大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Val Plant of Leicestershire Library Services on behalf of John Briggs and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in 1929 so I remember most of the wartime farming. At the start of the war the government created committees, known to farmers as the WarAg. They had a difficult job to do as Britain had to try to feed itself. Each area committee had to produce a set amount. Farmers were given orders and told how much wheat, potatoes and sugar beet to grow. This caused a lot of problems as some ground is not suitable for certain crops.

There was no electicity or piped water in our village, Barton in the Beans. Milking was done by hand and water to cool the milk had to be carried approximately 25 yards. Oil lamps lit the house and cow shed and the kitchen of the house had a large black range.

My father, Frank, and the other men in the village had two nights a week either fire watching or at the local fire station.

Twenty Italian prisoners were sent with two guards to help lift potatoes. After capitulation one prisoner came each day on a bike.

I left school at Christmas 1942, only just 14, as my father had no help on the farm. I had been helping with the milking from the beginning of the war, when I was 10, starting at 5.45am. Labour was difficult during the war as most young men went in the forces. In the latter part of the war we had land girls. When the war started we had three horses and a 1928 Standard Fordson tractor.

I remember soon after the war started we had a shower of leaflets 'Hitler's last appeal to reason' which my sister and I collected and sold for the Red Cross. I remember watching the bombing of coventry when the skyline was lit up; and the planes and gliders going over all day on D-Day.

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