Ron the Yarn Spinner

 

The Nodding Donkeys of Sherwood Forest

                                                                             

You find yourself encircled by towering trees that form a cathedral’s canopy overhead, filtering sunlight and eclipsing shadows on the moss-covered rocks and fallen logs. Easily missed by the unfamiliar eye  are the smaller ones -  trees that grow no more than the height of  a long bow with  dappled grey trunks, straggly branches and clusters of ovate grey-green leaves. It is the legendary hideout of the fabled outlaw Robin Hood. It is Sherwood Forest - the royal hunting ground for kings and nobles.

The winding trails invite you to wander among the ancient trees and listen to soothing sounds  of rustling leaves and singing birds. And beneath the rich tapestry of colors and textures murmurs the Yarnspinner’s  tale about a forgotten group of Merry Men who dove deep into these ancient folds to hunt, not for game, but for “gold.” This is a story about  a  secret posse of “crazy” cowboy-booted roughnecks drilling for black gold in the heart of this old world forest. Though these woods are steeped in folklore and legend, nonetheless the ancient trees and stone ruins bear witness to centuries of human activity, and attest that this  anecdote is veridical.

Near a dirt path entering the woodland stands a stout 7-foot statue of an oil worker. The roughneck is  wearing an oilfield helmet and holding a pipe wrench and stands astride a base etched with the names of 42 men – all Americans. They are all gone now  and so are their nearly 100 nodding donkeys that came with them. The men wearing colorful western shirts, Stetson hats and  a few with banjos, made an indelible impression on the locals in the meager, menacing and at times mundane  days of wartime England, "Where d'you reckon 'e tied 'is mare?" jokes one Brit to another after meeting a roughneck  for the first time.

Titled the Oil Patch Warrior, the statue is a monument to  one of the groups that traveled many miles from home to aid the besieged and starving people of Britain during World War II. The story behind the Warrior is a compelling, little-known, but powerful reminder of the lessons history can teach about friendship, survival, and steadfast cooperation when things are at their “Darkest Hour.”

 

 

Years before the discovery of North Sea oil, Britain had to import fuel -- and emergency reserves in WWII were down to just a few months as Nazi submarines devastated  incoming convoys, the island’s lifeline. But the Brits fortunately searched for home-grown oil before  WWII even started. They found it beneath the forests and fields of rural Nottinghamshire in Sherwood Forest. One company, a forerunner to British Petroleum, began drilling but it was slow going because of the lack of proper equipment to efficiently extract  crude from shallow oil fields. Besides, there were really no real  roughnecks about since most young men were called to arms so only inexperienced help was available.

In September 1942, British oilman Philip Southwell  left London and traveled nearly 4000 miles to Washington, DC, to try and buy shallow depth drill rigs and related equipment for extracting oil deposits close to the earth’s surface, but he had no luck. What’s more, there was still a manpower problem. He decided to take a chance and he called upon a fellow WW I veteran – a doughboy by  the name of Lloyd Noble, to ask for his help. Lloyd was  a wealthy Oklahoma  oil baron. Southwell just showed up at Nobel’s house one evening and rang the doorbell. He did not have an appointment in fact, Noble answered the door in his “pj’s” but the two “hit it off”  and Noble agreed to help, under one condition:  He wouldn’t take a cent of profit. 42 Oklahoma roughnecks, drillers and tool pushers volunteered to sail across the Atlantic and join in the war effort in a big way. In early March 1943, the oil men burst  into the sleepy village of Eakring  like rowdy cowboys riding into town after a long cattle drive. But a place had to be found to hide the men. Where to billet them? How about a monastery? And that’s where they lived – with the monks. In those desperate times, the existence of the oil field had to be kept secret. It was difficult hiding an operation that employed hundreds of people and often choked the dinky country lanes with  heavy trucks carrying men and equipment, and the locals weren't fooled by Americans playfully claiming to be filming  a motion picture. The site had to be hidden from the air, too, so even the “nodding donkeys" -- wore olive green camouflage.

So, the men went to work and by the time they left snow-covered Nottinghamshire for the US in March 1944 they had unbelievably drilled 106 wells ultimately producing  3 million barrels of oil. Sadly, however, when it was time to head for home, they were one short. In November 1943  29-year-old Texan Herman Douthit fell from a derrick to his death. He was buried at the U.S. military cemetery in Cambridge.

Today, the Oil Patch Warrior statue stands as testament to cooperation and comradeship. Fittingly, the British monument has a twin on the other side of the ‘pond’ : an identical statue in Ardmore, Oklahoma

 

 Meme:

Odd little stories like this could easily fade from memory, like those camouflaged nodding donkeys swallowed by greenery. I try and refresh those memories whenever I can.

The site became the test bed for drilling rigs that ultimately went to the North Sea and a nodding donkey is well…just  a nick name given by roughnecks to the seesaw pump jack that brings oil to the surface.