Our Land at War

by Duff Hart-Davis

  ‘We haven’t got any land to plant them,’ Barber protested.

  ‘Plant ’em,’ said Boutflour, and put the receiver down. ‘A patch of ground was found on the side of a hill, the spuds were planted, and it became known as “Barber’s folly”.’

  Boutflour was nothing if not outspoken. One of his well-known observations was that ‘a farmer with 150 acres is equal to a brigadier-general in the army’.

  When people started complaining about bacon rationing, he wrote in Country Life: ‘One British habit is causing a great deal of worry, and that is the demand for bacon for an Englishman’s breakfast. Why should we worry? No other man in the world asks for such a breakfast, not even in countries where most bacon is produced.’ He went on to say that the oatmeal from a field of oats would produce ‘eight times as many good breakfasts in the form of porridge as would the same oat-meal converted into bacon … Bacon for breakfast is a habit, almost a vice.’

  Ploughing was accelerated by the issue of tractors, of which the Ministry had a pool. Through the War Ags it distributed them all over the country according to the nature of the land: fifty went to Devon, where grassland predominated, but only ten to Essex, much of which was already down to cereal crops. Progress was hampered by violent changes in the weather. The summer of 1939 had been gloriously hot (bringing out a plague of adders in the New Forest), but it left the ground baked hard and difficult to break up. Then October turned cold and wet, and in November frosts set in – the first of a bitter winter which brought cultivation to a halt and, in several places, froze the Thames from bank to bank, so that ice-breakers were working in the river.

  When the weather eased, and March 1940 came in with two blessedly dry weeks, farmers began ploughing at night as well as during the day: a special amendment of the blackout regulations allowed them to use headlamps, provided they were screened so that they could not be seen from above – and in any case, on moonlit nights they could work with no lights at all. Phenomenal progress was made, and by the middle of the month 1,370,000 acres had been brought under the plough. In Scotland alone, by the beginning of June, farmers had notified the Ministry of their intention to plough 252,000 acres of old grassland, and the War Ags had taken almost 2000 acres from nine farms ‘which were not being cultivated in accordance with the rules of good husbandry.’

  Wheat, for bread-making, was the principal crop; but another promoted by the Ministry was flax, or linseed, which was needed to replace the supply of cotton from abroad, cut off by the war. The plants had almost gone out of cultivation in England, though they were still grown in Northern Ireland for their tough fibre; but now, for the coming season, the Government ordered a fourfold increase in English production, from 4000 to 16,000 acres. One advantage of flax – whose flowers open and turn a glorious pale slate-blue when the sun comes on them – is that it grows fast: a crop sown in March should be ready by July. Another bonus is that rabbits do not like it, and will eat almost anything in preference.

  In the old days flax used to be pulled by hand, but by 1940 pulling machines could be hired; the seed heads were crushed for oil, and the tough stalks processed to make cloth. Earl de la Warr, Chairman of the Flax Board, called flax one of the main munitions of war: when used in the manufacture of wing fabric for aircraft, it was claimed to add five miles per hour to the speed of certain bombers. Potatoes also came under the control of the Ministry, which ordered a far larger acreage to be planted.

  According to Derek Barber ‘the impact of the war effort on the character of the countryside was quite incredible’. He cited the example of a 2000-acre block of land close to Cheltenham, on the edge of the Cotswolds, which half a dozen farmers had been using as a huge ranch. One of them had a flourishing trade in pit ponies, which he bred, but none did any cultivation, and the ground had degenerated into bush, ‘just like in Africa’. With the thorns ripped out by tractors and winches, the land ploughed and sown, it turned into 2000 acres of wheat, and the change wrought on the appearance of the landscape was as drastic as that caused by Dutch elm disease fifty years later.

