My Family and the 506th

Aldbourne, Wiltshire

A wartime photo taken from the stables yard

(Robert Impink Collection ©)

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Aldbourne – pictured June 6th, 2004

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David Webster of E/506 (pictured later in Holland)

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He wrote the following of his arrival at Aldbourne:

“I thought I’d passed out on a Hollywood movie set. All around the area were fairy-book cottages with thatched roofs and rose vines on their sides” – Not much has changed today…

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A visit to Aldbourne – 6/6/2004

A short car ride from Swindon over to Aldbourne, it was a lovely day bright and sunny. My mum and I arrived and parked near the village pond all was quiet and still on this lazy day. A short walk took us up the hill past the Blue Boar pub and over the green to the old church. I looked around and tried the church door but it was locked. Water was pouring from the tap outside the church and two small boys were running off laughing down the hill.

Sixty years before the village children would have had other distractions to occupy them. Then the village ‘buzzed’ with wartime activity with proud young American Paratroops in their high jump boots.

This day, the anniversary of D-Day there was no visual sign of that occupation so long ago. There were no flags, no bunting, bands or veterans to be seen, but my mother I could tell had memories of her own flooding back.

A silver haired motorcyclist was riding around the village green on a vintage motorcycle, a young family were laughing and drinking on the seats outside the pub and a women pushed a pram past us up the green. The canvas the way that David Webster and others had painted wartime Aldbourne was pretty much unspoiled but those painted on it were certainly of a different generation.

Rodge Dowson

‘Coffee and Reflection’ – (Robert Impink Collection ©)

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