大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Dawn Cunningham of Lutterworth Community College on behalf of Jack Burton and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditionsJ

I was 30, married with one child and working on a farm when the war broke out. I can remember the announcement. I was not really concerned about the clothing situation during the war because I was one of 9 children, with 4 brothers and 4 sisters, so I was used to hand me downs and make do and mend all the time anyway. Living on a farm we could always get food.

Farming was a reserve occupation and I was also in the homeguard, I can remember when a bomb dropped only 100 yards from where I lived. My brother went in to the army in 1939 and became a prisoner of war in Italy for four years. During this time we had 7 Italian prisoners of war working on the farm. So my brother was a prisoner in Italy and we had Italian POW'S on the farm. If you had Italian POW鈥橲 you could not have land girls at the same time, so it was not the best swap in the world, but they were all well looked after and well fed on the farm. We didn鈥檛 bear any animosity to them.

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