Episode 1 Wartime Farm

In September 1939, Britain stood on the brink of the Second World War.

To avoid defeat,

one battle would become more important than any other.

The battle to produce food.

Two thirds of Britain's food was imported.

And now, it was under threat from a Nazi blockade.

To feed the nation, an agricultural revolution of epic proportions

was needed to at least double home-grown food production.

Churchill called the farms of Britain the front line of freedom.

Now, historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Alex Langlands

and Peter Ginn are turning the clock back.

We're about to embark on the greatest challenge

ever faced by British agriculture, Peter, the Second World War.

Over the next year, they'll work Manor Farm in Hampshire

as it would have been during the Second World War.

-Onward march!

-Come on! Quick march!

Here, the team will relive the struggle of wartime farmers

to maximise food production...

The plough, really, had become a weapon of war.

..cope with shortages...

Whoa! That is a bit of kit!

..experience social revolution in the countryside...

Whoa!

..and protect and defend the south coast from the threat of invasion.

Four men, evidence of explosives.

PLANE FLIES BY

This is the untold story of the countryside at war.

CAR HORN TOOTS

GEARBOX GRINDS

-Oh!

-Oh!

-If you can't find it, grind it, as they say!

In 1939, Britain's farmers prepared for war.

Now, Alex, Ruth and Peter are on their way to their new farm in Hampshire.

A few miles in from the south coast, near the ports of Southampton

and Portsmouth, during the war, this was the front line against the Nazis.

Like troops, farmers, too, were being mobilised.

So important was their job to the nation's survival, the farming

would become a reserved occupation, exempt from military conscription.

60% of our food was being imported. Just so easy, isn't it,

for the Germans to just cut-off the supply?!

A ring of U-boats surrounding the British Isles,

effectively starving us to death.

Suddenly, all the overseas food on which Britain so depended

was in jeopardy.

German U-boats and warships threatens to destroy convoys

transporting supplies across the Atlantic.

To make things worse, farming in Britain had been in recession

since the end of the First World War.

And now they'd have to double production.

This is probably one of the greatest challenges British

agriculture had ever faced!

Absolutely!

How to turn it around after 20 years of neglect

and a reinvestment in the countryside.

But the main thing, we have got a new team member!

-Isn't that right, Henry?

-All right at the back there, Henry?

He's going to make all the difference, isn't he?

I think he most certainly will.

-There you go.

-That's really pretty.

-What a farm!

-Beautiful, isn't it?

This is Manor Farm,

eight miles from Southampton,

which they will work on for the coming year.

Handing over the keys is farm manager David Trenchard.

Hello, David. Alex.

-Alex.

-Ruth.

-Ruth, pleasure. Fantastic farm you've got here.

Yes, it is. You wouldn't find a more typical Hampshire farm than this.

Where is our first port of call going to be?

I think we'll start in the yard and have a look at the stock.

-OK.

-Thank you.

Manor farm was typical of the 1930s.

Cheap cereal crops imported from the United States and Canada

meant British farmers could no longer compete.

So instead of growing crops, they concentrated on livestock.

Ah, the pigs!

These are the pigs, yes, we keep two breeds on the farm at the moment.

We keep Saddlebacks, and this is Middle Whites.

Good old pig for your sausages and everything else.

In fact, they are a rare breed.

Good girl, good girl.

THEY LAUGH

There you go.

-Now, here's your girls.

-Here's our girls.

-You can tell they are milkers.

-Yes, yes, very good milkers.

-We have actually got a Guernsey, Jersey and an Ayrshire there.

-Right.

I mean this close to somewhere like Southampton,

-there's definitely going to be a market for milk, isn't there?

-Yeah.

-This is our milking parlour.

-Wow!

Hey! It's a modern milking machine!

Cups for the teats. I mean, it is such a reduction in labour.

Yes, yes, we have modernised.

So this really is the 1939 state-of-the-art milking parlour?

This is it, yes, sit on that stool every morning

spending 20 minutes milking the cow there.

THEY LAUGH

Before the war, Manor Farm also had beef cattle,

sheep,

workshops...

..petrol-powered farm equipment...

..and nearby, a wartime village hall.

Oh, look at this! Dance Mania Foxtrot.

-Wow, old gramophone records!

-The One I Love. A foxtrot.

So we're definitely between the two wars here, aren't we?

Mmm. This must have been ringing, this place.

Such a popular thing to do, during the war, dancing.

Well, judging by the state of this place, it was an awesome party!

Got this fantastic archaeological record here, haven't we,

-of life during the war, really.

-Absolutely.

At the heart of the farm is a row of cottages.

Here, Alex, Peter and Ruth will experience wartime domestic life.

-Ah, the kitchen!

-Let's have a look.

-Nice light. A local stove.

