Christmas 1944

In 1944 the Americans arrived in Compton Chamberlayne, and camped in the fields. Needless to say they soon found the village pub, The King's Elm Inn, which was run by my Mother as my Father was in the war, and we got to know them very well. I remember the one Christmas that they were in the village, one of the soldiers, Johnny, asked my mother if he could put the presents in our stockings as he was missing his son in America. As the bar was packed she agreed, but said she couldn't leave the bar. She had no idea that our Auntie Mary had put her presents in the bedroom. We had no electricity, which made our bedroom very dark, although there was an oil lamp on the landing to light up the stairs. Obviously Johnny wasn't used to a dim light, and when he went into our bedroom he couldn't see a thing and tripped over a present my Aunt had left, and ended up under one of our beds. Of course this woke my brother, cousin and myself, and we thought it was Santa. My Mother arrived on the scene and pushed Johnny out of the bedroom and calmed us down, telling us that if we didn't go back to sleep Santa would do magic and our toys would disappear, as we should have been sleep when he came. It did the trick; after talking about it for minutes, we went to sleep.