REMINISCENCES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Mary Turnham

Mary recalled how farming methods have changed drastically over the last fifty years, things were so different on the land then. Hoeing and thrashing were done by hand; there was stone-picking, thistle-scything, potato-picking, and cattle feed to be ground and the shire horses had to be taken to be shod. That said, many of the horses were conscripted into the army. It was a dreadful sight to witness the fear of the harnessed recruits being loaded into the trucks at the bottom station supervised by Geoff Wilks from Sulgrave and Doug Whitton. The recruited horses were mostly hunters and lightweight horses as the shires were still needed on the farms; there were not many tractors around in 1939! The hunters were to be used for pulling gun carriages and had never been used to harness, and Mary has often wondered what happened to all those beautiful, but terrified animals.

In 1939, Mary worked in the family business. Her grandfather was an egg, butter and poultry dealer, and although semi-retired, kept the business going throughout the war, no easy task with all the rationing and coupons involved. There were such small amounts for the customers and after weighing out the butter and wrapping it, Mary used to cycle around the villages and sell it. Her grandmother kept chickens as well as pigs and Mary spent many hours washing out the "chitlins" (pigs’ intestines) in salt water. These were exchanged with neighbours like Mrs Hawkins - and vice versa when they had a pig killed. There was a small room in which hung bacon and great hams to dry. The bacon fat was made into lard - delicious it was too, on bread or toast.

On the family’s very large allotments they grew swedes and mangolds (rarely seen now but used then to supplement the pig feed) and water was drawn from the well in the lane and served almost the whole of what is now called Field Way. (Street names, eg Wappenham Road, Field Way, Church Street, were given to various parts of the village after the end of the war.) The earth lavatory was situated in the garden and caused much comment from some of the people who lived with the Turnhams, either friends and family, or service personnel, billeted with them, who had never seen such a toilet before. It consisted of a plank of wood with one large and one small hole in it, with newspaper to read and use! In the dark hours, a candle was needed to find the way, and on windy nights it was often blown out!!

Before the war there were always two or three milk cows kept in the fields where Hintons Close now stands, so there was a constant supply of cream to make butter. During the war, milk was collected in a can, directly it had cooled, from Hill Farm and milk was also delivered around the village by pony and float from Jessetts at Lukes Farm. Many town folk were evacuated to Helmdon during the war and Mary and her grandmother had their fair share of families and service personnel.

In 1940, Mary joined the Women’s Land Army and went to work for Major Doyne at Lois Weedon House, doing general farm work and helping with the cows, which of course, were all hand milked. Her transport was a bicycle and she cycled everywhere. However, cycling to Lois Weedon in the blackout on a cold, frosty morning was a nightmare. Mary explained that she could not see the state of the roads from the thin glimmer of the cycle lamp she had to use. Often she walked across the fields with her dog, Vaux, in the really bad weather.

Because of conscription, extra manpower was needed and so German and Italian prisoners of war, who were based in a hostel at Sulgrave, also worked on the farm. Mary started work at 7.00 am and worked six and a half days a week throughout the war years. Life was hard but she also enjoyed a social life in spite of the disadvantages.

At Syresham, there was an Air Force cafe and at Wappenham an RASC depot. Visiting the service canteens with other Land Army girls, all of them in uniform, they were made very welcome - not quite the forgotten army in those days! Dances were regularly held in the hall behind the Bell here in Helmdon, and many village romances started here. Fund-raising concerts for the Red Cross were enthusiastically received, and happy hours were spent collecting hips from the hedgerows for bottling by the WI. They knitted scarves and socks and sent them off with their names and addresses tucked inside in the hope that they would get a reply! Mary corresponded for some time with two soldiers who replied and actually met one of them in Northampton.

Black-outs were always a nightmare. Mary remembers at the beginning of the war, hand-sewing yards and yards of stiff material to form curtains to hang at all the windows. Shutters were made for the windows on the old farmhouse.

There was a Sixth Light Infantry Searchlight Battery at Kiln Farm and some of the service personnel would regularly stay in the front room at Fieldview for their leave of one day or so at a time as travel was very difficult. Mary’s grandmother, who died in 1942, would feed them, dry their wet clothes and store clothes and personal belongings at the house. One of them had a piano accordion and Mary almost learnt to play it. She used to cycle up to Kiln Farm to collect their swill for the pigs, precariously balancing two buckets on the handlebars of her bike!

Good Friday was spent ‘primrosing’, a practice that is outlawed today! The family would go to Whistley Wood or Plumpton Wood and pick masses of primroses to decorate the house and church and give away to neighbours. On Sundays, Mary’s half day, the joint of meat and prepared Yorkshire pudding were taken in the early morning to the top of the lane (in what is now Jean Spendlove’s house) where Tom Needle and Harry Hawkins kept a large oven. It was collected at 12.30 pm for the traditional family lunch, which frequently included the families or soldiers staying with them.

Life dealt some very hard blows during the war with the loss of good friends and loved ones and it certainly changed the pattern of village life for ever, but in spite of this there was a great deal of comradeship, and friendships made between civilians and in the services during the war are still there today. Mary doubts that she would ever have left Helmdon if it had not been for the war; joining the Women’s Land Army and living in a WLA hostel in 1947, certainly gave her an insight of life outside Helmdon.

As told to Lyndsey Leeden Glassett in Aspects of Helmdon No 2