WW2 - Life On Our Lincolnshire Farms - Remembering POW Workers!

I was 12 years old when the war started in 1939 and lived near Gainsborough, Lincs, on a farm. We thought that it was going to be exciting. We were issued with gasmasks, ration books etc. All the windows had to be blacked out at night, with blackout material.

The excitement very soon disappeared when the bombs started dropping. We had some very funny times also.

I remember one night when we were all in an air raid shelter with some of the farm workers families. One woman said, “ Oh deer, I’ll haft to go back to the house, I forgot to put my false teeth in.” Her husband shouted, “ Sit down you daft woman, it’s bombs they are dropping out there, not pork pies.” We all had a good laugh at this.

One night we were all asleep in the house and were woken up by a large knock on the front door. Father opened his bedroom window and saw an airman with a parachute draped over his shoulder. He shouted, “Please may I use your telephone, I have bailed out of my plane and want to ring my station. Dad said, “Are you English?” “I most certainly am sir, I am in the RAF at Hemswell and we all had to bail out.” Dad said “Wait a minute, my two sons are in the Home Guard and I’ll have to get them down stairs with their guns. As far as I know you may be a German.” Later he was let into the house and rang Hemswell, had a cup of tea etc until he was collected.

Another day we looked out in the morning and a whole area was covered with yellow papers, thousands of them and they were German leaflets, dropped from the air by a plane. They were in English, saying that the war was over for England and we must surrender now to save lives and time. We reported this to the police and very soon dozens of police and soldiers were picking up the leaflets. We were told not to touch them or keep any. Every field in the area was covered and it took many days to almost collect them all up but it was impossible. Some months after, during harvest time, the sails of the corn binder were throwing them up into the air.

We had three prisoners to work on the farm at a later date. They were very good workers, after we showed them what to do. They lived on the farm with one of our workers.

They were such good workers, that when we moved to Beelsby, near Grimsby. We wanted to bring them with us, but we were told we could not, because it was not under the same control we would have to apply for another three prisoners from the Grimsby area. Dad did not want to do this, so he brought them here anyway and got away with it.

During a busy time we wanted a few more prisoners. There was a prison camp near Brigg. We got five more men and we had to train them how to harness a horse into a cart, how to hoe weeds in a field of corn, to load hay onto a cart so that it would not fall off on the way to the stack.Also, how to milk a cow, to plant potatoes, to single sugar beet, to feed the horses, to sort potatoes, to stack the sheaves of corn, to drive cattle — but not to drive the tractor. They were not allowed to drive vehicles. These jobs on a farm did not come easily to the men. Well, considering that some were jewelers, some were office workers, some bricklayers, joiners and some ex-policemen. Funny, none were farmers!

Where we could, of course, we put a man to his trade if at all possible. One man I remember decorated our lounge with emulsion paint and did a perfect pattern of flowers in several colours by using stencils, which he made. Also with an old medicine bottle, a bent piece of glass tube through a cork, he would blow into one tube, and spray would come out of the other.

Two men built walls along the main street in the village in front of several farm cottages where the wooden fence had broken down. These walls did stand a very long time, and some still do!

I remember one day, Dad wanted a few extra men to start hoeing weeds in the cornfields, so he asked Mr. Peart to send a few extra. He seemed delighted to do so. The next day four lorries turned up with 48 men! We did not of course have enough hoes and we went to Briggs of Caistor, the local ironmonger, and took all the hoes in stock, some thirty. Anyway, we did get a lot of fields weeded during the next few days. I think that some of the corn would suffer too in some cases.

One day, Mr. Peart came to see if we could possibly take a few extra men even if they didn’t all work. All the men must be out of the camp for some reason for a week. The next morning, six lorries arrived — 72 men. It looked like an invasion, but I remember some 40 or 50 men were sitting around in the sunshine; some of them were ‘having a look round’. There was a bit of trouble when a few balls of twine went missing and a few eggs. On one occasion, one of us had seen two men go into the henhouse at lunchtime and when they came out we went into the shed where their overcoats were hanging. We waited until they had gone back to work or somewhere and Dad found two coats, which contained eggs and he swapped them for pot eggs. We had a supply of these pot eggs, which are used to mix with a nest of eggs to stop a hen pecking and breaking eggs during sitting to hatch. The next morning Dad said to these two men, “Did you have a good breakfast?” No more eggs were taken, for a while anyway.

The men arriving on the farm would have to be cut to 10 men at the most. It was too much of a headache, watching and finding work and showing them what to do. Amongst these men would always be Stephan Idzinski or we would take none. We had got used to him, he would set himself on in a morning to do most jobs around the farm.

Each day men would bring wooden toys to sell. They made them in the camp. They also brought some slippers made out of binder twine, similar to some missing from our farm. I remember Dad saying that if he had been in their place he would probably have done the same to get some money for fags, chocolate etc.

No wonder that some of these men could not understand the English spoken by our workers. I remember one day one of these German prisoners was on top of a load of wheat sheaves on a cart, and our Harry Steer, who was a very broad Lincolnshire speaking man, was passing up the sheaves. The load of wheat sheaves was distinctly leaning over one way and looking in danger of slipping over. Now old Harry would not mutter one word all day to the other men. It was his way. He eventually looked up at the German and shouted at the top of his voice. “OWD ER TO LOWETH A BIT!” (Meaning hold her, the load, to Louth a bit.) Dad happened to arrive at this time and heard this, and could not help laughing. In the first place, which way was Louth, and what did the rest mean? Dad shouted to him, “Try and load the sheaves over this side more, as it is too much the other way.” Anyway, Dad could speak a bit of German. He did learn it at school and it was ‘coming back’ a little.

Old Harry was not a lot better when he was showing about 20 prisoners how to ‘single’ sugar beet. Dad had sent him, (I don’t know why) to explain to them in his own way how to pull out of the soil, so many so many sugar beet plants with the fingers and only leave one plant in each lot, and then go on to the next lot about a foot away and do the same. All in a kneeling position, they gathered around Harry like a swarm of bees. “Look you ere”, said Harry. “Just pull ‘em all up and leave one like this ‘ere.” They all shouted something and ran off to get a row of beet each. The first man Harry saw went like a madman pulling ALL the beet up. “What the hell are you doing, you clot?” Harry shouted at him. “I leave my one at the other end!” he said. With that, Harry called Dad to come, saying, “They all sound like a lot of foreigners to me!”

DENNIS FENWICK 2005

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