16 AUGUST 1946, Page 4

It must have been during that far-off Canterbury Week that

I first drove (conning, no doubt, my single interjection) througlr the jungle of sweet chestnut on the ridge above Chilharn. I remember noticing at the time what dense cover it made. I don't remember foreseeing that a decade, later I should be feverishly stocking subterranean hideouts in its remoter thickets with high explosive, bully beef and other sinews of guerilla warfare while overhead, almost unnoticed by us, the R.A.F. fought a battle, victory in which could alone remove (or, as we thought, postpone) the need for a British maquis. It's very odd, the things one finds oneself doing.