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My name is Dorothy Mary Jones and I am 81 years old.
I joined the Land Army in 1943, because I fancied the uniform of some girls who were passing me. And that’s the real reason. I didn’t think what they did, except I did go and say ‘What are you?’ and they said ‘We’re rat catchers’ and I thought ‘Well that sounds a strange thing’. Anyway, they gave me the address of the lady to whom I was to write, in Trefnant, so I wrote, and she came to the house to see me. But the thing was, I was working as a short hand typist at Monsanto Chemicals, which was a reserve job, I wouldn’t have had to go near the war with that job, and my mother knew this, and she created..! Well, after a lot of to-do I eventually got my own way. I had the uniform sent to me, and I went off to Menai Bridge. I joined a hostel with forty girls in it. And they’d said, because the convoys were coming over from America and losing so much food, and the rats were eating our granary and our food, that they would train some of us to be rat catchers. So those of us who’d had a grammar school education went to be rat catchers. Eight of us. We went to Bangor University first, and learnt all about the theory of rats- how they breed every 21 days, and where they live. And after we’d been there for a while we came out into Menai Bridge and an old man called Mr Jones, who was a mole catcher really, taught us how to catch rats in dry walls, which are very difficult to find. We then had a van each- four of us to a van- and we had to go out and catch rats. The farmers had a contract with the Ministry of Agriculture- for whom we were working- and we would go out on three monthly visits.
We used poison and gas. The poison was arsenic, zinc phosphide, or red squirrel, which is now warfarin, which they give people to clot the blood. That's why we were giving it to the rats, to paralyse them. If you used one poison, and they got just a bite of it, you couldn’t do it the next time, that’s why we had to keep on using different poisons. First of all we had a big tin of sausages, which we fed the rat holes for eight days- baiting them. And then we added the poison to it, and then, especially with the zinc phosphide, the rats would be out. And the farmers loved that because they would have plenty to see. And then we’d pick them up and put them on our fire place in the hostel. Which wasn’t dangerous, we were well dressed for it, and well trained for it. And we had a lot of fun. And we were 18. I was doing that for 4 years- til 1947. And we had a lot of fun. Forty girls together- as you can imagine. And there were a lot of forces on the island, so we had lots of dances. They’d send a truck for us to take us out and dancing. We really had a good time, and had a fun filled war.
Joyce, my friend, and I, we were chosen to look after an agricultural show, and the tent was given over to rats and rat catching for farmers. And there were rat traps and such, and there were four live rats in a cage, which we were to show to people. Well, we were young. We went off wandering, and left the tent. Whilst we were missing, somebody had opened the cage, in the middle of a crowd. I’ve never seen anybody run so fast! But the rats weren’t coming for them, they were trying to get away across the field, but the people didn’t know that. So we got called up in front of the ministry of ag and really put in our place! But we were young!
Menai Bridge village was very dark. And about ten of us had gone down to the village for chips. We were walking back, and I ran on ahead. And when we got near the hostel, there was a place where leaves were put, and I was just passing there, and someone jumped on my back and flattened my nose onto the road. Well, I yelled and screamed, and the other girls came behind, and picked him up. He was from South Wales. They picked him up and took him into the hostel. They sat him on the table in the dining room and took his trousers off and made him sit there until the red caps came. So he’d been a bit too clever for his own good.

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