TWO pensioners from Pershore remain on 24-hour call, 20 years after their first demonstration at Greenham Common.

Freddie Fredericks and Anji Clarke from Farleigh Road are so committed to the peace movement and the protection of the environment that they have remained on the contact list, ready to protest and demonstrate if they were ever needed again.

The Greenham Common around-the-clock protest against cruise missiles started in the early 80s when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and Michael Heseltine, nicknamed "Tarzan", was Defence Secretary. The MP got his name after pictures of him with flowing locks and flak jacket flashed across the world as he hovered over Greenham Common in a helicopter.

Women from all over the world joined the protest, outraged at the RAF air base being used by the US Air Forces as part of a NATO agreement. There was no obligation for the US government to obtain Britain's consent before firing nuclear missiles from Greenham Common.

The women arrived at the base from John O'Groats to Lands End, Australia, America and beyond for the biggest stake-out ever seen. Women, children and some men, demonstrated outside the base in every way they knew, through Indian summers and freezing. "We will be there as long as it takes" was the collective message.

Stepsisters Freddie and Anji were living in Portsmouth and were members of the town's Women for Peace movement.

They were in their 40s, married with jobs and grown-up children when they decided to replace words with action, and hit the road.

Freddie, who is now a registered healer and dowser, said: "We spent every weekend and holidays at the base for ten years. We started with a tiny tent, and graduated to a bigger one, and eventually a camper van - it was wonderful to be able to put your knickers on standing up!"

Freddie and Anji's memories are still vivid - especially the violence - as peace campaigners they never hit back.

Anji said: "I got beaten up by a black American woman in uniform one day when I was shopping in Newbury. I was going through an underpass and she shouted abuse at me and punched me in the face - it was hard to take, especially from another women."

Anji was also imprisoned for seven days, had a gun pressed to her head, and was locked in a US prison van for 24 hours for breaking into the base by cutting through the fence. They also had the windscreen of their camper van smashed in the middle of the night and saw men in uniform running away.

Nearly every day bailiffs would descend on the women's camps to rip up their tents and throw them into refuse lorries but mostly the women would see them coming and move the tents quickly until the bailiffs left. Winter was the hardest. Freddie said: "Many a time my toothpaste was frozen when I woke up. Being on night-watch was also very grim." The national media gradually turned on them as spin doctors put out the word that the demonstrators were filthy, unemployed lesbians. Freddie said: "What was most insulting were the reports that we were dirty and unemployed. T he lesbian bit didn't bother us - that was their problem!"

There were good times, though, with lots of laughs. The camaraderie was great and the women thought up so many ingenious ways of drawing attention to themselves that they were constantly in the pubic eye. Freddie said: "We lay in the road, dressed in ridiculous costumes, formed a girdle around the entire base, and held a "noisy" demo where we all shouted loudly and banged and bashed anything we could get hold of for long periods of time - just to annoy them."

The women used to break into the US base on a regular basis to do their washing in the huge laundry. The airmen got so fed up that they enlisted the help of geese to stand guard, but the early warning calls came to an abrupt end when one of the women got the bright idea of throwing spiked raisins over the fence. Freddie said: "It was so funny to see the drunken birds first wobbling all over the place, then dropping to sleep - they were given their marching orders after that."

Both now divorced, Freddie and Anji had moved to Pershore when the protesters won public opinion and the missiles were taken away. But even now the movement is still active.

The huge network of peacekeepers continued the struggle and turned their energies into campaigning against Trident and the nuclear warheads being produced at Aldermaston, now they have started up protests abroad.

The UK Greenham Common women are raising funds for a commemorative site to be built next to the decommissioned nuclear site. They say it will be an inspiring contribution towards a world without nuclear weapons. For more details on the Greenham Commemorative Memorial Appeal, see the Greenham Common website.