More scenes from wartime Pocklington this week, courtesy once more of Jim and Margaret Ainscough’s great new book, Pocklington At War.

Last week we looked mainly at the airfield on the edge of the town: 922 airmen who took off from here were to die in the service of their country during the war.

This week we look more generally at how the war affected the lives of those who remained in Pocklington and neighbouring villages.

The town itself was to suffer only two civilian wartime casualties, both when a German bomb fell on Garths End. It was a dark November evening in 1940, Jim and Margaret report. “A lone German pilot may have mistaken his airfield target when he dropped a stick of bombs on Garths End.”

Most of the bombs caused only minor damage. However, one badly damaged Number 27 Garths End, and killed Joan Young. Her father, Albert, was seriously injured and died in hospital two days later.

Many people were attending Armistice Day services when the bombs fell. The Yorkshire Herald reported: “Though the bombs could be heard falling, there was no panic among the congregations.

“In most cases the people joined in the singing of well-known hymns, and when the danger had passed they quietly dispersed to their homes.”

With the airfield nearby, the danger from bombs continued right throughout the war.

Even in December 1944, with the war in Europe in its final phase, no one was safe. Germany resorted to the V1 flying bombs, or “doodlebugs”. One landed by the far side of the airfield, close to Barmby Moor, at just before 6am one morning.The young Gerald Fountain lived with his family in a house near to where the rocket landed. “I remember us having a disturbed night through aircraft activity… then way out in the distance hearing an unusual noise, now getting louder and louder,” he recalls in the book.

“Then all went quiet, and all of a sudden a terrific explosion practically blew us out of our beds.”

In true, stoic wartime fashion, The Yorkshire Herald’s headline was: “Fly bomb havoc caused in Yorkshire village – householders cheerful under terrifying ordeal.”

In one way or another, as Jim and Margaret make clear, the war affected the lives of every person in the town.

• Pocklington At War, by Jim and Margaret Ainscough, is on sale, priced £5, at Simply Books and various newsagents in Pocklington, and at the Yorkshire Air Museum. It can be ordered from the Barbican Bookshop in York.