大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples War Site by volunteer John C Haywood 大象传媒 Radio Lincolnshire Action Desk on behalf of Mrs Sheila Foy (nee Spencer), and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Foy fully understands the site terms and conditions.

The Land Army girls came to a small village in Dorset called Manston quite early in the war. They quickly settled into an arrangement of newly built huts with a warden in charge of their welfare. Mrs Jupp the warden was an extremely nice person, but she was quite strict with her girls, almost all coming from the north of England, Yorkshire and Lancashire areas, town girls mainly. Their arrival caused a bit of a stir in the village not at least among the farmers wives. They wore smart clothes, had neat hair styles and long red finger nails, which became a thing of the past as they quickly found out, cleaning the pig sty's, milking cows or pulling mangolds out in the fields, plus the many other jobs they had to do on the farms in the area. They soon though settled in to the new way of life and got on well with the local folk, and they also had many invitations to local homes for meals and even had the luxury of a hot bath!

Life for the girls was rather mundane until the day that the American soldiers arrived on the scene, the Americans where in a camp a few miles away near the town of Shaftesbury. The G.I.'s were a magnet for the local female population, especially with gifts of nylon stockings, perfume and other luxury items, only obtainable on coupons in our shops. Even petrol was known to have found it's way into several local cars, presumably to some irate father's! As the war gradually ended in Europe the Land Army was disbanded and the girls returned to civvy street, a few remained in the district marrying local men, or just because they liked the farming way of life.

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