大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pam Riding of Kirklees Libraries on behalf of Mr Parker and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Farewell, James Allard Truman, Sportsman, Gentleman and Reluctant hero. Farewell! Dear Friend. The relatives, friends and various mourners had slowly ebbed away and I was left alone on that frosty, foggy autumn afternoon, left with a mound of earth in the corner of the church-yard and happy memories of roaming the woods and fields. James, Jet, a little broken bred spaniel and myself in pursuit of anything that flew, run, or hopped, an unbeatable team in the Golden Autumn of '43.
That summer I had tended a herd of milking cows on a common land hillside, lush with grass but unfenced. A local farmer had agreed to pay 6d an hour for herding, then on to the hillside for after morning milking and bringing them home at 4. This lasted eight hours per day, seven days a week through six weeks of glorious summer time. Everyday one or two of the farmer's children would appear, staggering under the weight of a basket with my lunch and a picnic for them. They would stay for an hour. Beautiful children, clear eyed and innocent.
I remember how they loved the little tricks I taught them how to make a penny disappear and turn up in their shoe or make faces out of straw. I also remember teaching them how to split an elm stitch about four inches long lay a rubber band between the split twig and bind up the ends. When you blow, it makes a noise of a rabbit in distress and brings the stoats out of the dry stone walls. I also made whistles out of "Mother Die" and ratchet wheels that run on your arm and made a noise like a corn crake. The children were fascinated and we all became so engrossed, at times we had to go looking for the cows who had wandered off.
One day the farmer told me the feed on the hill was getting a bit sparse and he intended letting the cows eat off the feed in the enclosed fields nearer home. Would I come that evening with my tally added up? I could have presented my tally there and then, it was added up daily, but farmers like a bit of ceremony so I turned up that evening with a page out of my school book recording the incredible sum of 拢8.8shillings. The farmer looked at it, added it up twice, spit, took off his flat cap, scratched his bald head, added it up again and disappeared into the farmhouse. I was left standing trembling -what with? fear, nervous anticipation. I'm not sure what, until he reappeared. He was carrying a double barrel 410 shotgun and a half box of cartridges. 'Will you take this instead'? he asked. Take this? Would a bear like a tub of honey? Would a seal take a barrel of fish? I would take that gun than take the crown jewels. So we shook hands and I set off home. He called after me-'don't forget to get a gun licence and would I come again next year.
I went to our local Post Office next day and took out a 10 bob Gun Licence, though at 15 years old, technically I was too young. On the way home from the farm I passed through a dense wood, it was dusk and quite dark under the trees. I couldn't wait any longer, two rounds in the breach, two hammers back and two shots in the air in joyous triumph, like a victorious Arab with a Kalashnikov.
For those interested in guns, I will give a brief description of the 410 shotgun. Belgium made and bearing the proof marks of LIECE on the barrels showing they had passed stringent tests. This was the smallest shot gun, half the size of a twelve bore. Walnut stock cut away for lightness. To load you pushed a side lever and the barrels dropped two inch, push a button on the side and the gun folded in half, the ideal poachers weapon. It was a hammer gun and would kill at a range of 25 yards. There were no guns in wartime Britain even if I had the money. This was an unexpected prize and I loved it like a brother (Ha Ha Ha).
Soon after acquiring the shot gun I met James. He was the son of a solicitor and lived in a fine house on the edge of the village. He was seventeen, tall and very handsome, always very well dressed. His ambition was to attend college and then medical school but the college buildings had been requisitioned by the Army and until new premises were found he was a free man.
I had seen him in the woods, stealing through the bracken like an Indian and setting snares on the smoose holes under the walls. We met in the yard behind a butchers in a neighbouring village, a good man who would buy all our wares gladly because of the meat shortage. Half a crown for a rabbit, shilling for a wood pigeon, five shilling for a hare or a pheasant. We were both there on the same errand and formed a wonderful partnership never to be broken.
In 1943 the war was going disastrous for the Allies. The Germans were at the gates of Moscow, the Japs had conquered the whole of South East Asia and were advancing on India. America was reeling after the disaster of Pearl Harbour and the loss of the Philippines. Totally innocent civilians were being brutally murdered along with prisoners of war in countries occupied by the Germans and Japanese. But there was a glimmer of hope on the horizon. The Eighth Army. under Montgomery had turned the German onslaught on EGYPT at the second battle of EL ALAMAIN and were driving Rommel out of AFRICA.
