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This story has been entered onto the site by Miriam Knights, aged 14, from Emmanuel College in Gateshead, on behalf of Joyce Fitzpatrick, and she fully understands the conditions upon which I have done so.

It was around 1942/43, and Joyce had never been away from home before. She was 21 years old, but had only ever been to stay with relatives with her family. Her father had died when she was ten, so her mother had been left somewhat alone to raise Joyce and her sister Doris, who was two years older than her.
Joyce was primarily sent to Weatherby, to train as part of the Women’s Timber Corps. At Newcastle Central Station, where she was boarding the train, she met another girl, called Isabel (but known as Belle), who also lived nearby, in Ellington. Belle was heading for the same location as Joyce. They seem to have remained good friends throughout the whole of the war.
They spent six weeks at Weatherby being trained. They learnt a huge variety of skills, including how to chop trees and how to saw the wood down for pit props.
At the end of six weeks, although Joyce had had no more experience than anyone else, she was made a ‘ganger’. A ‘ganger’ was a woman who was in charge of a small group of girls, but also had a foreman over her. Joyce was then asked where she would like to be billeted. As she had never been away from home before, and she missed her mother, she asked to be billeted as close to Newcastle as possible. She was sent to Launceston, a town in Cornwall.
The group of girls (Joyce and Belle included) travelled on the train down to Launceston Station, where they got on a lorry to take them to where they would be staying. Joyce had never been on a lorry before, and was surprised at how unladylike it was.
The lorry took them to Lewdown, a village six miles from Launceston and thirteen miles from Okehampton in Devon.
Joyce was taken to Hayne House, where she and the others were to be billeted. It was a grand house, and as the authorities didn’t want to spoil the front vista for the owners, behind the house four Nissen huts were erected, in which all the girls slept. In each hut there were beds along the walls, with a heater in the middle of the floor. Obviously, it was nothing like home comfort, but apparently it wasn’t too bad.
Each of the four Nissen huts was given a name by the girls, but Joyce could only remember three of them. The names of the three huts were; ‘Crazy Cottage’, ‘Hell’s Angels’ (not exactly what you’d expect from respectable young ladies in the 1940s) and ‘Hatters Castle’. They had to be up at seven o’clock every day, and all the girls came together for breakfast in one big hut. Their breakfast was typically porridge, a rasher of bacon and a piece of fried bread. Sometimes the light was so poor that they had to eat by candlelight. On one occasion they were sat eating their porridge when a girl said, ‘Joyce, there’s maggots in this’. Joyce didn’t believe her, but on closer inspection of the porridge found it to be true. As Joyce had already finished her porridge, without examining it carefully, this wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear!
The girls were separated into two gangs, and Joyce’s duties as ganger began. Each group went to a different wood to start doing what their training had taught them to do. Each group had a ganger in charge of them, of which Joyce was one. Joyce made friends quickly, and formed a group of friends around her. The names she remembered were Elsie ‘Plum’ Plummer, Betty, Joan, Vicky and Belle.
Every day was the same, and although Devon is renowned for the good weather, it seemed to rain an awful lot! They would go out to the woods every day, and, on the lorry coming back they would sing songs. It is easy to imagine, and she said that she enjoyed the years she spent there, and made lots of friends. As in many places, the war brought together different people from all walks of life, who would never have otherwise met. This particular group formed firm friendships, and still keep in touch, although some of them have, sadly, but inevitably, passed away.
Whilst she was in Lewdown, Joyce received regular letters from home, and likewise wrote letters home. She was a prolific writer, and wrote so that her mother would receive a letter every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday without fail. They were very long letters, and she told her mother everything. It is just as well that she wrote so much, because she was only allowed home twice a year.
Joyce spent 6-12 months at Hayne Camp, and then moved on to ‘The Chalet of the Laughing Cow’, which was still near Lewdown. Here she was very well treated by the Bruck family, the people who she was billeted with. In fact, they treated her as one of their own. Although the parents have since passed away, Joyce still keeps in touch with the daughters.
She was now working on a different wood with a different set of girls, but was still a ganger. After a while spent there she was re-posted to Exeter, to Dogg Village. Joyce requested that Belle, as her friend, was allowed to go with her. They stayed there for 2/3 years and continued working in the woods with a new set of girls, but still with Joyce as ganger.
One occasion Joyce remembers particularly clearly, was when they were stationed in Beale. As Beale is famous for its cider, there were numerous orchards dotted around. One of these was used by the girls as a shortcut to reach the woods in which they were working at the time. One day they were working as normal, when a young girl with downs syndrome passed by with her mother, as they lived in the houses nearby. The girl was fascinated by the work the corps were doing, so her mother asked if her daughter could come and watch them. Being friendly people, they agreed, and from then on the little girl came every day. She soon began to copy their habits, even so far as to start smoking. Joyce eventually decided that they would have to stop their uncouth habits for the sake of the girl, because although they never used bad language, the smoking was bad enough. Apparently the young girl was heartbroken when the corps had to leave.
