I Like to Walk in This Field

A boy's story through to manhood, he recalls images as in frames of a film, determining to be a farmer. The son of a veterinary surgeon between two World Wars, his enthusiasms carry the reader from Scotland to the countryside and littoral of English Midlands, shortly before war in 1939. His recall encompasses the rhythms of an English family farm and village life. The shock of war slides into peoples' minds on a harvest morning - the young lad is an onlooker, noting the response of farmers and men, family friends, his father's colleagues, country folk, disbelieving of wireless voices. His father's own recall of wounds in the 1914-1918 war, heightened by talk of men killed, terrible destruction, and the sudden billeting of American servicemen before departure to D-Day, leaving legacies of armour and amour in deep imprint. War years in rural England, work in farming sets his skills in lasting fashion, with demanding situations in the Highlands; all set manhood upon him in accelerated and testing army service. Imprints lie deeply in a weave of bonds given to places and persons, nourishing his resolve to farm in his own right.