It's tiny. How am I supposed to manage with that?!

This coal cooking range dates from well before the First World War.

By the 1930s, they were being superseded by cleaner

-and more efficient cookers.

-Look, look, I'll show you what I want.

I've been looking. Look, see! That's what I want, that.

-What is that? Gas, is it?

-An electric cooker.

I mean, there's gas cookers and electric cookers going in like crazy all across Britain.

It's clean, takes far less work and the government is actually

saying with war coming, we know we're going to be short of coal,

we need that fuel for other things, electricity is much more efficient.

It's really encouraging people to move over to electric cooking.

So, the lady gets a new cooker because it's all

-part of the war effort, is what you're trying to say to us?

-Yeah.

I'm really looking forward to bringing this place back to life

and seeing what it was like living in rural Britain

during the Second World War.

Wartime in many people's minds is all about guns and aeroplanes,

and tanks and young men in uniform.

But it's also a period in which the British countryside,

and British country people really came back into their own.

Timber!

The farmers had to produce food,

and provide accommodation for a huge section of the population.

It was an enormously important part of the war effort,

and I do think that sometimes it gets forgotten.

This is an opportunity to explore an untold history.

Here, we've got a very, very different battle being fought -

a battle, really, for food -

and that untold story is one that I'm thrilled to be exploring.

ROOSTER CROWS

Even before war was declared,

the government anticipated that a German blockade would

drastically reduce food imports, so Britain would have to feed itself.

To do so, farmers would have to increase their harvest.

Over there, we've got dog-tail coppice.

The government set up war agricultural executive committees

in every county to drive through these changes.

Known as War-Ags,

they had the power to tell farmers what fields to plough up.

So Alex and Peter are surveying the farm's 30 acres to see how it can be done.

So, this is Manor Farm here.

Yeah, that's the farm and we are bound by the River Hamble here,

-coming around this horseshoe shape.

-Yeah.

So all of these fields around here would relate to Manor farm.

But of course, the majority of this land

-was all being used for rearing livestock.

-Yeah.

But using land for livestock production

was not the most efficient way of feeding the nation.

It's a simple principle, really, isn't it?

Instead of growing all of this feed to feed animals,

to slaughter, to then feed people, why don't you actually just

grow the feed and feed the people directly, and it's a much more

economic way of feeding, because you lose a lot of that calorific value

from the original food,

by putting it through livestock before you feed people.

In 1939, war breaks out, you had months to get around your farm,

as we'll be doing, and looking at the field and saying, that - wheat,

that - beans, that - barley,

-and that's exactly what we're going to have to do, aren't we?

-We are.

Over the six years of conflict, the War-Ag instructed farmers to grow

an extra 6.5 million acres of crops, a total area bigger than Wales.

Many farmers were ill-equipped for this monumental challenge,

as they didn't have the machinery or suitable land.

Welcome to the badlands. If I were a potter,

I could make my fortune here.

It's beautiful, beautiful clay, but at the moment,

this clay is a hindrance. The water, it sits on it.

If we attempted to grow crops here, they would be ruined,

so we need to find some way of draining this sitting water

and then we'll be able to grow a fantastic crop.

It actually, according to the map,

dips away towards a brook in the bottom of the field.

So I am worried about sitting water.

In this field, they have decided to grow wheat, used to produce bread.

I've got a leaflet here, Peter,

this is what the ministry have furnished me with.

"Mole drainage for heavy land."

What the War-Ag is recommending is the use of a mole subsoiler,

essentially, it's a kind of deep cultivation, if you like.

It's like a little torpedo that is dragged through the soil

at a depth of, what, Peter?

-About just over a foot.

-OK.

-A foot or a foot and a half.

-Just over a foot.

-It's got to be deeper than the plough,

-if it's going to happen.

-Yeah.

Traditionally, farmers had drained fields with hand-dug ditches

and clay pipes.

But using a mole subsoiler was much quicker and cheaper

and used extensively during the war.

First, they need to survey the field to find out which way it slopes.

Now, it might look obvious to start with, but I can see already,

we've got a dip in there. There's a danger that

if we just drained all the way down to this point, OK,

even if we drained through it,

we'd still get a build-up of water in this area.

As archaeologists, surveying is second nature to Alex and Peter.

Yeah, there, perfect. And just work down a little bit.

-So, here?

-Yeah.

-OK.

-So that's what? Five feet seven?

-About five, six.

-Five, six. There we go.

OK, Alex! Shall we do another line?

Knowing the lay of the land, they can work out where to use

the mole subsoiler to make underground drainage channels.

Doubling food production put enormous demands on labour,

so women were drafted to work on the land.

This made it important to reduce housework

by modernising the kitchen.

Ruth's called on expert in household technology, Dr Karen Sayer.

