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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from Age Concern, Dorchester on behalf of Beatrice (Trix) Williams (nee Rowling), and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Williams fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

“I worked in a War Factory. I was making barrage balloons for the Navy as my war work, near Wandsworth. Incandescent fabric. We had to leave our previous jobs in London because of the air raids. We had to get registered. I was 17 in 1939.

In 1942, my twin sister and I joined the Land Army (to avoid being called up for the ATS). We had six weeks training. We were taught to look after horses, put them into shafts and take them where they had to go. We also learned to do tractor driving and how to handle the farm tools, which was a bit unfair because they were all mens’ tools. We also learned to look after pigs and calves. The training was at Winchester — Sparsholt, now a farmers’ agricultural training centre. We did exactly the same as a man had to do. War Ag had a list of farms. It was the end of the harvest. We were split up. My sister was at Bradford Abbas. I was billeted at Exeter so it took us an hour by train to meet in Exeter. I was at Pinhoe near Exeter. I was billeted privately. I did general farm work, drove the tractor, looked after pigs, sheep. I was never invited into the farmhouse for food. I sat with my sandwiches (which the lady at my billet made) in the granary. The farmer never gave me so much as a cup of tea in six months. I paid half my wages of 26/- to the lady at my billet. The rest went on travel. We had two travel warrants a year to go home to London. I was told to take the tractor up to one of the fields on the farm. The farmer didn’t tell me that there was a deep ditch covered in brambles. I was told to take deep sweeping turns. The tractor fell into the ditch which was three or four feet below me. I climbed out into a tree. I had to walk three or four miles back and they had to get four or five men to pull the tractor out

I was told by some Land Army girls that they had vacancies at Cleeve House on the outskirts of Exeter. It belonged to a banking family and it was commandeered by the Government and we were allowed to live there, 6 or 8 to a dormitory. There I did farm work near Crediton, driving tractors and horses. I had meals with the farmer’s family. I did any sort of horse work. I fed the animals. They were shire horses and a huge hunter horse which bolted with me. It was hard, hard work. It was our war effort. We did lots of overtime and never got paid for that. We had to join the Young Farmers’ club and had to go to the meetings. We had a shearing contest and we had to use old-fashioned shears and the boys had mechanical shears. They caught the ram for me. I nearly castrated the ram.

I was going out with a Young Farmer for four or five weeks, when he invited me to go for tea. He said to wear my Land Army uniform. His family were like Royalty locally. The dining room was palatial and all his family were there. They were hostile. They had silver and stuff on trays. I never went out with him again.

We had Americans billeted around. Nobody took them seriously, though some of the girls became GI brides. I nearly got engaged to a chap in the Air Force, but we did get engaged after the war.

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