大象传媒

I was born and bought up in Yoxford and I was 13 when the war broke out, I was still at school, I left when I was 14, just after Christmas in 1940. I was at home a first looking after the house and my younger sisters and then went to work in Drapers in Yoxford earning 7 shillings and sixpence a week. After five months I volunteered to e a land girl as I always wanted to work outdoors. Because of my responsibilities at home I was\able to work locally, Bark Barn in Yoxford a poultry farm. Some of the hens were battery hens, some were free range until they came to lay, then they moved in. There was one other land girl, who was full time Jean Blowers who also came from Yoxford, we were busy all the time, there were other land girls who came for a short period of time from the land army hostel at Peasenhall or in the White Horse at Leiston. One girl Mary Pratt came from Yorkshire and she married a USAAF airman. Also Ivy Roberts from London who I think married an airman too. Jean got married to a British Army Sergeant stationed in Yoxford in February 1945 and I was then on my own until I got married after the war.
There were hundreds of British servicemen in the area at the time. Many lived in tents on Dunwich Heath all along the coast to Thorpeness. Soldiers billeted at Westleton, and the bathing facilities were set up by the river at Middleton baths in tents. Water was taken from the river into big coppers then the hot water was taken into the tents. After the soldiers had finished the children were allowed to jump in and have a bath too. In the summer of 1944 on a Sunday afternoon the 鈥淩ye Field Murder鈥� happened at Aldringham, a Leiston girl Miss Bacon who was fifteen was out walking on her own hen she was attacked and later died in Ipswich Hospital. A soldier stationed at Thorpeness was eventually charged and got fifteen years, but it caused great concern as nothing like that had ever happened in Leiston Like that before.

One local man had an arrangement with my boss to sell eggs on the black market in London. He used to come to collect them in a hurse and put the eggs in a coffin. He paid my boss 10 schillings a dozen ( a lot of money ) so I don鈥檛 know how much he got for them in London. But it meant that my boss couldn鈥檛 say anything when I wanted a dozen eggs at the usual price, or a cockerel! Eventually he was caught and was stopped from going to London, but to give him his due he didn鈥檛 involve my boss, but he was fined 拢8. It gave us a problem because we then had all these surplus eggs to get rid off. So we dealt with a poultry dealer in London called Wallers and I had several train journeys to Darsham station putting chickens on the train to London. I was glad my father never found out.

I miss the togetherness and the support we had in the war. Father used to cut logs for the window next door, we all shared everything.

We were out planting tomatoes one day in a field when a German aircraft came over and machine gunned us, we ran to the ditches and fortunately no one was hurt.

My brother was already in the T.A when the war was declared and went straight of to Leiston and finally went off to Singapore then was caught by the Japenese and worked on the Burma railway in the 4th Suffolk鈥檚, he didn鈥檛 know for thirteen months he was a P.O.W, he came home in October 1945.

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