During their lunch and tea breaks the corps sometimes roasted chestnuts on an open fire, because most of the food they were given wasn’t brilliant quality. Sometimes solely consisting of beetroot sandwiches. So the girls supplemented their lunches with whatever they could get, whether it was tins of beans they’d bought or chestnuts from the forest floor.
Joyce had one other specific story to tell, but sadly it wasn’t an experience she rather not have had.
In Joyce’s group there was a young woman, called Gwen Jayne. She was very pretty, with red hair and green eyes, but she was also a terrible flirt. Although most of the girls had to share rooms, Gwen was deemed responsible enough to have private digs. Unfortunately, Gwen got involved with an American G.I, and, almost inevitably, became pregnant. As ganger, Joyce was given the responsibility of taking Gwen home to her family, as a pregnant worker was no good to the Land Army. Under the circumstances, it was a responsibility that Joyce dearly wished she could have done without.
Before they left Exeter, the Welfare Officer told Joyce never to leave Gwen alone, so even when she went to the toilet, Joyce had to accompany her.
When they eventually reached Gwen’s home her mother met them at the door. She was in shock, and in fact couldn’t stop crying all night long. Gwen had also been idolised by her father, so he was obviously devasted. Joyce actually had to take a lot of verbal abuse from Gwen’s mother, because she was in such a state of shock. Joyce, completely understanding the mother’s situation, just took the criticism quietly. She realised, thankfully, that the abuse wasn’t personal, but instead a way for the mother to get over her shock. At one point during the evening, Joyce mentioned how regularly she wrote to her own mother. Gwen’s mother then told Joyce that Gwen never wrote; she was too busy flirting. As Gwen couldn’t cope with her baby son, and her parents refused to help her, because they had apparently warned her and told her to be careful, Gwen ended up in the workhouse. Eventually, however, Gwen’s parents got her out of the workhouse.
As Gwen hadn’t lived too far from Newcastle, when she had taken her home Joyce had paid the extra fare to get a ticket up to Newcastle. It was Saturday night when she finally got home, and her mother was astonished and pleased at her appearance. Her pleasure at seeing her daughter again didn’t last for long however, because in answer to her question, ‘How long can you stay?’ Joyce had to reply, ‘I have to leave tomorrow.’ Unfortunately, that was the way life was.
When Joyce returned to Exeter she was talking to Gwen’s friend, Audrey Hitchcock, and trying to warn her against doing what Gwen had so foolishly done. In reply, Audrey plainly said that she had been pregnant, but that Joyce wasn’t to worry, because she had disliked it so much that she wasn’t going to do it again.
Joyce then returned to Hayne, where life went on, and she was actually very happy. She was there when the war ended.
Joyce and her group of friends went into Launceston for VE Day, but all the shops were shut! A couple of months later, they went to Plymouth for VJ Day on the 7th August. They all went into a restaurant and celebrated together. They seem to have had a surprisingly good war where they were billeted, because although Plymouth was bombed because of the ports Lewdown had very few air raids. They even went to Bath Abbey and saw Princess Elizabeth, who at that point was in the forces herself.
After the war, most of the girls intended to go straight home. Joyce, however, was going to stay on, in order to go into business with the man of the family she had stayed with at the ‘Chalet of the Laughing Cow’. He had even promised to buy her and another girl a tractor. This wasn’t to be, however, because he mother missed her and begged her to come home, so she went straight home after the war ended.
That wasn’t the end of the story, however, because she has been to numerous re-unions, and they have kept very much in contact. One woman, Betty, was always a joker — there was a laugh a minute when she was around. On one re-union in Exeter, Joyce and Betty wanted to buy some sandwiches for the train journey back to Newcastle, so they went into Marks and Spencer’s. They were going up the escalator, with Betty in front, when she suddenly turned round and announced, ‘Joyce, I’ve got your condoms for tonight.’ As they were both, in Joyce’s words, ‘old women’ by then, Joyce was naturally mortified. She had been told several times that she was ‘green’, and has said that even recently she has had to ask for explanations of certain turns of phrase, and has found out afterwards that she didn’t really want to know. In fact, her sister Doris once told her that both Joyce and her mother had lived a very sheltered life. To which Joyce replied that she was glad she had.
Therefore, you can imagine Joyce’s response to Betty’s outburst. She turned round on the escalator, only to find a young man behind her laughing uncontrollably. Joyce still has no idea where Betty picked that phrase up from, and she will probably never know. Another escapade of Betty’s actually happened in Harrods. When she was asked what she would take back to her husband (who was as old as her) as a gift, she promptly replied, ‘Bermuda shorts and a skateboard’. Even so, to Joyce she was a good companion to have, because people like that can brighten any day.
Altogether Joyce found her war experience to be very interesting, and actually quite enjoyable, which is good, considering the number of people who found the war so difficult. It is good to know that some people didn’t have too hard a time of it — evidently Joyce was one of them.

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