A Love of tractors - podcast

Boyhood wartime memories of discovering tractors and a tale of catastrophe for a land girl and a father's heroism heroism.

Fordson N Tractor credit Beige Alert (https://www.flickr.com/photos/beigephotos/) / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

I loved tractor driving and using any of the machinery involved with them. I can still remember dad taking me to see my first little Fordson tractor ploughing – I was no more than five – and it seemed to have huge balls of clay for rear wheels, which squidged off in large lumps across the field. I was to learn later that the farmer had been worried about the weight pressing down on his Bedfordshire clay, and during the first months of ownership, he and his two sons had taken it in turns to hacksaw out the wheel centre between the strakes! The Ford Model N that I drove most in the beginning came second-hand from a factory in Leeds where it had been used for towing. Father’s employer, Mr Topham had been ousted as a ‘stay away’ tenant by his brother-inlaw, an Air Vice Marshall in charge of airfield engineers, who was able to pull strings to get this urgently needed tractor, but what a disappointment when it arrived! It had almost smooth ‘road’ tyres, a very worn clutch, and needed to be kept running fairly hot or the plugs oiled up in minutes.

However, our new employer took leave, and taught me the beginnings of engine overhaul – fitting nothing more than new piston rings and using a file on the little and big end bearing cups. However, the moment we dropped a cultivator in the ground it stood still, so over that summer it was only used for light work. The Bedford factory that rebuilt clutches – they had no replacement clutches – were able to do the job, and during Mr Martindale’s next leave, he decided to drive it there, but on coming to the first hill it refused to budge any further, and he abandoned it on the verge, and walked home. They all laughed, when I came home from school and said that he should have turned it round and driven up in reverse; but sure enough, when he and my father drove out to it the following day, they turned it around, and up it went. The old girl – on cast iron wheels – weighed over 1.7 tons, and come April each day after school, I was driving it to harrow and roll the fields of corn.


Betty, the Land Girl was keen to get tractor driving experience, and grumbled, ‘If young Billy can be left to do such work, surely I can too?’ The following morning she happily drove over the fields to hook onto the roll. It was cold, she wore the regulation overcoat, and it is believed that it got between her foot and the clutch pedal. The outcome resulted in her being thrown off as the tractor hit the rolls. These tractors were started on the severely rationed petrol and switched over to paraffin whilst still hardly hot enough to vaporise it, so they easily stalled. Dad heard her screams from the buildings, and raced to the scene, to find her under the rear wheel, blood oozing from eyes, nose and ears. She moaned, 'Lift it, Bill, lift it. Oh please lift it.' He grabbed the axle stub and lifted. 'Oh that's better,' said Betty, 'lift, lift.' Finally he had it off her body and placed his knees under the tyre to take the weight. Unfortunately she was so badly injured, she was unable to move: it was now father’s turn to shout.

Three men eventually arrived and pulled Betty out, but unable to lift the tractor, one ran to inform the employer, and fetch a jack, whilst the others propped the tractor with wood. Father believed he stood for about twenty minutes, before the jack lifted it off him. My guess is the tractor – which was fully fuelled – would have weighed some 1,344 lbs to 1,568 lbs at the rear wheel (609.6 to 680.3 kilos). My 1971 Guinness Book of records lists one professional achieving 1,200 lbs in a 'squat lift' and another managing 820 lbs in a two handed‘dead lift’!

extract from Chapter 2d of Bill Clark's autobiography 'Route & Branch',
Listen to the full story in this 18 minute podcast  
https://archive.org/download/ch-2d-a-love-of-tractors/Ch2d-A-Love-of-tractors.mp3