大象传媒

I first volunteered to join the Land Army with a friend Lillian Hooper in 1942, we both worked at the Norwich Co-op. She was sent to Sandringham to work on the Queen's farm and met the Royal family. She was engaged to a soldier and one day when he was home on leave and came visiting he asked someone in a farm shed where she was - it was King George 1V! I went to Sparham!

I was billetted with Mrs Robinson at Little Farm and worked on Robert Sayer's Church Farm. I was then aged 20 and stayed there until 1946. I worked with another Land Girl called Eileen.

I did general farm duties, no milking. I used to be responsible for feeding 200 - 300 pigs and worked with horses doing horse rolling, harvesting and sugar beet topping. The piggeries had a wooden door which had to be pushed back to get in to feed them. The pigs pushed too and one day one of them jumped over the door on to my back. I was scared and cried and said I was going home.

One day we were working in the field, a pouring wet day so we had our khaki macs on - they kept flapping about. A german plane came over hedge hopping so we had to throw ourselves on to the ground very quickly.

From the field we could see all the airfields around, the planes would go off in formation at about 7am and come back about 12 o'clock. One day we saw two planes collide above us, Bawdswell Church was destroyed and all 22 American airmen aboard were killed.

We had weekends off except at harvest time and I went home by bus to Eagle Way, Norwich. It was near the hospital so I used to see all the ambulances going in. My dad worked at Bolton Paul making bomb boxes whilst mum looked after the family. My older brother did war work driving soldiers and my younger sister had a baby to look after.

In Sparham rectory lived a French man who was blind, he was married to the daughter of the parson. Their name was Bronne. They had a son called Paul and a daughter Angela. Last year when I gave a talk about the Land Army a lady in the audience said 'I have a Mr Bronne living next to me'. It was Paul, after all those years! His health is not good so I haven't seen him but I have met up with his sister Angela who lives in Sheringham, Norfolk.

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