KENT was a deliberately confusing place for a stranger 70 years ago as we braced ourselves for the expected German invasion.

With France gone and the remains of our army regrouping after the "Miracle of Dunkirk" we awaited the first enemy parachutists, probably to be followed by troop-carrying planes and gliders.

Church bells were silenced, to be rung only to signal an enemy landing. All signposts and business names giving a location were covered or taken down. Passengers on blacked-out trains, lit by a few faint blue lamps, had to be alert for a station porter's shouted announcement to know where they were. Posters warned that Careless Talk Costs Lives and urged us to "Be Like Dad, Keep Mum".

We did not talk to anyone about our preparations to resist an enemy and knew little about what was happening in other parts of the country. Those who did know didn't talk. Posters advised Keep Calm and Carry On. So we did.

The Ministry of Information restricted newspaper reports of bombing incidents to a vague location "in south-east England". It was forbidden to name towns or villages or use photographs showing roads, railways and bridges, in fact anything that might be useful to an enemy.

By government order all large open spaces were blocked to prevent enemy aircraft landing. Farmers planted poles or scattered redundant machinery in fields. In Tonbridge the central Sports Ground (the Racecourse), large, flat and an ideal landing ground, was divided with lines of sand-filled barrels.

Many country roads were half-closed with barriers of old vehicles, such as steam rollers, and everyone had to pass through checkpoints manned by the army, police and Home Guard. Failing to answer a sentry's challenge risked being shot, though nobody was.

National Registration identity cards had to be carried at all times.

Kent and Sussex were virtually closed for 20 or 30 miles in from the coast to anyone who did not live there or had an officially approved reason for entering a "defence area".

The Medway was a key line of defence against an enemy expected to advance rapidly from the coast and head for London. Concrete pill boxes were built all along the river and at junctions, some disguised as cottages, bandstands, and even a fish and chip shop.

Tonbridge High Street, identified as a key route for an enemy breaking through, was prepared for possible street fighting with a barbed wire barrier and tank traps between road and pavement.

As the summer of 1940 merged into autumn, Local Defence Volunteers (renamed the Home Guard from August) had a regular Sunday morning exercise heaving concrete anti-tank plugs and steel barriers into prepared slots. Every night the LDV/Home Guard, by now with a few items of proper uniforms and some American and Canadian rifles left over from the war of 1914-18, patrolled important places such as railway bridges.

The late Brian Woods, aged eight when the war began and living on the Barden estate in Tonbridge, remembered his father "guarding a bridge with a rifle but no ammunition" and later storing a Lewis machine gun used for training recruits under Brian's bed.

It is curious that with weapons kept in hundreds of homes there was little gun crime. Wives dusted rifles in the hall among walking sticks and umbrellas.

A large house called Bredbury on Mount Ephraim, Tunbridge Wells, was designated as the seat of a south eastern regional government to take effect if the enemy landed. Bredbury staff worked closely with headquarters of 12 Corps for the defence of southern England based in Broadwater Down. A secret communications centre in tunnels under Broadwater Forest was never used operationally but survived for years as a wartime curiosity.

King George VI 's visit to General Montgomery ("Monty") at Broadwater when an invasion was expected daily was supposed to be secret. But people got to know and he was cheered by a large crowd when he inspected the troops.

The German air force, the Luftwaffe, was over Kent every day from July 1940, pursued and frequently shot down by RAF Spitfires and Hurricanes from local airfields Biggin Hill, West Malling and Detling. We became confident in identifying planes as "one of ours" or "a Jerry" and wondered who had died in the sickening thump of a crashing plane, hoping it was one of our lads on a descending parachute.

By the end of the month the raids had intensified into what became known as the Battle of Britain. Each day brought several alerts signalled by wailing sirens, followed in an hour or so by the steady note of the All Clear, only to be repeated almost immediately when a new raid came over . Large businesses had plane spotters on roofs , and schools trained children to give the alarm.

Most of us who were young in that fraught summer 70 years ago declared afterwards we wouldn't have missed it for worlds. But mothers and fathers with memories of the war 22 years before knew there must be worse to come.