The Red Army after appalling suffering had turned the Germans after Stalingrad. And Ord Wingate had proved the Japs could be beaten, though not without terrible sacrifice. The 14th Army in Burma were poised to beat the Jap army and drive them back. Under General Slim and once the industrial might and resources of the USA were unleashed on the enemy, 'the writing was on the wall'.
But amongst all this suffering and carnage and considering the sacrifices of the G.I's, two specks on the planer, two adolescent boys had one aim, one purpose in life from morn till night, from dawn to dusk, the hunting of game or vermin and our personal betterment,
We haunted the scrub land giving the conies no peace, the spaniel forced them out with little yelps of excitement and the gun was awaiting. We snared or netted all the smoose holes, these were holes left under the stone walls by the builders over a century ago. They enable the keepers to set snares where the rabbits were running. We used to snare all the holes between the meadows and the woods, the go back in the dusk. Walking through the grass whizzing half a brick on the end of a piece of clothes line driving the rabbits back to the woods and into the snares
We built hides on the edge of the stubbles and made decoys to entice the wood pigeons. It was after a particularly bad day decoying wood pigeons that I decided I wanted a twelve bore and preferably a 12 bore hammer gun made by Purdey, England's finest gun maker. In Victorian days the zenith of English gunmaking, a fine Double Hammer Gun by Purdey would cost 拢50 or 拢60, over two year's wages for a working man.
They were used by all the finest shots of the day, Earl de Grey, the Marquess of Ripon, Lord Walsingham, Duleep Singh and many more.
On the invention around 1880 of the Hammerless Gun, the hammer guns became obsolete and many fine guns were scrapped or passed on to the keeper. There were still some of these guns around and I set my sights, so to speak, on owning one. I had met a garage owner who had a magnificent specimen in its original case for 拢15. The trouble was he wouldn鈥檛 sell it until I was sixteen and wouldn鈥檛 take a 鈥榝astener chance. 鈥橧 lost interest. I had approaching that sum in the Tate and Lyle bank, i.e a treacle tin in the corner of the ferret hutch, but I daren鈥檛 take my father in my confidence, knowing he would find a better use, in his opinion, for the money. I did own some fine English or should I say British hammer guns, because there were some fine Scottish and Irish makers, but I never owned a Purdey. Not yet anyway.
Across the valley from the farmland where we roamed free was a large shooting estate owned by the Earl of Dartmouth. In the heyday of the aristocracy this estate bred thousands of pheasants and had four keepers and under-keepers. Now the keepers had gone to war and the few pheasants left were breeding wild. Or so we thought.
Occasionally, a lone pheasant would cross the valley, flying from the hill and landing in the bracken on our side. The dog used to go crazy with the scent and they seldom flew home or back to base.
We kept away from the Estate, there was a kind of taboo-people used to say you鈥檒l get six months if you are caught over there so apart from catching a few rabbits around the borders we kept away.
The land around our side of the valley belonged to the Council and in those days they couldn鈥檛 care too much for a couple of teenagers keeping down the vermin and helping to feed the farms and people. They had enough on their plates with black outs, air raid shelters and gas masks, not to mention concern for their own sons and daughter who were fighting to survive in various parts of the Empire.
We were relatively untouched by the war in our part of Yorkshire although there were various excitements and alarms. One night in November 1942 a Wellington Bomber on a night training exercise from Lincolnshire came up the valley with a comfortable 2,000 ft showing on his altitude meter. It crashed at Royd House near Farnley Tyas. He hit the hill-side, ten feet from the summit, burst into flames. All the crew died. The RAF posted two sentries after taking away the bodies. They intended to come and salvage the wreckage the next day. Meanwhile, us local lads were doing a bit of salvaging for ourselves. It started to snow and a local farmer only about away took the two RAF lads away for a warmer as he put it. After that it was on for young and old. We had belts of 303 machine gun bullets that had survived the flames, things that went click and things that went clack and even a very light pistol that still worked, but I won鈥檛 tell you how I know.
