Life in the Land Army

When I first joined the Land Army in 1943 all the girls laughed at me ‘cos I turned up with my uniform and it was several sizes too big ‘cos I was only 4’9”. They tried to put me off going in but I insisted that I was strong and could do the work, and it proved I could because before the war was out I was throwing 8 stone sacks of potatoes on a weigh, and even onto lorries.

We had to do ditching, dyking, hedging, threshing, one of me last jobs was concreting. I used to love hoeing. I worked on tomatoes, we used to do stooking sheaves of corn, rye which was very high, and barley which was prickly and got into your jumper. You used to have to pick the barley shawms out of your socks. It was hard work.

We pulled sugar beet in winter. That was a hard job. If you could move you kept warm, but pulling carrots, sawing the tops off you never got warm unless you did any digging out. We used to try and finish at half past four, just have half an hour for lunch and try and finish early. We used to be in the lorries by half past seven in the morning. Got up at twenty past six and made our sandwiches, we used to get beetroot sandwiches or potted meat. Porridge for breakfast.

We slept in dormitories and there was four girls to a stall. Top and bottom bunks, concrete floors and an iron stove in the middle. It was got cold but we were tough. The ablution blocks were all concrete and there was a door open to the outside. There was 2 baths to each dormitory but if you’d been threshing you had priority for a bath and you needed it ‘cos you were filthy.

The RAF used to come to the dances, or the army, but if there were operations they were cancelled. We used to see them loading their trailers up with the bombs at Breeton Aerodrome or *** Aerodrome. We’d see the Lancaster bombers going out and when they were coming back we used to hear them say all the alphabetic names you know, to check them in and out. You could hear them over the tannoy outside. It used to make an awful noise you could hardly hear yourself speak.

We had real good times with the lasses, we used to sing all day. You had all the joys and sorrows of the other girls, you knew everybody’s problems. It was great.
I remember the war generally as a good time ‘cos you were all friendly together. When the girls’ boyfriends came home on leave they’d go home — they weren’t supposed to but if your boyfriend came home and you hadn’t seen him you wouldn’t stay would you? What could they do, they couldn’t stop you! They used to sneak out and we’d let them in the dormitory window after hours, and one girl come in and put her foot in next day’s stew!

We went to different farms, sometimes we were two or three weeks in a farm, you could go one day to a farm, they were a bit reluctant to employ us at first, but they’d no choice ‘cos the men were all away apart from the farmers sons or those who were exempt, or they were displaced persons [like Muriel’s husband who came from Latvia]. We had Germans and Italians to work with too, you weren’t supposed to fraternise but you can’t stand on a stack all day with a man and not talk to them.

The WAAFs got a better deal with rationing than we did. We had good plain food though, it depended what the cook was like at the time, the way they used the food. Some used to turn their nose up at fish and that, but we were glad to have anything, we used to get so hungry working in the fields. We used to look for our allowances, our lunches, coming, especially when you were dry and dusty standing on a stack.

A pal and I got a lift to Goole on one of the days when it was bad weather and they let us off for half a day, and we saw some dresses, a guinea each. Our wages were 30 shillings, we got £3 but we gave 30s for our food and lodgings. We thought these were cheap dresses and we had enough coupons so we got a dress each — she got a blue one and I got a green one. The first time I washed it the colour came out into the collar. My mother used to knit lace on fine sock needles so she knitted me this lace collar and cuffs and I wore it for years after.

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