大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Chris Comer of Stockport Libraries on behalf of Jean Ramsell and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Most will have heard of the Women's Land Army, but how many will have heard of Harvest Camps?

They were set up to accommodate the extra labour that was needed at certain times of the year. Volunteers went for a week or more at a time and it was an enjoyable way to spend ones holiday. In wartime much of the coast was out of bounds, beaches were covered with anti-tank devices and many of the hotels were requisitioned for military use.

You applied to the Ministry of Agriculture and you were sent a list of camps. My sister and her friend went to one in Dorset, where her friend actually met her husband.

Me and my friend chose one at a village near York called Alne. It was quite an adventure for us. We were 17 and it was the first time we had been away on holiday on our own.

We went from Manchester to York where we had to change trains onto a little branch line to Alne, stopping at stations en route (a line since axed by Beecham). On arrival we and several others were met by a large canvas topped lorry and transported to our final destination.

Alne Hall was a stone building down a short drive, taken over for the duration. There was a dining room with long wooden tables and a lounge where you met in the evening to socialise, people of both sexes and ages and all walks of life with one thing in common - a desire to do their bit.

There was also a large empty room which could be used for dances. Upstairs large bedrooms housed four or five bunk beds. I don't remember much in the way of bathrooms - no en suite. the food was simple and hearty to cater for the appetites of those who had spent all the day in the open. We were used to wartime rations. In any case tastes were not sophisticated in those days, pizzas and Chinese take-aways had not yet arrived in Britain.

We were allocated farms and transported in the same lorry. we set off all eager and it was all very jolly bowling along the quiet country lanes singing the popular songs of the day at the top of our voices. Six of us were dropped off at our farm, where we stayed all week, picking potatoes. It was back-breaking work. I remember one girl giving up and going home after the second day.

We were given packed lunches, sandwiches like door-stoppers. You had a choice - cheese, mouse trap variety, or marmite. The farmer's horse got most of ours on the first day but afterwards we got such an appetite we could have eaten the farmer's horse and I don't think we sang on the way home.

I went back a second year, this time digging open a large clamp of potatoes - filling buckets with them and emptying them into a sorting machine, turning a heavy wooden handle. This was extremely hard work, even for the men. The farm was owned by a Major in the Army and was looked after by an old family retainer who was very taciturn and didn't give us much respite.

Much of the work involved potatoes in one form or another but another job was gathering flax that had been 'laid' i.e. flattened by the rain and couldn't be harvested by machine. It all had to be pulled out by its roots and it could cut your hands. One young man had a fine voice and sang light opera songs whilst he worked.

We had no access to the loos. Of course the men could just disappear behind the behind a hedge but it sometimes caused a problem. In one field there were some of low triangular hen houses of a kind that I don't think you see now and we often got the giggles crouching down in these. Fortunately there were no hens in at the time.

Towards the very end of the war I joined the ATS but I spent part of my demob leave in 1948 in two Harvest Camps in South Wales. There wasn't very much work as the men were back from the war and there was not the need for volunteer labour. I believe that was the last year they operated.

If my memory serves me right the pay was 1/6d per hour and then you paid for your keep out of that. But you didn't expect to make any money - that was not the object of it. In the spirit of the time you all pulled togther and were united by the fact that it was wartime and you all wanted to do your bit.

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