大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jenny Ford on behalf of Mr. Frank Cook and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

3rd September 1939 - War being declared and listening to Mr. Chamberlain our Prime Minister while sitting on the kitchen steps at Bourne End Farm, Wootton, Beds.

Next memory: Father and Mother went to Bedford some Saturdays to shop and see the animals sold in the market and to buy and sell corn and feed for our cattle. On the last Saturday in September we arrived home to find a lady waiting for us with four young boys sent to the country from London because it was expected that Germany would bomb London. The lady said the boys were to live with us. On looking back it must have been dreadful for them, two Welsh Cockney boys aged 11 and 13, named I think - Allan and David Hughs and two boys aged 7 and 10 from Neasden, named Bobby and Dennis Kent. Their mother had recently died and their father came next day to see them and bring them more clothes and toys.

My poor mother was distraught as to how to cope with four extra boys, so she asked me to show them around the farm while she made tea for us all. The boys had, it seemed never been on a farm and the first thing the Welsh boys asked me was, "Where was the nearest pub and fish and chip shop?" They only stayed one week then went back to London.

Wootton schools had mostly children from Neasden and Willesden and most of them returned quite quickly. However, some stayed, including Bobby & Dennis who moved into the village to be nearer the school. In 1940 many more came and stayed as as the Germans had started bombing London very heavily. Wootton then had to find room for all these extra children and their teachers. I think at one time approximately there were six hundred of us all together. Some were taught (?) in the Scouts' Hut, some in the Memorial Hall and some in both Chapels. My teacher was a Mr. Edwards, a Welsh Londoner and he was supposed to teach between 50 and 60 of we boys (what a hope!) in the Wesleyan Chapel. Lots of games and play time, no much teaching!

I stayed at home a lot in busy times on the farm. When biking to school I passed a searchlight based on the hill between Hall End and Wood End and we used to watch it's powerful beam piercing the sky at night when enemy planes were about (not too often!) Some of the soldiers working the light used to come and help us in the haytime and harvest. About this time, father was allowed to buy a new tractor (they were rationed.) A Standard Fordson costing 拢110 0s 0d. He had an Allis Chalmer Model W.C. bought in 1938 when we moved from Middle Farm, Cople to Bourne End.

Almost every commodity was rationed and I remember buying the last tin of cough sweets from the shop opposite the school as there were no sweets at all at that time in the war. They were called 'Zubes' and had 'go suck a Zube' on the tin. Needless to say I had to share them with my mates!

1943 - We had a pigeon unit from the R.A.F. based on our farm. At that time pigeons were used for sending messages both from planes, the Army and from men fighting behind the enemy lines. Anywhere where they did not have a wireless or could not use one. Germany bombed Coventry about this time and the whole sky was lit up with the flames. (This was when the Cathedral was destroyed).

At this time we had Land Girls working for us and the first one was Mary Day who had previously worked at Wootton House as a maid to Colonel Grenville and family. In busy times we also had Land Girls brought by lorry from Milton Ernest five days a week. I was not very old but I remember feeling sorry for them as many of them had come from places like Sheffield and from very poor families. They told us they had not owned a pair of shoes when children but they were nearly always cheerful and often singing as they worked. Later in the war they used to come to work talking about the dances they were invited to at the American base at Chicksands. The American Air Force personnel were given more pay than our men and gave the firls gifts like silk stockings, etc., not obtainable here.

Once we had a gang of about 20 men from the Free Polish Air Force to help us dig the potato crop. I was fascinated to see that many of them had golden false teeth. They said it was the custom in Poland and also served as an emergency supply of money.

Airforce and Navy Weeks were sometimes held in the village. Concerts were held in the old school to raise money to send parcels, etc. to the forces abroad. I remember drawing a Spitfire and a bomber for an art exhibition held in the Scouts' Hut and with the help of another boy hoping to make a mile of pennies, only it ended after a few yards outside the school wall. In the concerts anyone who had a talent for singing, etc. took part.

There were no school dinners to my mother arranged with Mrs. Odell (Dorothy Orchard's mother)for me to have dinners with them and their evacuee. Later on I went to Mrs. Fardells in Bedford Road.

1944 - The Home Guard was issued with some rifles and bren guns and they had manoeuvres at our farm which had supposedly been captured by Kempston Home Guard as the enemy. Our cowman (in Wootton Home Guard) cycled through them and told Wootton the (enemy)positions. All great fun for us boys watching and after they had gone we collected a lot of strings of crackers which they used instead of live bullets.

During the war all the gardens and allotments were used for growing vegetables and most householders managed to produce a lot of their needs and some gave to those who could not. Gardeners helped each other by giving away seeds and cuttings etc., and the school had a plot just outside the school wall where gardening was taught one afternoon a week.

