Ex-Land Girl recalls hard work (From Witney Gazette)

Ex-Land Girl recalls hard work

6:21am Wednesday 30th July 2008 in Witney By David Horne

Grandmother Joan Clark remembers her time in the Women's Land Army for some of the hardest work she's ever done.

Along with thousands of others across the country, Mrs Clark's efforts during the austerity years of rationing after the war have now been recognised with a special badge from Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

"It was for helping to provide food for the country when it was needed," she recalled yesterday.

"It was hard work, up at 5am, off to milk the cows and planting out in the fields. You don't forget that."

Mrs Clark, who celebrates her 78th birthday on August 6, lives in Lyneham Close, Witney, but was brought up in Surrey.

The Land Army was set up during the Second World War to recruit women to work on farms that men had left in order to fight abroad.

It continued after 1945 as the country was still struggling to produce enough food. It disbanded in 1951.

She said: "I was a child in the war but I remember the posters Your Country Needs You'. My father had been captured by the Japanese at Singapore and sent to a prisoner of war camp.

"I thought I'd join the Land Army to be out in the open and near horses, which I loved."

Farming stayed with her when she married in 1951 and her husband took up work in west Oxfordshire, at Black Bourton and then Clanfield.

She now has eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren and still remains active, mowing her own lawns and tending her own garden.

Another Witney woman, Daphne Valters, has also received a special Land Army badge. She joined in 1947 and worked until 1951, based at Mount House, Church Green, Witney.

She said: "It was a hostel for Land Army girls. We were ferried out each day to different farms in the area. Mainly I worked milking the cows, which I liked."

Originally from Essex, Mrs Valters's family moved to Witney in 1942 and she has stayed in the town ever since, now living in Woodstock Road.

Fifty women from across the country, including Jessie Brown and Freda Castle from Oxfordshire, visited Downing Street to pick up their badges last week.