The Two Soldiers

This story was submitted to the People’s War Site by Three Counties Action, on behalf of Jean Alison McMenamin, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was 13 when war was declared on Sept 3rd 1939 and life changed considerably after that. I went Convent School, and every holiday time a lot of us used to meet up in Bedford Park. Boys from the Modern School and Bedford School, and girls from the High School and Dame Alice Harpur. We chatted and laughed and sometimes we played ‘hop and run’, or ‘truth and dare.’ One day a few of us cycled up there and it was pretty empty apart from two British soldiers sitting there on the grass! Curious, we went up and started talking to them. They told us they were from the Beds and Herts Regiment stationed at Kempston Barracks! We noticed their uniforms were stained and one pulled out his pocket book, also stained. We asked them where they had come from and one answered, so simply, “We’ve just come back from Dunkirk”!!

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