大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of William Whitehead and added to the site with his permission.

I was born in 1917 and called after an uncle who died in the First World War a few days before I was born. I was 22 when the war started. I had left school in 1931 and had been farming in Entwistle and Edgworth - my Dad had some poultry and we had built up from there so that when the war started we had 1000 hens and 20 cattle. As a farmer I was in a Reserved occupation so I didn't join up but it was a difficult time. We weren't allowed enough food to feed the livestock. We had to use kitchen waste from Bolton for our pigs. Day after day you'd find old cutlery in the bottom of the pigs trough. We gave the poultry boiled potatoes and carrots and they had burnt corn from Liverpool after the May Blitz. It was difficult to keep going.

We had to plough but up here it's really a waste of time ploughing. A committee came rouund and told us what we had to grow. We had to plough two of our fields and we got 拢10.00 for an acre of potatoes. We did plant up a field of oats but we only got seed out of it.

I was in the Homeguard for a time. We had to sit on the hills and wait for paratroopers to drop. I had a shotgun to begin with, then we were given rifles. We had to turn out if there was an Air Raid - I've still got the Homeguard rota at home. We would drill at night but I gave it up when we had to parade on Sundays because I wasn't able to leave the livestock for that long.

Being here felt just like carrying on with your normal life but sometimes I wished they'd call me up - especially when I didn't have enough food for the stock. One or two lads I knew were killed. I remember one of them, Kenneth Hackett was in Italy. He wrote a letter to his mum the day before he died saying, " We've got to cross the river tomorrow and I don't think we'll make it. " Another lad, Billy Greenhalgh was killed in North Africa.

I got married in 1942 - it was a Utility wedding but the two mothers in law managed to get hold of stuff from under the counter. I don't know how they did it but they did. So we had cooked meats and all that sort of thing. Our first son was born just after D Day.When I went to see my wife at Towneley hospital I remember seeing all the wounded soldiers at the windows. I think they were glad to be out of the War. One of them said to me " You're doing a better job where you are than if you were in the Forces."

I had a brother - he was nine years younger than me and he was desperate to fly. He joined up as an air gunner. " What are you doing, Committing suicide?" I asked him. But the War finished just as he was about to go out to Japan.

We took over another farm at Islewood Field in Edgworth in 1944 and with it 13 cows that were in calf. The first to calf had twins but we sent for the vet and he said, " Do you know what you've got here?" It was a case of contagious abortion. In the end all thirteen lost their calves and all we could do was bury them.

I'd borrowed money to take over the farm and I knew that if our six original cows were to contract the same conditon I'd be bushed. I'd read in a magazine called Dairy Farmer about a new American serum called S19. So I got into a telephone box (I'd never used one before) and I got through to the Ministry of Agriculture in Preston and asked them to get hold of the serum for me. It came over from America and I injected it into the six cows and it stopped the condition from developing.

I carried on farming until 1955. Then one of our farms went under the reservoir and it wasn't viable to carry on with just the one that was left. After 24 years as a farmer I went to work on the railways and carried on there for the next 26 years.

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