The school was very limited in what it could teach (no wood work, no cookery, no science, no swimming) even paints were in short supply and the bus that used to take children to Stewartby before the war stopped and the swimming pool closed.

On the farm father had to plough up most of the grass so the ploughed acres rose from 60 in 1939 to 250 by 1945 and so with all these acres in corn we were threshing (a large machine that knocked the wheat out of the ears)as a combined harvester does today. First the wheat was cut by binder (so called because it cut and bound the wheat in bundles) then they had to be picked up by hand and stood together - ears on the top so that the seed would dry in the wind. These (sheaves) were then loaded onto carts and pulled by horses and sometimes a tractor and trailer usually made from an old car chassis - then these loads were taken to near the farm buildings and built into stacks large enough to be threshed out in one day later with the machine. If we did not want corn at harvest time we had to thatch the stacks with straw like a house.

The corn came out of the machine and put into large bags hired from the corn merchants or the railway company. These held 75 kilo of oats, 100 kilos of barley, 112 kilo of wheat and 125 kilo of beans and peas and they had to be carried on one shoulder or laying up ones back. The rest of the sheaves, i.e. the chaff and straw was all kept for the cattle to eat or lay on in the cow yards.

I started ploughing with a Fordson Standard which had steel wheels on it on my 13th birthday. My brother William having taught me how when I used to take his tea to him down the field. I felt very grown up but I must have worried my mother a lot (I wonder what the safety people would think today?)

Mr. Bill Juff's father was the Wootton baker and delivered twice a week (no sell by date then!) Mother used to soak the stale loaves in milk and heat them in the oven and they were as good as new. Mrs. Juff was very kind to we boys and used to open a hatch in the bake house wall and give us a new bread roll each to eat as we cycled home from school. Some times we would meet Army lorries and bren gun carriers coming from the searchlight camp and we had to jump off the road and drag our bikes up the grass bank because the road is very narrow on that hill.

1945 - There were now many thousands of Italian prisoners in this country captured in the North African campaigns. On the farm we had four every day all year and in the harvest we sometimes had six. The Italians were a happy lot and most of them were just glad to be out of the fighting. The discipline in their camp was enforced by the threat of cutting off their hair which they were very proud of and were always combing. Once one of them, named Victorio, had not returned to the camp by curfew time and the commander had ordered his hair to be cut off. He came to work in a foul temper and father sent him to work on his own trimming a hedge. We had never seen a hedge trimmed so quickly ever before!

One of my worst memories of helpers on the farm was when the authorities started holiday camps for Londoners (one was at Ampthill). All Cockney women of all ages. We had them to help hoe the large acreage of root crops grown for the cattle. Just imagine a 16 year old lad in charge of 20 of them! I did not know whether they were teasing and could not understand what they were saying when talking in Cockney slang - like having a cup of tea 'rosy lee' and far more unintelligible sentences but as we had to pay them I was expected to get them to hoe the crop (I guess I learnt quite a lot!) I certainly had a laugh when after taking most of their clothes off the first day to get brown, they came to work on the second day wearing pyjamas as they were so sun burnt not having seen much clear sun light before.

After these we were sent German prisoners. They were not so happy but very sad. The older ones did not want the war and the young ones had been brain washed by Hitler's gang although as I worked alongside them and talked to them, few of them would find fault with Hitler. The ones we did not like were from Eastern Germany, mainly Officers and they believed they were a superior race and hated doing manual work. (When the war ended we had become friends to some and when they went home mother gave them a food and clothing parcel as their letters from home showed how bad conditions were in Germany.

Some other memories - I used to watch the American Flying Fortress planes leaving and some of them returning (a lot were shot down) when they went on daylight raids over Germany. We could see Thurleigh drome quite clearly from Bourne End Farm. I remember seeing a German bomber in daylight over Stewartby. I also remember being fitted with a gas mask and having to carry it on my bike to school and being told off by the teacher when I forgot it.

I kept maps of the war's progress from Africa to Berlin and could recognise all English planes and many German ones and liked drawing them.

Sone after 'D-Day' when the Allied armies invaded Europe, late one evening the sky was filled with our bombers, Lancasters and Stirlings, all pulling gliders full of troops. They kept coming over us for nearly an hour. The troops were sent to capture the bridge at Arnhem in Holland to stop the Germans blowing it up and to create a diversion behind their main defence lines. I shall never forget those hundreds of planes and gliders droning over us; sadly, many of the men were killed mainly due to them being dropped on the wrong side of the river and too far apart. Also, unknown to the Allies the Germans had kept a Division of armoured Panzer troops back, near to Arnhem.

8th May 1945 VE Day - Victory in Europe. I remember biking to Wootton with the Land Girls in the evening. There was a fair behind the Cock Inn and some singing but people did not seem to know what to do except feel happy that the war had ended at last although all the forces were still on the battle fronts and did not come home for a long time.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.