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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Berkshire on behalf of Gladys McHaffie and has been added to the site with her permission. Gladys McHaffie fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

During the war years there was a number of Land Army Girls, about 48 in all stationed at a hostel known as Hook Hostel. The foreman was known as Harry Spencer. We worked at various places on farms all around Hook, such as Hartney Whitney, Four Marks, Farringdon, Grately, Black Bush, Camberley, Fleet, Farnborough, our main depot was at Alton. On one occasion we had to clear snow from Aldershot in order that the troops could get through.

Various supervisors were responsible fro catering and welfare the last one I remember clearly was Miss New, who is still alive residing in Southsea and must be in her nineties.

We arranged social evenings from the hostel to get money for the wounded boys at Park Prewett Hospital, taking cigarettes, note-paper, apples which sometimes we had to scrump from farms. In those days all the girls had for their rations was 1oz butter, 1oz of margarine, 1oz of sugar, and for breakfast we had porridge made from water and dried egg which we grew to like. Cheese in a sandwich to take to work and this was very dry, often we gave sandwiches to prisoners of war who seemed to enjoy them.

We would leave the hostel to go to work about 6.30am and be dropped off at different farms on the way. Sometimes the work consisted of potato picking, market gardening, thrashing ricks all around Hook, also thatching ricks, cutting our own spars. We worked in all weathers and in the winters we finished work as soon as it got dark about 5.30pm. I the summers we worked until about 10.30 pm each night. Weekends we finished earlier. At the end of the week our take home pay after deductions for board and lodge was about 11 shillings and sixpence a week. Overtime would bring our money up to about £1.25 shillings a week.

My friend Ruby Beckett who became a fore-woman, would cut down stinging nettles and hoe weeds with me, at a house in Hook, where we were given 2/6d a drink and a piece of cake. This was often at weekends.

I remember once being refused water, which was in a well because it was difficult to get in the summer when it was very hot.

On frosty mornings, pulling sugar beets wasn’t funny, I can tell you. We would light a fire, bake potatoes perhaps if we were lucky enough to be on a farm where we could get some. At nights this fire had to be banked up so that it was hidden and could not be seen from the air. (Due to air raid precautions).

Another friend Kathleen Day and me, used to sing at Odiam Aerodrome to the airforce boys. It was sad when some of them never returned from a raid.

In the winter we would meet at the Crooked Billet and White Hart, public houses, at Hook, where we could meet the troops, and the boys came from all over the country including Canadians from a regiment called the Algins. Evening entertainments included singing, and yodelling from the Algins.

In the Hostel we had 2 baths and 1 shower which was shared between 48 of us, we would jump in together in two’s or three’s especially if we had been thrashing barley, it was very prickly and often very dirty. Some of the farm men were very cruel to rats, they would stab them with a fork and twirl them around when they were not properly killed. This I didn’t like one bit. Mice would get in your clothes and one day when I got back to the hostel I found about a dozen mice in my coat pockets and in the linings.

On the whole we were quite a happy crowd, especially considering how things were. A lot of us were blood donors. I remember once a lot of girls collapsing like flies while waiting for their dinner after giving blood.

We would hitch lifts to get to Basingstoke or to other local towns.

We would exchange clothing coupons in order to obtain cigarettes or sweets so that we could buy a bit of extra clothes.

We used to have a bit of fun amongst ourselves and I can remember on one occasion we had a bet on with a girl named Eileen Battrick. The dare was that we wouldn’t have the courage to ride a bicycle in our pyjamas and ride to Hook. This of course was a practice that was strongly frowned on. The bet was for 2/6d each so we took it on and did it. We gave the money back, 2/6d was a lot of money in those days. Two of the girls, Grace and Joyce from Bournmouth had a husband and a brother who were prisoners of war in Germany, and sadly the brother never came back.

There were a lot of land girls at the Hostel who had come from London, one named Sophie, she was like a mother figure to us all and was full of fun. She came from Popular, Isle of Dogs.

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