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PRIME MOVERS

I never thought of the horse as a Prime Mover until the other day. In fact I’d never come across the term until the war when it was applied to the part of the articulated vehicle that did all the haulage around the aerodromes and Maintenance Units of the RAF. I was thinking about this as I went round and round turning the hay in Gills Mead. It was one of the tractors that started my train of thought. The bloody thing had just breathed its last gasp as the engine petered quietly to a stop. “It won’t pull,” my son said as he started it again. One of the cylinders was full of water and that was the end of it. We’d bought another one and were awaiting delivery and there was the hay getting fitter by the minute. Three days, they said, to check it over. Three days!!!

And so I got to thinking about this Prime Mover business and the horse. It’s a nice term, Prime Mover, and that was the horse alright. It moved everything didn’t it? The plough, the harrows and the waggon at harvest time. The corn to the mill and the flour home again. Or the barley for the pigs.

The first Prime Mover I remember was Short, long past his best and the odd jobber in a stable of twelve heavy shires. He’d been struck by lightning some years earlier and walked with a crabbed gait, driven or led by Old Sammy, also past his best and on the Old Age Pension of ten shillings a week. A wizened little man, I never saw him without his cap upon his head, and of uncertain temper. He still put in a full weeks work and so did Short when required.

With Short in the Ladder Cart and Old Sammy I would spend many of my winter days cutting ‘flops’ of hay out of distant ricks and hauling them back to that Devon farmyard. I would laboriously pitch it up to the tallot where Old Sammy would be standing complaining bitterly, “‘Ow can I drow it back if you don’ drow it up viddy?” He had little time and less patience with modern youth. Old Sammy who, a few days before he died was visited first by the parson and then the Boss who entered the tiny bedroom as the parson left. “Huh!” said Sammy to the Boss, “Who’s thicky bloody fella?”
And Short who slipped down in the heavy red clay whilst pulling a load of mangles through the mud. “Come up!” said Sammy but it was a long time before Short managed it and then only after we’d tipped the load and got the harness off. He survived the winter but never worked again and whilst we were sat at table one Spring day a Gypsy knocked at the back door. “You’ve a hoss?” he said to the Boss. Word had travelled round and he offered five pounds which the Boss accepted. He handed over the large white notes and then demanded and got five shillings luck money. I never saw Short go but that was the first Spring for many years that another horse pulled the hoe in the roots.

My mind moved on to other Prime Movers. To an RAF station on the Persian Gulf where we assembled Spitfires for the Russians who would fly down across Iran, a plane load of pilots at a time and fly the ‘Spits’ back to Russia. I thought of the Russian Officers who would not swim in the camp pool in the time allotted to Officers but insisted swimming with the other ranks. The Spitfires were sent out from UK in packing cases, one aircraft minus engine to a case, chained down to the decks of ships for the long journey. These cases were used for all sorts of things, stores, offices, a canteen, a guardroom. There were hundreds of them it seemed and they were moved about on trailers with another Prime Mover. This one was a Fordson tractor, 1936 vintage. I bought one myself when I came back, it cost £ 100 and left happier memories than the one at Shaibah. The end of a packing case fell out one day and crushed the driver. He died instantly if I remember rightly.

Like most of us on this job I’ve had a number of Prime Movers. In 1960 I bought a two year old Major for £500, and in 1962 I bought another two year old Major, this time for £250, such were the vagaries of the market at that time, and they served me as well as old Short and Sammy served the Boss all those years ago. Until the other day that is. I’ve told you about one. Well, a fortnight later, we’d taken delivery of the new one, I was reversing a load of hay into the barn and I misjudged it in the poor light and I suppose the old Major took umbrage at the red tractor where its mate always was because I couldn’t get it out of reverse gear. I left it overnight but I never did get it out of gear and now I have a useless gearbox and an equally useless engine suitable only for the scrapheap but, by dint of a bit of farmyard engineering I’ve still got a Major in good working order and going as well as ever.

I suppose a Gypsy will come around one day and take away the rest, just like one took away old Short, but there’ll be no ‘luck’ money this time, and I don’t suppose I shall get more than £5, despite inflation!