Then and Now

Worthing

We’re on home turf now. My seaside town on the West Sussex coast that found itself on the front line when invasion threatened in 1940. Beaches were wired and mined, pillboxes appeared along the promenade, and a section of the pier was blown up to stop it being used as a landing stage. In the build-up to D-Day, its streets filled with troops and tanks waiting to cross the Channel.

1941

Findon, West Sussex, 1941

Children watch activity around a Matilda Mk II tank of 44th Royal Tank Regiment in Findon, Sussex, during exercises against ‘enemy’ parachute troops, 4 March 1941.