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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Birtley Library on behalf of Ms J Pearson, and has been added to the site with the author's permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

The year 1943 saw Betty and myself in the uniform of the Women鈥檚 Land Army. Green jersey, breeches, knee-length stockings, brown shoes, shirts, hat and overcoat, and working clothes.

When we left Birtley station for Bedford, all the family and friends turned out to waive us goodbye. We arrived at Bedford station to be met by an army truck and the first thing we saw were lots of cycles being ridden by school boys in their blazers and straw bengers, it was just like "Tom Brown's School days". After going through some lovely country-side, we eventually arrived at the hostel, which was at Wrest Park Lodge - Silsoe, an old manor. The girls were from the North-east and Yorkshire, and we settled in; later a batch of girls came in from the South and at first the North and South couldn't "get on", and on one occasion during a meal, a row broke out and the pudding plates were thrown around the dining-room. Eventually things settled down and we all became friends.

We had to get up at 6 a.m. to put our sandwiches up, consisting of grated cheese. The first 2 months we were allocated to various farms, doing threshing, hoeing and planting. I remember we had to go bean-threshing at Woburn Abbey and I had the job of taking the horse and cart to fill it with the bean stalks and then take it into the yard to put in the bullocks' troughs - but what I forgot to do was allow for the hubs on the cart to go through the gates, and they caught the gate and as I went through the gate came away, and the horse took fright and so did the young bullocks, and there was a right howd-you-do - the farmer was far from pleased.

We eventually got settled on a farm called Priestly Farm, which had been a monastery in the past. We were there for the duration of the war, three happy years. The farmer and the farm-hands were all very kind to us, the work was very hard but we were soon knocked into shape. The Winter months were extremely trying because we had to pick Brussels sprouts in the snow, soaking wet, hands red and cold, and a few tears were shed, feeling very sorry for ourselves.

We often worked with the German and Italian prisoners-of-war and out soldiers used t stand in the fields with their rifles, guarding them.

The village consisted of a church and two pubs. We were asked if we would like to teach at the Sunday School. We had difficulty understanding the Bedfordians' dialect and the children couldn't understand our North-East accent. We had to go to a lovely thatched cottage, where two dear elderly ladies gave us instructions for the Sunday School lessons. After a while we gave it up, because we used to stay in Bedford at the week-ends with some relatives. We used to have some nice wardens looking after us. Of course we got up to the usual pranks - making apple-pie beds, putting holly into the sheets etc. We also had our own ghost, which frightened the living daylights out of us. A lady and a little boy ghost used to visit one of the girl's bedroom and walk up between the beds, door handles used to turn on the bedroom doors and we could hear chairs being moved in the dining-room through the night and nobody was there.

When any of the girls was married we would go to the garden shop in the town and borrow hoes and forks and form a guard-of-honour.

Often we were invited to an American camp for a night-out, they had wonderful dance-bands and lots of lovely cakes (which we didn't have). A soldier called George from a camp near us, used to come to our hostel and play the piano for the girls to dance.

A big parade was once organised in Bedford. All the forces contingents were assembled for the Princess Elizabeth (now Queen). Betty and I had the honour to present Her Royal Highness with a basket of produce - it was a grand day.

We got on very well with all the girls, and had a great time. The companionship was something which had to be experienced to be believed. It was a great privilege to serve in the Land Army, and one we would not have missed.

Betty and Jean Pearson.

Jean and Betty have been kind enough to give me extracts for the diaries they kept during the war years. These will give an idea of work done by the Land Army.

January

We went out topping. In other words we had to take the tops out of Brussels sprouts, it would be freezing cold, you had to flick the snow off to find the tops.

Putting cabbage stalks in the furrows to be ploughed in for fertilizer.

If wet outside, sorting onions in the loft where they had been stored until required. Cleaning Mangolds. Cleaning beetroot. Putting up potatoes from the potato pit, potatoes were stored under straw and covered with soil in the autumn ready for use. Someone shovelled potatoes into a machine, someone else turned the handle and the potatoes came up a conveyor belt for sorting.

February

Digging leeks if ground not too hard. Weeding parsley. Dung flinging from the heaps already on field. Turning dung from one side of a narrow yard to the other. A job we did not like doing, as we smelt dreadful. The girls wouldn't sit next to us going back in the truck because we smelt so awful. Harrowing with horses, after a filed had been ploughed. This was done to break up the soil.

March

Weeding parsley. Cleaning Beet, pulling Rhubarb, preparing ground for sowing onion seed. The onion bed was prepared by pulling a large roller over the ground. Sowing fertilizer ready for setting potatoes. Planting cabbage plants, a back-breaking job. Planet hoeing peas. A planet hoe was an implement with long handles attached to a wheel fixed between two blades. This was pushed along the rows to cut out the weeds.

April

Hoeing cabbage, pulling rhubarb, digging up parsnips, still leek digging. Sowing fertilizer ready for potatoes.

May

Singling out beetroot, settling Brussels plants, cutting cabbage and parsley.

June

Picking peas, crawling along rows of beet thinning them out, setting leeks.

July

Stooking corn, weeding onions and parsley. Threshing oats.

August

Setting Kale plants, pitching corn, stooking corn. Pulling onions.

September

Spreading shoddy (Shoddy was pressed waste fibre sent down from London in trucks by rail) over fields ready to be ploughed in. Pulling onions, picking beans, cutting lettuce, bunching parsley.

October

Topping sprouts. Digging sugarbeet (chopping off the tops with a sharp curved knife, one hand was held behind your back in case you chopped off a hand by mistake). Cutting cabbages. Gleaning potatoes (picking up into a basket, all potatoes left on the ground by the potato digger)/

November

Flinging dung over the field ready to be ploughed in. Picking tops of Brussel sprouts.

December

Picking sprouts. Plucking fowls.

Other jobs during the year would be stone picking (cleaning a piece of land to be ploughed of the larger stones. These would be carried in baskets to the headland where they would later be used to fill in the deep ruts in the cart tracks of the farm).

When Jean and Betty left the farm for home in the spring of 1946 my father gave them a 拢5 bond, telling them not to change it unless they had to.

For all the valuable and great service to their country.

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