For the next few days the town was full of red-capped military police riding around in jeeps putting up notices directing the military traffic. A tent was put up at Udens crossing in which police checked all persons entering the road to Udens House. No civilians were allowed on this road or anywhere in the woods around the house. Two thousand soldiers were stationed there and bulldozers were employed in clearing the wood to house these troops. A hospital centre was made at Merley and a landing ground set up for the landing of army helicopters. - The Bristol 171, which was on the experimental stage. (I can still remember cycling up and watching one land)

Airstrip
An air force camp was made at Corfe Mullen out of tents, which were camouflaged with bracken, and a landing strip for small planes was marked out in the field beyond. A large notice was placed at Canford Bridge saying that it had been "demolished" and no army vehicles were allowed over it.

The manoeuvres were divided into three sectors: - Ex Corruna Packet, Merry Widow and Surprise Packet.

Blandford was the most hard hit town near Wimborne. A tank went right through a house. There was also "street fighting" there. In fact so many tanks and lorries went through that the shopkeepers were going to write to the government complaining and asking for compensation because the Blandford townsfolk were too scared to go out shopping in such conditions.

Flail Tanks
On Tuesday night (no date) 220 tanks (60 tons each) went through and kept Wimborne awake the whole night. Then on Wednesday morning I watched more tanks go through including Comets, Churchills and Shermans. Also - the first time I have seen any - there were some Flail tanks which took up the whole road (These had revolving metal chains across the front, like present day car washing brushes on their side, which flayed the ground to explode mines) One tank broke down one of the bus shelters. More went through in the afternoon.

In the evening, at about nine o'lock, I had just come out of a rehearsal (Church House?) when I wondered what the noise and bustle was in the Square. So being curious I went up to see. When I got there I found a crowd of people standing around a large hole in the road. A tank had recently gone around the corner (between Woolworths and Kings Head) and ripped a manhole cover off and had pushed the round manhole into a triangular shape.

Night activities
At two o'clock in the middle of the following night I was awakened by the sound of tanks going along the main road. Unable to sleep, Dad and I dressed up in our warmest clothes and went down to the bottom of Grove Road to watch them. Every vehicle was covered with bracken and had only two small sidelights on. Interspersed between the tanks were jeeps, bren-gun carriers, half-tracks and hundreds of lorries. We stayed watching this convoy till three in the morning.

It was fairly quiet for the rest of the manoeuvres with only food, milk and brake-down lorries going through. All the milk lorries for troops displayed notices saying "Police Priority - Milk"

Although parts of the road were turned to gravel, this was soon repaired and life went on the same as usual. On the whole the manoeuvres provided a very interesting and enjoyable holiday for us schoolboys but a very costly fortnight for the government.