The irony is the fate of these villages has been more catastrophic than any enemy invasion from which they were being protected. When they were forcibly requisitioned by the British Army in 1942 there existed a way of life that had evolved over a thousand years but within a couple of months the villagers had been cleared out and today only the churches remain to the imaginings of an existence.

Last week I sat in the churchyard of St. Andrew's Langford and re-imagined the events of 1942 in to the paradigm of the present. What if during one of the Iraq Wars the government had marched in to my village, rounded us all up, ordered us to leave our homes within two weeks, no compensation and never to return? The law of war is a strange beast.

[The 'Battle Area' villages of Stanta comprise of West Tofts, Langford, Tottington, Stanford, Sturston and Buckenham Tofts]

Mark Cator, 2018, Interior of St. Andrew's church, Langford

Mark Cator, 2018, Interior of St. Andrew's church, Tottington