TWENTY-year-old Deddington baker Sid Berry had never been much further than the Oxfordshire county boundary when he volunteered for the Royal Navy, but spent four perilous years sailing the world during the Second World War.

Sid’s story, and those of hundreds of other young servicemen, women and evacuees from one tiny Oxfordshire parish, have been put together in A Parish at War, a military record of the north Oxfordshire villages of Deddington, Clifton and Hempton.

The book, by Michael Allbrook and Robert Forsyth, gives a unique insight into how the parish’s young people found themselves thrust from their everyday lives in rural Oxfordshire into the hardship and horror of war.

Names, service details, photographs and experiences from the Battle of Waterloo in 1812 to the recent war in Iraq are covered, with accounts of life in the Home Guard, the Women’s’ Land Army & Timber Corps, the Royal Observer Corps, Women's Volunarty Service and of how the parish managed the evacuees who came to live there.

Co-author Robert Forsyth, 72, a retired Royal Navy nuclear submarine commander who lives in Deddington, said: “The book contains tales of incredible courage, of love and of how a whole generation of young people risked their lives, without question, for their country.

“I didn’t appreciate just how matter-of-factly the average young service person – who had probably never travelled further than Banbury, found themselves in strange and exotic places such as the sands of Africa or the jungles of Burma.”

Researching the book took four years, and last month Mr Forsyth and Mr Allbrook presented a copy to the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Research Centre Library.

Colonel Tim May, vice-chairman of Soldiers of Oxfordshire Trust, which is planning to build a military museum for the county at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock, called it “an invaluable reference work for us in years to come.”

A Parish at War costs £10 and is available from Deddington Library and Banbury Tourist Information Centre, in Castle Quay.

All proceeds will go to the Deddington branch of the Royal British Legion and will eventually be used to provide a memorial to men who died during the First World War but whose names do not feature on the parish war memorial.

Sid Berry was born in Hudson Street, Deddington, and started his working life as an apprentice at Course’s Bakery.

On volunteering for the Royal Navy in September 1940, he was made a cook.

But nothing in his life to date could have prepared him for the four years of near-constant warfare at sea that followed.

His first experience of battle was on board the destroyer HMS Mashona, which joined the hunt for the German battleship Bismarck in the Atlantic.

Sid recalled seeing shells from British battleship HMS Rodney aimed at the Bismarck passing overhead.

Shortly after seeing the Bismarck sunk, HMS Mashona was ordered back to Plymouth but en route she was attacked and sunk by a German Focke-Wulf patrol aircraft.

Sid told how when he came to the surface after jumping overboard, he thought he had gone blind, but in fact his cork lifejacket had ridden up over his head.

He was not rescued until after nightfall and then spent six weeks in hospital with an injured leg.

Sid then served on HMS Ashanti which carried out escort duties for numerous Arctic convoys bound for Russia. On one occasion off Bear Island they withstood an attack from 50 Heinkel 111 bombers, each of which carried two torpedoes. Eastbound convoys arrived in Archangel, which had little to offer by way of recreation except joining their Russian hosts in heavy drinking competitions.

Sid returned home with a Soviet Navy rating’s hat won as a prize.

In August 1942 HMS Ashanti was sent to the warmer, but no less dangerous, waters of the Mediterranean to take part in Operation Pedestal, an attempt to run 50 merchant and naval ships past a gauntlet of German and Italian aircraft, E-boats, minefields and submarines to bring much-needed supplies and fuel to besieged Malta.

At Action Stations, when there was no cooking to be done, Sid helped out with ammunition supply to an anti-aircraft gun.

In early 1944, Sid volunteered for the submarine service, thinking this might be safer.

He joined HMS Selene in the Far East and transferred to HMS Vivid in July 1945 to return to the UK.

In 2004, at home in New Street, Deddington, Sid made audio recordings of his naval experiences and recollections of village life for the Deddington Online website. He took part in every Remembrance Day march in the Market Place until 2005, before his death at the age of 86 in December 2006.

His daughter, Janet Macey, 52, now lives in Sid’s former home with her family.

She said: “Dad brought my two brothers and I up after our mum died, and he was a very good cook. But he didn’t really talk too much about the war until he got older. Like most, he had never travelled far before going off to war, but he was very proud to have witnessed the Bismarck being sunk. He was pleased to have someone take down his memories and transcribe them for this book. We all miss him a great deal.”