Oh! You've caught me! I'm still cleaning! Hello! Come in! Sorry!

-That's fine.

-I'm absolutely filthy! Lovely to see you.

Good to see you, too.

I found this fantastic picture in my book here, about furniture

and how to layout the home.

And that. You see? That's just exactly what I had in mind.

We've got the electric cookers, the kitchenettes, it's a modern,

-new kitchen, ready!

-I have to disappoint you a little bit.

-Oh.

-THEY LAUGH

-The kitchenette is fine,

but electric cooker is going to be a big problem.

-Do you have mains electricity?

-No, not the mains.

So the fact that we're not on the grid here,

was that common for farms at the outbreak of war?

Absolutely. The majority of farms were not on the grid.

In 1939, just one in ten rural houses had mains electricity.

But there was an alternative.

A portable petrol-powered generator.

Philip Everson has brought one along.

ENGINE CHUGS

-Goodness, you got it going!

-Yes!

Hopefully, now we can have some light.

That looks frankly like you are about to restart Frankenstein.

Well, it would probably do that as well,

but first of all, we should have...light!

Oh, wow!

SHE LAUGHS

This is a 50 volt set. It runs 50 volts and up to 1,000 watts.

This is what you call a cottage lighting plant

so you run the engine during the day to charge a set of batteries up

and when they were fully charged you put the lights on at night

so you can have the lights without listening to the engine,

and use the engine to keep the batteries charged.

-That's quite a doable thing.

-Yeah, absolutely.

We could use it to light a workshop, we could use it to light the house.

Were there a lot of these about?

They made these engines from 1926 up until 1964

and the actual basic engines, they made a quarter of a million of them.

They were one of the most successful small power engines

ever made in the UK.

They were almost impossible to kill.

You could work them and abuse them

and they still came back for more so the farmers loved them.

Before they can sow the wheat,

the team need a mole subsoil to improve the drainage.

But low incomes during the agricultural depression

meant farmers didn't have the money to buy equipment.

So, like farmers of the time, Peter must improvise

by calling on the services of a blacksmith like Simon Summers.

This is, essentially, a bullet-shaped piece of iron

that gets dragged through the ground and leaves in its wake a channel.

Basically, like a pipe without any...piping

Yeah, yeah, you want a solid bit of iron.

You want some strength there, for that.

Serious strength. Yeah.

-All right.

-Cos this is quite an undertaking.

In 1939, scrap metal was going to the war effort

for armaments production - resulting in shortages.

Well, that looks like the base of a seed drill.

Yeah, there's some good wheels on that.

The blacksmith, whose craft had long been in decline,

now found himself once more in demand.

There's an adjustable linkage there, so that could go on to the tractor.

He had the skill to make do and mend,

turning rusty metal into new machines.

The thing I'm most concerned about is the actual physical lump

of metal that gets dragged through the grounds.

-That's iron, that is.

-That's iron, is it?

That's raw iron, that shaft is.

-Well, that's pretty...

-We could use that.

It's good-quality iron, this.

Henry, we're looking for iron, not potatoes!

In the forge, Simon begins the process of transforming

the scrap-iron axle into a brand-new mole.

OK? That's it. Now we're going to put it back in the fire.

The first job is to make a bullet-shaped nose on the mole,

so it can be pulled easily through the clay soil.

This is where the sledge comes and you're going to follow my pattern.

-You tell me where to hit and I hit it.

-Yeah.

OK.

Right, we're just driving... this in to cut a slot.

We have to be very careful, cos it's so hot.

Simon has to keep cooling the tool otherwise it gets stuck in there

and will essentially forge the two together.

That's perfect.

Once the fields have been drained with Peter's mole subsoiler,

they'll return to bare earth, by ploughing.

But Alex had spotted another problem.

You can't plough a field when it's got big, thick sward, you know,

a thick grass on the top of it. It just doesn't work.

You've got to have it eaten down so it's almost like a carpet.

To do this, Alex is calling on the beef cattle,

reared by Debbie Underwood.

So you've built up a real rapport with this herd.

-This one we've had since she was two weeks old.

-Really?

I used to pick up and carry her around. I don't do that any more.

-No, I can imagine!

-She's like a lovely, soppy Labrador.

-This is Abigail.

-Abigail?

Yeah. Isn't she gorgeous?

Come on, then.

But back then, this herd would have faced an uncertain future.

You would have had farmers, like Debbie here, who had grown-up

with cattle all their lives but with more looming

and this desire to grow more cereals,

the Ministry for Agriculture wasn't going to reward farmers

who kept beef, cattle.

Come on!

It will take the cattle about three weeks to graze this grass

ready for ploughing.

This is my new kitchenette.

I am so pleased with this.

Ruth and Karen are furnishing the kitchen with labour-saving devices.

