When the Second World War came in 1939, no one in the village questioned that they must go and fight for their country, for men of the village had been going to the wars for a thousand years. Clutterbuck tells us that John de Gorham and Lawrence de Broc were required to send one man to serve in the expedition against Scotland in the time of Edward I for the fee they held in Shephall. This was the service of a knight fully armed, and his servants. Over the years, being so close to a major road, soldiers of many armies must have come foraging for supplies, and as the village had close links with St. Albans, the people must have been very aware of the battles around that town during the Wars of the Roses, when Henry VI was captured there.

        The first George Nodes was a soldier. In 1542 when granted the lands of Shephall, which he already farmed, he was perhaps wanting to settle down to being Lord of the Manor and to organise the administration of the estate, but in 1544 he was called on a muster of the army for the invasion of France and the capture of Boulogne. He took with him two servants - were they Shephall men, I wonder?

        Forty years later, the Spanish Armada was threatening to invade. In 1588 the Archbishop of Canterbury exhorted his Bishops to set a good example and direct their clergy 'especially such as be of better ability' to furnish themselves with

'launces, light horses, petronylls on horseback, muskets, culyvers, pikes, halberdes, bylls or bowes and arrowes as in regard to their several abilities shall be thought most convenient.'

The Bishop proceeded to rate his clergy according to his estimate of their benefices. He ordered his Archdeacon to make the rate known to every beneficed minister with all speed and charge every one of them to provide men, horses, light armour and furniture. The vicar of Shephall was ordered to find one culyver furnished; this was a musket with 'flaske, touchboxe and murrion, an arminge sword, dagger and girdle', and a man to wear them. In 1590 he wrote to the Archdeacon:

'Robert Wood, vicar of Shephall do certifye that he have a calliver furnished and as for a man I have none and this to be true'.

        There is no record of how Shephall was affected by the Civil War. Soldiers from both armies moved along the Great North Road, and there was a time when the Parliamentary garrison at Hitchin fled, and did not remuster till they reached the Roebuck Inn at Broadwater. On the cover of the first church register is a short list of vicars, and a note by the name of Thomas Knight 1641-1660 reads ' Vicar during ye troublesome times'. In the Bedford Record Office is preserved a letter written by George Nodes in 1642 to his son-in-law Sir William Boteler. His grandchildren had been on a visit to Shephall Bury:

'I was glad to see my grandchildren. I am old and crazy (i.e. iII) and I doubt whether I shall see them again. We think the times more dangerous now than ever they were - I pray God amend them'.

He died the next year.

        The Revd. William Hawtayne who was vicar here 1719-1734 had served as a chaplain to the Welsh Fusiliers in Germany and in Flanders. Jane Dellow's husband was a soldier and when she came to Shephall it was no doubt because his regiment was about to embark for overseas.

        On Easter Monday, 1807, John Carrington, the Chief Constable of the district, wrote in his diary:

'To Sheephall on Dunn to carry warrant for 2 men drauft to serve in the New Army now a Raiseing for 559 is to be raised in the Hundred of Cashio, and Borough of St. Albans, And so on in the other Hunds in proportion, to Raise 4000 upwards for the County, some parishes 50, 60 or 70 according to the largeness'.

The Shephall Parish Book has relevant entries:

1782     Paid the Militia Men

1794     The quota for two men for the Navy

1798     Paid Allec Thompson allowance for being drawn into the militia

To Parker on a Muster of the Parish for the service of the country

Overseer at Codicot for maintenance of militia substitute

Overseer for pioneers at the Red Lion

1800     Paid for Kimpton being drawn in the militia

The last item links up with a paper found in the church chest, a certificate sent to the Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor of the Parish of Sheephall:

‘….every person chosen by lot to serve in the Militia and any serving personally or by substitute and not being worth Five hundred pounds is entitled to such a sum of money as the Lieutenancy shall adjudge to be one half of the current price of a volunteer, to be paid by the Churchwardens or Overseers of the Poor of his parish or place after one month from his enrollment the sum of Five pounds, five shillings has been adjudged the sum payable and Joseph Kimpton late of your parish is now entitled thereto...'

At the bottom is a note:

'I do hereby certify that the above named Joseph Kimpton by Thos Rule his substitute appears to have duly served one month since his enrolment and on taking the oath as above is well titled to the allowance'.

Several Militia lists for Shephall are preserved at the County Record Office, among them that for 1775, a large one with

'17 fit men and 5 with children (men who were not called) and Richard Lever troubled with fets at times and he pealed himself out before you at St. Albans at one of the subdivision meetings.'

