My tribute to Peter Herrick, my namesake.
Before he was drafted into the Ultra Secret Enigma cryptography operation at Bletchley Park, my future Father, AT Pilley, served at Aldergrove aerodrome, Belfast.
This was one of a group of merchant navy air defence stations, tasked mainly to protect vital shipping lanes bringing supplies from America into ports like Liverpool. He was at first Squadron Leader, then Intelligence Officer.
My Dad and his young wife Nora became friends with one of the Spitfire pilots. My Dad and he would fly to Hendon Aerodrome, Colindale, north of London, and motor from there to Aylesbury to spend some Leave time together at Hazel Cottage.
Today, I look again at the heart-warming snapshot of my Mum and Dad together. I ask who could have held the camera?
The cottage is at the end of a farm track, after a ‘No Through Road’ leads to the hamlet called Sedrup Green.
The dwellings, including Hazel Cottage, are set around the cow pasture belonging to Sedrup Farm. Sedrup can be seen on the Domesday Map drawn up by command of William the Conqueror in 1086AD. Most of them are still there.
If Sedrup is a remote place today, it was all but undiscoverable in the 1940s. Many people from the nearest village of Stone, some twenty minutes walk away on the Aylesbury to Oxford Road, had never been to Sedrup.
Water was drawn in buckets from garden wells, with the exception of one with a spring-fed pond. Mains gas and electricity only arrived here in the 1960s!
My Father’s family in London would not have visited. It was wartime. My Mother was the only member of her extended family from the Netherlands not living in Occupied Europe.
I am of the belief that the third person, the taker of this unguarded intimate scene, could only have been Peter Herrick, my namesake!
One tragic night over the Irish Sea, the plane carrying this young man and some of his RAF colleagues bound for weekend leave in Liverpool developed engine trouble. It crashed into the sea with the loss of all on board. My Father had been invited, but had refused on this occasion.
The pressures and constraints placed on the scarce aviation resources at that period sadly were contributing factors of such mishaps.
The young man’s name was Peter Herrick. I was born just under a year after VE Day. My parents named me Peter in a tribute to their dear friend Peter Herrick.
My heart beats for both Peters. And my continuation is in some measure our mutual redemption and a way of honouring renewed life made safe to live through human sacrifice on unimaginable scales!
~ Love is present EveryNow
The View at 72+ 