The Rations Challenge by Claud Fullwood

Author:Claud Fullwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780745980829
Publisher: Lion Hudson Limited
Published: 2019-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

Peggy Wheatley was sixteen when war broke out. She joined the Women’s Land Army and spent the war years between Wokingham and London.

Peggy

When the war started, I was working for my aunt who ran a sub-post office in Chiswick. She rang up and said, “Tell Peggy not to come back ’til the war’s over!” I stayed home for a while but, in the end, I said to Mum, “I can’t stay at home, we don’t know when the war’s going to finish!” So I went back to work.

I joined the Land Army at seventeen. I wanted to join the Wrens but then I found Mum crying in the kitchen because she was worried about me; she already had three sons in the forces. I said, “All right, I’ll go in the Land Army instead.”

My farm was in Wokingham near Reading. At seventeen, I was the baby, not that I got any special treatment! One time they ploughed up a field that had never been used before, and we worked on a Saturday which was our time off. We got thruppence an hour and we had to plant the whole field.

I decided one day that we should ask the farmer for more money. We all marched up to him but, when he asked what we wanted, nobody spoke! I thought some of the older ones would say something and they didn’t say a word. So eventually I spoke up. We didn’t get anywhere though; the pay stayed at thruppence an hour.

I stayed for about three years, but then I got rheumatism in the head and couldn’t go back. The rheumatism was caused by working in the rain; we got soaked to the skin. They just couldn’t find a raincoat that stopped the rain, nothing stopped it. The farmer’s lads used to shelter in the sheds and watch us work in it! I still suffer with my joints and veins from my days in the Land Army because it was such hard work. We started at 6 a.m. in the morning in summer, and finished at 4 p.m.

In the winter, we collected cabbages covered in ice; you had to chip the ice away before you could get at them. We dug potatoes; you had to kneel on the ground and drop them in a bucket you held between your knees. There were two conscientious objectors who took the produce to market every morning at 5 a.m. by horse and cart. They worked very hard, until 10 p.m. at night.

We had great entertainment. I used to work with my rollers in so I could go out afterwards. I lived next door to the pub and we played darts with the squaddies in the evenings: the Army, the Air Force and the Canadian troops were stationed nearby. We used to go to dances in a nearby village, get home at 4 a.m. and be up at 6 a.m. to go to work! On those days, we’d be in bed by 6 p.m. as we were all exhausted.

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