Another local diarist, John Izzard Pryor, brewer by trade, and squire of Walkern in the earlier part of the 19th century, was for some time a Deputy Lieutenant. His sons were officers with the County Yeomanry. The annual training for the local troop ended with a dinner given by the Troop Commander, Captain Heathcote of Shephall Bury. Two years before the Crimean War John Pryor wrote in his diary:

'August 4th 1852

Captain Heathcote giving a dinner to his troop this day invited me and several gentlemen to dine with him and them at 4o'clock, after the men had gone through some of their evolutions at Broadwater where they met at 1 o'clock. Hungerford Colston drove the carriage over and came on the ground at 12 o'clock. Mrs. Pryor, Emma and Juliana were within, Mr. Baker and Fred behind and Cooper on the box with Mr. Colston. There were a few short showers but nothing of consequence. We retired from the field at half past three and sat down at 4 to dine in a long marquee handsomely ornamented with laurels in festoons and Chinese lanterns suspended. Captain Heathcote was supported on his right by Mr. Abel Smith and Mr. W. Wigram and on his left by Lord Grimston and myself. There were several officers of Lord Salisbury's troop present. My bro' Vickris and son Morris dined as officers of the North Herts troop and also 50 privates dined. Mr. Heathcote presided in his usual excellent manner and on giving the toasts spoke pertinently, indeed eloquently, and the whole thing went off very well indeed.'

John Pryor had brought his family with him, so it seems likely that other gentlemen present were also accompanied by their families. It would be a pleasant afternoon watching the 'evolutions'. Did the ladies retire to take refreshment with the Heathcote ladies while the gentlemen dined, and was the marquee put up in Shephall Bury Park? (That other diarist, Carrington, would have told us what food was on the tables!) And there would be the Shephall folk, and others from the surrounding villages watching the exercises. Some of their own would be in the troop and they would be proud; there would be a snide remark or two; and all the girls of the district would be there if they could, in their best finery, because as always 'There's something about a soldier'!

        Sixty years later came the Great War. In the church porch during the 1920s and '30s hung a framed roll of honour naming 44 men who served in that war. Six of them did not return and a dozen were wounded. The autumn of 1917 was dreadful for the country and for the village; the news came of four dead, one from gas poisoning, and six wounded, all in the space of five months. Most of the able-bodied went to the war, leaving only the elderly, the unfit, the women and children to farm the land. 'Shephall Makes History' is the heading of the report in the local newspaper when the simple tablet in the church was unveiled in memory of 'those gallant men of the fields and meadows who gave their lives when the homeland called for the great sacrifice'.

        Some twenty years later Shephall made a headline in the national press. The Daily Express printed an article about a village which had sent 16 men to war from its thirty homes. From my RAF camp I wrote, proudly telling of my village which also had sent 16 men to war (and two NAAFI girls) from its thirty homes. They sent a staff reporter down, who had a hard job convincing the village he wasn't a spy before they would talk! This of course was a different war from the others. Some occupations were reserved, and there were many jobs which counted as war work. Different too, because Britain itself came under attack and war was waged in our skies.

        For Shephall it began in 1938, when the first young man was called up to the new Militia; a bit later another joined the RAF. It was the disturbing year of Chamberlain's 'peace with honour'. The village was issued with gas masks and instructions about possible air attacks. It was all terrifying. Then one lovely September morning in 1939, a Sunday, many of the people of Shephall went to church and came out to the sound of the air raid sirens; a false warning as it turned out, but one to be heard so many times over the next few years. Events moved swiftly and by Christmas each of the cottages was home to at least one child evacuee from Stoke Newington, while a group of RAMC soldiers had taken over the Old Rectory. Their lovely Welsh voices joined ours at the Christmas services, filling the gaps left by our own boys; but by January they too were away to France and Dunkirk.

        The first bombs in the county fell on Shephall fields the following August, jettisoned in the dogfights which surrounded the bombing of the Vauxhall works at Luton. It was only the beginning; many more bombs were to fall in the fields around the village, happily without loss of life or damage to homes. Shephall had its own air raid wardens, and every fit man not called up was in the Home Guard. Night after night they were on watch as the raiders attacked London and the Midlands, and there was always the threat of airborne invasion. In their spare time those left at home raised money for the Comforts Fund, which sent parcels to their sons and daughters scattered far and wide from their loved village. Inside each one was a card - 'Your friends in the parish of Shephall remember you'.

        Two more names were added to the war memorial tablet in the church. The young man who had joined the RAF first was shot down, captured and later died in the melee as Germany capitulated. The other fell on the distant shores of Italy.

"We will remember them"

War Graves Commission memorial to

David Bygrave, who died of gas poisoning

in a Southampton hospital