大象传媒

April 1944 I was 16 and working in the office of the Country Gentleman's Association in Letchworth. I had to register for war work.

Mr Mansfield, a milk farmer, at Thistley, Dairy Farm, Gosmore, Hitchin, had a land girl, who lodged with my parents. As she was leaving he asked if I would work for him. I jumped at the chance. Little did I realise that my working day was no longer 9am till 6pm six days a week, but 5:30am to 6pm six and a half days one week and seven days the next. He was a good boss with two daughters and he treated me the same as them.

There were twenty cows to be milked by hand and Alfa Laval milking machine. The milk was put through a water cooler, then bottled and canned. Bess the cart horse was harnessed and we made deliveries. Mr Mansfield made deliveries from a small Austin van. I loved this part of the work until I returned to the farm and had all the empties to clean and wash.

One morning I was delivering the 400th third of a pint of milk and a cook came out and asked if I could help her. She had a mouse nest on the top of a flour barrel. The mice were new born and all pink and squirming about. How brave was I, not wanting her to know I was as frightened as she was, got the coke shovel, scooped up the nest and contents, and asked the cook to take the lid off the range, and I popped them in, only for the rest of the staff to scream at the crackling of the bodies on the fire. The cook was thrilled as I had not wasted her flour. After all it was rationed and the school boys would never know!

During my time in the land army I sold war saving stamps around the village. For this I received a post office medal.

Dolly King worked on the farm with me and as we had been to school together we went out. One evening we went to the hunt ball. It was miserable. The posh people did not allow us to mix so at 11:30pm we left. We prepared ourselves for the walk home. We both had on long silk dresses but underneath were long woolly socks and wellies. Over the dresses were our green WLA jumpers and overcoats. It had been snowing and was very dark so we sang as we walked home along the country road. We had to pass a Royal Corps of Signals camp. The guard stopped us, asked where we had been and asked if we had a pass. I don鈥檛 think he believed us. Long frocks, land army overcoats, and wellies? We were still up to milk next morning.

One morning I got to work to find a fox had got into the chicken hut. He had had a good feast. We had to kill a lot of the chickens as they were badly injured. The fox returned but Mr Mansfield was prepared for him and he returned no more.

When we had bad weather I was shown how to take out nails in horses hooves and replace them with ice nails. One morning with bad snow and ice I walked along the side of Bess for safety. I had left her to deliver milk when a War Agricultural van skidded into the float. Milk flew everywhere, crashing down onto the ice and snow. Bess took off in fright and was found 3 miles away frightened but safe. Jack Izzart, a school boy, was helping me make deliveries. He had been on the float and I could not find him, but a kind customer had taken him in and made him some cocoa. Milk was rationed to two and a half pints per person per week and we now only had what Mr Mansfield had on the van. At each house we had to call and say that all they could have that day was half a pint. It did not go down very well. That night we were milking and bottle washing till midnight when Mrs Mansfield came to say there was a rabbit pie for supper.

In 1946 my sister found work for two land girls in Bridlington and we moved in in April. There was a tied house for us in the middle of a 400 acre field. It was on the top of a hill up a chalk road. It had lovely views of Bridlington bay! It was a two up and two down with no water, electric or gas. Cooking was by coal range. The earth closet was well away from the house and the week's contents were emptied into a hole dug into the field. There was a well but rats were floating on top of the water. The kitchen had been used for a dinner hut and a can of oil had been burnt in it. We had quite a lot of cleaning up to do. The shops were over 2 miles away. We went to them on our bicycles to get paraffin, matches, candles, coal and sticks and then back again for our food rations.

大象传媒 was milking and then out into the fields. I had been used to a modern farm, but this was very old fashioned. The dairy was cleaned once a year. We were used to doing it everyday. The milk was sold wholesale, so no delivering, instead it was hoeing, scruffling, harvesting, muck leading and sowing. How I missed my Bess and the milk round.

1947 was the worst winter for a long time. It started in February and lasted for eight weeks. Blizzards and freezing for days, and all the roads closed with blocked snow. Sheep were buried in drifts and had to be dug out. We melted snow for washing in the kitchen. We carried kilner jars of drinking water up from the farm. We walked about in gas boots on top of the snow.

That summer we had a very good harvest and German POW鈥檚 came to work with us. They were good workers. This was the second time I had worked with POW鈥檚 as we had one at my first farm.

I enjoyed my Land Army life.

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