大象传媒

During the war at the height of the bombing, when all the docks were alight around the East End of London, (there was a ring of fire all around London), we lived in East Ham. The house I lived in was fire bombed, and we were in this shelter - (mother and father, sister Rene and myself). We rushed out, father and me and tried to put the fire out, but the water mains had been burst so there was no water in the taps. We did our best but the top part of the house was all burnt - all the roof. The next day we went to work. I went to Beckton Gas Works, but the acid plant had been bombed - so they sent us all home. By dinner time, my father had been sent home, from his work in Poplar, that too had been bombed. Then later Rene came home because her job had been bombed as well. My father said we can't live here, we will have to go down to Farringdon (where my two brothers Johnnie and Ronnie and a sister Kathy had been evacuated). When we got there we had to stay in the Baptist Church Hall. They had divided it off with partitions for the different families. We were there for a couple of days, and then we managed to get billeted around the town. I was in one house, my brothers and sisters in another house....... we were all split up around the town. We were like that for a week or so, then we found out there was a cottage that was empty of a farm but somebody had to work on the farm.

Well it was me that had that job. I went off to see the farmer this day and they were milking. He asked me what I wanted and I explained. He asked if I had ever done any milking, and I replied that this was the nearest I had ever been to a cow let alone milk one!. Anyway I watched him a while and he said come back in the morning at 6 am. So next day I was there bright and early, and he gave me a long white smock to wear down to my ankles, a calico hat, a bucket and a three legged stool. He put me under this cow and said "Now you saw what I was doing yesterday afternoon, you see what you can do". I tried, I was pulling and tugging but couldn't get anything. He showed me again, and gradually I got the idea of it. I carried on and got quite good at it. Freddy Freeguard and Milly the land army girl and myself used to milk about 36 cows every morning. I put the milk through the cooler and into the milk churns and into a milk float with a cob horse driving it, and drove down to the dairy. Then I would come back and start work! (I had already done a day's work by then!) I would muck out the cow sheds, and work on the fields, and again in the afternoon milking again. Every day I would ask him if this cottage was available yet, and he would keep saying he was having it done up and decorated and it would soon be ready.

One day I was down the bottom field, hoeing the thistles between the corn. You had to do that in those days because there were no weed killer then. I looked up to the top road and noticed a removal van going up to the cottage (It was called Stormy Cottage). I went running up to the farmer and asked him what was going on. He replied that there were these people who were bombed out of Plymouth and anyway you are settled in the town all right. The chap getting this cottage was a wood man and he was going to cut down some trees for the farmer in one of his fields. I said there was no way that I was having them move into the cottage promised to us. I told him that I was packing up the job. The farmer then said that I was not allowed to as I was an agricultural worker. I said "We'll soon see about that". I went down to the town to the Labour Exchange and explained that I wanted to give up the job, but they said I had a Green Card, and could not give up, unless the farmer sacks you. So I had to go back and work on this blooming farm! The farmer saw me and said "I told you so now get back to work". I had to get some money - so I had to carry on working. milking twice a day hay making at night I was doing 70 - 80 hours a week. 7 days a week.

It was war between and him. I did everything I could to get him to sack me. He even tried to get me to do some ploughing. One of the horses had itchy legs and when you turned it round at the end of the field, if the chain touched his legs he used to pull and went mad. Once he pulled the other horse down, and they were both thrashing around on the ground. They have hairs on the back of their legs you see and it could not stand having the hairs touched. Then the farmer got me driving the tractor, so that I could do ploughing with that. It was a Fordson tractor and one day we had a wagon load of hay and were half way across this field when the farmer pushed the lever down to put on the brake and told me to jump on the seat and said gradually take your foot off the lever and carry on driving it . There were two solid concrete posts that held the gate up. I drove it straight at the posts. It smashed the shafts of the wagon, and all the hay came off. We were covered in hay. It was war. It went on like this. I got to know my rights and how many hours I had to work, and found out I could stop at 5pm. So if I was milking a cow I would just stop as soon as it got to 5 0' clock. The farmer would shout at me to carry on but I wouldn't. In the end he said help me finish the hay making and then I'll let you go. Then I got a job as a plumber in the town. Eventually my sister Kathy went to work in service to a lady in the Big House, and she let us have a cottage on the estate. We stayed all the family together until I went into the Air Force, and that's another story........

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