It's clean.

A lovely enamel surface, easy to wipe down for pastry preparation.

-Absolutely.

-All your food storage, all cleanly tidied away, it's great.

With the generator finally connected up,

Ruth has electric light in the cottage.

Fantastic!

SHE LAUGHS

BULB SMASHES

Hopefully, she'll have better luck with the radio.

Whoops!

RADIO TUNES IN AND OUT

Of course, this is how you're going to get all the news

and current affairs.

Particularly as you go further into the war,

the newspapers themselves had to cut down incredibly

-and sometimes there were only four sides at a time.

-Right.

So the best way of finding out exactly what's going on is the radio.

This really is your connection with the wider world.

It's your connection, absolutely.

Electricity also meant new labour-saving gadgets.

Now we're talking!

Perfect appliance to make your life so much easier.

Traditionally, an iron was a piece of flat metal heated on a coal range.

Now they were replaced by ones you could plug in.

-So, it's a bayonet or like a bulb.

-It's a bayonet exactly like a bulb.

That's it.

-Wow!

-Now, how much faster is that?

-That's not only fast but it's so clean.

-It's so clean.

You don't have to worry about smuts getting on your laundry.

Small generators weren't capable of powering large appliances, though,

like electric cookers.

But there was a modern convenient replacement for the coal range.

Oh, it's a paraffin stove!

They're supposed to just free stand, no plumbing in.

There's no fixing to anything, it's just a little stand-alone box.

Well, again, this is the way forward. This is modernity.

So, it's just a series of flat paraffin lamps.

-This is nothing new, is it?

-No, this is exactly like oil lamps.

People would have been very used to using this and this helps with

the adoption of technology as well and you can see that in the styling.

It's all painted black to look like a range

and yet it's made of really thin sheet metal.

Absolutely, and that's to make people feel very comfortable.

I am really looking forward to cooking on this.

-I bet you are!

-It's going to be so different.

It is going to be so much easier presumably.

Look, no smoke.

You're not having to shovel coal or anything.

It's much less labour intensive.

-OK, you get the sledge, Peter.

-Yeah.

To drain the boggy land for cereal production,

Peter and blacksmith Simon Summers are making a mole subsoiler.

Whack it down, yeah.

So far, they've made the head of the mole.

Next, they must make a strong bracket

to hold it in place below the ground.

-Now we need to make another cut up here.

-Right.

Move it along, probably about there.

But the best they can find is a rusty Victorian cartwheel rim.

It's really good iron. It's such a waste if we don't re-use it.

Once we get up to a certain temperature,

the rust just comes off so it will be like bright new iron again.

The bracket's finished. Now to attach it to the mole itself.

Right, here comes the hot rivet. In it goes.

So, through... it catches the mushroom. OK, flip...

Flip!

CLANGING

You can see why blacksmiths went deaf!

And there we have it, entirely made from scrap iron

that we found in the hedgerow.

Old machinery that we turned into a new machine. Fantastic.

Peter is building a chassis to carry his mole subsoiler.

So hopefully this is going to aid keeping the mole in the ground.

And there we go.

Slide that in like that.

This project is a mix of quite intense stress

because obviously, it's got to be done and done to a certain time limit

but also one of immense joy because it's so much fun

to have a workshop, to have a forge, to be able to tinker around.

All good, all good stuff.

Peter will need a machine to pull the mole subsoiler

through the ground.

But in 1939, there were 20 horses to every tractor on Britain's farms.

If farmers were to double food production to meet the demands

of war they'd have two replace horsepower with mechanical power.

Unlike horses, tractors don't need to rest.

Pete Diggs, who has farmed in this area his whole life, is giving

Alex and Ruth a lesson in driving the most popular wartime tractor,

the Fordson.

-Hello, Peter.

-So this is her, is it?

-She's going to do all the work for us?

-Well, we hope so!

You've got a nice sprung seat here.

There's no cushions

but I can remember putting straw into a sack and tying that on.

-Yeah.

-It was much more comfortable on the bum.

-I bet it was!

But it's no easy job starting it.

-Make sure you've got plenty of oil there.

-OK.

During the war, tractor numbers on British farms would more than

triple from 55,000 to over 175,000.

But the Fordson was notoriously difficult to start...

as Ruth's about to discover.

And then wind with the starting handle.

Shall we make Ruth crank this, do you think?

Oh, you'll have muscles now!

I've got muscles!

Blinking heck.

Jeepers.

Doubling crop production would need a huge increase in labour

so women were called upon to drive the tractors.

SHE GASPS

Much easier to take a horse out of a stable!

Yeah, probably quicker at my rate and all!

-ENGINE SPLUTTERS AND DIES

-Oh, did you hear that?

Oh, nearly! Nearly!

