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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Margaret Walker of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Evelyn Brammer, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I went in the Land Army when I was 17 and was sent to Kent, (near Margate). When I was first told where I was going, it felt like I was being sent to the end of the earth.

Worse still, after a week working at a Market Garden (just dealing with produce, apple picking, tomatoes etc.), there was a terrible heat wave. I was outside all the time, obviously with the job I was doing, and the next thing, I was struck down with the most terrible heatstroke. I had never been out in the sun like that before, and had a terrible reaction. My arms, legs, face all swelled up and went red, and I looked like the Michelin man. It was very painful, and I had to spend some time in a wheelchair recuperating!

I lived in a hostel with lots of girls. I had chosen this, as the other option for land army girls was to live with the farmer and his family, but I didn’t really fancy that, and thought living in the hostel would be much more fun. It was fun, but the downside of this was that the food was absolutely terrible.

The Matron of the hostel used to do everything, including the kitchen, and she was the worst cook you could ever imagine. If there was any mashed potatoes left from the evening before, we would get mashed potato sandwiches for our packing up the next day — cold obviously! We hated them, but we ate them because we were so hungry after working on the land all morning, and there was no other choice. The food in the evening wasn’t any better.

I went from there, to Boston, Wyberton Rectory, which was a hostel, and again to a farm. One day, the farmer asked me to take this huge shire horse to the blacksmith's to be shoed. I had to walk to the village, dragging this horse along the road. I had never handled a horse before, and it was actually quite scary. I was just on my way, when suddenly, a lorry came down the country road, and it was full of soldiers. Well, when they saw me, a young woman with a horse, they all cheered, whistled and waved. The noise really spooked the horse, and it reared up and I don’t know how I controlled it. I had no experience of what to do, and was terrified. Anyway, somehow I managed it and lived to tell the tale, and the photo is of me on that very morning with the horse in question!

The worst job in the W.L.A. was potato picking. This was very hard work because we had to follow a tractor which was unearthing the potatoes. If we fell behind, the farmer wasn't too pleased. Backache became the norm!

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