大象传媒

My name is Francis Liddington.
I live in a small village called Gaydon in Warkwickshire in 1939, when war broke out i was helping to deliever papers before i went to school, in 1940 we had evacuees from Coventry came to stay in gaydon, we lived in a three bedroom council house although there was five of us in the family we had two boys and their grandparents staying with us i still can't remember how we managed at home.
At school because it was quite small only about 35 children when the evacuees came we could only go to school half days one lot in the morning and one lot in the afternoon which at the time we thought was quite good.
When i was 11 years old i started work on a farm bottling and delivering milk before i went to school and after school doing other jobs on the farm at that time there was a scheme if you had a job on the farm you could have 20 half days off school to help with the harvest and an extra 20 half days if needed which i had mostly driving the tractor.
When the first Gaydon Airfield was being built 1941/42 which was about half a mile from the village, the farmer i worked for had three horse and carts working up there. Another job i had after school was fetching the three horses when they finished work back to the village taking off their harness and tying them in the stable, one being a stalion was a very big horse and when i went to take off his collar he would lift his head, and because i was not very tall i had to stand on a box.
When i left school at 14 years old i went to work on a farm.

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