THE following excerpts are taken from Cricklade Revealed Extra, the latest book in author Marion Parsons’ series of local memory books, which is available now.

Far from being a back-water town during WW2, Cricklade (and Latton) stood on one of the busiest routes in the country, both by road and rail, for transporting freight and military personnel from the North West to the South Coast.

It also lay between the two emergency RAF airfields at Blakehill and Down Ampney. Many Londoners were evacuated there, and local residents led very hectic lives doing their bit for the war effort. Below are two excerpts taken from Marion Parsons’ latest wartime book about those times.

‘When the war broke out in 1939 we were completely unequipped for anything, and immediately they formed the Home Guard in Cricklade and my father joined that right at the beginning before he went in the normal army.

‘At the beginning they called all the young men up, and they had to join the Home Guard first, and they didn’t have any uniforms. St. Sampson’s Church tower was used as a lookout. There was a garden shed erected up there by Dick Giles – the normal eight by six feet kind of thing, so that those who weren’t on outside watch could sit in the hut to keep warm.

‘My father used to go off wearing his trilby hat or cap – normal working clothes – and those that had a gun took them with them because none were issued and most had nothing – they took sticks as weapons – anything. My father had a double-barrelled gun for shooting rabbits and so on – he kept it above the mantelpiece on two hooks, so when he went to do his duty as a look-out on top of the tower he took this shot gun, and put a handful of cartridges in his pocket.

‘Although realising how serious it then was, I thought it was funny later when I remembered this – seeing my father walk out of the door with his gun under his arm just as he did when he went shooting rabbits walking down to the church and climbing to the top of the tower all to make sure no Germans came along to threaten us!’ Les Mutlow of Cricklade.

‘I was called up during the Second World War as a railway reservist in 1940. At one point we were billeted at the old vicarage at Latton. We had to parade outside the building. The sergeant – a regular in the army – was a devil and this boy hadn’t shaved. He said to him, ‘Go in and get your shaving kit and give us a demonstration.’ He had to prop his mirror on the wall of the graveyard and shave in front of everyone. It was humiliating. The sergeant was a regular soldier caught up on discipline. We were just civilians in battle dress.

He made me have three haircuts in one week. He’d come up behind you and just say ‘Haircut!!’ And this was in Latton! At Latton vicarage we all had to sleep upstairs, and as there were no toilet facilities available we had to do some digging in the field next door.

It was in November, and on my 21st birthday I had the unenviable task of emptying the slops! Apart from this we had some fun with boys from all the different railway companies.’ Horace Drake of Bridgend, South Wales.

l Cricklade Revealed Extra by Marion Parsons is available for £3.60 from Cricklade Town Council Office.

Call 01793 750542 for more information.