Sussex, 1939. Lily Harper is twenty-two when the farm becomes hers, and the war comes to her fields. In a village where a careless word can ruin a life, she will learn that everyone is keeping a secret, and that the most dangerous one may be her own.
Sussex, 1940History added: author to verify
The front line ran through the fields
In the summer of 1940 the war stopped being something on the wireless.
France had fallen. The army had come home from Dunkirk, leaving almost all its guns behind. Across the Channel the enemy was gathering barges, and the beaches of Sussex were mined and wired against him. Signposts came down, so that he would not know where he was. The church bells fell silent, to be rung only if he came.
That autumn, night after night, the bombers crossed the coast on their way to London, and the searchlights swept the sky over the Weald. Sons and brothers were away in uniform, and letters were slow to come.
And all the while the cows had to be milked, the hay made and the harvest got in, because a country that could not feed itself could not fight.
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
If the Germans come, by parachute, aeroplane or ship, you must remain where you are.
1.5mpeople, most of them children, moved out of the cities in the first days of September 1939
4 ozof butter per person, per week, when rationing began on 8 January 1940
338,226British and Allied troops brought home from Dunkirk, 26 May to 4 June 1940
57nights in a row that London was bombed, from 7 September 1940
Three books. One village. A world at war. Peace would ask even more.
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From a September evening at Heston Aerodrome to a farm in the High Weald that is about to change hands. About 11,400 words, as they appear in the book.
IPrologue: September 1938Heston Aerodrome, Middlesex. Thursday, 15 September 1938
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An illustration from the novel, not a photograph of the patrol.
The true history
The patrol in this book was real.
The Auxiliary Units were formed in July 1940 as a secret stay-behind resistance force. Bodiam had one of their Operational Patrols: ten men from Udiam, Bodiam, Ewhurst and Hurst Green.
Sydney John BrabonSergeant. Farm tractor driver
Stanley George BarberHead gardener
Arthur BrabonFarm labourer
Wilfred Walter EnsumDairy farmer
Ernest William Ades GoodsellCoal merchant and clerk
