll know straight away if the decoy works,’ pointed out the major. ‘Mendips’ll suddenly be bombed to bits.’
‘With careful information management that can be passed off as a German miscalculation... which of course it will be. There’s no need for the general public to know about the decoy.’
Major Bellinger was sworn to secrecy and so he returned home unable to share any of this amazing information even with his wife. He simply had to tell his men that no one was to be allowed to approach the new military zone.
‘If you see anyone hanging round over there,’ he said, ‘then you arrest them and bring them to me.’
‘But what is going on over there, sir?’ asked Bert Gurney.
‘I have no idea, Gurney. Our orders are simply to ensure no one goes near the place. It’s all part of an exercise we’ve been ordered to join.’ It was the only explanation he would give.
His men accepted this and patrols were set up to monitor the blackout and to keep any inquisitive folk away from the military zone.
It was the early hours of a Sunday morning some weeks later that the air raid sirens began to wail. Though there was no moon, the sky was clear and it wasn’t long before the roar of approaching aircraft and the blast of ack-ack could be heard. The Home Guard were out in force, checking all the houses in the village and the outlying farms to be sure no lights were showing. Billy and his mother, asleep at Charing Farm, woke with a start and Billy hurriedly pulled on some trousers and a thick jersey over his pyjamas.
‘I’m going out to the barn, Mother,’ Billy said. ‘Dad’s out on patrol and someone should be in there with the last of the ewes. This noise’ll terrify them.’
Reluctantly his mother agreed and Billy hurried out across the yard. The thunder of the planes filled the sky now and as he reached the barn he looked up. Coming in from the south, the planes flew in formation, dark sinister shapes against the night sky.
Heading for Bristol again, he thought as he watched them. Hope Jane’ll be all right. The first flight were almost out of sight when they seemed to release a trail of lights. Bright flares spiralled downwards, erupting into brilliant yellow and white fires, targets for the bombers following in their wake.
‘They’re dropping short!’ Billy cried as he watched the incendiaries burst into flame somewhere beyond the ridge on the distant hillside. Anti-aircraft guns, dug in somewhere up on the hill, pounded away at the incoming planes, blasting the sky with shells in an effort to bring down the enemy, or at least to drive them away.
The first aircraft peeled away, their job as pathfinders done, but the roar of engines didn’t fade as another flight passed overhead and, homing in on the incendiary-lit target, off-loaded their bombs. Explosions cracked the air as the waves of bombers emptied their bomb bays before swinging south again towards France.
Billy wasn’t the only one watching, fascinated, as the Luftwaffe mistook its target and bombed the open hillside. The bombing sounded so close that people from most of the villages that nestled among the hills were at their windows, staring incredulously as the last of the raiders flew away. How had the Germans made such an incredible mistake? Surely they must have been aiming for Bristol. No one could speak of anything else.
In Wynsdown they gathered outside the church for morning service, exchanging ideas as to what could have happened.
‘How did they come to miss Bristol like that?’ Billy asked his father as they went out to the sheep. ‘You were out on patrol, you must’ve seen the whole raid from out there.’
‘I don’t know,’ replied John. ‘It’s the pathfinders must’ve got it wrong. They drop their lights and the bombers drop their bombs. If the pathfinders get it wrong, like last night, then the bombers do, too. Just thank God they did. Saved Bristol from a rough night.’
‘Thank God indeed,’ echoed his wife, her thoughts flying to Jane working in Bristol.
Billy thought about the bombs. There must be huge damage after such a heavy bombardment. He knew roughly where they had landed and was even more intrigued.
‘You know what, Dad? I reckon they were targeting that military zone. P’raps it wasn’t a mistake. P’raps they knew there was something top secret there and bombed it specially.’ He shook his head. ‘The poor buggers underneath it all. Whatever it was, it must be destroyed now.’
It was a plausible explanation and one which many local people came up with. Somehow the Germans had learned that there was a top-secret project and had set out to destroy it, but, surprisingly, the army land was still occupied and so they must have failed.
All built safely underground was the perceived wisdom, so the project, whatever it might be, was safe.
‘Must have been told by a spy,’ said Bert Gurney. ‘Stands to reason, don’t it? There’s spies about, fifth column.’