'One of the few positives from World War II, due to the extreme shortage of food, was that farmers were appreciated as never before or after. A consequence of this were the Agricultural Holdings Acts. The 1947 Act provided guaranteed prices. The 1948 Act required conditions of good farm management and the 1949 Act covered land tenure'
Armistice Day, the 105th, has come and gone.
I, one of the generation known as 'The Baby Boomers', entered the world at number twenty seven and became aware of the significance of the day at an early age. Duns square was packed. We walked to the War Memorial in the public park behind the veterans of both world wars. Some were on crutches or, it they had lost both legs, in the dowdy black government issue bath chairs.
There were empty sleeves and others wore dark glasses and carried a white stick. Medals were proudly displayed and some who had served in Scottish regiments wore Balmorals or Glengarrys. Tears flowed but there was an underlying pride that, of the victors, Britain alone had fought, sometimes against overwhelming odds, from start to finish in both wars.
Wounds, both physical and mental, were still raw. Of the two young shepherds at Blackhaugh, my grandfather’s farm, my father was seriously wounded and Sergeant Jimmy Stoddart KOSB still lies in France; not too far from my father’s cousin Jack from Wedderlie and my mother’s first husband, Herbert Montgomery, who was shot down in a Hurricane over the English Channel.
All three were only sons. My auntie Jean’s first husband, Peter Paterson, who flew in Bomber Command, lies in a cemetery in Denmark. To us they are names on a war memorial, to folk then they were loving, laughing kin and Remembrance Day was every day of the year.
When I became aware, those who had been away like my Dad and the shepherd Archie Anderson, both of whom were decorated for valour, 'had beaten their swords into ploughshares'. Like the uncle I never knew, Archie had flown in bombers. Bomber Command had the highest attrition rate of any of the services in The Second World War.
It was exactly the same as the trenches on The Western Front in World War One. Night after night they took off in the darkness knowing only too well that some seats at breakfast the next morning would be vacant. Archie was a tail gunner, the worst job on the plane. If it went down in flames, he would have difficulty in getting out.
Women too did their bit. My mother served in The Women’s Auxiliary Airforce (WAFF) and my aunt served in The Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). So too did a little old woman from Roxburgh who I knew later in life, who had been Mary Churchill’s driver. As they had in 1917, 200,000 women joined The Women’s Land Army in World War II. Known as the Land Girls, they replaced men from the farms who were away fighting. They were critical to increasing the country’s food production.
More than a third had never been out of the cities and had no agricultural experience. Despite this they ploughed and harvested the fields, caught rats, milked cows and drove tractors. Others, ‘The Lumberjills’ joined The Woman’s Timber Corps and did the work previously done by men in the woods.
Increasingly, as the war progressed and the tide began to turn, Italian and German prisoners of war were employed on the farms. Many of the German POWS, like the Poles who fought on our side and who loathed them, never returned to their homelands which were now behind The Iron Curtain.
Those on the farms who were too old, too young or unable to fight joined The Home Guard. The image of The Home Guard portrayed in 'Dads Army' when we stood alone and invasion threatened was realistic however, as the war developed, it became a formidable force. Fortunately, by then the immediate danger had receded and it was no longer needed.
One of the few positives from World War II, due to the extreme shortage of food, was that farmers were appreciated as never before or after. A consequence of this were the Agricultural Holdings Acts. The 1947 Act provided guaranteed prices. The 1948 Act required conditions of good farm management and the 1949 Act covered land tenure.
For the first time tenant farmers had security of tenure. In England this was for three generations and in Scotland it was in perpetuity. Improvements made by tenants would be now eligible for compensation at waygo. In a superb article Evelyn Hamilton of Mains of Tullochgribben, who graduated in economics from Edinburgh University in 1956, and who worked for the East of Scotland College of Agriculture after that, described the huge difference security of tenure made both economically and psychologically, to tenant farmers.
The grinding poverty of the 1930s and the worry of eviction at the end of the lease had been replaced by optimism and investment in their farms. I quote Evelyn Hamilton, 'All of this may seem a long time ago, but these foundation stones of tenant security laid down sixty years ago must not be eroded or dismantled. The principles are as sharp and relevant to conditions today as they were in the aftermath of World War II'.
Those in my sphere as a small boy were farmers, shepherds and land workers but other sons of the soil too had their day in the sun. Francois Meilland grew roses in Northern France. In 1939, as clouds darkened, his land was required to grow food and he spent three days burning his roses in huge bonfires. He saved only one rose which he thought particularly promising.
It had dark glossy leaves and large flowers of a light yellow to cream colour, slightly flushed at the edges with pink. As yet it had no name only a number, 3-35-40. When war was imminent Meilland sent plants to fellow rose growers in Italy and Germany. A third cutting was sent to the United States on the last plane to leave France before the declaration of war.
Nothing was heard of the fate of these plants until late in the war and the tide was turning. Meilland learned that the cultivar in Italy had done well and had been given the name ‘Gioia’, the Italian for Joy. The German plant too had been a success and had been named ‘Gloria Dei’, Glory of God. Nothing had been heard of the plant which had crossed the Atlantic.
On April 29, 1945, the very day that Berlin fell, two doves were released into the American sky and the beautiful cream rose with the pink flush was introduced to the world. They didn’t know it then, but it was destined to become the greatest rose in history and 3-35-40 now had a name.
The name they gave it was PEACE.
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