George Spenceley recalls his memories of training to be a farmer in Yorkshire in the 1940's.

At first my Dad wasn't very pleased with the idea of me going off to work on a farm but I'd made up my mind. Firstly I had to go away and be trained.

The school careers teacher arranged for me to join the YMCA on a scheme called 'British Boys for British Farms'. Within days of leaving school I had to leave home and go to a village called Mappleton, near Hornsea on the east coast of Yorkshire.

My sister Edna accompanied me to the bus terminal with a kitbag belonging to my brother Ron holding my few possessions. As we waited for the bus Mrs. Graham came along and greeted us with the usual, 'Hello' she asked me where I was going with the kitbag, was I leaving home?

She smiled and Edna explained that I was going to work on a farm to which she replied, 'Oh! But that must be better than going into the steel works'. She must have felt sorry for me for she took a sixpence from her purse and offered it to me as a gesture, a token of good luck.

With very mixed feelings I travelled by train to Hull and once there I had to change trains for Hornsea. A chap with a Ford Tilley van greeted me and he drove me the last four miles.

Mappleton was a small village very close to the sea, there were a few houses, a church, a garage, a small shop come post office and a couple of farms. The coastline there was eroding very quickly, the villagers reckoned that the original church was two miles out at sea.

Large cracks had appeared on the cliff top and within a very short time owing to the water getting into those cracks another section would break off and slide down on to the beach where it was washed away by the sea.

The hostel or camp as we called it was very near to the cliff top, it was just a matter of time before the whole site would be taken over by the encroaching waves.

When I visited some forty three years later I found very little of the site left despite the Local Council having made vigorous attempts to stop the erosion, costing a very large sum of money.

The camp was made up of a collection of old army billets, for the village of Mappleton was on the edge of a huge military bombing range. On arrival I was taken to the principals office and welcomed in by a rather short, stocky man by the name of Mr. Jenkins who explained to me the workings of the hostel.

I was told that the camp was run by the Y.M.C.A. and as an association the money they paid was very low, I would receive one shilling (5p) a week for the first two weeks.

I'd be helping around the site and in the kitchen, the gardens, cleaning the living quarters and the surrounding areas, generally getting to know the workings of the place and the people who ran it.

During this time they'd keep a careful eye on me to see how I'd fit in with the others there. The shilling I received as pocket money soon disappeared.

I had to pay three pence a week to the club known as the family circle, a couple of coppers for a bottle of pop and sweets although still on ration from the corner shop would cost another two pennies leaving me with very little to last the rest of the following week.

Most of the lads came from homes similar to me with very poor backgrounds, we were all clean in ourselves but we'd very few clothes. The Y.M.C.A. issued us with some clothing from their store, we thought it was a very unusual colour, dark green. A bottle green with a diamond or triangle of bright yellow material across the back, we laughed and joked as we tried these unusual clothes on.

Asking the meaning of the shapes on our backs we were told that they'd been prisoner of war clothing, the B.B.B.F. A charity had been given them as surplus stock from the Government. We were very grateful for them and they certainly kept us warm when we worked in the fields.

Although I was very home sick like most of the other lads I settled as best I could under the circumstances, living away from home and loved ones came as quite a shock. I made a friend of one of the lads called Lee.

One day Lee came along and asked me how much pocket money I had left, I told him tuppence, he only had a ha'penny and he wanted to buy some sweets so asked if I'd loan him another ha'penny. I willingly gave him the coin but he said he only wanted a loan and insisted that he would return it the following day.

I said there's no rush but he insisted. The following day Lee was to assist the gardener in his duties and he had been weeding a vegetable plot while the gardener watered the greenhouse and he'd then gone on to some other chore.

When Lee finished what he was doing he went in search of more work, he looked into the greenhouse expecting to find the gardener, he noticed that the heater had been turned off so thinking that it had been forgotten he turned it back on again sure that he was doing the right thing.

There was a considerable amount of water about and when he turned the switch the tragedy happened. Lee was electrocuted. Nobody missed him for a while as we all thought he was in the garden but eventually the gardener returned to the greenhouse and found him laid there, Dead!

It was a terrible shock to us all when we heard the sound of the ambulance and found out that Lee had died. What a loss and he'd been such a good friend to me, it took a long time before I got over his death.

In the short time I'd known him we'd spent hours climbing the sandy cliffs together, playing on the beach and searching for the nests of the birds that burrowed into the sand, it made it seem as if I'd known him for a long time.

In Hornsea the amusements were just starting up again after the war and we spent some time on the motorised boats sailing around the mere, we had our photos taken and really enjoyed ourselves.

One day Fred Perks my friend went missing from the hostel and as it was only a short time since the death of the other lad the Principal became very worried.

Hours passed and still there was no sign of Fred. I gave the person in charge the photograph that we'd had taken on the mere. It was pinned on to the notice board with the caption 'WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE' and an arrow pointing to Fred we really looked a pair of scrounge tykes.

Hours later Fred turned up as large as life and got a good telling off for going missing.

George Spenceley, 2002