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This story has been entered onto the site by Helena Corner and Rebecca Dodds (age 14) on behalf of Henry Herbert Dyson and they fully understand the conditions.

Henry Herbert Dyson was born in 1925 near Masham where he grew up. He left school a few months before the war began to help on his father’s farm. During the war he wasn’t required to fight with the allied forces because he was helping at home. The work he did on the farm was essential to helping the country through the war. Although the war did affect him, he was very lucky’ as his family stayed at home with him.
One memory he has is of the poor children who had been living in Tyneside and were evacuated to houses in his village. However, he didn’t have anyone staying in his house as there were already seven in the small farm house.
To help with the war effort there were several changes that occurred in the area he grew up in. Firstly, a historic example of a three-field system called Marfield was ploughed up to make space for the growing, if more essential crops. This was done by local farmers with the help of land girls. Another dramatic change that Henry faced was that all his family’s spare land was given to the government for munitions dumping and as a result’ there were extra Pioneer Corps sent to the area to handle munitions. To the disappointment of many of the young men in the area, this meant that there was a lot of competition for the local girls with many of them choosing the uniformed soldiers over the local lads.
Although Henry didn’t have any evacuees or land girls staying at his farm, they did get a group of soldiers from the Durham Light Infantries staying in their outbuildings. These men had been sent straight from Dunkirk to assist with the munitions. One vivid memory that has stayed with Henry is that every Monday all the DLI had to be out by 6.30am. The reason was simple, it was his mothers wash day and she needed the buildings to do her washing!
Another memory that he has is of cycling back to his house in the dead of the night and hearing the chorus of pheasants being broken up by the bombs exploding in the distance. Sadly though the sounds of bombs weren’t always quite as distant as many of Henry’s family would have liked. The White bear Hotel had a land mine dropped on it. It badly damaged the hotel and destroyed the three cottages nearby. Another mine was also dropped on a football pitch near Marfield House and damaged neighbouring property but luckily no-one was injured.
Overall, Henry Dyson was badly affected by the war and was able to carry on the majority of his life as usual. However, there were a few events that did affect him and those are the events that changed his life forever.

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