The farmer, an eccentric with staring eyes and wild hair who for some reason was called WIRE-LESS WILLY, came back alone with a rake and started raking the burnt ground, any bits of metal he found was handed to the awaiting throng. At one stage he took a small Book of Common Prayer and preached a sermon to the dead. I can see him now, wild eyed with the snow settling on his shoulders and the tears running down his cheeks. He asked us to pray for their families, who even now may have no knowledge of the accident. He mentioned gallant airmen who like their fathers had come to defend 鈥楾he Old Country鈥�. The only thing he got wrong, he thought the aircrew were Canadian when in fact they were Aussies. He finished by getting us to stand in snow around him in a circle reciting the Lord鈥檚 Prayer. The strange thing we all obeyed him and nobody laughed, in fact on reflection there was nothing to laugh about. Sixty years on I could take you to the exact spot where the bomber hit the ground. There is a circle of different coloured grass. There were other noteworthy incidents.
The 鈥楲uftwaffe鈥� were out to destroy the industrial cities in the North of England. Every night bombers passed over our village on their missions to destroy Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield. We had a 100 foot tower on a nearby hill, built to commemorate Queen Victoria鈥檚 Jubilee in 1897. This was used as a marker by the German pilots after crossing the North Sea. One night we were stood in the garden after the alert sirens had sounded. A twin engined bomber dropped a parachute flare lighting up the village. My father, with four years experience in the trenches during the 14-18 War, declared it 鈥榦ne of ours鈥�, though I doubt if he encountered many HINKLE MK 2鈥檚. Then came two earth shattering explosions, the bomber had dropped two 500 bombs in a field 500 yards away. Father, unabashed said, 鈥榳here did they come from?鈥�
There was a stream running down the valley known as the Freshfield Dyke. We spent many happy hours lying on the banks guddling for the beautiful rainbow trout, under the stones. One day we met up with a dark haired French girl, delicate of feature and with an accent that stirred hidden desires. She was a natural history student staying with a school mistress whose garden ran down to the stream. We were both bewitched and for a while all tracks led to Freshfield Dyke.
We disclosed to her all our secret places, where the holt of the badgers lay in an abandoned stone quarry, where there were voles, harvest mice, frogs, toads, the foxes lair and kestrels nest. She was very generous in her affections to us both, but I admit I experienced a few pangs of jealousy when she took to wearing James鈥� college scarf.
One day the dog went wild barking at something in the grass of a paddock near the school mistress鈥檚 house. We rushed over and there was an adder sliding through undergrowth. There are no adders in our part of the world, but I was certain I wasn鈥檛 mistaken. In our school room, curled up like a spiral was a large snake in a bottle maybe 14鈥� high. On the jar was a label.
ADDER (VIPERA BERUS)
Caught by boys of 4A
At summer camp. Blackstone,
Hants July 10th 1932.
After shedding it鈥檚 skin.

Francoise and James wanted to attempt to capture the snake but remembering the snake in the bottle, I called the dog off and advised them to leave well alone.
The next day Fran was missing from our usual meeting place. We called at the house and was told she had a high temperature and the doctor had been sent for. That was Friday afternoon, by Sunday she was dead. The inquest was held in the old school room. There was talk of convulsions but cause of death was indeterminate. I sat with James, both of us lost in sadness and the sun shone through a side window and glinted off a glass cabinet with a jar containing an adder (circa 1932). To this day I am convinced that Fran tried to catch the snake after we left and finished up getting bitten. She was eighteen and escaped from the Germans.
We started hunting and shooting again-rabbits were in huge demand leading up to Christmas. James, like many tall athletic young men was a natural shot. When shooting pigeons, flying down wind at sixty miles an hour, it was aim swing, pull and a prize every time. By then we had graduated to a double barrel twelve bore. An old Jones Patent Under-lever made in 1873 for Major Porter of 鈥楾he Banks鈥� Warwick. It was made or built to use the correct terminology by William Powell, a famous Birmingham gunmaker. It started life as a pin-fire, a system in which every cartridge carried its own firing pin, then converted to centre fire by the same maker at a later date.

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