  Similar transformations occurred all over Britain. Every possible piece of ground was ploughed: not just meadows and the lower slopes of mountains in Wales and the Peak District, but cricket fields, commons and golf courses. The parkland surrounding large country houses excited much irritation. Farmers argued that the parks were a conspicuous waste of land, lost to agriculture for the sake of mere display. ‘Private parks,’ wrote one, ‘are now the exercising ground of deer and pheasants … Much of it would grow cereals well. The deer and pheasants could be killed to augment the meagre [ration of] 1s 2d worth of meat a week, which is by no means enough for heavy manual workers.’ Golf courses, he added, ‘should be made to produce food for man or beast … I say we are fighting a life-and-death struggle, and money does not enter into it.’

  On 4 July 1940, in the House of Commons, Mr J. J. Tinker, Labour MP for Leigh, in Essex, asked if a survey could be made of the Royal Parks in London, ‘to see whether some parts of them could be used for growing foodstuffs, and in particular, whether the stretch of ground known as Rotten Row, in Hyde Park, could be utilised for this purpose’. The answer was that sixty-three acres had already been devoted to allotments, and eighty acres to the cultivation of oat and root crops. ‘In addition, two-thirds of the greenhouse space normally used for the production of flowers is being used for the cultivation of vegetables.’ As for Rotten Row: ‘It consists of sand up to a depth of six inches on a brick floor about a foot thick, and, further, for a great part of its length it is lined by tall trees.’

  The War Ags were certainly proud of what they achieved. A makeshift notice stuck up in a field proclaimed:

  War Agric

  47 Acres

  Debushed – Drained – Reclaimed

  WHEAT

  52,000 Loaves?

  Growing more food was essential for the nation’s survival, but so was the harvesting of the crops; and farmers were soon severely handicapped by the shortage of labour, particularly for potato-picking in late autumn. The list of reserved occupations which exempted men from call-up included agricultural workers; but many farm boys, eager to escape the drudgery of life on the land, volunteered for the army, navy or air force, or went to earn better money on the building sites springing up all over the country in the rush to construct new military camps and airfields. All this created a serious deficiency, exacerbated by the fact that the seasonal influx of migratory workers from Ireland had been cut off.

  In one issue after another The Farmers’ Weekly bewailed the fact that farmers were losing stockmen, milkers, dairymen. ‘From all over the country they are asking for skilled women to fill the abruptly-emptied places. If you have daughters who are clever with stock, or in the dairy, or are good milkmaids, urge them to think quickly about responding to this call.’ The Situations Vacant columns were packed with advertisements seeking ‘foreman cowman … girl calf rearer … young man to work horse … intelligent young Lady or Girl for milk round … cheesemaker man or woman … Respectable youth wanted, improver, general farm work … Strong woman wanted … Strong girl wanted for milk delivery in the City of Oxford. Horse vans used.’

  In summer civil servants were given special leave to do farm work, and many rose to the challenge. But a still more valuable source of extra labour lay in the harvest camps for schoolchildren, organized by the Government. At first, in 1941, only boys were allowed to take part, but in 1942 girls joined them, and the number of camps rose sharply from 335 in the first year to a peak of 1068 in 1943, putting 68,000 young workers into the field, for an average stay of four weeks. Boys earned between 6d and 8d an hour, but they had to pay for travel to and from the site, and contribute towards the cost of their food – which left little in hand at the end of a three-week stint.

  Although the work was tough, the camps were much enjoyed by most of the inmates, who remembered ‘the pleasures of tent life, camp food, fireside sing-songs, the camaraderie with old
er farm workers and, in particular, the fact that campers found a new freedom and gained a sense of independence denied to many at the time’. Even so, pea-picking was regarded as a ‘horrendous’ job by the girls of Manchester High School, who were sent out to tackle the crop near Ormskirk in 1943, and worked with hessian sacks over their heads to protect them from the rain. Their miserable lot was to move along the rows, pulling up plants with their left hand, and with their right stripping the pods, which they dropped into a skip that held 40 lb when full.

