THIS STORY is set during the 1939-45 war, and the years immediately before and after. It recalls the hardships and terrible happenings, as well as the good times, the spirit and the humour that was shown, and in particular, the way in which boys and other young people reacted. Ferryden is the fictitious name for a village which is a central feature, and the characters are also fictitious. However, the adventures and happenings described in the book are based on the author’s personal experiences.
To make the reading as entertaining as possible, some of the incidents have been ‘embroidered and polished’ and a small number have been added to, compressed, or given a different setting, but they all happened in one form or another. The intention is to give the reader an impression of what times were like for young people in those far off days. Times as seen through the eyes of a young boy through to manhood, and recalled many years later.
It is of course, accepted that the memory dims with age, the major difficulty being to recall the particular time of an event and, inevitably, some of the detail. This is not intended to be an accurate historical document, but certain happenings, particularly the more momentous events, are as fresh in the memory as they were all those years ago. As time goes by, the band of people who can recall their experiences, and retain the ability to put pen to paper, becomes less and less. All of those who fought in the war have long since passed the age of retirement, and the author himself, who was a small boy at the outbreak of war, is now a pensioner. For these reasons, he has decided to tell this unique story.
