大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Claire White of 大象传媒 Scotland on behalf of Jessie Petrie and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I volunteered to serve in the Land Army in 1941 aged 20 years. I liked being out in the fresh air and gardening so when a woman came to our house asking my sister and I to enlist for service the Land Army was an obvious choice. My sister and I were the first women in the village of Arnold in Nottinghamshire to volunteer for the Land Army.

The work was hard. I was billetted to farms that had been taken over by the Agricultural Committee. The first job I did was clear cow sheds of dung to provide manure. Meanwhile my sister looked after sixty pigs. After two years I went to work for a private farmer and again cleared out the cow sheds every morning. The hardest part of being a land girl was harvesting wheat and carrying buckets of water to cows in the winter. There was no running water or electricity in the village.

The village dance was the highlight of the week and it was there that I met my husband. He was in the Scottish Horse Regiment and his work led him to North Africa so I didn't see him for some time.

I made many wonderful friends in the Land Army and being in the fresh air every day made me stronger. I served throughout the war and came out two weeks before VE day to do some voluntary work with the YMCA.

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