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Interview with Irene Greaves

14/9/2005 by Joe Murphy

Born 15/5/1920. Lived 32 Cecil Street, Walkden.

Irene was 19 when the war broke out. There were her parents and her sister, four of them in the family. Irene went to St Paul’s Walkden Infant School and then went to juniors and when Walkden High School was built she went there.

I was one of the first scholars there and left when I was 15. I then worked at Ramsden’s Knitting Factory, Harriet Street, Walkden making baby clothes.

When war broke out I moved to Burton’s Tailors, up Worsley Road there, tailoring men’s suits but they hadn’t yet gone on to khaki then, they went on to khaki later.

I volunteered for the Land Army when they said I had to either go in the services or munitions so I volunteered for the Land Army. It was about October 1941 when I went up to the open air school at Lostock to do a month’s training in dairy farming. It was quite nice there. I got good food because they were feeding delicate children. We didn’t get fed the stuff but the children did. The children were there. I don’t know what’s happened to the place now. Then after a month we were transferred to another farm, separate farms and I went to Balderstone near Rochdale which was a very lonely place out in the country. I had to get up at 5 with the family, the husband and the daughter — I had to sleep with the daughter, never done that before in my life. Anyway, I had to do dairy farming, milk cows at 5 o’ clock in the morning, then we would come in for breakfast which was the biggest dinner plate I had ever seen with the smallest piece of bacon on it which I didn’t think much of. Anyway, after that you had to go round the district and deliver the milk when you came back you had lunch and then you had to do the cleaning up of the cows and what not, the cow shed and what not. I only stayed there a week because I didn’t much care for getting up at 5 and going to bed at 8. And they had a lovely good looking son there who did that as well — I thought ee what a life for youngsters here. I was only 20 then. So I phoned the person over at the Land Army, I think it was in Preston somewhere. Anyway I said that I didn’t care for here and could I go home so I went home after a week and they wrote to me and said did I wish to give up the Land Army. I said, oh no, I didn’t wish to give it up but I just didn’t care for that part of it, so a week or so later they sent me a train pass to go down to Oxfordshire to live in a hostel in Curbridge near Witney with about 20 other girls. I was a bit homesick at first but I rather enjoyed it. It was supposed to be in at 10 o clock, of course when you got in a group of other girls went out and only being a ground floor building, a prefab building, well other girls would let you in at later times, you could get in through the window. We slept on bunk beds in small cubicles. It was very nice, the food wasn’t much but the warden always served your evening meal, you had to take sandwiches for during the day. We were taken out in lorries and those little army trucks and taken to different farms. We did mostly field work and harvesting and planting potatoes. It wasn’t all dairy working, no, not for that. If it was raining we might get a little bit of it, or cleaning hen coops out which is a smelly job. But mostly it was field work which I enjoyed. I like the threshing bit which they don’t do now, it’s combine harvesters. So we got more experience because, as I say we were taken to different parts of Oxfordshire which is a beautiful part of the country. I was in the Land Army for four years. I met my husband down there he worked for de Havilland’s repairing Spitfires and Hurricanes and we went together, we were later married when I was still in the Land Army. It was very nice.

I was expecting my son during VE Day, he was born in July 1945, so I was expecting my son then. I didn’t see any of the celebrations, I heard about them but I didn’t see them. I was living with my mother because your husband could not leave his job for a year or so after the war finished, they weren’t allowed to leave so I lived with my mother on Walter Street, off Murray Road, Walkden.

He came back and we bought a house in Church Road then, and the little boy, well he was walking about then. I had a little girl after that. I was living in Church Road during VJ Day. My cousin was a prisoner of war there and I remember him coming home — oh he looked awful, he was just skin and bone and he was such a jolly, jovial lad, he’d been there about 3 years I think, it may have been longer. Was it near the railway or somewhere?

I think he had been involved in the war in Europe before going there and then I think it was when something fell and the Americans joined in then and he was taken prisoner. Oh it looked horrible. He used to knit to try and concentrate to get away from what he had gone through. He didn’t tell us all but he had diphtheria and beriberi, the lot. He says, the only reason I kept living, he says I know my mother fed me well before I went. He was a butcher before he went, for Gledhill’s in Walkden Road, and he said I did a bit of butchering for the Japanese officers and he said we used to cut the head off as near the body as we possibly could, into the body if we could, and we used to say to the officers that this animal had a short neck and we had the neck piece and we used to cook it and have it for a meal. He said I think that’s what kept me alive. He didn’t tell you everything but you could judge what he’d gone through when you looked. He’s still living now at a poultry farm in Cheshire.

My husband’s brother, he was in the army, but he was stationed mostly in Scotland so I don’t think he saw much of the fighting. He was lucky, perhaps I was lucky. I often say I was because I enjoyed it really. I shouldn’t say that should I when so many people were getting killed. I missed the air raids. I saw some of them here. I went to quite a lot here when I came on leave and things but we didn’t see much in Oxfordshire although we were near the aerodromes. They were training the parachute regiment there, we used to see them practicing, coming down in the airfields on the parachutes. To get to go home on leave you only used to get a weekend once a year which meant us travelling Friday night after we finished work and coming back Sunday and it used to take three or four trains to get to Manchester from Oxford. It took us about 12 hours to get home. It was hardly worth going home for.

We used to get a fortnight at Christmas because we said we celebrated New Year more than Christmas like people down south do. We celebrated New Year so they allowed us a fortnight at Christmas after that but otherwise we only got Christmas off. As I say, the travelling was terrible. About 4 trains you got to get to Manchester and we sat on luggage all the way in the corridors or in the toilet even.

No body sat there and grumbled It was always a sort of jolly journey, the forces were always in the best of humour and things like that. No body sort of worried about it, you enjoyed the journey although it was a long journey.

We didn’t have a lot to eat. Dried fruit was rationed and everything wasn’t it. I can’t remember exactly. My mother used to do her own baking so I imagine she baked as much as possible but I can’t remember exactly. We didn’t get much even thought we were in the land army. We only had the ordinary rations that the civilians had. A piece of lard and a piece of butter. We just had a ration book for sweets because they got our rations for us and the warden used to cook our evening meal. It was minced beef. It smelled like something, like the cat had been under the table. She used to serve it out with a cigarette in her mouth with the ash hanging off the end of it. No body complained about that. You’d go mad now if you saw that. I always remember that ash hanging from the cigarette. Anybody could have eaten that, couldn’t they?

I met one or two friends from Royton and from Oldham but there was two cockney girls there. They came from different parts of the country. I was the only one from Walkden. They didn’t know where I came from by my accent, down there. They said well I know where she is, she’s cockney and she’s Lancashire and Yorkshire and what not…couldn’t guess where I came from.

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