´óÏó´«Ã½

Memories of my agricultural assistance in feeding the nation are much clearer. Obviously it was important that as far as possible the country should be self-supporting in all the food we could grow in England. Gardens and allotments had always supplemented or provided much of the produce that we consumed, but more areas were given over to food production. I remember that several acres of the BGS playing fields were ploughed up on a borrowed tractor by ‘Chips’ Morris, the French master. Potatoes were planted and later harvested by members of the School, who probably consumed most of the harvest in school dinners, either at the canteen or in the Boarding House.
School holidays were rearranged to fit in with the crop cycle. The summer holidays were shortened and there were three-week breaks at Easter and in October. The first was to plant or ‘set’ the potatoes and the October one to collect them — ‘spud-yacking’ as we called it. ‘Chips’ Morris was friendly with Mr Herring, who farmed some hundreds of acres at Wrawby. He arranged for volunteers from BGS to pick potatoes on his farm and some twenty of us duly cycled over to Wrawby in the holidays for this. I was one of the youngest ones, just over twelve when I first went, and we were paid by age and the length of the ‘stint’ we picked. I received three shillings and sixpence a day (which equates with sixpence — or 2.5p — an hour) with extra on Saturday mornings; those aged 14-15 were paid five shillings a day and the most senior boys seven shillings and sixpence. 'Spud-yacking was a formative experience, but it needs a whole article to itself. However, it was in this way I did my bit and was introduced to side of life I had never encountered before. The labour force at spud-yacking time included, as well as schoolboys, women from the area who were earning some extra pin money and, more colourfully, prisoners of war from the Pingley P.O.W. camp on the road out of Brigg towards Bigby. Here an area had been securely fenced off and huts erected on land belonging to Pingley Farm. It can’t have been a strong security prison like Stalag Luft 17 or Colditz and it housed both German and Italian prisoners, more of the latter. We rarely held conversations with these Jerries and Eyties and we never got to know much about them, but we did admire their facility in carving rings out of pieces of perspex and in making cigarette lighters out of bullet cases. The POWs were more interested in the ladies than in us schoolboys, though ‘ladies’ may have been a misnomer. My mother and her friends with their stiff lower middle-class morality would have looked askance at their dress and behaviour, for there were strict class divisions in Brigg society in the 1940s. We were nowhere near the top, indeed well in the bottom half, but my mother’s friends would have considered themselves ‘better’ than these cheerful women in cast-off clothes, mud-stained wellington boots and usually uncorsetted with their toothy grins and ribald remarks. There was much banter, probably of a sexual nature which passed completely over my head, between the POWs and the women; nor did I grasp the probable implications when a couple went off and spent a considerable time behind a far hedge in our precious lunch break. The POWs must have been trusted, because I can’t remember any British soldiers on escort duty. They did, however, add colour to our potato-picking lives and we even learnt a few foreign swear-words, now long forgotten, and the regularly used but then uncomprehended ‘jig-jig’.
One Wednesday afternoon my friends and I volunteered for another duty which enabled us to do our bit. A plane had crashed in a field just outside Brigg, somewhere at the end of Westrum Lane, which contained a few imposing houses on the town’s outskirts over the level crossing on Bigby Road. The larger pieces had all been cleared away by RAF lorries, but there still remained innumerable pieces of glass, perspex and metal scattered around the field(s). We were invited to clear the field(s) so that the spring sowing could be done. We formed up in lines and proceeded with buckets/baskets along the length of the field, picking up the debris as we went. It was rather like harrowing a potato field. I have indistinct memories of this and cannot say whether the plane was a bomber or a fighter, a Jerry or one of ours that had been trying to find its way back to its Lincolnshire base, but failed. However, in the deep recesses of my mind I recollect someone finding an item of pilot’s clothing with body parts attached. It is probably apocryphal, but folk lore soon recalled a flying helmet with a bloody pulp of squashed brains inside and many of us later cast ourselves in the role of the intrepid discoverer of the helmet.
Thus the war proceeded. The news became more and more encouraging and I suppose our hearts were lighter, but nothing memorable affected my daily routine of lessons, homework, school sport on both Wednesday and Saturday afternoons and church for both Matins and Evensong — I was in the choir — on Sundays. D-Day caused a ripple of excitement, but it was all far-removed and none of the foregathering had taken place in our part of Lincolnshire. Eventually came V.E. Day and sometime later V.J. Day.
There were parties and knees-ups and the gas lights were lit again after five years. The long-silent bells of St. John’s pealed out again and a brave new world was about to be created. Well, at least it was to be different. There were street parties, though I can’t remember one taking place on the road between Woodbine Avenue and Central Square. Our celebrations took place in Farmer Hill’s field bordering on Wrawby Road and East Parade. I seem to remember keenly contested races, a tug of war, a surprising array of food and a Fancy Dress competition. The latter sticks in my mind, because my brother (by then aged about six) won a prize. He was a Bevin Boy: at least that is what it said on a placard round his neck, for I had carefully constructed and filled in the large letters. He had on an old flat cap of Dad’s and somewhat ragged clothes liberally spattered with coal dust. His face was also smeared with coal as he commemorated the many young men specially recruited for the mines by Ernest Bevin, the wartime Minister of Labour. David’s success caused much resentment and indignation in the breast of his contemporary, Herbert Collingham, who in his inimitable, gruff and adenoidal voice said in disgust: ‘Have you seen David Rhodes? They’ve given him five shillings for having a dirty face and mucky clothes.’
I, of course, was fourteen at the V.E. celebrations, far above fancy dress and too unathletic to have any chance of racing success, not even in the sack race or the slow bicycle race. I was at the awkward age — too old to go to bed before the evening events and not old enough to go on celebrating after midnight. However, I do remember parading along Wrawby Street and into the Market Place, linked to older boys and girls in conga shuffles and tagged on the ends of impromptu palais-glide lines, fiercely attempting to remain attached and to perform the right kicks and knee-bendings at the appropriate time. I also remember we surrounded policemen and serenaded them, which caused much good-humoured embarrassment. Even Sergeant Hatton was ringed under one lamp post while we raucously and repeatedly assured him that Lloyd George loved my father and that the former Prime Minister reciprocated his affections with equal fervour. I felt I had reached adulthood at last.
Similar festivities were staged on V.J.Day, but they did not have the same mint-fresh novelty and are muted in the memory. They certainly didn’t have the exhilarating effect of the activities surrounding V.E.Day. This was probably due to two main reasons. Hitler was a much more realistic and immediate enemy, for he had occupied our minds for years, and he was dead and his forces that might have been an occupying power had been overcome; Japan and the Japanese were a much more intangible concept, far removed from our understanding both geographically and culturally. Moreover, we were slowly coming to terms with the awesome power of the Nuclear bombs that had brought about the Japanese surrender. We were at peace at last, but a most uncertain future lay ahead.
For me School Certificate was a year away, but I can’t say it had entered my consciousness in the summer of 1945 and the results of the October General Election did not make much impact on me either. However, the war was over, having proved a not unsatisfactory experience for me and having left no adverse effects. A new, post-war period was about to start, but we still had rationing and we had to scavenge around all the likely sources for any sweets. I felt a sense of achievement when I tracked down and purchased some humbugs from two elderly ladies who kept a small sweet shop in the front room of their terraced house in Bridge Street. However, as 1945 turned into 1946, the challenge of School Certificate did impinge upon my consciousness and somewhat belatedly I realised that this year was to be the beginning of a new and crucial chapter of my life.

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