大象传媒

In 1940 I joined the Women's Land Army and was sent to Savernake Forest to work on Warren Farm. Before that I was living at home in Liverpool.When I first joined I was sent to Seale Hayne Agricultural College at Newton Abbot in Devon, and it was quite a thrill for a town girl like me to see such beautiful countryside. We were trained in all aspects of farm work: milking cows, working on the land, even how to humanely kill a chicken! I remember the sprout picking very clearly , because my fingers were so numb with the cold; sprouts have to be picked while the frost is still on them.
At first, the farmers were reluctant to employ girls, I suppose they didn't think we were up to it, but as the war went on and more men were called to duty they began to come round to us. I enjoyed my time spent at Warren Farm, and on the rare times I travelled home I was newly aware of what a grimy place Liverpool was.
When the war ended I remember saying to the farmer that I could go home, only to be told that I could't, the Land Girls were too important. How his attitude had changed! But my time in The Land Army did finally come to an shortly after 7th July 1945, when a massive explosion at an ammunition dump devastated the farm. I was walking across the farmyard with two pails of fresh milk when I was thrown into the air by the force of the blast, my milk pails torn from my hands. The farm was badly damaged, although thankfully nobody on the farm was badly hurt. Sadly, however,a soldier closer to the explosion was killed. With the farm temporarily out of action and the men starting to return I was discharged and allowed to go home.

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