The schoolboys Trevor and Stuart Chivers break into the house of WWI hero Gerard Sefton, while he is in hospital, and smashes up everything searching for money. The boys also have a little sideline collecting "lost" golf balls at the golf club and selling them to Claude Greengrass. But the youngest, Stuart, is fascinated by Sefton's war exploits and visits the old man at the hospital. When PCs Bellamy and Ventress want to question the boys their battleaxe of a mother says that her little "angels" have nothing to do with it, and throws them out.

Stuart and Trevor Chivers are at it again. Stuart has got detention with a classmate, Bernie. In revenge Bernie smashes the windscreen of the teacher's car, but the teacher Mr. Powell thinks Stuart did it. When PC Bradley questions him about it, he runs away. He is found the next day with severe stomach pains. PC Bellamy's grandmother complains about lorries rumbling through the village at night. The police cannot do anything about it, so she promises to take action herself. Oscar Blaketon has become WPO of Aidensfield and as such he is responsible for putting the village on alert in case of a war and for the village fallout shelter. Greengrass knows the perfect place for such a shelter, and he and Bernie Scripps are selling accommodations in it for a token annual fee for maintenance with great success.

Maggie Bolton has discovered that she and her husband are having a baby, and that scares her because they have lost a baby before to cot death. To think things over she goes on a weekend trip with Gina. There has been a series of small fires in Aidensfield. Mostly in garbage cans and haystacks and things like that, but one night a cottage is burning, and Neil Bolton rushes in to save a baby trapped inside the house, when the roof collapses. Greengrass has bought an old railway carriage to use as a holiday cottage for paying guests. His first customers are on their way already, but he does not have the proper licenses. Nor does he need any - or so he thinks.