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This story A6336858is submitted by The British Schools Museum, Hitchin with Ken Burton’s permission.

I was nine years old when we heard on the wireless the announcement that England had declared war on Germany. We lived in the village of Pirton, near Hitchin, Hertfordshire and at eleven in the morning I was in the orchard cleaning out one of the hen houses when the air raid siren sounded announcing the outbreak of war: I was with my step father Alf Pearce. He had served with the Canadian Amy in the First World War in the trenches in France. I was surprised to see tears in his eyes at that moment.

The first way the war came home to me was when the evacuees arrived in the village, and we took in a little boy called Albert. I thought he was a strange boy, the first meal we had he did not know how to hold a knife and fork, he did not like the food we had and said why could we not go to the fish and chip shop, I had never been to one and did not know what he was talking about. Being an only child brought up by older step parents I was very jealous of Albert and did not get on with him, he only stayed a few weeks when his mother arrived and took him back to Seven Sisters Road Finsbury Park.

By the summer of 1940 a lot of the evacuees had gone back. We had spent hours walking round the school playground in our gas masks, every afternoon for half an hour. As I always had done since I was seven I waited for my uncle Harry to arrive to pay me for helping in last year's harvest, and say I would be coming again, except this year we were to join up with Bert Weedon at Hammonds farm so I was to go down and get my orders from him. I did not need telling twice as he had got modern tractors instead of the horses uncle Harry used.

Bert was in the house when I arrived. He took one look at me, asked how old I was and said I ought to learn to drive a tractor. He took me to one of the barns and there was a small International tractor. He said get on it, showed me the clutch, brakes and gears, started it up (this was done with a starting handle), and said "go on then learn to drive", with that he disappeared round the corner and left me to it, I have to say my friend and I had always fiddled about with machines so I had some idea, and for some time had an Austin Seven chassis which we used to drive around the garden, when we could scrounge some petrol which was pink and only for agricultural use.

That harvest in 1940 was a complete change from my earlier years working with my uncle. Previously it was hard work with my uncle shouting at me at everything I did. I was with my friend Sam Burton, part of a team. We both drove tractors and joined in all the other harvest time activities as a pair making one man: This we did for the rest of the war until I left school and started work. We were involved in mixing up the animal feed during the winter on Saturdays to feed the cattle in the yards for the week; the tractor was always there to travel to the yards and deliver the feed.

We were stopped on numerous occasions by the local police man, Bill Worby asking to see my license which he knew I had not got; it became a ritual on Saturdays. There were other occasions when after school Bert would send for me to go to Franklin's Mill at the Hitchin station to collect cattle feed, the only opposition was from the headmaster of the Grammar School I was attending by then, who spotted me driving through the town in my school uniform. I had forgotten to change that afternoon.

I had just started school at the new secondary School in Old Hale Way in Hitchin. We travelled by bus and whenever the siren sounded we all had to assemble in the corridor behind the hall, the boys one end and the girls the other. We used to slip out of the door and watch the German planes flying along the railway line towards Henlow, that was until we got found out. After one year I changed Schools and went to Hitchin Grammar School. Here we had to assemble in the cloisters and in the changing rooms, which were under the school, during air raids.

During that early part of the war we used to see enemy aircraft flying around. On one occasion a plane flying over spotted me on a tractor in the middle of a field ploughing. As it headed towards me I left the tractor, which would follow the furrow on its own, and laid in the furrow until he let off a few rounds and flew off. I then had to run to catch the tractor up before it ran in the ditch.

Every evening in the winter we used to go around the house and fit the black out screens to all the downstairs windows. These were wooden frames with thick tarred paper tacked on. Then we would go outside and make sure no light showed. We only had oil lamps and candles so the low lights we had were not difficult to keep out. When it was bed time the bedroom curtains were drawn and the candle only used to see to get into bed. This was necessary because Uncle Alf, as I used to call him, was an air raid warden and used to go round the village checking for lights showing.

My friend and I used to spend the winter evenings either wandering about the village or building machines with our Meccano sets. Out in the village we could hear the aircraft flying over and could tell if they were ours or theirs by the noise. We used to hear the bombs exploding and could see the reflection in the sky of the fires burning. We did experience a few bombs nearby, three dropped down Hambridge way in the brook which borders Uncle Harry's field, Sam and I went down there next morning and found three big holes in the brook, the ground really did shake that night.

The next happening was one morning setting off to school. I used to bike to Hitchin and I was told I could not go up to Punch Cross, where the Icknield way crosses because a stick of incendiary bombs had dropped setting on fire a straw stack and the home guard had closed the road whilst they searched for the carcasses and any unexploded ones, That was a good enough excuse not to go to school that day. I could of course have gone across the fields; there was a good path but I did not.

The war passed off without having much effect on me. My Friday afternoon job was to take the accumulator to Ted Titmus, the village hardware shop, to get it charged and bring the charged one back and we had to sit through the six o'clock news.

Later on we used to watch the doodle bugs flying over with their funny 'pop pop' noise as they passed. One Friday night one fell in Dane field up Wood Lane. Next morning Sam and I set off to find it before the Home Guard could get there, we found the exhaust end and stood it up to see how tall it was. The next person to arrive was Frank Howard, the Pictorial photographer who took our picture and it was in the paper next week.

The next one to land was on the trees at Toot Hill next to the church, about five hundred yards from our house, that was at about four in the morning. It demolished two cottages and damaged a few more. See Article A7321259 for a photograph.

I was, by that time, in the Army Cadets and our job was to act as runners for the ARP, Home Guard and if necessary the fire brigade. I did not wake but they woke me up and I set off on my bike. The first job was to carry a message to the Home Guard hut. This meant going by the damaged houses and hearing a horse I went to investigate and found a horse with the roof of the stable resting on its back. It was holding the stable up.
Luckily no one was killed and the village hall was pressed into use for the families who were homeless.

When the V2 rockets arrived we only had one near us as far as I know, that dropped near Henlow. I was at the time carrying a bag of cattle food across the yard in the snow. I saw snow rolling up into ball and then the blast hit me and knocked me over, it was then I heard the explosion.

All through the war there were dances every Saturday night, one week at Pirton and the next at Shillington. The band was Bobby Simpkins and the girls would all sit down one side of the hall and then after the pubs closed the men would turn up and the floor was crowded. There used to be lots of RAF men arriving apart from the village men - those that worked on the farms and were exempt from the forces. There was never much drunkenness because beer was in short supply. Each pub, and there were five in the village, had a darts team and great rivalry went on as the winter ended and the teams were competing for the cup.

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