  That freedom of the fields often extended to the complete absence of safety precautions. Gerald Pendry, who went from a London school to a harvest camp in Warwickshire in 1941, was set to work with another boy on a flax-pulling machine, which had to be constantly unblocked, as the tough fibres kept jamming the rubber belts. Drive-shafts and belts had no form of protection, and the lads were supervised by a Polish tractor driver who spoke no English.

  With still more harvesting hands needed, in 1943 camps for adults were introduced, and after a series of appeals by Robert Hudson, the Minister of Agriculture, thousands of men and women applied to join.

  Perhaps it was a sense of achievement, coupled with hope that the war might not last long, which lent buoyancy to the sale of farms early in the war. Estate agents cheerfully reported good business, ‘and plenty of eager applicants for good holdings, either for investment or occupation’. Prices seem ridiculously low. In March 1940 a freehold, ‘highly farmed’ holding of 163 acres in Suffolk, including an ‘excellent residence’ with five bedrooms, ‘splendid premises’ and two ‘superior cottages’, was advertised at £2500. A 170-acre grass farm in Nottinghamshire, including a cottage, could be had for £1750. In July Country Life reported that ‘The investor’s quest for first-rate farms goes on with increasing vigour’. The Yews Farm, near Rugby, with 215 acres, went at auction for £4800. On the other hand, with cement scarce, and bags of it described as ‘precious as gold dust’, repairs were difficult and farm buildings were tending to fall into decay.

  Three

  Exodus

  It’s dull in our town since my playmates left,

  I can’t forget that I’m bereft

  Of all the pleasant sights they see,

  Which the piper also promised me.

  Robert Browning, The Pied Piper of Hamelin

  Even as ploughshares bit into virgin turf, people everywhere were bracing themselves for war. On Saturday, 2 September thunderstorms rumbled and crashed over the south of England; but Sunday, 3 September was gloriously fine and warm. Hardly had the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, made his fateful wireless broadcast at 11.15 a.m., declaring that the country was at war with Germany, when air-raid sirens wailed out, rising and falling over London. Worshippers in St Paul’s Cathedral were ushered down into the crypt, and everywhere in the city householders hastened, as instructed, to stick crosses of brown paper on their windows, to minimize the risk from flying glass. Others hung wet blankets over doorways as a precaution against gas attack, which was many people’s worst fear.

  On a blustery morning in Banff, far off on Scotland’s north-east coast, young David Clark saw his father, the minister, running up and down the streets in search of a wireless powerful enough to broadcast the news in St Mary’s Church – and when Chamberlain came on: ‘Tommy, my wee brother, and I immediately looked to the skies. Not for heavenly persuasions of any sort, but simply because we thought that German Stukas would immediately appear.’ At Four Elms, a village in Kent, a boy rushed into the church during the service and handed the vicar a message, saying the war had begun – whereupon the congregation stood and sang the National Anthem. On their way home people collected wood from a spinney, assuming that coal would soon be unavailable.

  Out in the country farmers covered hay and corn stacks with tarpaulins, to prevent gas sprayed by low-flying German aircraft, or dropped in bombs, from contaminating the precious stored crops. Over cities and large industrial sites barrage balloons floated in the clear sky like silver whales tethered by steel cables.

  The threat of air attack seemed so real that on Friday, 1 September the Air Ministry had ordered a countrywide blackout, in the hope that the suppression of all lights on the ground would make identification of targets harder for the German air force, the Luftwaffe. The new regulations laid down that after dark all windows and doors must be covered by heavy material, cardboard or paint. The rules were strictly enforced by Air Raid Precaution wardens (ARPs) – easily identified by the white W painted on the front of their steel helmets – who adopted an aggressive approach during their rounds, and if they spotted a chink of light would come hammering on the door. Persistent defaulters could be reported to the police and heavily fined.

  Anyone showing a light was liable to be besieged by neighbours, angry that one selfish or idle person was endangering everyone else. Total darkness was considered so essential that one night Sergeant D. M. Hughes of the Caernarvon police felt obliged to put out a light left on in an office building by shooting it with a .22 rifle. Outside, street lights had to be switched off, or screened so that they shone downwards. Traffic lights were fitted with slitted covers which filtered signals towards the ground. Car headlamps at first had to be blacked out entirely, but so many accidents occurred that restrictions were soon relaxed, and shielded headlights were allowed.

