大象传媒

WORKING IN THE FOREST

I went to school until I finished at the age of 14, and of course I wasn鈥檛 old enough to join the Army and therefore, my first job was on timber, dragging timber with a chain through the woods for the Ministry of Supply.

This was done using horses to drag. I was away from home doing that for 4 yrs and I had a job to find lodgings. We carried our own food for the week on the back of a bike because, of course it was all rationing, and you couldn鈥檛 get even a loaf of bread, we had to take coupons to get that.

I got my cousin a job with me and we both worked together and we lodged where we could, but sometimes we had to stop in a tent and in the end our boss got us a hut that we could sleep in. We had to take a little old paraffin stove so when it was wet we had a stove to boil a kettle and fry our bit of food on, and then on days when it was fine we had an open fire outside the hut where we used to do our cooking. I had a gun under the bed and we used to shoot a rabbit and scrounge some potatoes off the farmer and we used to make a meal out of that, because it was hard times then and you couldn鈥檛 go and get what you wanted to eat because it was all rationed. Where we were lucky, we used to kill a pig and we would take a joint of boiled bacon with us which would last us several days and I think that was the big thing that kept us in food.

It was pretty hard work, we were cutting the wood for the pit props, and there were a good many fellers felling the trees. You had 2 fellers tossing the timber and each gang had a horse. They would fell the timber in the morning and it was sawn in the afternoon, and when you have got to fetch timber from quite a distance it took a long time to get it down to them to saw. We stabled the horses at different farms and in the summertime they were turned out on grass, but in the morning we brought them in and fed them on oats, and also when we brought them back in the evening we gave them oats before we turned them out. They were heavy horses and working with them, going back in those days, they knew what you were saying to them. They got that when you undid the chain off the timber on the bottom of the wood and they turned them back up the ride where I was working and I called, he would come back to me so that I could send another toss of timber down, and they were so knowing that if he found my bag he would open eat and eat my sandwiches!

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by June Woodhouse (volunteer) of the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Hereford and Worcester on behalf of V Layton (author) and has been added with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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