MILKING AS USUAL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 8, 21 October 1941, Page 8

MILKING AS USUAL.

A SCOTTISH “BLITZ” INCIDENT. Here is the story of a Scottish dairy farm that received a shell hit from the enemy during a bombing “blitz.” The farm and its human and animal occupants were quite safe but the bomb had buried itself not far from the farm steading and was still unexploded. Accordingly the occupants of the farm were evacuated. While the woman occupier herself had to leave, her foreman and a relative remained in the vicinity. They slept “in the hills” so that they might be near to the stock of the farm. The dairy herd, numbering about, 16 cows, had been taken from the byre and put into a grazing some distance from the unexploded bomb. Had they been left unattended with little to eat from the grass, and without being regularly milked the cows would undoubtedly have “gone wrong” within a short time and their milk contribution to the national supply would have been lost.

But by diligent service these two men, the foreman and his colleague,' visited the farm steading twice a day to bring in the cows for some feeding and to milk them regularly. Had they regarded their obligations as mere employees, they need not have worried about the fate of the cows. But their loyalty to their employer and to their calling held them to the job and they saw it through as a duty.