It was early summer in 1940. World War II had already lasted for nine months. I was 12 years of age and living with my parents, two brothers and three sisters, a mile outside the small Midlands town of Abbeyleix in Ireland.
My brother, Ted, then aged 15, had joined the Local Defence Force (LDF) and I remember well the evening he arrived home, looking excited and important, in his new uniform - khaki trousers, tunic and cap and sturdy brown leather boots.
My father admired these excellently made boots, saying he wished he could have a pair. After the next training session Ted came home with an extra pair of boots, size seven, and presented them proudly to his dad. My father's face lit up in pleasure as Ted reported how the officer-in-charge had said he was welcome to a pair of boots for his dad!
At first, the LDF's main duty was to guard the gates of farm fields to prevent farmers from moving their cattle during a serious outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, a catastrophe rather like our BSE scare of recent years.
One day I went to see Ted on duty. As I approached, he stood to attention and saluted, showing off to this sister whose approval always meant so much to him. He then demonstrated to me the difference between an Irish and a British salute. I left him there to dream the hours away as he stood guard with his rifle over a field of cows.
At this time I was studying for a scholarship to go to boarding school. My teacher, Mrs Galbraith, had been giving me extra tuition after school hours in her own home. She was married to a local farmer who had once been a pupil of hers, and she had to work long hours on the farm, both before and after school, so I felt I had to study hard and win the scholarship in order to justify my taking up so much of her precious time.
On the day my story begins I was seated at the table in the middle of our sitting room, doing the extra homework Mrs Galbraith had set for me. My father and my uncle Charlie were sitting, one on either side of the large window, chatting away. They were great pals, those two, having been together at a camp on the Surrey Downs in 1917-1918, both of them serving with the Royal Flying Corps and subsequently, the RAF in its early days.
My uncle had a ground job on camp and my father was engaged in maintenance work on Handley Page bombers. It was very dark in the room as, outside, the rain was falling in torrents while the lightning flashed every few seconds and the thunder rumbled and crackled loudly overhead.
Suddenly, all three of us jumped to our feet. A great ball of fire seemed to come through the door to my right, roll across the floor and out through the door on the opposite side.
"What was it?" I cried, terrified.
"A thunderbolt," replied my father, and there followed much discussion about the matter. I have not to this day discovered a scientific explanation of the phenomenon, but all three of us in that room on that day saw it and described it similarly. It scared me. I felt as early man must have felt, a great fear and awe of a mighty power beyond our comprehension.
Shortly afterwards, we heard a knock on the door and my father went to answer it. I followed at a discreet distance. Not often did we have unexpected visitors in those parts. A member of the Gardai Siochana (Irish Police) stood there, asking for Ted Hartford.
He told my father that Germans had been spotted parachuting into Knapton Woods and that Ted was to report at once to the police station, in his uniform, to collect his rifle and go to defend his country. Ted, too, had heard the knock and, as he listened behind a door, he grew very distressed and jumped into the nearest bed, diving under the bedclothes for cover.
When the policeman had gone away, Ted begged our father to protect him and not force him to go. An hour later the policeman returned asking where Ted was and why hadn't he reported for duty. My father pleaded with him, saying: "How can you think of sending a 15-year-old lad to face highly trained and ruthless German soldiers?"
He offered to take Ted's place, saying he had learnt how to handle a rifle and face German soldiers at the Front in World War I. The policeman relented and said he'd report back at the station that he couldn't find young Hartford and he told my father to keep the boy hidden.
The Telephone Exchange in Abbeyleix had been busy, too, and it wasn't long before what we took to be the entire Irish Air Force, consisting of one plane, had landed in Tom Mitchell's field. There was much activity of importance taking place. The next day's international news headlines were being written!
Meanwhile, in Knapton Wood, a young courting couple had been sheltering under the trees but were afraid they'd be struck by lightning, so they decided to make a run for it.
As they emerged from the woods, a young volunteer on guard dropped his rifle and ran for his life, as if all the devils in hell were after him! The young couple were mystified. What on earth was going on?
Eventually, an armed group decided to enter the woods and they found, not Germans but three haystacks. These had been lifted up by a freak whirlwind in the neighbouring county of Kildare and had been carried through the air before finally falling into Knapton Wood.
Haystacks in those days were shaped like parachutes. There were many red faces thereafter and the tale was told many times over, but my brother never wanted to speak about that day's events.
Two years later he left Abbeyleix to start work at Foster Gwynnes Ltd in Lincoln, a firm engaged in essential war work. He also joined the Home Guard and from the horror tales he told of the aftermath of bombings, I know he truly wiped the slate clean after his failure in Ireland to answer a call to duty.
As he searched the rubble after one bombing raid for possible survivors, he found the charred remains of a baby, which he had to hand over to its mother, a traumatic moment which never faded from his memory. I wonder if his mind ever wandered back to the LDF in Abbeyleix as he carried out his fire-watching duties along the walls of Lincoln Castle.
As for me, I passed my scholarship examination and in September 1940, I started as a boarder in Rochelle School, Cork. Not long afterwards the Germans did come.
One night the girls in a second-floor dormitory were woken by the loud roar of a plane. On rushing to the window they could see a bomber, with clear German markings, pass close to the school, flying very low, level with their window, in fact. A short distance on, it dropped its bombs on that part of Cork City.
I left Rochelle in June, 1945 and I remember VE night in school mainly for its electrical storm and torrential rain, similar to the freak storm five years earlier in Abbeyleix. After the storm comes the calm, as in my favourite piece of music, Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, for next morning we woke up to sunshine and the realisation that peace had come to Europe.
The scare is now a memory from the past, a tale to be told with humour 61 years later, recalled as I sit at a computer, a student once more but this time trying to cope with "dot coms" rather than "decimal points".