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I joined the Women's Land Army in June 1940, I trained at the Agricultural College at Plumpton to be a tractor driver. I had no idea what was involved but I was accepted - the training period was 6 weeks but I stayed for one year 'living in' most of the time and working on the Downs at PIumpton which were cultivated owing to war regulations.
The first morning, all done up in my new uniform, I was told to make my way to the tractor shed to learn how to sharpen blades. This to me, sounded very scary and even worse on my way there, a herd of cattle emerged from their milking sheds and mooed and mooed. I was petrified, that was the last thing I needed, but nevertheless I looked the other way, put my best foot forward and set off.

Before starting work, breakfast was 6 a.m. and as I walked down the large flight of stairs there was a long table with dishes of stodgy porridge and door step toast. Like it or leave it was the motto. So there used to be some swapping going on for toast and porridge etc.

While at the College, once a month we had to do all night fire watching in pairs. The building was so big and basic we didn't venture out of the room we were in and just hoped for the best. After my year at the College, I moved back to Lewes.

I worked on different farms in East Sussex and the WLA Hostel was in Lewes so I was allowed to live at home and picked up every morning by a truck which had already collected the girls from the hotel and as I was the last one and usually only just getting out of bed, I had to sit wherever there was room, often on the floor. Wet or fine we had no cover but they always bought a bottle of milk for me to wake me up.

My first job after leaving Plumpton was at Southease and as I was ploughing in a field along the Newhaven road a plane came swooping in from the Coast. There was a man on the other side of the field with a horse and cart, he shouted to me to get down, which I did. My raincoat was hanging on the tractor and on inspection after the incident there were four bullet holes in it fro~ the machine gunning the pilot was doing going through the valley. I was of course very shaken up, but the farmer kindly took me home as this was about 10.30 a.m. That was also very nerve racking as every comer we turned round in Lewes seemed to have been bombed, but thank goodness my family and home were all safe. This happened in 1943.

While working on the local farms, I was going by train or billeted out on the farms, depending on how long the job was likely to last. I worked for 3 months at Peacehaven at Gracie Fields home on some ground she owned. Following this at Northease, where a lot of women not employed by the Land Army but doing their job for the war - they used to pick up potatoes etc after I had ploughed them out. The head lady was Mrs Hubbard, she kept them working well.

There was a gun post near the farm there, and some very good Canadian soldiers manning it. As our tractors had to be started by hand with a handle these men came in very useful. One special one used to whistle the song 'You are my Sunshine' every morning. One wonders what happened to them all. As the Canadians couldn't get eggs, we swapped the farmers’ eggs for their chocolate.

The Army put on some very good dances at the Manor House, the only trouble was that we had to walk some 4 miles back to Lewes at around midnight. We used to get a couple of the men to walk with us to Iford, past the wooded area, and then we felt safe. Often with our shoes in hand as our feet were killing us, but it was all good fun. We used to dance nearly every night of the week at the local hops, for about a shilling. Often more men than girls so you were always sure of a dance whatever the grade was.

Talking about dancing I met this very handsome solider at one of our local dances. I liked the look of him, so got chatting and asked him to dance but he admitted he could only shuffle. Being a good a dancer myself I thought it was worth a go and he shuffled on and on and on. He was billeted in Lewes with the REME until posted abroad and joining the 8th Army. He was demobbed in December 1946, after doing 6 years of war service and this was six months after I finished my time with the Land Army. So we married in March 1946 and had daughter in 1948. We had a very happy marriage until his death in 1991.

This story was added to the site by Melita Dennett on behalf of Joan Mills. Joan fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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