The story begins when David Ashby comes home on a weekend pass, he is a Captain in the Army. He finds his home bombed and his two children in the care of an ARP Warden at the side of the road. Shirley, his wife, arrives. She had been to meet the children from school due to the air raid. David takes his family to his parents' farm in Dorset. The story is both happy and sad but they love their life in the village, a perfect place.