大象传媒

Summer of 1943 found me 14 years old and grown enough to spend my summer holiday helping on the land at the school harvest camp. We were all anxious to go as not only were we to be paid but the break away from home routines was eagerly anticipated - we lived a very quiet existence as everything was shut down for the war.What a surprise it was to learn that we were to camp in the elementary school at Haddenham, England鈥檚 largest village and only a few miles from my Hester grandparents at Princes Risborough.Two of my grandfather Hester鈥檚 cousins (he had 57) whom I had not met previously, lived in the village.Off we went with our bicycles by train to Aylesbury and then by bike to camp.The woman who cooked our school meals came along as cook as well as several masters. We ate very well. One of the science masters (teachers) constructed a wooden box that he filled with hay so it could be used to insulate a large pot of boiling porridge. The porridge would be placed while very hot into the box late in the evening so that it could cook overnight and be ready for breakfast in the morning. In this way, the cook did not have to rise so early to get it ready and we all learned a practical lesson in physics. We all thought the porridge tasted better.

The camp was divided up into two sessions lasting two weeks, but many of us stayed for the full month.Each morning we either rode our bicycles out to the farm to which we were assigned, or were taken there by truck if it were far. We showed up all eager to start helping with the harvest but nothing was ripe until later in the month of August. So, for the first while, we were out either hoeing rows of turnips or slashing weeds with billhooks in carrot fields.The latter was more fun as we found the fields full of frogs that we could throw up in the air and chop with our billhooks as they fell to the ground.
Three friends and I had managed eventually to get jobs away from the rest and had a much better time of it.

At one farm just outside the village we worked for a Mr. Rose who, I was to learn years later was a distant relative. We were only thirty miles from our homes but I was the only one of the group who understood what he said.So much for the Bucks dialect of the time.Of course, when he indicated one of us should go to the farmhouse to bring back tea, or do some other job that relieved the monotony, I would tell my friends that I had been selected for the job, while they stood wondering what Mr. Rose had said.
We finished up the camp with a two-week job harvesting on a farm at Hardwick north of Aylesbury to which we were driven every day.The farmer was very good to us and tipped us each a pound. This was great money as we were being paid only eight pence an hour and it took 240 pence to make a pound. A pound represented thirty hours of work. We kept the money and did not put it in the general pool as we were supposed to.

The farmer must have forgiven us the occasion he returned early from his lunch to find us re-enacting the chariot race from Ben Hur as we raced the horses and carts around the field.His face got very red and he told us in his best Bucks accent 鈥渂oi Chroist if Oi were your bloody schoolmaarster Oi wouldn鈥檛 鈥榓lf give it to 鈥榚e鈥�.Strong stuff for those days.
Part of the crew consisted of two Italian prisoners of war.They were decent enough fellows but spoke little English so we could do no more than laugh with each other and teach them disgusting expressions in English.They wore Italian army uniforms with great, multicoloured patches on their backs and knees covering holes, which had been purposely cut out of their uniforms. They would never get far dressed like that if they escaped - something neither seemed disposed to try.Each lunch time, they would get away from us all and cook their own meal then go to sleep. As soon as the end of lunch was heralded by the return of the farmer we would be sent to find the Italians and wake them up with a gentle prod from our pitchforks.

Harvesting was a labour intensive job. Combine harvesters had either not been invented or simply not introduced into England.First the reaper would go around the field cutting down the wheat and tying the sheaves.We were not invited to participate in the slaughter of rabbits at the conclusion of the reaping but arrived later to stand the sheaves up into stooks each of eight to fourteen sheaves.Once the wheat was considered dry enough, it would be carted and built into a rick, about the size of a small house, to keep it dry until the threshing machine arrived. The farmer showed me how to build the sheaves up on a two wheel cart which had extension 鈥渓adders鈥� over the horse in front and projecting from the back as well.I liked doing this and got pretty good at it - at least none of my loads fell off! I had to rely on the good offices of a friend to throw the rope over the load and tie it down to provide the means by which I could descend to ground level.

