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This story is contributed by Edith Lewis and added to the site with her permission.

When the war started I was in a village called Shaw between Rochdale and Oldham, on the edge of the Pennines, the Pennines were over to the east, but looking south it was a mass of cotton mills with tall chimneys pouring out smoke and when I was a child I always had a wish that I could wave a wand and turn them all into trees. By the time I was 20, I’d been working in Manchester for four years, and I had to do something useful for the war effort, so a friend and I decided to join the Land Army. First of all we went to North Wales for a month’s training…we had a month on four different aspects of farming: poultry, dairy, general farming and forestry. So that after this month we were supposed to have a fair knowledge of farming. I had been used to coming into contact with animals because there was a narrow lane I had to navigate coming up and down from school, because I used to meet these cows, so these didn’t bother me. From there we went to a lovely place near Pwllheli called Madrim Castle….quite a few of the people who worked on the farm and were to teach us the ropes there, only spoke in Welsh, so that was a bit daunting…but we seemed to get on alright and luckily once we got through the training my friend and I were sent to South Wales where there was very little Welsh spoken. We had opted to do General farming and live on the farm rather than live in a hostel — I think we took a wise choice there — because the girls who lived in the hostel usually had the not too special kind of jobs. Things like thrashing which was a horrible job, picking up potatoes, and anything that needed a lot of extra labour. Whereas living on the farm, we lived more or less as a member of their family and reasonable hours and took the jobs as they came through the year. I think we quite liked the milking…..we hadn’t done anything like that but after a week of being on the farm near Monmouth where we first went. They were very trusting the farmer and his wife left us on the farm in charge of the milking while they went to market . And we managed it quite well so we felt quite proud of ourselves then. We quite liked the harvesting but the trouble with that was they had double summertime in the war and we used to work on until half past ten when the moon was coming up. But it didn’t last for ever ..we quite enjoyed it really although it was quite hard work. We did all sorts of things….thatching on the ricks we made. You see we were too early for the combine harvester which took over all the jobs completely, whereas we had to do it the old fashioned way then in those days. I think it was soon after that the combine came in.
The worst job was probably thrashing….it was a dirty job, we used to have the sheaves of corn and we usually got the job of being on top of the thrashing drum and we had to cut the string on the sheaves and feed it into the thrashing drum, which was quite dangerous really. You had to mind and not get too close to it and of course you got things like corn flying out — I had one in my eye once which was nasty — flying out of the drum. And we had other mishaps like falling off loads of hay and things like that, but nothing too terrible.

We weren’t really aware of the war — a lot of things have come to light since I’ve been older, much older, those awful things like Auschwitz, we didn’t have a clue.
We were allowed home on highdays and holidays….I quite enjoyed it really I must say.

Later on it became possible for girls to go in for milk recording if they wish to as a change from general farming and Gwen my friend was sent back up to Lancashire to do that job. That meant very early rising and going round on a bike to the farms recording the milk quantities morning and night. But I didn’t really take a shine to that kind of thing, so I stayed in General farming and came to Coed Morgan just outside Abergavenny. It was much more rural here…there were no signposts and these country lanes can be a bit misleading, I used to get lost trying to get into Abergavenny on my bicycle. And living where I did with a nice family who were very good to me. I met my husband to be in this village hall (Llanddewi Rydderch) at a dance and we became engaged in a few months.

Shortly afterwards I was taken ill and had to leave the area….
I hadn’t been aware of this insect bite at the time but it came up into a huge blister and of course I decided to puncture it and let out this water and it must have got infected then. It went on for weeks and I saw the doctor but didn’t get any joy they just gave me something to put on it which didn’t seem to do anything. And I became very shivery and shaky…..couldn’t stop shaking one morning and the son of the farmer took me to the station, put me on a train and telephoned my parents to say I was on my way home. I had this feeling I had to get home …..luckily although the train was packed, a very kind soldier gave me his seat to put my leg up on and everything seemed to fall into place. A nurse who I hadn’t noticed myself, had seen me and approached my parents when I met them on Manchester station and told them not to let me go through the night. They rang the doctor when they got me home and he said I’d be alright until the morning. But they thought better of it and called him again and he came out and sent me straight to hospital. It was septicaemia I had penicillin injections for about a fortnight or so and was out of hospital in about three weeks and that was really the end of my Land Army career, but I’d been in for about four years by then.

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