is a tiny village on the Dorset coast once home to smugglers and other adventurers. However, in World War II the village was one of the most important in all of England, home to a state of the art radar facility. Along with the airbase in nearby Swanage, Worth Matravers was the frontline of the defense of England from German bombers coming over the English Channel, a site in history that is now almost forgotten.

I have not forgotten since it was at Worth Matravers that my parents met and married in 1940. Mom was a young WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) officer manning the radar facility when her then fiancé, Denis, was shot down in his fighter plane over the channel. Dad was a young army officer whose regiment was being marshalled along the Devon coast before being shipped out to Africa.

Mom, who had a good voice and had a strong dramatic flair, was singing on the makeshift stage that the contingent of military personnel had set up to encourage the troops. According to Dad, he walked into the back of the mess hall, heard Mom singing, and said to his mates, “That’s the girl I’m going to marry.” Four weeks later, they did just that in the nearby church of St. Nicolas.

Mom and Dad held a reception for their friends and spent their wedding night in the nearby Square and Compass. Dad shipped out the following day so hurriedly that he forgot to pay the minister for the wedding service. They didn’t see each other until the war was over.

Pam and I took a stroll down through the village to see St. Nicholas, built in the 1100s and one of the oldest in England. We walked past the cliff trail down to Winspit quarry that Mom and Dad would walk when they were courting, now used as a film site for the Star Wars: Andor series. And then we had a drink in the pub where Mom and Dad spent their wedding night.

There is little left in the village to indicate that this was where radar was developed and used to such devastating effect in England’s war effort. Nor that at one time there were 2,000 military personnel stationed in this village alone. The countryside bears no scars of that historic conflict, but if it were not for its historic importance, my parents never would have met.

September 2022