大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by a volunteer from CSV Berkshire, Amy Williams, on behalf of Mary and has been added to the site with his permission. Mary fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was called up to join the Land Army in 1940. At that time I was teaching at a school in Caversham; I had been a pupil at the school until 1927. I was called up because I was an unqualified teacher and because I was young. The headqaurters of the Berkshire Land Army were on the Kings Road in Reading. The woman that ran the Berkshire Land Army was a pretty tough character. When I arrived, she said: 鈥淵ou are going to Compton to the Agriculture Research Council. They鈥檝e got two big dairy herds there and you鈥檙e going to help milk the cows in one of the dairy herds鈥�. I thought that this would be awful as I didn鈥檛 know how to milk a cow. My family had a friend nearby who owned Chazey Court Farm. I spoke to him and asked if I could gp to his farm to learn how to milk a cow. He agreed and said that I could come down and help his son Derek to milk the cows. Derek and I had been at school together so I already knew him. I went there every weekend for a few months on my bke. I learned how to milk cows by hand and by machine; they had a machine as they had a big herd of Ayreshire cows to milk. This experience meant that when I went to Compton as part of the Land Army I didn鈥檛 feel such a fool.

At Compton, I stayed at first in a hostel in the valley. There were two roads leading up from the valley: one up on the left and one up on the right. They both lead up onto the Downs, and there was a place to milk the herds at the end of each track. After a month, I was taken out of the hostel and I was put in some very nice cottages which had been built just before the war for the keeper and his wife and for the other workers on the estate. This was possible because money was no object with the Agriculture Research Council, it was very well funded. The track onto the Downs went straight past the door to this house and up onto the hills. It was a good mile鈥檚 walk up onto the Downs with no proper road, just a chalk track, but the tractors and the milk lorry could get up it. There were three of us working up there. Two of the girls stayed at the hostel while I stayed in a cottage with the keeper鈥檚 wife. The other girls used to come along and collect me in the morning. I sat on the doorstep of the house and waited for them. They would turn up at about half past four and we had to walk up to the Downs for five o鈥檆lock milking. They were both Londoners. One of them was absolutely terrified of the countryside. If she heard a vixen screaming we had to hang on to her because otherwise she would have run off in terror.

I was at Compton for about six months from August until the beginning of the spring in the following year. It was terribly hard work. You had to go up there by five o鈥檆lock. You could come back down on the milk lorry in the early morning, then you had to walk back up again after your breakfast, down again for dinner, up again after dinner and down again for the evening. You walked roughly about five miles every day. There were six of us altogether: the head cow man, two other fellows who lived up there in cottages and the three girls. We had one weekend off in six weeks, taking turns between the six of us, and one half day off every week. I was so tired at night that I used to go to bed at seven o鈥檆lock! Mrs Blisset, my landlady, was very kind. She used to bring me my supper on a tray in my bedroom. I used to get out of bed and sit with my back against the bed, and sit on the floor to eat it. I thought that if I nodded off again the whole tray and dinner would go all over the bed! She felt sorry for me and she thought I needed a bit of help to get up the hill in the morning. She would leave a faggot sometimes and some coffee or tea in a thermos.

It was such hard work up there that the girls never stayed long. We all stuck it for about 6 months or so, some girls left before I did. I wroked there all through winter time. I was sometimes given a doughnut at Mrs Blissett鈥檚 and I couldn鈥檛 pick the wretched thing up because my fingers were so chapped from the cold. I used to chase it around the plate with my fingers. Once or twice the milk actually froze when it slopped over onto the floor of the cowshed, because we were quite high up in the hills. We had to keep it terribly clean - they were so fussy that you could have licked the floor. Two of us had to swill down the sheds and then brush with a stiff broom amd then swill again, while the third girl would be in the dairy. We always kept a cup in the dairy. When we knocked the lid off the night before鈥檚 milk, there was ten gallons of milk with all the cream come up to the top. We would dip the cup in and have a cup of cream.

I left there in the end because you just couldn鈥檛 go on with it for very long. I went back to the Berkshire Land Army headquarters in Reading, and I was sent to Yattenden. This time I was billeted right next door to the farm, in the middle of the village. The farmer was not very good with his men; he never kept his cowman for more than a couple of months and he was well-known for advertising in the newspapers but no-one wanted to take the job on. I was there for ten months. I knew more about the cows than anybody else in the end because I was there for the longest time. We had a machine, but we didn鈥檛 have a tractor until half way through my time there. We had a pair of horses, and the carter used to come up at five o鈥檆lock to see to them as I was going in to milk. I sold the milk to the villagers at the door of the dairy, and I had to keep the churns sterilised. I was in charge of the dairy as well as the milking. I enjoyed it there but I felt it was a bit difficult as there often wasn鈥檛 a head cow man so I felt terribly responsible for everything. For this reason I went back to the Land Army in Reading and asked to be moved again.

