The Women's Land Army Part 1: Starting Out 1943

One morning, my friend and I went down to the town just for a walk round. It could have been our day off, I don’t know, but we ended up at the recruitment hall. We went over to join the wrens [WRNS] but they asked us if we had a birth certificate, which we hadn’t and they said also that we had to be 18, which we weren’t. It was the biggest disappointment ever because I always wanted to join the navy. So off we trooped around the hall to see what was on and we saw the Land Army so we signed up to them. They didn’t ask if we had birth certificate and they didn’t ask how old we were, so we were quite happy, until we got home — ah, then, I wasn’t very happy because I had a good job and also had a bonus that was very good, because Dad was away in the Air Force and there was just Mam and the kids and home. So anyway, it got over. The next thing was waiting for our uniform. Well, yes, it came. The only thing was my uniform was a little bit large. My breeches were under my arms and my jumper was way down to my knees. I looked a sorry sight, I can tell you!
Well, we got dressed up and went down to the Central Station at a set time and waited for the train. When we were standing, this girl came along and you could see by the sight of her, her uniform was too small. So mother said, “When you get on that train, Doreen, ask that girl, will she change uniforms?”, which she did. It made us two very happy people, because our uniforms fitted. Off we went on the train and we ended up at Wolverhampton. It was very nice. The warden was good, the girls were great and we stayed there for a few weeks’ training. We looked after pigs, sheep, poultry, mucked pigs out and fed them, went to bed, looked after poultry and fed them, went to bed, mucked out the pigs, collected the eggs, fed the poultry, mucked them out, collected the eggs, went to bed……...!
“ How to milk a cow”. The “cow” was a bag suspended on wooden frame. Rubber gloves represented the teats. Mind you, it’s not like milking a real cow, which I learned to my cost. We also had a go at driving the tractor, but what could you do in a few weeks? We did work hard, but it was good. I must tell you, the first night I got to Wolverhampton, of course, I bubbled my eyeballs out. The warden was such a good woman. She said, “Doreen how old are you?” I said, “16 and I want to go home!” She said, “No, it will be all right in another couple of nights”. Which it was. We also had lectures about what was corn, what was barley, wheat and oats and telling the difference between them. We had quite a few lectures about all sorts, about how to do things on the farm. I was a skinny sixteen-year-old, only seven-and-a-half stone and I should have been seventeen to do the work, but I worked hard and it was really nice.
Not far away from our hostel, there was an American camp. We weren’t allowed to fraternise. Not that we wanted to particularly, because we were all young, but one afternoon we were invited to the camp and we saw for the first time the jitterbug being danced. One young white American played the piano and a dark American did the dance. It was fantastic because we were all dance mad and it was a lovely afternoon and a lovely ending to our time in Wolverhampton.

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