How you doing? Do you want me to...?

No.

The kind of wartime attitude we need, Ruth.

ENGINE STARTS

Congratulations, Ruth.

Oil and all!

-You are going to stand well back, aren't you?

-Yes, absolutely, Ruth!

SHE GRINDS GEARS

Let's let her get on with it, Peter.

Yes!

Pete was just seven when war broke out

and he witnessed the transition from horse power to mechanical power.

That was Captain and that was Dick.

As you can see, I started very, very young.

Look, that's you on top of that. That's a big dray, isn't it?

That's it.

-I take it these aren't your boots here.

-No, they are my fathers.

I nicked them one day and was off down to the farm.

-What, you wanted to be a farmer from a young age?

-That's it.

Come on! Come on, come on.

ENGINE STALLS

Argh! I stalled her!

-The gear changes.

-Were you attempting second, there?

-I was trying second.

-You were attempting second gear.

-Yeah.

I'd better go over and see.

HE LAUGHS

In the workshop, Peter's mole subsoiler is taking shape.

But there aren't enough hours of daylight to get it finished in time.

Using the generator to light the workshop should help.

This is going to make such a difference.

Because it is going to enable me to work throughout the evening.

If they don't get the fields drained and ploughed

in the next few days, they won't get the wheat crops sown in time.

Finally!

Oh, dear.

On third September, 1939, at 11:15 in the morning,

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made the announcement

the nation had been bracing itself for.

-NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN:

-This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin

handed the German government a final note

stating that, unless we heard from them

by 11 o'clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw

their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.

I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received

and that consequently, this country is at war with Germany.

Somebody who was my age in 1939...

I'd have been in my mid-20s in the First World War,

the sort of age when you're losing husbands, losing brothers.

You have such a strong experience of it and then here it is all again.

So you're sat here listening to Chamberlain saying,

"I regret to tell you we're now at War-Again, against the same people."

You could lose your husband in the first war

and your son in the second.

Even so, you'd be sat here looking out the window

scarcely able to believe it.

A beautiful summer's day like this.

Britain was now expecting to be bombed by the Nazis at any time.

Air raid precaution wardens were tasked

with protecting the population.

Steve Taylor is an expert in wartime civil defence.

One for you.

One for you.

The government assumed that the Nazis would used poison gas

on the population so a gas mask was issued to every man,

woman and child in the country.

How do we know there's going to be a gas attack?

Are we just looking out ourselves for bombers?

No, you will hear an air raid siren or a rattle.

I've got the rattle here that I can show you.

Once you hear that, it's gas masks on immediately.

As soon as there is an all clear,

there will be an all clear siren or my trusty ARP whistle.

THREE LOUD WHISTLES

-It will tell you it is all clear.

-Right, OK.

It was also feared that Britain would suffer night bombing.

A total blackout on the ground would make locating the target

much more difficult for the enemy.

Steve's demonstrating how doors were blacked out using a light break.

So, it's late at night and there is a kerfuffle in the farmyard.

Sound of a fox at the chickens.

I go in here, make sure I've closed the curtain first.

And then open the door.

And door open.

-Can you see any light coming in the edges?

-Only through moth holes.

There we go.

To black out the windows, Alex and Peter are making removable frames.

One bespoke blackout frame.

-Not a single pinprick.

-Proper job, mate.

-Right, fantastic.

-That is a great job.

Now all we need to do is get that blackout curtain up.

All YOU need to do is get a blackout curtain up.

Right. Others have mole ploughs.

Of course, you need to get that done, don't you?

With war, the threat of German U-boats cutting off imports

became a reality.

It wasn't just staple foods like wheat that were under threat.

Imported fruits containing vitamin C were essential to the health of

the nation, particularly children.

As a boy, Ruth's father, Jeff Stealy,

was sent into the countryside to forage for alternatives.

I remember you telling me all about doing this.

-How much did they pay you?

-Tuppence a pound.

-Tuppence a pound!

Which was quite good for pocket money days, it really was.

If you did it on the wet days, of course, they weighed more.

Which was quite good.

That was your compensation for being out in bad weather.

And with all the men away,

it was left to the women and largely the boys,

to go around the hedges, finding apples, picking berries.

Why rosehips so much? There's not much food value in them.

Ah, but there's vitamin C.

So the sources of vitamin C that we've got used to,

all the oranges and lemons, are no longer coming in.

And limes, all sorts of Mediterranean stuff,

couldn't get through. So we're scratching about trying to find

-native British equivalents.

-Yes.

Ruth is preserving the rosehips in syrup

so it can be taken throughout the winter.

The long, slow, gentle cooking has suited them quite well

so now I just need to strain all that liquid off.

Look at the colour!

So what I am getting out here is the vitamin C.

