John Ashton’s family, along with other British farming families, were faced with significant shortages during the war – particularly labour. “Back then, the work was very skilled and had to be done by hand. This meant that when a lot of the workers enlisted, my grandfather had to get more help on the farm. My father remembers the soldiers coming to the farm to help with the harvest from 1916. It was such a skilled job and such an important crop and I’m not sure if they would have been able to do it without the help of those soldiers. A lot of the soldiers sent back from the front line already knew what they were doing so they got to work straight away. We had women on the farm as well helping out with the light work, everyone pulled together.”
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