YOUR article How WI Kept Nation Fed with Plums and Damsons (Journal, October 16)brought to mind children's contributions to the war effort.

I attended a commercial college in Birmingham in the early 1940s when they arranged a harvest camp, and we all came up to camp in tents for four weeks in a field at Dunnington.

Remarkably, it was only one mile from where my wife and I have lived and where we first met 73 years ago.

Every morning I remember we were collected by the same bronzed and fit gentleman with his tractor and trailer (no such thing as 'elf and safety in those days) and taken down to the vast orchards at Twyford.

We worked a long, full day, breaking only for lunch of maggoty cheese sandwiches and a swim in the river.

We must have picked several hundred tons of apples and plums for which the WI probably benefited.

Some of us did turns on bean pulling, which was very arduous work.

I often wonder why schools don't organise such harvest camps today.

It was an excellent social and work experience for the young during a long and sometimes boring summer holiday, and a way to earn a little pocket money.

Douglas Wathen

Oakfields