大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by a volunteer from Lincoln CSV Action Desk on behalf of Fred Hurt and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Hurt fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was due to start the City School on September 4th, the day after war broke out and for some reason I can remember being with my mother on Monk鈥檚 Road. We were walking on the other side of the road and we had to cross over to where there was a greengrocer. Now in those days, they just didn鈥檛 open on a Sunday, but my mother must have known, he was our regular greengrocer 鈥� she must have known that he would be open, and when we crossed over it was about eleven o鈥檆lock, when the Prime Minister was due to come on the radio. We went in and there was nobody serving; it was empty and then in three of four minutes this chap came from the back of the shop with very white face and he鈥檇 been listening to the radio and he said 鈥淲ell we鈥檙e at war.鈥� We just walked home 鈥� we didn鈥檛 say anything, we couldn鈥檛 take it in. My sister was in a push chair and we just walked home and didn鈥檛 say a word about it.

The worst thing about potato picking was getting up early because you had to be down at the City School for seven o鈥檆lock. There were at least 50 or 60+ people and they always used to turn up and groups of friends used to try and get on the same lorry. The journey was about 10 miles and you had to work fairly hard 鈥� I think we were a lot fitter than lads nowadays. We used to follow behind the spinner, the tractor went along and had a flail on the back which threw up the potatoes from the ground. We had to walk behind and pick them all up before the tractor came back down the next row doing the same thing. You worked your own section which was about 10 yards wide. My friend and I were both very tall and so we go the job of loading the bags onto the lorry instead of having to bend down picking up the potatoes all the time. We had sticks which were about 2鈥�6鈥� long and we used these to load the bags on to the horse and cart. You put the stick onto the bottom of the bag and gripped the top corner of the bag and it went up. It was called a hicking stick. I鈥檝e heard people say that we weren鈥檛 paid much but I thought it was marvellous money. I thought it was something like 拢5 a week or similar and I thought I was getting more than my father.

We had things we used to do during the dinner hour. We used to put potatoes in a bag to take home ourselves but also, at Brattleby, there was a beautiful hedge of cultivated brambles. Since it was September time we got a bag of those and then on the field opposite, chicken used to get out from the farmyard and they had a cosy nest so we used to farm a few of the eggs, but we never took them all.

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