By Joyce Swain
I happened to be in the company of a member of the Newsletter editorial team when someone mentioned the recent TV programme about the Polish squadron of Spitfires based at Northolt. This reminded me of my schooldays in Harrow, where we could hear them take off – an unmistakeable sound – and we promptly grabbed our gasmasks and lunchboxes and headed for the air raid shelters, knowing that the air raid sirens would follow.
This led to a discussion of what else happened to me during the War.
The staff at my school organised a ‘Harvest Camp’ and about 40 16- and 17-year-olds travelled to Temple Grafton (near Stratford-on-Avon) to find the War Agricultural Committee had set up army bell tents for us and the use of the village hall for cooking and eating.
We were sent out to various farms (by bicycle) to do whatever was needed. At my first farm we found a farmer very reluctant to have us, who made us first dig his garden and then pick up a field of shallots (my back still aches when I think about it!). We then progressed to real farm work – in the days before combine harvesters, the crop was cut and baled, then put into stooks of six to keep dry. This last was our job and very scratchy it was! We also picked plums, damsons, apples and pears.
Then we were asked to go in on Saturday morning to help with the threshing. What we did not know was that the farmer had a bet laid on with the men that they could not clear the bay of a barn in one morning. By this time I was fairly handy with a pitchfork – by the time we finished, winning the bet, I was expert!
We were paid eight pence per hour for this (remember it was 240 pence to the pound back then!). Not that we saw this – it all went to buy our food and we had 2/6 (half a crown) a week for ourselves. By chance, this sum purchased a seat in the gods at Stratford Theatre, so there we went (on our bicycles) on Saturday afternoons.
Hard work, but mostly remembered with pleasure – it’s not everyone who has sat in a house which Shakespeare visited!