The O’Gorman family hoped for a quiet life when they escaped the London Blitz and moved to Oxfordshire during the Second World War.

But it didn’t quite work out that way.

They witnessed a dogfight above their cottage at Juniper Hill, near Bicester.

The family named their new home, a derelict farm worker’s cottage, Pump House, because the only means of water was from a hand pump in the yard.

Tony O’Gorman, of Hethe, near Bicester, writes: “Surrounding the yard were a few tin-roofed barns, in which we kept chickens and rabbits, the former being the staple diet of the war.

“One bright moonlit night, my father came rushing in shouting that an air battle was taking place right over the house.

“He grabbed me to take me outside to see it. My mother cried: ‘Don’t take him out, John, they will see the glint of the moon on the barns‘.

“He took no heed, thank goodness, and I can clearly remember seeing the tracer bullets passing between both aircraft, a sight I have never forgotten.

“I smile now at my mother’s words.

“These men were fighting for their lives – small chance of them thinking of the moonlight on a couple of barns thousands of feet below.”

Later in life, as a writer on Oxfordshire air war matters, he discovered the fight was between a lowly Avro Anson and a ME 110 German night fighter.

The Anson crashed near Buckingham and all on board were killed.

Keep your wartime memories rolling in.