Manpower shortage

“Further to the ‘tattie’ correspondence,” writes a Craigie reader, “with the war still on, there was a great shortage of manpower on the land. The country schools already had a break in the autumn to help bring in the harvest. Now secondary school pupils were recruited. Those who did not, or could not, still had to attend school, but with much reduced class numbers.

“For those of us who did volunteer, it was a case of auld claes and wellies, plus sandwiches and a bottle of lemonade.

“We assembled at the school gates at 8am to be loaded on to buses. Most of the farms seeking our assistance were within 10 miles of Dundee and lunch was served in the nearest country school or village hall. Our ‘pieces’ were for our morning and afternoon breaks, taken alfresco, in the fields.

“If it rained heavily during the picking, we were sheperded into the nearest barn for shelter. If the rain continued, we were taken home. If we arrived home before lunch time, we were expected to attend school in the afternoon, but that seldom happened.

“The bus journeys in the mornings were a bit solemn. We were still half asleep, we did not know where we were going, or what to expect when we got there. Some of the ‘bits’ allotted to us varied from an easy pick to one we had barely finished picking before the digger returned. If the bits were really hard to pick, the digger often broke down – sabotage?

“The journey home was a different story. For a start, we had just been paid. (circa 10 shillings) per day. Many a new bike or a pair of football boots were purchased on the strength of what we earned. Once the bus was on the move, it only needed one pupil to start a song and the whole bus erupted.

“As the bus entered the city boundaries, the volume of the singing diminished as the driver dropped off the pupils at points along the route.

“Those still left on board when it reached the school gates, made their own weary way home and then the whole format was repeated, Monday to Friday, for two weeks.”