  The blackout was exceedingly tiresome, indoors and out. Unless householders were prepared to live in permanently darkened caves, they had to take down the window covers in the morning and fix them up again in the evening – a time-consuming chore, especially in large houses with multiple windows. Outside, the restrictions put pedestrians in danger, not only of tripping over drain covers and pavement edges, but of being run down by vehicles feeling their way through the streets. White lines were painted along the middle of roads, but even to walk along them was dangerous, when drivers could hardly see ahead of them.

  Townspeople were terrified by the threat of air raids. Householders hastened to fill sandbags to protect their properties from blast, or put finishing touches to the Anderson air-raid shelters in their gardens. More than a million and a half of these sturdy little huts, each of which could hold six people, had already been distributed across the country, free to those with an annual income of less than £250, £7 to others. Made of corrugated steel sheets bolted together in hoops, and covered with a fifteen-inch layer of soil, they could withstand the impact of shrapnel, but not a direct hit from a high-explosive bomb. Indoors, Morrison shelters – in effect reinforced steel tables – gave protection against falling masonry.

  Country people were less alarmed by the idea of bombs, which they imagined would fall mostly on industrial centres. For farmers, a worse scenario was that of invasion. They could hardly believe that Germans would take over their land or slaughter their livestock. Nevertheless, some of them took precautions – like one man in Dorset who said to a friend: ‘Bloody old ’itler’s coming. I’m going to start saving money. I’ve got one churn buried, full of half-crowns and two-shilling pieces, and I’ve started to fill up another one.’

  Five years earlier Winston Churchill had predicted that, in the event of war, three or four million people would be driven out into the open country around London. The exodus of 1939 was not as drastic as that: nevertheless, it was a huge movement, planned with skill and care, which drained the cities and deluged the countryside with a flood of urban children.

  ‘The scheme is entirely a voluntary one,’ the Government’s Public Information Leaflet No. 3 had announced, ‘but clearly the children will be much safer and happier away from the big cities where the dangers will be greatest.’ The leaflet struggled to reassure everyone that the scheme would be for the best:

  The purpose of evacuation is to remove from the crowded and vulnerable centres, if an emergency should arise, those, more particularly the children, whose presence cannot be of assistance. Everyone will realise that there can be no question of wholesale clearance. We are not going to win
a war by running away.

  Safer – yes. But happier? That was wishful thinking. The diaspora began on the morning of Friday, 1 September, the day Germany invaded Poland. Children streamed out of London – and not only from the capital, but from other cities that were potential targets for the Luftwaffe – Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield. From Manchester alone 66,000 unaccompanied children dispersed to farms, villages and towns in the surrounding country.

  On the morning, in London, outside schools all over the city pupils lined up with an escort of teachers and marched off to the nearest bus stop or Underground station. Each child had a brown identity label pinned to its jacket and carried a case containing a change of clothes, as well as a cardboard box holding a black rubber gas mask. For security reasons – and to prevent them following – the parents had not been told where their children were going: they would not know until a message came back to say that the travellers had arrived. Mothers, in tears, waved from behind iron railings, and most of the evacuees were sunk in misery – torn from home, and mourning their cats, dogs, mice, guinea pigs, canaries and parrots, which had either been exterminated or, on Government orders, left behind.

  Some of the children from Central Park School in the East End of London were elated, but most were frightened and downcast. The carriages of the Underground on the old Metropolitan line to Paddington were so packed and stifling that some of the young passengers were sick over their neighbours, and when they reached the main-line station they collapsed, slumping to the floor of the concourse, which was thick with noise, black smoke and steam. Others put down their pathetic luggage and cried. In spite of the crowds, one boy felt ‘very alone in a world going horribly mad’.