During the present spate of Gablemania, when the film stars films and life-story are featured in cinemas; on television and radio; it is interesting to recall the visit of the great man to this part of the country during the war.

In 1944 the Northamptonshire countryside bore evidence of the vast conflict that had been raging for over four years. Air bases were abundant; tanks, lorries, bombs and shells were hidden in almost every wood in the district and thousands of men of many nationalities were being trained in readiness for the coming invasion of Hitler's Europe.

Local airfields were occupied mostly by the U.S.A.F. Eight Bomber Group, flying Fortresses and Liberators. Great fleets of aircraft assembled in the early morning, often before daylight, and formated above their bases before heading eastwards towards Germany or targets in occupied Europe.

There was the inevitable crashes and collisions when so many hundreds of aircraft were in the air. Many lives were lost before the bombers left our shores. The roar of aircraft filled the air both by day and night and we wondered if we would ever live under quiet skies again.

Our local population was swelled by thousands of American servicemen, and as our tailoring firm was on the War Office's approved list for service uniforms, we worked for many pilots and crew members of units stationed in the vicinity.

One morning, in early Spring, an American Staff Car drew up outside our Rushden branch and two American officers of high rank came into the shop. I recognised one of them as Colonel Bowles, who was commanding officer at Molesworth Air Base, for whom we had made service uniforms. His companion's face was almost obscured by a pair of hugh sunglasses.

Colonel Bowles introduced his fellow officer who bore the rank of captain, and said he had brought him along in the hope that we would make him a couple of uniforms. His friend had intended to go to London for his clothes, but when he learnt that the tailor would require several fittings which would entail journeys to London from Polebrook, where he was stationed, he had decided to entrust us with the making of his clothes. Something about this officers' face and speech seemed vaguely familiar and I noticed that he had unusually large ears. When being measured, he removed his sun­glasses and I immediately recognised the well known, handsome features of Clark Gable, king of an empire called Hollywood, who today has not been dethroned, even after death.

He had the full-chested, tapering figure on which one of our uniforms would sit with great credit to the tailor who made it. His considerable charm was at its peak at that time. News that he was in Rushden quickly spread and when he had been measured and left the shop to get into the car, a small bevy of girls waited to greet their idol as he set off back to base.

Our staff found him a man of quiet disposition; easy to please, and when the uniforms were completed, he tried on the garments before a full-length mirror. Coming downstairs from the fitting-room, he presented himself before our little secretary, who had been crippled with polio. "How do I look Ethel?", he enquired, and when she answered, "Very nice" he gave her one of his famous smiles that had such a fascination for so many of his female admirers.

His mission during the war was to photograph enemy territory and also take shots of bombing raids and damage to installations. When I asked one of the crew of the Fortress in which he flew how they protected such a renowned figure from attack by Nazi fighters, he replied that they packed his plane in the middle of a tight formation of Fortresses so that it was virtually impossible for enemy pilots to reach him.

If he had been shot down over Germany, it could have had interesting consequences, as he was Hitler's favourite movie-star and of German ancestry, which Hollywood tried to disguise but a fact the Nazis knew all the same.