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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home on behalf of Kathleen Cockcroft and has been added to the site with her permission…

I was 13 in 1939 and living in Spetisbury, Blandford Forum. There were nine of us children in the family and I remember the day we came home from a children’s service at the church and dad telling us about Neville Chamberlain’s speech about the war.

My brother who was 20 was in the Coldstream Guards and before going off to war they sent all his civilian belongings back home to us. One of my sisters was in the ATS and another one went into the WRENS.

At 14 I started work as a parlour maid at the home of an army major. It was a big house and there were eight of us in service there. We were allowed one day a week off from 2pm until 9pm and Sunday morning. We had to hand our ration books to the cook as we got our keep as part of the job. The windows of the house had to be blacked out at night time and we had to go under the stairs when the siren sounded.

When I was 16 I met my future husband, he was stationed at Blandford Camp before being sent abroad.

I joined the Land Army; we wore brown knee length corduroy trousers, cream shirts and green pullovers. We assisted on the farm, but also worked in tomato greenhouses. I recall I once fell off a hay lorry during hay- making. The days were long we worked from 6am to 10pm. But we had a lot of fun and enjoyed ourselves.

We worked with German POW’s on the farm, and I recall them having mashed potato for lunch. They came and went, one who had blonde hair, came into the dairy where I was working and gave me a hand made cigarette case.

One day when we were out on our bikes a US Army truck went by and they gave us tins of peaches on which they had written their names and addresses.

I remember hearing the noise of the bombs dropping, aimed at Blandford Camp and seeing a German aeroplane, it flew so low that you could see the swastika.

I was in Sherbourne on VE Day, there was a dance there that night and we had a wonderful time, but the American soldiers were not allowed to attend as President Roosevelt had died in April.

After coming back from Italy and meeting him five times, I married my husband and we stayed together for 57 years.

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