A Bren Gun

A Memory of Chalfont St Peter.

Gold Hill common has an upper flat grassy area and then a sloping area, which leads down into the town, which is covered with scrub, not the town of course. This photo is right on the edge of the upper part. In 1963, when I was a boy of eight, the army came and laid on an exhibition, I guess this was a recruitment drive. They carried out a mock battle with half tracks and guns firing blanks and yellow smoke billowing slowly across the common. If you take the main footpath from Layters Green Lane (?) across the common, the swings and stuff will be off to your left, there was/is a hawthorn tree to the right of the path and I lay under that tree with a soldier who was firing a Bren gun. I asked him if I could have any of the spent carteridge shells but he told me that they all had to be accounted for. It was an amazing experience.