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Irene Tipton: In the Land Army

My home was between Warrington and Manchester. One of my friends persuaded me to go into the Land Army, so I joined and came to Shropshire in 1944, when I was 18. I was scared to death because I’d never done anything like it before. I’d never worked on a farm but, in the end, I did everything there was. Assembling the milking machines, doing the milking, everything to do with the pigs, cows, sheep. I was on a farm at Hinton near Shrewsbury. Among the crops we grew were ten acres of sugar beet. You were officially required to grow sugar beet, and that was all done by hand — seed sown and beet harvested, ten acres of it all without machinery.

I lived in at the farm until 1947 and I was on my own most of the time. From time to time Italian and German prisoners came from the nearby camps. I got on all right with them. The Germans worked very well but the Italians were mostly lazy. I think they were paid 1/6d a day and they would stop working and sit down when they thought they’d done one and sixpence-worth. But there was no animosity between us.

I would get up at 6 am, do the milking and wash the machines, then go in for a good breakfast. Then I worked all over the farm on whatever needed doing until lunchtime. I had an hour for lunch and then worked on until 6 pm — and that was every single day, including Sundays. Being on a farm, I had very good meals, and everybody was very friendly during the war. The area where I’d come from was bombed but only one bomb fell anywhere near our house.

There was a good social life round here, plenty of dances, and some of the famous bands came here, like Joe Loss and other names I can’t recall now. People dressed up as well as they could when they went out. I know the Land Army girls had a certain reputation. I’ve seen that film, but it was nothing like that in my experience. We all went to the dances but that was all. I met Henry at a dance in 1944 and we were married in 1947. I managed to have a wedding dress made but we had to borrow dresses for the bridesmaids, so they were wearing different colours. Henry, being a farmer, was in a reserved occupation, so he was in the Home Guard, and very proud of it. After the war we farmed at Worthen for 7½ years. We had no machinery then except for a tractor. We had horses, and most things like sowing and harvesting were still done by hand.

This story was collected by Genevieve Tudor and submitted to the People’s War site by Graham Brown of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Irene Tipton and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

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