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 BILL PARTRIDGE

Born: Luccombe, Somerset, 1916
Lived: Luccombe
Recording made: 2001
Length of recording: 3 hrs 44 mins

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Bill Partridge didn't have the happiest of childhoods. He was nine when his mother died and of his four brothers, three died young. He had ambitions, but missed a lot of school through TB. At 14 he started looking after his father, doing the cooking and cleaning and shooting rabbits to pay the man's wages. When war came along he went into the army. In 1944 he was commissioned in the field, wounded the same day, and awarded the Military Medal.

Then he and his wife came back to Luccombe Farm and he worked for his father until he was finally taken into partnership. After the war, he says, you didn't question anything. He still works in the family farm and feed business, run now by his daughter Roz. He maintains strong wartime friendships, is a member of the Rotary Club, and vice-chairman of the Parochial Church Council. There are three generations of the family buried in the churchyard.