I was sent to the Lambourne Valley between Newbury and Lambourne. I was there for two years. There wasn鈥檛 a milking machine so I had to milk by hand. There a lot of other old-fashioned ways of farming there. You had to go out and harvest in the evenings. It was double summer time so it got lighter much later. I didn鈥檛 have to start milking until seven o鈥檆lock. At harvesting and hay-making, you had to go out and help once you finished the milking so you didn鈥檛 get home until ten or eleven o鈥檆lock at night. We harvested hay, corn and barley. The barley had whiskers on that used to go up your trouser legs and tickle you and prick you. We shucked it up in the old-fashioned way and it was cut on an old-fashioned machine and slid off in sheaths. You picked up one on each side, with heads of corns in front of you and the stalks at the back. Then you pushed them both quickly into the ground, and the stalks stuck in the stubble. That left the corn stuck there in a shape like a wigwam. That would keep it dry. Harvesting was still done in that old-fashioned way even during the war. I had a big knife to cut wedges of hay out of the haystacks for the cows to eat. It had a big handle with a blade pointing downwards from the handle. It was also my job to fill the trough at the side of the farmyard. When they came out of milking the cows were very thirsty. As soon as I filled the trough they slurped it all up. We used to have to bring the cows down from the field in the morning. The bull used to run with the cows. The bull was quite safe, or I thought he was, as long as he was with his ladies the cows. Sometimes the bull would be very keen on one cow and wouldn鈥檛 leave her alone. The Yanks used to come along in a lorry, because they were stationed nearby in the village. When they saw the bull behaving like this, I used too feel a bit embarrsassed! The bull would peel off into the farmyard with the cows. The Yanks used to catcall and meow at me, and throw oranges out so it wasn鈥檛 all bad! The bull was an absolute pest at times. One day I did a very wicked thing. I threw a pitchfork at the bull and I didn鈥檛 miss; it got stuck in his backside. He went charging around the muddy old yard amongst the other cows. I thought, I鈥檝e had it now, he鈥檒l charge at me one day. He never did.

We had to cross the railway lines with cows, so you had to be very careful when you opened the gate. The cows were in a field near the railway line at night, and you had to be very careful of the train that used to run along this track to and from Newbury and Lambourne. You could see the train a long way off in the distance, so perhaps you would let a few of the cows through and then shut the gate and wait until it had gone and then let the rest of them through. I enjoyed my time there. I still keep in touch with the head cowman鈥檚 son: I went to his wedding at the village hall. I still send them a Christmas card. I managed to milk seven cows in an hour. Some were very easy to milk, some were very hard. There was one called Tulip and she had huge teats, you could hardly get your hands around them. I took the hard ones and the head cowman would take on the kickers because I didn鈥檛 like getting kicked. Even if you strapped the cow鈥檚 back legs together to stop them kicking they would jump up and down on their back legs together. There was a cow called Raspbery, with a lovely reddish coat full of lice. When you touched your head to her the lice would creep along your clothes! There was a cow called Big Whiskey and her daughter Little Whiskey. Little Whiskey would be awkward and try to knock me over. I hated the real vicious cows. Milking was very unpleasant because the cow would sit down and wee as you milked. And that would splash all over you. Then a chap would come along and feed them in front of you, so they would be dribbling. You got very mucky. At Compton I had a bath at Mrs Blisset鈥檚 house. At the hostel we could have a shower once a week. In Lambourne I stayed with the keeper鈥檚 wife and we had no electricity. We had a lamp which you pumped up for light. If I wanted a bath I had to pump the water, fill up the copper basin, then pour it into a galavanised bath and put in in fromt of the fire. In the summer I couldn鈥檛 be bothered to do that so I put on my bathing costume and I went down to river Lambourne. I would get onto a bridge by the river, it was quite a shallow river only about two feet deep, and there just this little footbridge with the railway line on one side. I would go in in my bathing suit with the soap and wash. It was lovely. It was one of the coldest rivers in Britain, so one of the keepers used to say, because it was chalk. There was trout and grayling in it. When the keeper came home on leave, he and a friend from the village stood on either side of the river holding a net, and I stood in the river in holding the net upright. We would take all the grayling out and give it to the villagers for food. Food was short then. All the trout was thrown back, because the keeper had to be sure that there was pelnty of trout in the river for the people who owned the estate. I was there when the American soldiers were practising for D-day. They were parachuted out of planes at night. While I was in bed I heard them land on the roof and slide down, and in the moring they were gone. Sometimes they got tangled up in trees and one or two of them were strangled. I learned to broadcast seed, and once I came to the end of a field and there was a soldier asleep in a ditch; he had just collasped asleep in the ditch. I didn鈥檛 wake him!

We nearly came to grief once going over the railway line in the farmer鈥檚 car. He came to fetch us because it was raining and we were harvesting in a field on the far side of the railway line. I was working with some German and Italian prisoners of war sent to help on the farm. I warned the farmer that a train was coming down at 1.15pm from Lambourne to Newbury. He wasn鈥檛 concerned and left the gates open on both sides of the track. We got in the car; I sat in the front with him and the Germans sat in the back. We just got the front wheels over the track and I saw the train in the distance and I said 鈥渋t鈥檚 coming!鈥�. The farmer did the right thing and put his foot on the accelerator and we shot forward and the train went past just behind us. The Germans were swearing like mad behind us in German, they were really shaken. There was a very nice Italian boy, who was only 20 years old, who was billeted on the head cowman and his wife. I was very fond of them, I would go up to Mr and Mrs Moss鈥檚 and have a cup of tea. He was full of pranks. He was too young to be in the army really, a nice young lad. Everything was so primitive. I was very happy there in the Lambourne valley. I had to empty the outside loo and dig it into the vegetable patch. The potatoes were super! We had to wear breeches, brown thick stockings that went up over your breeches. One pair of heavy brouges for walking and a pair of wellington boots, and boots that went up over your ankles so you could wear them at work. Mostly you wore wellingtons. Very thick cotton overalls in a light brownish colour and a green pulover. I used to have one of my brother鈥檚 shirts. A thick coat for going out that was shortish length. A litlle hat with a tuck in it. After six months you got a triangular badge in red and green; you stiched that onto your arm. Then after another six months you got another triangle and it became a diamond. I was in there for 4 years. I enjoyed some of it, but really you were just grinding on.

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