Once the threshing box arrived, it was all hands to the task. Power for the thresher was provided by a stationary tractor, to which it was connected with a long belt. One day the belt broke and there were about 100 feet of 4 inch wide belt flaying all over. You never saw people scatter so fast. By the time someone had turned off the tractor and we all stopped running we saw the farmer already in his car on his way for a new belt.

My job was mostly as one of the two who fed the sheaves into the top of the threshing box. We spent the day bent over with a knife tied to our wrists, cutting and discarding the string from the sheaves before spreading the straw and dropping them inside. It did not require much intellectual skill and was hard work.When sheaves were not spread well the machine would utter a nasty sounding thud that invariably drew a yell from whoever was in charge. Presumably our lack of attention to the job caused a grievous mechanical injury but I never discovered what.On other occasions I would work on the baler where I threaded wire with which the bales were tied.

We were glad of the tea breaks in mid-morning and afternoon. A Polish airman on leave was helping on the crew. He gave the best demonstration I ever saw of the use of a scythe to cut wheat from the corner of the field missed by the reaper. After that we all tried our hand with mixed success during the tea break.

By now I had become more accustomed to foreigners. Had I not met Americans, both black and white, Canadians, Italians, and Poles? - but no Germans. The gentleman who was to correct this deficiency was of course a prisoner of war. My parents and I met him quite by accident while touring some of the less impressive remains of the Roman occupation along Hadrian鈥檚 Wall near my grandparents鈥� home at Humshaugh.We stumbled across a group of German prisoners working on parole and consequently unguarded on the excavation of the remains of the abutment of a Roman bridge.One of the party strolled over to greet us, his grey uniform patched on the back of the jacket and the knees of his trousers in the usual manner.My mother turned to my father and grabbed his arm 鈥淥h Syd, he is going to speak to us.What are we going to do?鈥� There was no escape.There were no guards around.My father decided to see what happened.As he related afterwards, 鈥渋t is my country so why should I back off?鈥� We were uncertain how to behave but the man overlooked our obvious coolness and addressed us in perfect English.This was to be the first of our surprises as he continued to give us a detailed history of the Roman occupation and when the bridge was built and how it fit into what had gone on.He was certainly nothing like what I had been led to expect! Our informant seemed well-pleased to be out of the war and my father, who was clearly somewhat embarrassed in the beginning, allowed that the man seemed a decent sort of fellow who, as he reminded us 鈥渨e are not all savages you know鈥�.Other prisoners of war, who would not give their parole, went to work on heavier duties and were guarded all the time.

Early in 1944 the newscasts were always mentioning airborne rocket attacks against 鈥渆nemy installations in the Pas de Calais area鈥� of NW France.We suspected this had something to do with the 鈥淪econd Front鈥� as the expected invasion of France became known.鈥淪econd Front Now鈥� had been scrawled on walls for years especially by sympathizers and admirers of the fight Russia was putting up.It was only a matter of time until one was started.The raids did seem to be rather more concentrated than we would expect.
It turned out that the targets were launching sites for the German 鈥渞eprisal weapons鈥� which our Intelligence had known about for some time.These were terror weapons known for short as V1, V2 and V3. The V1 was a jet-propelled bomb about the size of a small plane but without a pilot, the V2 a rocket, and V3 a rocket propelled shell.All these devices were intended for use against London.The V1 was used extensively, the V2 only a little and the V3 not at all.

Had Adolf Hitler seen the reaction of our neighbour Mrs.Fryer to the supposed terror weapons, he might have changed his opinion about their impact on the civilian population.When a 鈥渂uzz鈥� bomb, as the V1 weapons became known, came over in the daytime she would run out into the back garden and shake her fist at the plane as it flew over.鈥淕et away, go on home鈥� she would shout.This was hardly the scared reaction Hitler had hoped for.There was no confusing the V1 weapon with any other flying object, as it was easily identifiable by the position of the jet engine mounted on top of the tail.The V1 attacks got into gear early in 1944.The Germans had little navigational control over these devices except for the quantity of fuel.When that ran out, the device would glide to the ground and explode.With its jet engine, it was faster than the propeller fighters so there was little that could be done to bring the device down.The scary bit came at night when you heard the engine cut out but of course could see nothing.Where would it land? We got plenty of the bombs in the northwest London but the news programmes always spoke of serious attacks in the southeast of the city.

