Looking back, childhood in West Hoathly during the early 1940’s seems to have been a lot of fun. Village children could wander safely over Ashdown Forest, spending long summer days watching “dog-fights” in the clear blue sky, racing the authorities to crash sites and swapping cannon shells and aircraft parts like postage stamps. They played football against Italian prisoners of war from the local camp and in the winter played ice hockey with the Canadian army on the frozen pond. But of course there was also a darker side, West Hoathly was in “Bomb Alley” and was regularly threatened by bombs, aerial torpedos and V1’s. School friends were killed and injured in the Whitehall Cinema bombing in East Grinstead and, most of all, the loss of several young men from the village made a deep impression on a small, close-knit community.

John Smith was born in the butcher’s shop in North Lane, West Hoathly on August 29^th 1929. He was ten years old when World War Two began. “One Boy’s War” is based on his memories (including two close encounters with the Luftwaffe). It is not about the war, it is about growing up in a village in extraordinary times.