Memories of the Women's Land Army

Among the first Land Army girls to arrive in Bourne was Edith Denham who was posted here in 1939. She lived in Bradford and joined at the suggestion of her family who thought that a spell in the Lincolnshire countryside for an eighteen-year-old girl would be a welcome change from life in a northern mill town.

"My first impression on arrival was that it was a very old town but I soon got used to it although the work was extremely hard", she recalled in later years. "You had to go where you were sent and I went to work in the woods and was trained to fell trees."

Edith soon learned to use a 6 lb. axe with some skill and worked in both Bourne Wood and Temple Wood, even dodging bullets on one occasion when American troops were carrying out target practice in the vicinity. "We were busy with our work in the middle of the forest when shots whizzed past us", she said. "It gave us a bit of a start but we carried on regardless although I think that the soldiers responsible were later reprimanded for their negligence and we all got a pair of silk stockings by way of an apology.

"I was later sent to various farms and the work involved many different jobs from feeding the chickens to tending a pregnant pig which eventually had eight piglets. It was quite a funny sight to see it lying on a huge cushion of straw with the young ones climbing all over it."

Other tasks included coppicing, picking and riddling potatoes and digging fire trenches, pictured above with Edith in the background. "In fact, we did everything the men would have done had they been here instead of away with the army", she said. "It was hard work but it was also great fun."

Gwen Wesley did not even know where Lincolnshire was when she received her train ticket to travel down from Sunderland and join the Land Army at Bourne. The city girl was just seventeen years old when she signed up after seeing a recruiting poster depicting a life feeding chickens and a variety of other farming roles.

Now aged 85, Gwen, of St Paul's Road, Bourne, said: "When the war first broke out it seemed exciting. Everyone wanted to do something but I was too young for the army, navy or Royal Air Force."

So she responded to the appeal to help on the land and never regretted a moment of the experience. "I did not have much of an interview", she said, "but after a couple of weeks they sent me a railway warrant to take me to Lincolnshire, wherever that was."

Gwen set off resplendent in her new Land Army uniform and after changing trains at Newcastle, Doncaster, Lincoln and Spalding, arrived at Bourne to be met by the stationmaster at the Red Hall, then used as the railway booking office. "We were made very welcome and were sent to our billet at Hanthorpe Hall", said Gwen. "There must have been thirty or forty of us staying there at any one time during the war years."

The girls were moved by lorry from Hanthorpe to farms around the Bourne area and she first worked for Joe Atkinson at Haconby Fen. Kitted out with heavy breeches and boots, she and countless other girls turned their hands to what had previously been men's jobs and soon discovered the work was tough and outdoors, regardless of the weather, and frequently back-breaking labour. "I have carried an eight-stone sack of potatoes over a plank", said Gwen proudly. "Nothing was too much for us."

Picking and sorting potatoes and working in the sugar beet fields were regular jobs for Land Army girls but Gwen also spent a lot of time working in the fields with horses as well as the occasional day beating for game, helping build and maintain haystacks and even catching rats, always a frequent pest on the farm and catching them was probably the least enjoyable experience of her new career.

Gwen also recalls a night in 1941 when the war that had brought her to the relative tranquillity of Bourne suddenly felt much closer to home when a German bomber was shot down. "I remember it as if it was yesterday", she said. "The horror at thinking that the men who were killed were somebody's sons. A lot of people ran off to see it but I had already experienced the impact of bombing on Sunderland and chose not to go."

After the war, Gwen remained in Lincolnshire and continued working in farming before choosing a change of career at an elderly people's home at Haconby. Now aged 85, with four children, four granddaughters and two great grandchildren, she looks back on those wartime days with pride, good humour and even affection.

"It was the first time 1 had worn boots", she said. "I got awful blisters but it was a world of new experiences and you got a tremendous feeling of satisfaction in knowing that you had done something to serve your country. And I never did feed the chickens."

NOTE: Acknowledgment to The Local newspaper which published interviews
with Edith Denham and Gwen Wesley on Friday 8th February 2008.