And that fleshy bit around the seed,

it is just like making jam or jelly really.

And once this is all drained out,

I will just have to make it into a syrup with sugar.

The sugar is there to preserve the fruit,

and then when I bottle it, it will keep.

Finally, Peter's mole subsoiler is finished.

And the team can drain the field in preparation for sowing the wheat.

-Finally, all of those hours out of the shed.

-Yeah.

It is quite a contraption, isn't it?

I've got a plan that Peter and I will survey the field,

we put in all the levels, but the first thing to do is

to just concentrate on getting in these main drains.

Yeah.

Before Peter's contraption can prove itself,

there's the perennial problem of getting the tractor to start.

Damn the Fordson!

ENGINE STARTS

Stand back!

GEARS CRUNCH

It's not going according to plan.

Ideally, the mole should be cutting a channel

about a foot beneath the surface.

Try standing on this.

Yeah.

Can we dig a hole and put the mole in so we start with it

already in the ground rather than trying to go down?

When war broke out, there were almost four million acres of land

like this that needed draining.

OK, let's go.

The problem is it's pulled the path of least resistance which is up,

out of the ground.

It's clear the chassis built by Peter is too light

to keep the mole in the ground.

In a corner of the farmyard, Alex has found a much heavier chassis

to fit Peter's mole subsoiler.

That sun's nearly down.

-That's it, lovely.

-That's wonderful!

But things are about to go from bad to worse.

The improvised bracket holding the mole has bent

because it isn't strong enough.

Well, that's that, then, isn't it?

Time is running out to get the crops sown

so they'll have to abandon draining the field.

As Peter has discovered, improvising farm machinery is no easy task.

But for the wartime farmer, this could have been disastrous

and incurred the wrath of the War-Ag.

If our fields flood, the War-Ag would look at us

and say, "We need to move them on."

So we'd just better hope against hope

that we have an extremely dry summer.

A farmer's duties to the nation didn't end with attempting

to double crop production.

Their knowledge of the landscape made them invaluable recruits

to one of the war's most secretive organisations.

The auxiliary units.

Your names have been put forward

as men who would like to do something more for the war effort.

-Is this something?

-Absolutely. Everything we can.

The auxiliary unit was an resistance force in waiting,

a last line of defence against Nazi invasion.

Steve Mason is an expert on the auxiliary units

stationed here on the south coast.

Do you think you could kill another man in cold blood?

-HE INTAKES BREATH

-Tough.

Those were the sort of questions being put to people at the time.

-Farmers?

-Absolutely.

But it really comes down to your personal mettle.

This is something beyond the Home Guard.

-This is actually a sort of secret service, isn't it?

-Absolutely.

Just like the cells they were setting up in Europe at the same time.

A resistance movement.

We've heard of the Home Guard. Why don't we hear of these guys?

The people who joined this particular resistance movement

had to sign The Official Secrets Act.

I suppose if, during the war,

we were held back in a reserved occupation

and we were of a certain age, then we would be seen as,

if we both knew the land, as farmers and also quite able-bodied.

Absolutely.

So, these are photographs of the men who actually were

the auxiliaries for this locality.

You were never to discuss this thing, ever.

I've spoken to one survivor who was 18 at the time,

so he's young enough still, now, to talk about it.

He only wants to discuss the people in that photograph who are dead.

With the Nazis poised to invade,

the auxiliary unit were ready to go to ground

and form a guerrilla network to destroy the enemy's infrastructure.

Their instruction manuals were cunningly disguised.

It's got a cover, so if a German invader were to pick it up,

he would hopefully think that it was an out-of-date calendar

and not look inside.

And this tells you how to handle explosives.

And again, more tricks of the trade.

How to blow up a petrol tank.

How to blow up railway lines.

Do you think, putting yourselves back there,

would you really actually have signed up for it?

I... I think so.

If you were a reserved occupation like a farmer, for example,

is there going to be a sense that you want to be out on the front line?

Although you're farming, you want a bit of action.

Itching to get involved.

Yeah, I wonder whether that might have played a part

in some people signing up.

A number of them do say that. They actually just wanted

to get their hands on some action, as corny as it sounds.

Unbeknown to the boys, like many farmers' wives,

Ruth, too, has been conscripted into secret service.

Gardening has taken on a whole new significance.

Particularly in this potting shed.

Because, whilst the boys think I'm out in the garden, and they are

well out of the way in the fields, what I'm really doing in here...

is this.

Ruth's been recruited into the Special Duties Section.

Their mission -

to handle communication between the auxiliary units in the field and HQ.

This is my aerial.

About 3,500 people were involved - vicars, barmaids, farmers,

farmers' wives and housewives.

And yet, almost nobody knows about it.

They really just kept that quiet.

