Punches to Fireworks

An Excerpt From My Memoirs

While helping with the running of the estate, I had a romantic flirtation with Colette, a beautiful maid, yet I still cherished the hope of being allowed to return to Devon in order to complete my training as a sheep farmer.

The Wonnacotts wanted to have me, but they also wanted to be paid a maintenance fee, which was absolutely reasonable. My father disagreed, stating that either I could go back as a kind of “au pair” boy or not at all.

Meanwhile, if I really was serious about sheep farming, he decided that I had to enroll in an agricultural college at Rambouillet. However, that institution required that one should have at least one year of practical experience on a French farm before enrollment.

Accordingly, within weeks, I was taken to a farm in Eastern France near Pont à Mousson, belonging to friends of friends of friends. There, in a totally alien, unromantic environment in the company of uncongenial people, I became a kind of slave of a psychotic ex-paratrooper recently returned from the war in Algeria.

He was a rough man who ordered me to fence miles of grazing land. In order to do so, I had to cut trees, whittle them into poles, plant them at regular intervals, and then stretch barbed wire across them. The task was not only arduous but also extremely boring. I grew very depressed and very sorry for myself. Whenever the pace slackened, “my boss” would begin by yelling abuse at me, and then he would assault me, slapping, punching, and kicking me.