Stories of a Land Girl

The following account has been compiled by Ben Wale on 25/12/2005 on behalf of Florence May Stone who gave full consent to this article being written.

Flo was just three months short of her 21st birthday when she joined the Womens’ Land Army (WLA) in 1942. At first she was based in Halesworth, Suffolk and lodged in the Old Rectory with 16 other girls (aged 17 upwards).

Flo and the other girls worked around Beccles, Blythburgh and Bungay, thinning out and harvesting sugar beet and other crops. The days were long and tiring — starting at 7am and finishing at 5pm or 10pm at harvest time. The days took their toll on the girls, blisters and aching muscles were part of the course, which made getting out of bed in the mornings a real mental struggle. One morning at about 10:30 whilst out in the field with the farmer, driving the tractor (a privilege which Flo often had), she saw the chance for a quick nap. The hot sun was beating down and Flo was tired. The next thing she knew she was being woken up by the farmer with the tractor continuing on its course whist she had nodded off. On later outings, the farmer thought it wise to carry a stick when Flo was driving the tractor so he could hit the side of it and keep Flo on the job.

Even when Flo was awake there was no guarantee that anyone was safe with her behind the wheel! After one particular day out in the fields threshing, Flo got into her favourite seat, on the tractor, whilst the other girls hopped onto the trailer at the back. It was time for tea and Flo started up the engine to ferry everyone down to the bottom of the field. The weather had been hot and dry so there were big ruts and holes in the field. The tractor went into a few big ruts and as it continued bumping down the field, Flo glanced out of the corner of her eye to see, to her surprise, the trailer overtaking her with none of the other girls on it. The pin holding the trailer to the back of the tractor had been dislodged and the other girls had suddenly found themselves in a runaway wagon. They all leapt out with Flo in her tractor happily bumping on down the field, unaware that her cargo had hopped off. When she stopped and offered the girls another lift the rest of the way down the field the girls said, “No thanks, we’d rather walk!”

Flo and the other girls thought that meals at the Old Rectory were very meagre, so they supplemented their diet with fish and chip takeaways. A ladder went down from Flo's window to the ground below. When the girls were very hungry, a couple of them would climb down the ladder at night and sneak down to the fish and chip shop. One night it was Flo's turn to go with another girl. They went down the ladder in the dark, but then heard someone nearby. They sat motionless hoping they wouldn't get caught. Fortunately it was only the matron putting out the milk bottles. The girls got to the fish and chip shop and returned with their prize which they ate quickly and quietly, fearing at any moment to see the matron burst into their room. However, the smell of fish and chips never reached the matron's nose and the girls got away with it.

Eventually Flo became a Forewoman and moved to a new hostel in Mettingham (between Beccles and Bungay), to train 15 Yorkshire girls. However, not even the relatively peaceful countryside of Suffolk escaped the dangers of war. One day the girls were clearing old brambles and bushes by a ditch at the side of a road. Flo was just getting into her van to do the timesheets when she heard a big ‘BANG’ which shook the van. The other girls were screaming and Flo could see one of them had blood streaming down her face. Two pieces of shrapnel had hit her in the face and another girl had a piece of shrapnel go right through her forearm. Flo took the two wounded girls back to the first aid post at their hostel and phoned for an ambulance. When Flo talked to the farmer whose land they’d been working on, he explained that he’d expected something like that to happen. The girls had set off a butterfly bomb, which German bombers dropped in clusters of 12. Eleven bombs had been found but not the last one, which exploded when the girl’s bill hook hit it, injuring two girls and sending the bill hook through the air and landing three fields away. The Area Foreman said that if any of the girls had died, the farmer could have been accused of murder because he was meant to warn the girls about the bomb. Both girls recovered and Flo was surprised to see the girl who’d been injured in the face back at work two months later. Unfortunately the day she came back she was riding her bike down a hill, lost control, went across the main road and hit a car. She ended up with a broken arm and another break from work.

Flo finished the war in the Ipswich gang, working with two men on pest destuction. One of her jobs was to take rabbits that had been shot to the butchers. One day she was running late and had to get a batch of rabbits to a butchers in Ipswich, from Wickham Market, before it closed. On the main road to Wickham Market, just before Woodbridge, she was pulled over in her van by the police for speeding. The policeman asked Flo if she realised she’d been speeding (she’d been doing about 40mph in a 30mph area), to which she replied she didn’t have a clue what speed she’d been doing. She just needed to get the rabbits to Wickham Market before the butchers closed. She was let off with only a warning, but for Flo the clock was still ticking. As soon as the policeman disappeared from view, she revved the van and sped as fast as she could for Wickham Market again, expecting at any moment to be caught by the policeman again. To her relief she wasn’t caught a second time and got the rabbits to the butchers just 5 minutes before closing.

Flo finished her distinguished career in the Land Army a couple of years after the end of the war.

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