There are instances in which a wife was doing this with the radio,

whilst the husband was out doing other auxiliary work,

and neither of them told each other

until they were in their 80s or 90s, years and years later.

In some ways, it's comical. But it's also really serious.

People were expecting to be invaded.

They were expecting that this sort of work

put their lives in serious danger.

If you had been caught with a radio when the Germans came

you were looking at not just execution,

but probably at torture too.

We confirm a successful patrol manoeuvre, four men,

evidence of explosives.

Northwest of Arbor Wood. Approximate time, 0015. Location, Hamble. G.

Despite their important top-secret military duties, the priority

for farmers was doubling crop production to feed the nation.

Although the team were unable to mole drain the boggy field,

the task now is to plough as quickly as possible

in preparation for sowing the wheat.

With the days drawing shorter, the War Agricultural Committee

encouraged farmers to plough on into the night.

We've got to plough through the night,

and this was something that was expected during the war.

Not something I expect people did willingly, really,

but unfortunately, we've just got to do this, because we're so behind.

Ploughing at night creates unique problems.

Right, so this is our lantern, and it's just in the hedge,

and it's going to give something for Ruth to fix on, on the horizon,

so she can drive, theoretically, in a straight line.

I'm a bit worried about using these lights in the blackout.

I reckon that the lamps in the hedge probably could be hidden, anyway.

This one's already got a hood on it. And this lamp would be moving.

-So, I just aim at the light in the hedge?

-Yep, that's the idea.

When you think about ploughing, you think about the horseman,

out there with his horses, gently ploughing away in the quiet,

perhaps on a nice, sunny spring morning.

But, during the Second World War,

ploughing was a very different monster.

And the plough, really, had become a weapon of war.

It was the farmer's principal weapon of war.

Now, I'm not entirely sure we're getting this right,

but we're putting our all into it and Ruth's doing a fantastic job.

Hopefully, by the end of the month, we'll have the field done.

Next morning, Ruth is called into action

by the Special Duties Section.

Her mission? To pass a message on to the auxiliary unit.

Hampshire, with its strategic ports of Southampton and Portsmouth,

was a key target for invasion.

So more auxiliary units were stationed here

than any county in Britain.

Military expert Gerald Sutcliffe is leading Alex and Peter's patrol.

What we are going into now, is an OB, and operation base.

We've got, basically, a little bunker.

We've already got some equipment, munitions and rations in.

Let's go and have a look at it now, shall we?

All over the country, around the coast in particular,

groups like us,

we're going to be providing a nasty surprise for Herr Hitler.

Unlike the other countries which had the unfortunate experience

of these jackboots going over them, we are ready.

We're going to come up behind him and blow up his petrol dumps.

We're going to blow up his ammunition dumps.

We're going to sabotage his tanks. We're going to shoot his officers

and anybody that helps him.

The aim was to transform ordinary farmers with no military experience

into guerrilla saboteurs.

Alex has picked up the message

dropped by the Special Duties Section

with details of a training exercise.

We've been left a note advising us

that a German patrol of ten men was expected.

At the moment, my thoughts are, we will ambush their patrol.

This is a typical exercise, passed on by the mysterious Agent R.

-Agent R, I wonder who that could be.

-That's the point.

You will never know. And neither will I.

You never know the names of the intelligence section

and they don't know you.

They just leave little messages for us.

And we pick them up and we never see them, or them us.

Training by night and working in the fields by day

meant a wartime farmer could find himself working 17-hour days.

I want two members of the team to go up on the ridgeline,

while I go down and arrange a couple of surprises.

And one of you can cover me while that's going on.

Why do I have to go in front all the time, Peter?

Alex and Peter keep watch from the ridge line.

Following instructions set out in the auxiliary unit manual,

Gerald sets a booby trap.

What I'm going to rig up is a grenade with the pin removed,

but sufficient pressure on top of it,

so that when somebody kicks it,

it's going to release the lever and go bang.

OK.

And rejoin the others.

This being an exercise, there are no Germans,

and Gerry's grenade is simply a thunder flash.

-ALL:

-Bang! Bang! Bang!

Stop!

Well, good for a first attempt.

-You think so?

-I think so.

-They would have used all sorts of methods to simulate combat.

-OK.

I did it that way because you weren't expecting it,

-to add that bit of tension and realism.

-Yeah.

So you were both conditioning us and testing us at the same time?

Yes.

Alex, Ruth and Peter have now been wartime farmers for two months.

For Ruth, the work in the fields

has left little time for domestic duties,

so she's taken another step towards modernising the kitchen

by fitting lino.

Fantastic!

You often hear about labour-saving things in the kitchen,

and you sort of imagine it's all about gadgets.

Nah. It's about things like this -

the things that make the big difference.

