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This story has been submitted by Margaret Payne of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Barbara Powell and has been added to the site with her permission.

My childhood memories of the war are of helping with the harvest in Lincolnshire. If you were aged 15 and over, the school authorities let you help, and some of the teachers went with us. We stayed in farmhouses and different trucks picked us up and took us to large farms to help. There were some Italian prisoners of war also working on these farms. I remember one large farmhouse where we stayed had a large ground floor window in our make-shift dormitory that all the girls used to climb out of onto the lawn to sunbathe. Little did we know that we were being observed by the local youths! Consequently, the next time we stayed at this farm, this particular window was barred and locked! Owing to one party of girls from a south Yorkshire grammar school making dates with the local lads and going out to meet them after dark! Shock, horror!!

We felt very sorry for the Italian prisoners of war and we shared our fruit with them, as they weren’t allowed out of the fields. Probably, girls used to shin up apple trees to pick the fruit! I and my friend were the only two red-headed girls and the Italian boys couldn’t keep their eyes off us due to our colouring — they weren’t interested in blondes or brunettes, maybe that’s why I’ve always had a soft spot for Italy!!

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