We learned later that this was a ruse to mislead the Germans into thinking they had put enough fuel on board only to bring the bombs down short of the centre of the city which was of course the target.British intelligence was trying to get the Germans to put in even more fuel so the bombs would overshoot.These bombs caused a lot of damage and would come at any time of the day or night.Had they been used early in the war they really would have been a terror weapon but by now we were hardened to such devices.

By this time, Herbert Morrison had replaced Anderson as the minister in charge of home defence.Anderson was remembered for the shelters he had distributed to those who wanted to build them outside their houses at the beginning of the war.Now it was Morrison鈥檚 turn.The shelters named after him were like enormous dining room tables made from steel.Underneath was a layer of bedsprings on which we slept for several months during the worst of the V-1 raids. The sides were of stiff wire.The whole outfit would withstand the collapse of the house and I am sure they saved many lives. My father and I had quite a job putting the shelter together and even more trouble getting it taken down later.My mother produced tablecloths she had inherited which had been made to cover the large tables used by the larger families of former generations.

Years later we were to learn that the British intelligence had known all about the V1 for several years.In fact, a model on test flight had gone astray allowing the Polish underground to capture it and arrange for it to be flown surreptitiously to England on a dark night.The story eventually leaked to us at the time was that the nature of the device had been interpreted by intelligence from the shadow cast by an early V1 at the weapons testing station at Peenemunde on the Baltic coast of Germany.

There was little point in sounding air raid alerts as the bombs would come over at any time.Many of the larger office buildings and schools appointed watchers to stay on the roof to spot buzz bombs coming in. When one looked like landing near the building or school, the watchers rang a bell and everyone would duck down until they heard the explosion.By this time, the air raid warden system was very efficient so the effects of the bombs were reduced quite a bit, certainly the terror the bombs were supposed to invoke never developed.

At school we would spend the day ducking down while appointed monitors pulled the curtains in the hope of slowing any flying glass.At school the job of standing on the roof and ringing the bell when a buzz bomb came into view was eagerly sought but I was a year too young.Fire watching teams consisting of groups of senior stayed on the roof both night and day.These teasm were trained to immediately extinguish fires that might be caused by incendiary bombs.These had to be doused right away before they spread.Every building and household by now had a 鈥渟tirrup pump鈥� which could be stood in a bucket of water to produce a stream which could be directed at any fire.We all knew the procedure.Our stirrup pump at home served as a spray for our apple trees for years after the war.

This was the year 1944 and the one in which I took the School Certificate Examination that was then a major milestone in the education system.The examination was supposed to be taken at age 16 but our school took it a year earlier.I had avoided the stress of having to take the 鈥渆leven plus鈥� exam but there was no getting around this one.Exam papers were prepared and printed for all the examinees to take at a set time.Nobody knew what the questions were to be until the master invigilating the exam would open the envelope containing the questions in front of us with great ceremony and pass them out.Half way through the French dictation we had to duck under the desks for ten minutes so we were rewarded with a second, unplanned hearing much to everybody鈥檚 relief! Apparently the rules required the dictation be given without interruption.

Latecomers to school were always called upon to give an excuse.At this time, we could always invoke a 鈥渂uzz鈥� bomb. One boy called J.B.Rose (we never called each other by first names) arrived late and was asked for his excuse.鈥淚 was sitting on the toilet when a 鈥渂uzz鈥� bomb went off and blew the window frame onto my head.My father told me to stay home for a while to help clean up the glass, sir.鈥漈he master responded that this was the first time he had heard that excuse and continued with the lesson. 鈥淪it down, Rose鈥�.Rose always maintained the story was true.

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