Walter Kammerling arrived in the UK in 1938 on a Kindertransport from Vienna, was sent to Gorman's Farm in Northern Ireland on arrival & stayed there until 1942:

It’s that type of work that put me off gardening. When you go on a cold, wet January & you get a big bag & are told to pick up half a hundredweight of brussels sprout.

You can’t do it with gloves, because it’s all wet & it’s all... You pick it up & the bag’s half full, and you think, “Well that’s probably half a hundredweight'. And it’s so light. The weight of brussel sprouts is... enormously low. I didn’t like it at all.

And, oh, when you for instance you have to weed out the carrots. The carrot plants are only about an inch high. The weeds are about three inches high, and you can’t see them.

After four hours your back’s breaking & you look up, and you’ve only done about three metres or so. You still can’t see the end of the field. I didn’t like that at all.

I liked the harvesting. I liked the work with the chickens. That’s OK - with animals.

But on the whole, I was quite happy there. It was OK. There were about 30 of us. Though we lived and worked and joked together, we didn’t know each other. Nobody really opened up. It was like – like- like wounded animals licking their wounds, you see?

Northern Ireland

Memories

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