大象传媒

This story is submitted by Pat Yates of Age Concern on behalf of Mrs. Joan Yates (no relation) with her permission & her full understanding of the terms & conditions of the site

I was 19 in 1941 and joined the Land Army on my birthday, April 1st! Until then I had been working as a lab. technician for British Drug Houses. It was a reserved occupation and it was difficult getting permission to leave but I had a bee in my bonnet: I wanted to work with animals and on a farm. So I moved from a skilled occupation to one in which I was completely unskilled.
Three weeks earlier I had received a letter with details of a farm in Prees Heath, North Shropshire where I would be going, and then, the day I left home, another letter arrived sending me to a completely different place - Hall Farm, Coreley - along with a railway ticket to Newnham Bridge station, in South Shropshire. In those days I was meek and timid. If I had been brave I would have spoken my feelings and said, "I'm going to Prees Heath as planned." But I didn't: fate had taken a hand and the outcome was that at Hall Farm I met and eventually married my husband, the farmer. He was 24 years older than I but we had a happy marriage and I was passionately in love with him and remain so, although he died many years ago, on 5th October, 1966.
I could not have anticipated the future..... I arrived after a five hour train journey and was met by the farmer. That first day, having come from London and the blitz, I was surprised by the noise of a huge explosion and thought, "They've followed me here!" But the noise was only blasting in the Clee Hill quarry, a daily event.
At the start, although I worked hard, I wished I'd never left London. In fact, I applied for a transfer and Mrs. Preston, the Head of the Land Army in Shropshire came to the farm to interview me. The meeting was in the comfortably carpeted dining room and when I walked in in my muddy boots she quickly took a sheet of brown paper for me to stand on. She wouldn't hear of my leaving, said I was a silly girl, and she didn't know where I would find another place with hot and cold water and central heating in my own room - a rarity then.
So I stuck it out though it was a sad house as, tragically, three months after my arrival, the farmer's young son was killed by a car whilst out riding his new bicycle - a 13th birthday present from his Grandma.

It was a large farm by the standards of the day of about 250 acres all told. The farming was mixed, with a fine herd of Aberdeen Angus beef cattle and some Red Poll for milk, butter and cream for the house. We also had sheep. There was other labour besides me: Jack the cowman, Bill the waggoner, and two young lads, George and Geoffrey. For a short while there was also another land girl.
I learned the skills gradually; starting off gathering and burning hedge trimmings, feeding poultry, cleaning out pigsties, and gassing rabbits and filling in rabbit holes. In the first week I was learning how to churn butter, and after 22 days in the Land Army I was able to make butter by myself!
One of my first jobs was to dig a 60/70 yard ditch to put in pipes for field drainage. That was very hard work as the soil was heavy red clay.There is an illustrated publication: 'The Working Countryside 1862-1945' and in it there is a photo of me hard at work on the ditch, watched by the farmer's sheepdog, Bob. I tried my hand at milking but didn't shine at that, though I was good at giving the lambs their injections; my lab training was useful there. I spent hours and hours docking; a horrible job. As a child on holiday in Whitstable I had loved running my hand up docks and scattering the seeds amongst the pebbles and I reckoned the wind had blown them all the way up to Shropshire to plague me. I graduated to driving the tractor, and I learned to scuffle the ground to make a fine tilth, working with Suffolk Punch horses. And, I was very good at scything; I liked that.
After a difficult start I took to the work; I was suited to it. The pay wasn't much though. I earned 32/- a week and out of that paid out 17/- for my keep. Land girls were not supplied with boots so I had to buy my own hobnailed boots whiuch I needed right away. They cost almost a week's wages.

I married my farmer on 25th November 1943 and eighteen months later and two days after VE Day,we moved from Hall Farm with all our stock and implements to High Hesket House in Cumberland. Although I was married I remained a land girl until the day we left.
To make the move we were able to hire a train to take the lot, travelling overnight from Tenbury Wells. The stock included heavy horses, 100 cattle and 3 ducks. One duck laid an egg on the journey and the guard was so thrilled, never having seen a duck egg before, that we gave it to him! The cows and their calves were travelling separately and at Oxenholme suddenly we were shunted into a siding. My husband wanted to know why and the guard explained it was so that we could milk the cows. "But the calves milk the cows," said my husband, and that is what they did. We travelled in one half of the guards van and my husband had the bright idea of bringing a primus stove along. So on the morning of our journey we feasted on bacon and eggs.
With the move to High Hesket my war work was over and I became solely a farmer's wife and later, the mother of two sons.

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