大象传媒

Pat Yates, a volunteer with Age Concern Shropshire, is submitting this story on behalf of Mary Evans (b.Yates)with her full permission & understanding of the site's terms & conditions.

When war broke out in September 1939 I was away from home and returned when my last brother was called up. He was sent as a recruit to the 2nd Hereford Infantry. That meant three brothers were involved in the war. The idea was to work on our farm, which I did, joined by another Land Army girl. Later we were joined by my sister Joan - now all in the Land Army.

The farm was situated close to the river Severn in the Crosshouses area of Shropshire, and not peaceful as you may think. This was now early in 1940. Later in the year the German bombers started coming over at night - we assumed on their way to bomb Liverpool. They made quite a noise!

In October we ourselves were involved. Three bombs were dropped around the farm buildings. An incendiary bomb exploded doing no damage; the other two did not explode. Florrie, the landgirl, nearly fell into the hole they made when looking round the sheep as it was a very foggy day. Royal Engineers were sent to defuse the bombs and we were evacuated for a few days, but soon returned. The Royal Engineers were billeted with us but had to leave before they had defused them as on 14th November 1940, Coventry was terribly bombed and they departed to deal with the carnage there. From the farm we could see the fires on the horizon. The bombs remained in the ground for many months as the war was becoming more intense.

There was great aerial activity at that time. We were close to two aerodromes - Condover and Atcham - and German planes came over quite often. They dropped bombs on the searchlights at Wroxeter and did some damage; and this was at 1 o'clock in the afternoon!

One day an Oxford training plane from Condover crashed close to where my sister and I were working. Two lads were dead and the aeroplane was scattered over a large area. There was little we could do. They were both badly mutilated. A Piper Club also crashed one Sunday afternoon in the same place. Another Piper Club landed and they came to the house for help. Incidentally, we girls had done quite intensive first aid training but we could not do much as one lad was so badly hurt. The other one was not too bad but help arrived when another plane landed with a doctor on board.

We saw a dogfight in which two Spitfires attacked a German bomber which came down on the farm next to us. I gather there was one survivor.

The Germans had been known to attack workers on farms so wherever we were working we had an old farm cart placed pretty handy to dive under. We also took our turn firewatching from a high point when the corn was ready to harvest as the Germans had also been known to drop incendiary bombs on the ripening crops of corn.

Eventually things quietened down. The three boys returned - boys no longer - and badly shaken by what they had been through... Florrie, the landgirl, had been a bit of a heartbreaker during her years on the farm and she was still there when my brother Tony came home. They soon fell in love, married, and after the war emigrated to Canada. My sister and I carried on working the farm until we were married in a double wedding on 2nd November 1946, when by then, my brother Sidney had returned to take over from us.

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