Apley Hall is said to be P G Wodehouse's inspiration for Blandings Castle. His characters were eccentric, however it is the real characters whose lives will intrigue and endure. These are their stories. Labourers, tradesmen and the gentry banded together, put on uniform and served in almost every campaign of the twentieth century. Some never returned. Apley men witnessed historic events, atomic tests, state funerals and the invasion of Normandy. The story might have been different had Hitler won the war and used the Hall as a country retreat, but ordinary men stood in the way: the carpenter who defused the bombs, the plasterer who flew through flak on a thousand-bomber raid, the forester behind the lines in Burma. The procession of lads march on, going out to protect the nation and return to the peace of the Shropshire countryside.