大象传媒

I was called up for the Womens Land Army in 1942.I had never been away from home at the age of 22, so I had no idea what I was going into.

I was billeted in a hostel of 36 girls in Lettuston Pembrokeshire.
Every day in pairs we would be allocated to a farm and would pick potatoes and thrash corn and barley all day(the latter being a painful job as by the end of the day our finger tips would be sore from the awns of the barley which got under the skin).

For one week Betty and I were allocated to a farm on Ramsey island a small island off the head of St David's island. The working party consisted of us two land girls and two Italian prisoners of war. The lifeboat man would row us across and then we had to climb a ladder at the side of the rocks and set to work thrashing from 8am until 6pm. It was such hard work, but we enjoyed every minute of it.

Land army life had a funny side to it too, like when I attempted to drive the tractor(quite confidently, although I'd never driven anything more powerful than a pedal bike before). Needless to say I reversed rather speedily and finished up in the middle of a duck pond. Luckily the farmer saw the funny side of it too and after having a good laugh waded into the pond and took over.

We were expected to work hard for our wage of around 拢2 4shillings a week out of which we had to pay our board and lodgings leaving us usually with about 10shillings. We would pick potatoes,put them into sacks and then hoist the sacks onto the back of a lorry often battling against the typical Welsh rain,the farmers were loath to send us home so we would seek shelter in the hedges until it stopped and then -back to work!

It was a very pleasant sight to see the farmers wife coming across the fields with our well earnt hot tea and freshly baked scones and cream.

Land army life was hard but we did enjoy it.

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