Instead of spending, you know,

45 minutes twice a day on the floor,

like you might have to with a stone/flag floor,

I can run over with a mop and bucket in ten minutes.

The paraffin stove is also helping to save time.

Unlike an old-fashioned coal range, it's up and running in seconds.

Ruth's using it to cook a quick meal from her 1930s cookbook -

fried bacon with bananas.

It's such an odd recipe to find in a late '30s book.

It took me so by surprise.

Bacon's going to become a thing of scarcity.

By 1939, we were already bringing in

quite a significant proportion of our bacon from Denmark.

And then the bananas go in the butter.

Bananas would soon disappear completely from the shops,

as the government requisitioned banana boats to import

materials essential to the war effort.

From the declaration of war in September 1939 until May 1940,

no bombers appeared overhead, and the gas attacks didn't materialise.

It became known as the Phoney War.

But by June 1940, after the British had been

driven into the sea at Dunkirk, the mood was darkening.

France fell to the Nazis, and as the new Prime Minister

Winston Churchill warned, Britain was next in line.

..and growing strength in the air,

we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.

We shall fight on the beaches,

we shall fight on the landing grounds,

we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,

we shall fight in the hills.

We shall never surrender.

I think it's quite interesting, isn't it,

that that speech is so iconic.

It must have been terrifying for people, as well,

to think that there could possibly have been fighting on the beaches

and in the fields, and somewhere like Hampshire, where we are,

I gather would be sort of on the front line.

It's the whole problem, isn't it, of looking back at the war?

-We know that we won.

-Mmm.

People at the time did not know that.

So I suppose the farmers at the time, they'd be -

hopefully - buoyed up to get a success in that harvest.

It would have loaded a lot of pressure on their shoulders,

you know? It would have really hammered home

just how important it would have been to have brought that crop in,

and to have a brought a brilliant crop in as well.

And that's all about the connectedness too, isn't it?

You know, everybody's hearing that, all together.

You feel like you've absolutely got to do it right to do justice

to the effort that was put in from '39 through...

I certainly feel a big responsibility

to those people who went through this and who are still alive.

-You know, it's not something to be taken lightly, is it?

-No.

We're messing with people's memories as well as with Britain's history.

Well, indeed.

KNOCK AT DOOR

-Hello?

-I haven't put that curtain up, you know.

It'll be all right, don't worry.

-Oh, hello, Steve.

-Good evening, Peter.

-Hello!

-Hello, Ruth.

-A pleasant surprise.

-Come and join us! Take a seat.

-How are you? Good to see you.

-You're in luck. Have a cake.

-Good grief!

I'm on my rounds. I have to say, what a marvellous job you've done

-with all your windows.

-Peter, I told you there...

-But...

-Oh.

You're going to be in for a fine,

-cos you're showing the light under your door.

-Really?

-Yeah.

You haven't put the curtain up.

So what is the consequences?

The County Court will summons you.

Anything from three shillings to seven and six, I would think.

Of course, the other thing to mention

is the excessive lights you're burning.

For a small room, you've got three lights.

-So that would incur another fine.

-Oh, good grief.

-Lord!

-I was just enjoying having electricity!

It's that classic thing where you're not physically doing the thing,

like filling your oil lamp. If you've just got electricity,

you don't think about that power source and how much you're using.

Well, I think we should enjoy these desserts while we can,

cos I think from now on in,

-things are only going to get tougher, aren't they?

-Mmm.

-What, like this guy?

-Yeah!

THEY LAUGH

You put that light out, I'll put this one out.

-And the radio!

-Let's get this curtain up, then.

Keep it running, Ruth!

The team's back on track

with the task of increasing the farm's food production.

The wheat field is ploughed.

Next, it's harrowed to break-up the earth...

..and sowed with the wheat seed.

If all goes well, in nine months' time,

they should have a good crop to harvest.

We have cracked on, haven't we? We really have cracked on.

How many million acres was it they ploughed up extra in '39?

By the spring of 1940, 1.7 million acres.

-Extra.

-Extra. On top of what they were already doing.

On top of what they were already doing.

A lot of farmers said it couldn't be done.

They shook their heads and said, "No, you can't do that."

And they turned around and did it.

Wartime farmers didn't know it yet, but this was just a start.

They still had five years of war to endure,

and conditions were only going to get tougher

as they struggled to feed the nation.

Next on Wartime Farm...

The team face the conditions of 1940, and the Blitz.

They confront rationing...

That's particularly hard to make last the week.

..make use of every last resource,

and there's temptation round every corner.

You're well on your way to becoming...

-BOTH:

-A black marketeer.

To find out how Britain fed itself during the Second World War,

and how rationing affected the wartime diet,

order the Open University's free Wartime Farm booklet.

Call, or go to the website...

..and follow the links to the Open University.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd