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This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Rod Sutton on behalf of Geoff Gregory, the author, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

I was at school during the world war two because I was born in 1930. At the age of 12 we were asked to volunteer for farm work. I and my younger brother volunteered. A lot of our school friends were farming lads coming from villages and so on and we’d been playing on farms and were quite used to farm animals and farm machinery so we volunteered to do this farm work.

We used to get seven weeks summer holiday and because we were doing this farm work we were allowed another12 weeks of school to do it. My education suffered alarmingly.

Because we were conversant with the farms, animals and the machinery when we went there the run of the mill lads were doing all the stooking corn and general jobs whilst my brother and I were driving tractors, riding and handling shire horses. These horses were gentle giants as recognised but they could be a bit wilful. I remember one of the jobs we had was to take them to be shod, I rode one horse and was leading two others. We had about three miles down country tracks to go to the forge. On the way to the forge it was quite gentle and easy going, horses shod, leg up onto the back by the blacksmith, turn for home and then just hang on because when the horses were turned for home they new where they were going and the warm stable and feed was waiting. All we had to do was hang on and they just more or less just galloped all the way home. You can image a twelve year old or two twelve year old lads on the backs of these huge horses each riding one with two others attached flying up these country lanes as though all hell was breaking loose, the villagers and everybody scampered for cover! We always got back to the farm safely because it was no trouble — it was like sitting on an armchair.

The other jobs we had were driving the old fashioned Fordson tractors, no brakes just one big clutch pedal. We used to operate this by putting the hands under the steering wheel, standing on the pedal, pushing up with your hands and down with your legs, that operated the clutch! This we were doing all day long with a big trailer on the back with farm hands throwing up the sheaves onto the back and then we had to drive them back to the stack yard. There was an elevator, we climbed up onto the back with a pitchfork and threw this huge load of straw bales (stooks as we called them) onto the elevator to put onto the stack. Later on the threshing machine would come round and then the repeat process was done you threw them off the stack onto the threshing machine and then stacked the straw at the back.

I first started at 12 and finished at 14, we left school at 14. On the farm we used to do the harvest and then in September time we used to go to the fields for potato picking. Again we would drive the tractors and pick up the spuds. It was quite back breaking work but it was an experience.

I left school at 14 in 1944 and got a job as a telegram boy. One of the jobs we had which was most unpleasant was taking telegrams round to wives and sweethearts whose husbands or boyfriends weren’t coming home — had been lost or killed. I remember that the instructions from our supervisor were: if the lady feinted fan them with your hat! ‘cause we used to have these silly little pill box hat things with a peak on.

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