This article was one of a series of short articles about people’s memories of the war printed in the Souvenir Programme produced for events in Radley organised to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of VE Day on 8 May 1995. The article was an excerpt from the book, The Story of the First Berkshire (Abingdon) Battalion Home Guard by Ourselves, first published in 1945. The author is unknown but was probably one of the masters from Eastbourne College, which was evacuated to Radley College from the south coast. It is probably not a coincidence that its headmaster, John Nugee, had been Sub-Warden at Radley College before his appointment in Easter 1938.

On 28 June [1940] we [Eastbourne College] were evacuated to Radley. That summer we had two patrols each night in the College grounds. Duty came round every third or fourth night for officers and every seventh night for other ranks. The headquarters was the cricket pavilion and we had sentry groups on observation as far as a mile away, connected by field telephone. Orders were not to load except in an emergency. While I was at the furthest post, I heard a shot and at once hurried to investigate. I discovered that one boy of independent mind had decided that, if these times were not an emergency nothing ever would be, so he loaded and discharged his rifle at the Warden’s house, thereby bringing a committee of enquiry from the neighbourhood.

Another night I returned from visiting rounds to receive a message that a sentry had heard from the Warden that German parachutists had landed at Sandford Lock. It seemed very odd but one could hardly mistake one’s own headmaster so the picket was roused, sentry groups doubled and a recce patrol started. The atmosphere was tense – we did not expect half-trained and half-alarmed boys to last long against the Hun paratroopers. I investigated and traced the message to an observation post who had accepted this bogus message from someone who said he was the Warden. The observation post received a raspberry and the rest retired to bed.

Two nights later, long before we had any uniform, my second in command received an urgent message that ‘an armed band was at Chestnut Avenue’. Reserves were summoned and a strong patrol hurried off into the darkness, expecting to meet a sticky end. An astonished observation post eventually protested that all they had said over the telephone to a sleepy orderly was that they wanted their armbands.

There were other great times – Sunday morning exercises spent in signal boxes, up gantries and under culverts until a worried station master urged that our troops should be protected from their more immediate dangers; cold nights spent on the Mansion roof spotting bomb flashes across two counties, and lastly those night patrols in Radley Park.