大象传媒

Born in September 1920, I was 19 when the Second World War broke out. By that time I had already spent four years in an office doing secretarial work for which I had been trained; I was not sorry to give that a rest.

I had by then fallen in love with a wonderful young Scottish airman who had been in the Volunteer Reserve but was now a Rear Gunner in the R.A.F. and had been billeted with us for a while. He was shortly posted to Singapore and we hoped to marry on his return.

For me it was a toss up between nursing or the Women鈥檚 Land Army. I chose the Land Army as I had always had a love of the land and genealogically it must be in my blood, even though I have never reached more than 5ft 2 in height or weighed more than 8st 4oz.

My first shock came when I was posted into rather basic digs in the village of Rusper, and found I needed to rise at 5 am. to cook my own porridge and get to work at 5.30. There was one other Land Girl who seemed very big, strong and capable. I was never more tempted to fall down on any patch of hay I saw to close my eyes and rest my body. I struggled through a month of trial service and was very much under threat of discharge from the Land Army when I was offered another chance to prove myself at a dairy farm nearer home. This I was persuaded to do, and from that time my health and strength returned and I never looked back. It meant a three mile cycle ride from home and back at least four times a day, but I did not mind that, and it was good to be with my mother. She was alone, and it took some of the worry away. My pay was useful - 拢3 per week, but it went a lot further in those days.

I started to work at Hyders Farm (now called Gatwick Manor Hotel). At that time it was a large dairy farm, with 100 head of Red Poll cattle, and the farm was owned by a Mrs Dyer and her son, who was away on active service. The farm was in the charge of a Bailiff, who had a cottage on the Estate. He was also in charge of the workers, of which there were four of us Land Girls, and two young male workers, who were exempt from war service due to their land work. The Bailiff also worked with us. He was an ex-showman, so everything had to be just right. He was a good man.

Now it was quite a joy to get to work at 6 a.m. instead of 5.30, and my first job always was to fetch or call in the cows from wherever they were in the fields. They would find their own way into their stalls. There would be about 24 in milk, and they all had to be milked by hand. I had never seen a machine. There was one Guernsey and one Jersey cow. Their milk was special, and used at the House. All udders and tails had to be washed before milking, otherwise you would get a very unpleasant swish around the face whilst your cheek was up against the cow's flank, and you needed to watch the back leg or it would end up in the bucket, or kick it over.

大象传媒 with the animals was 7 days a week, with sometimes a Sunday break shared on a rota system. No time for socializing. But I loved my work, it was so varied and there was never a dull moment.

After our morning milking, our different jobs were allotted to us by the bailiff, most often two to a job, but one of the girls preferred dairy work, so that was her special job, whereas I preferred to work amongst the animals and was in charge of the calves from birth till old enough to be kept or despatched. That was my special job. There was also the mucking out of the individual stalls to be done, and the pregnant mothers' stalls was a particularly unpleasant job, very smelly, really knocked you back, and lots of barrow wheeling to the dung heap, and fresh straw to be fetched.

Each season brought different work. We were taught how to lift heavy sacks of cattle cake on our shoulders, and how to cut hay from the stacks with the hay knife and bring the bales down on the pitchfork, and take the weight across our backs.

In the wintertime when the weather was bad and the cows were kept in, there was kale to be cut from the fields and prepared for the cows to eat, also the root vegetables to collect, sort and grind, and the brewers grain to mix for their feed. Carrots, particularly, had a habit of going bad and needed to be sorted through. A mucky job. I seemed to wear Wellington boots most of the time on the farm, as most of the work was amongst the cattle, or in the fields. Wellingtons and dungarees were our normal gear.

Later in the war some Italian prisoners were called in to help with hoeing, and also with hedging and ditching. We were always told, very strictly, by the Bailiff, not to fraternize with the Italians, and he would keep his beady eye on us. Very wisely, too, as some were very attractive and would know when we were alone and mucking out the cowsheds. We used to hear them coming in the lorries as they used to sing, all in harmony, like a Welsh choir. They also used to make little knick- knacks, like rings and things from plastic they managed to salvage.

Later still in the war we had some Canadians come to help us, and that was rather a different story, as two of our girls eventually married Canadians.

Then, to finish my story on a sadder note; it was one autumn time when the end of the war was almost in sight. I was in the hay loft having a snack when my uncle appeared, and he brought the devastating news that my Scottish fianc茅 had died in Madras, after having escaped from Singapore. I was quite distraught. It was heart-breaking news.

I asked for a week off to go and visit his parents in Scotland, but the lady of the house said I could not be spared at that particular time. In those days one did not disobey orders, but I am afraid I did, and because of it I was given notice to quit that farm. This was a blow in itself, but a rather unpleasant man had just been taken on to help out, so I was not so sorry to take work offered at another smaller farm a little further along the road and almost into Lowfield Heath. It was not such a clean farm, not so many animals, and only two cowmen employed.

However, I settled in and shall always remember one special Christmas morning when the usual early start brought me all on my own to do the milking, with the cows already standing in their stalls waiting. There was a lantern in the barn, and I was so vividly aware of the similarity to the oxen in the stable where Jesus was born it made a lasting impression on me.

Yet again there was tragedy and sadness, as the incendiaries had started to come over from Germany, and one morning on my early ride to work I kept noticing round patches of ash along the road. When at last I reached the farm, what a sight met my eyes. It was completely burnt out, being only a wood and thatch affair, and the poor cows and outside penned cattle had all been burned to death. The sight was horrific. I had to work amongst those cattle for days before they could be buried. There were not the facilities. The stench was dreadful. They kept me on at that farm for weeks after that as there was so much clearing up to do and burned timber to be sawn up and disposed of. I worked alongside the men in all of this.

This was the end of my Land Army days as the war was almost at an end, so I was then sent to a small munitions factory in Pease Pottage where they were producing and preparing small screws and parts for machinery. This almost killed me. All the noise and confined space after having worked in the open air for so long, apart from the fact that the buzz bombs had just started to arrive. One brought us all to the floor as it went over and the engine cut off. It landed in Crawley toward the end of Oak Road.

As the war ended my greatest wish would have been to go to a Horticultural College and continue my interest in the land, but it was not to be, and so my war time history ends. My deepest regret, along with that of so many of my contemporaries, was the loss of the young man I had loved and hoped to marry.

This story was entered on the People鈥檚 War site by Melita Dennett on behalf of Gert Law, who understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

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