Muriel Patricia Aflat
FARM CAMP
People in story: MURIEL PATRICIA
ALFLAT (nee GILLIVER), Miss. E. Woodland, Miss J. Hague, Miss P. Hampston
Location of story: Sheffield, Sleaford, Lincolnshire, Helpringham
Background to story: Civilian
This story was
submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk –
Sheffield’ Team on behalf of MURIEL PATRICIA ALFLAT.
FARM CAMP
By MURIEL PATRICIA ALFLAT (nee GILLIVER)
In the autumn of 1944, a group of girls from Abbeydale Girls’ Grammar School,
Sheffield, went to Lincolnshire to pick potatoes as part of the war effort. There
was a shortage of labour in the countryside, as the young men had been called
up for military service. We left Sheffield Midland Station on a Saturday by
train, until we reached Sleaford. One of our party, Mavis Hurst, trapped her
hand in the train door and was tended by some very kind American soldiers
travelling on the same train.
On arrival at our destination, we transferred to a lorry and were taken to our
lodgings. Up to that point, I was quite excited and eager to see what lay
ahead. We reached our accommodation, which was an extremely derelict old
farmhouse in Helpringham. To me it was horrific. We were allocated the rooms in
which we were to sleep. We were about eight to a room. Mine was on the ground
floor and others had to walk through ours in order to get to the upstairs
rooms. We slept on sacks filled with straw and we had army blankets to cover
us. If the doors of the rooms were slammed the walls swayed! We washed in water
from the pump (queued up to do so in fact) and it was also our drinking
water---that is until someone put their soap on the top (only there wasn’t
one!) and it fell down the pipe! Next to the pump was a small static water tank
with corrugated metal covers. When anyone lifted up a cover to get water, the
midge larva at the top wriggled to the bottom! I’m afraid I did very little
water drinking or even washing!
Our morning and evening meals, which were served in some hall or other, were
brilliant and prepared by our accompanying teachers, Miss E. Woodland, Miss J.
Hague (Maths) and Miss P. Hampston (English). Each day, a couple of girls were
detailed to help with the chores, washing up, preparing meals, cleaning where
the chemical toilets were. We mostly had cooked dried eggs and tomatoes for
breakfast, which I quite enjoyed. Our evening meals nearly always included
blackberry and apple crumble, the blackberries having been collected by staff
and duty pupils. I enjoyed this too. The meal I didn’t enjoy was the mid-day
one, a packed meal. Without fail it was fish paste sandwiches. I liked fresh
salmon paste, but ours was, amongst others, bloater and mackerel from jars. To
me it had a dreadful taste and I usually gave mine away. To supplement our
meals, we were always hungry, we were allowed to go to various orchards and
pick up the fallen apples to eat, even though the cows had had a bite of them
first! Our other supplement was a tin of National Dried Milk into which we
dipped our fingers and then licked it off!
One of the things I’d always wanted to do was to have a midnight feast. I had
read a lot of Eleanor M. Brent-Dyer’s “Chalet School” books! Some of us had the
odd food parcel from home and a “midnight feast” was proposed. I’m afraid I was
too exhausted to stay awake and had to be woken up by someone. All I wanted to
do was sleep---quite a let down!
Our daily time-table was as follows:-
- 8.0.a.m. we went to work
- mid-morning we had ¼ hour break
- dinner break for ½ hour
- 5.0.p.m. we finished.
We were taken to the fields on a tractor drawn trailer. The strip of field
being harvested was divided into patches paced out and marked with sticks. The
spinner (a machine that dug up the potatoes) was horse-drawn and went up one
side of the patch and down the other. We collected the crop into some sort of
baskets and left them at the edge of our own patch, to be collected by a man
with a horse and cart. When the area had been cleared, the spinner was replaced
by a harrow (rake), drawn by the same horse. This turned the soil again and we
picked up any potatoes missed the first time. Then the whole process was
repeated with a fresh strip of field. It rained nearly every day and was very
cold, bleak and miserable. It was back-breaking work and I ended up working on
my hands and knees. The older man who was in charge of the spinner was named “B
dash” by us---as in “Get them B--- ‘taters picked”, and the younger one doing
the collecting we called “Rosie” as he blushed when spoken to. I never did know
their real names.
At one point, Italian POW’s were working in the adjoining field from where they
cobbed potatoes at us with great merriment. Our pay was 9d. per hour (now the
equivalent of 3 3/4p per hour and our keep was deducted from this. On our day
off, Sunday, I would have liked to catch up on my sleep---but no, we were
marched in a crocodile to look at the eight sailed windmills in the area. Some
girls picked mushrooms---a variation to our diet---and some had assignations in
the hay-stacks with the local lads!
Towards the end of our stay, I developed dysentry and was isolated. I presume we
returned as we arrived, by lorry and train, but I can’t remember. My mother was
waiting for me as were other mothers at the station. She was quite convinced I
had someone else’s shoes on---they were so caked up with mud they were
unrecognisable as mine! The following summer, some girls went fruit-picking,
but I was not one of them!