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Date of photo: 2015	© Copyright David Howard and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
The Stags Head was situated at 31 Chilton Street. This pub opened in 1813 and closed c1955. Now in residential use, it is the far right building in the above photo.
Source: David Fisher
'But when the Americans suddenly disappeared the villages seemed very strange without them. On the evening of the 5th when Eisenhower was at the airfield, the bar at the Stags Head in Chilton Foliat a couple of miles away was a desolate place. Nobody was in except the local regulars sitting over their mild and bitter. The bottled ale and the strictly rationed whisky, which had usually all gone by nine o'clock were left on the shelves that night. The landlord and the regulars in desultory conversation, wondered where the Americans had gone, and agreed that they really rather missed the noise and the bustle, and reflected on how dead the place would have been all winter if they had never been there.
At closing time with these thought still in his mind, the landlord locked the bar, and washed up the few glasses, and then went out to shut up his chickens; and it was while he was out there in the meadow behind the pub that the airfield came to life. The aircraft came up over the elms in the park where the American camp stood empty now and silent; in twos, in dozens, in scores, they circled overhead and took up formation, and others came over from further north in hundreds. Standing there in awe, he called to his wife to come and listen. "This is it", he said.'
Excerpt from 'Dawn Of D Day' by David Howard
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