Yesterday Remembered

When I was aged 10, the farmers used to come round the schools to pick volunteers to work on the farms during the summer holidays, mainly to help bring in the harvest. The country was still building up after the war and it was all hands to the pump. Boys like me loved doing this work. I was no good at maths and English. We wanted to be out working and having fun, and it was fun walking behind the cutter, picking up the sheaves and building a tipi shape with them. The tractor and trailer would come along the rows slowly, so we could load the trailer.

- Wilfrid Leahy of Blandford Forum, Dorset remembers:

Pride and Sadness

I will never forget the pride I felt when I was 11 and Mr Turner said: "Here, you can drive the tractor this week. I'll show you what to do. You do nothing else – just concentrate on the driving." Well, I felt so proud and because I made a good job of it that year, the next year I drove it from the field to the farm with a short distance on the road. That was the last year for us working on the farm because things changed.

I then left school at 14 to work in the brickworks as a fitter's mate. The first week, I was a grease monkey, the next two weeks I was fitting dies that shape the bricks. Then I was put with Harry who taught me so much. By the time six months had gone, I was changing dumper engines by myself, then, suddenly, my world fell apart. Harry and I were sent to Richmond works to change a centre bearing on a mobile crane.

It was winter, and I caught the flu and was put to bed. While I was ill, the shop foreman came to see me at home. He seemed strange but asked how I was and said he hoped I would be better soon. When he left, my mum came in with a cup of tea for me and a letter from Harry. I read the letter and, when I'd finished, I looked at Mum who had tears in her eyes. She then told me that the letter was the last thing Harry had done before he passed away. The news broke my heart.

Harry was a heavy smoker, so when he wrote in his letter that he had trouble with his lungs, which was making him short of breath, I assumed that was the cause of his death. I was never told the actual cause. I have taken the letter with me wherever I have been. It is now kept in my Royal Marines bible and will remain there.