大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Chris Greenfield and Stephanie from Bodsham Primary School and has been added to the website on behalf of
Mrs Edna Young with her permission and she fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My Experience as a Land Girl

I was 14 years old when the war started and had just left school. I lived in Wakefield with my father, mother, four brothers and three sisters. For the three years I lived there we had no air raids. We sometimes heard the sirens but the 鈥榓ll clear鈥� followed very quickly and so we never needed to use the air raid shelter in the garden. I was called up at the age of 17 having never been away from home before. I went into the Women鈥檚 Land Army and ended up in Newchurch on the Romney Marsh in a Women鈥檚 Land Army Hostel. This was only a summer hostel and so we had to go into winter digs in Bodsham, Kent. I worked on the threshing machine in the winter and during the summer months worked on Bodsham Farm picking fruit, vegetables and hoeing. We were each given a bike as our only means of transport and went to Wye for dances. Sometimes friendly Army soldiers would offer to throw the bike in the back of their truck and drive us home.

One of my memories is of a particular day when I was threshing wheat on the top of an English threshing machine with a huge knife hanging from my wrist by a leather strap with which I cut the sheaves of corn. We suddenly heard this terrific noise in the sky and we saw hundreds of planes going overhead with huge gliders being towed behind them. We then saw one of the gliders unhook itself from the plane and we watched it come down and down and saw it land about 200 feet from our threshing machine. We dashed down from the stack and raced to the glider. The doors opened at the back and out came about half a dozen soldiers and the first words spoken to me were 鈥淚 thought I鈥檇 landed in Germany鈥�. This was the day of the D. Day landings. It was a truly marvellous site seeing so many planes travelling overheard, the noise was just one great hum in your head and the planes seem to appear from nowhere. It was a bright clear day and the countryside was very peaceful. It is something one never forgets.

On another occasion I was cycling home from work when I heard a plane coming down very low and firing at me and I just threw myself into the wood and I was O.K.

While I was living in the village of Bodsham I met my husband. He had an old Austin Seven and was allowed petrol because he was a threshing machine driver and he sometimes took me into Canterbury to the pictures at the Regal where I enjoyed watching all the old love stories. After the war we married and I lived in the village of Hastingleigh for 53 years which is the village next to Bodsham where I spent a number of war years.

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