大象传媒

At the end of Summer Term at Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, either in 1944 or 1945, I am not sure which, together with other boys from the school, I spent a couple of weeks at a farming camp. At the time, labour available for farm work was in short supply and with the harvest due this was our chance to help out and, perhaps, earn some pocket money.
We assembled at Waterloo Station and took a train to Andover. From there we boarded a bus, which took us to the small village of Linkenholt, about eight miles to the north. This was to be our base for the next fortnight. If I recall correctly, our tents were in a field opposite the church and next to what was probably the village hall. It was in this small hall that we had our breakfast and evening meal, prepared by two attractive young ladies. The hall also served as our 鈥渃ommon room鈥� in the evenings. We slept on straw mattresses, about six to each bell tent. I recall that my tent companions included the extrovert of our group who, after 鈥渓ights out鈥�, regaled us with typical schoolboy smutty jokes. I can still remember some of them to this day, but this is hardly the forum for repeating them!
We were each allocated to a farm in the area, which included the villages of Vernham Dean and Vernham Street. How we got to our allocated farm I don鈥檛 recall.
My first job was to clean out a cowshed of about a foot depth of manure, worth quite a lot these days to organic gardeners. It was a back breaking job for someone not used to manual work, even though my ancestry traces back to farm workers in Monmouthshire. Things then got better and most of the time was spent setting up stooks of sheaves of wheat, cut and bound by an antiquated machine pulled by an equally ancient tractor. Once the sheaves were dry enough, we loaded them onto carts to be taken to a threshing machine and then took the straw to make a large rick.
At the end of the fortnight, I think we had all had enough of farm work. Fortunately the weather had been kind to us so it was an enjoyable interlude where we felt we had helped the war effort. However, it did not result in our making much pocket money.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.