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I was evacuated from Gravesend in Kent in 1940, to a farm in North Suffolk, which I loved. Every now and again the farmer Mr Gower work with us in the wood yard where there was a great pile of wood, huge tree trunks. There was a great trestle and an 8-foot solid iron cross cut saw with a huge handle on each end. He would put 2 of us boys on one end and he would be on the other end, we had to drag this huge saw backwards and he pulled it the other way and the weight of the saw did the cutting. We spent hours on a Saturday morning sawing in the barns there was no machinery, no power, no electricity on the farm, the horses were the only power. The hours we used to spend in the barn turning the chaff-cutting machine and the big chipper — by hand! We used to go ratting and get up to all sorts of tricks to keep ourselves happy and occupied.

That winter went on was really bad and even in June you could still find snowdrifts in the hedgerows; it really was a long cold spell.

I was on the farm until about July 1942; I took my general school certificate in 1941 and stayed on for a year of 6th form work. Outside school life on the farm was a great experience. Getting the neck of a great Suffolk horse through the collar was a real task, I was quite small and the Suffolk horses are big.

After tacking up the horses we had to take them out to the fields to work. One of the jobs I had was rib rolling — that’s a big roller with ribs that’s used after the field has been ploughed, the roller was used to break up the clumps after ploughing. I spend hours just going up and down with a big mare, a really powerful wilful mare with a strong mouth and she took a great deal of turning. I started with her on the rolling and then in the harvest and haymaking a favourite thing of mine was on the drag rake, I picked up all the lose hay or straw and arranged it into nice straight rows and then they would come along and pile that on the back of the drays. It would be taken back to the stack yards. Eventually we were allowed to carry out more delicate jobs using 2 horses, doing things like using the chain harrow.

One of my greatest thrills was when Chubby (the farmers son) used to take me with him to help break the colts in. We would go up to the upper fields where it was quieter and have these colts who were used to being harnessed on light chain harrows — the first working job for them. They were very high-spirited and occasionally they would put their feet over the traces and they would have to be unhooked and the traces unravelled and hooked up again. Chubby used to stand at the head of the colts and I used to go around the back of their legs, rubbing my hand on their legs to let them know I was there and then I’d get their legs free from the traces.

This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Diana Wilkinson of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester and has been added to the site with Mr John Meiklejohn’s permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions

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