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This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Dunstable At War Team on behalf of Ilene Fuller and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was called up in 1942 when I was about 18 or 19 years old working in a reserved occupation in the electricity offices. My brother was missing in Singapore and I didn’t want to be called up and moved a long way from my mother who took the news of my brother very badly, so I decided to join the land army.

I did a months training down in Luton Hoo before I was sent to a farm near Bedford. They wanted someone to look after 10 cows, milk them and everything - I just couldn’t do that, I didn’t know how; they didn’t teach us that in Luton! They rang head office and sent me to see the person in charge in Bedford; she sent me to Kensworth House as they had just opened the hostel. There we did threshing, picking potatoes and brussels — any sort of work that the farmer wanted really. The threshing machine was operated by a steam engine and we used to follow it from farm to farm. The farmers used to hire the threshing machine out you see.

It was jolly cold in the winter — after about six months I developed paralysis in my face through driving in the open lorries, so they put me in the hostel gardens. I helped to grow vegetables for the hostel; tomatoes, etc. There were also grape vines, peach trees and green houses. Kensworth was a very big house; we started off with 20 land army girls and ended up with 40, mostly volunteers. Only 2 of us came from Bedfordshire, the rest came from London.

It was great fun living with a lot of girls and I remained friends with one girl in particular. We sometimes had parties (like little dances) and invited the local boys and soldiers along.

One of the worst jobs was picking brussels on cold frosty mornings — as soon as you picked them the frost would melt on your fingers - It was a hard life but very healthy.

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