Where did you live before joining the Land Army?

Phyllis: I lived over there (points) just under the Black Mountains.

Elsie: I grew up in Yorkshire and joined the Land Army in 1942. I had been working in a shop and one Monday morning I was cleaning the windows when I saw a girl in the Land Army uniform and I thought I'd like that...and I joined up!

Irene: I was in London and worked for Picture Post for Farmer's Weekly with my mother. I was 17 and she didn't want me to go. I had to go to a tribunal because they argued it was a reserved profession but my mother gave up when I threatened to join the air force as soon as I was 17 and a half!

Elsie: I was 19 and my mother wanted me to join the Navy instead. In my examination my mother kept answering the questions, saying I'd be too scared to do anything. Mothers had to come into the exams with us.

Irene: My mother told them I'd run away if I saw a cow! Mother's were the ones then, if they said no that would be it.

Phyllis: I was 19. My mum didn't want me to go but I was working in a private house so I had to go...

Why did you want to join the Land Army, especially if your mothers were so against it?

Irene: I had had enough of London and wanted to get away and do something else.

Elsie: Well, and the war was on and I wanted to do something patriotic.

Irene: Really? Well, yes, when you were in the uniform you did feel patriotic.

Where did you get sent first?

Elsie: They asked where I wanted to go and I said Devon because I had relatives there. My mother really didn't want me to go to Wales, she said it was a foreign country, there had been some scandal in Abergavenny and she was worried if I went near that area!

Irene: I went to work in Middlesex first, at a market garden there but I wanted to move on.

Phyllis: I started on a farm in Talybont selling milk and staying with the workman and his wife. Each morning we would take the milk around. It was okay but I wanted to move too.

Irene: I was sent to Glasbury (which we thought was pronounced glass bury!) and I remember changing trains at Hereford and then when we got to the station at Glasbury there was a truck to meet us but it had broken down and we had to push it to the hostel! It was quite a shock and I had told myself I would give it two weeks, but we arrived at the hostel which was at Maswllch Castle which was covered in red ivy and was lovely...and I ended up staying for the three years until the hostel closed.

My bedroom was over the ballroom which was beautiful. And there was a beautiful staircase, when you came down you felt like a film star! We got one girl who got married there to come down those stairs in her wedding dress!

I started in the market garden and then transferred to machinery, doing threshing, planting and hoeing and so on.

Elsie: When I came first I was working in Radnorshire and then they asked for volunteers to come to Breconshire to drive tractors. I stayed in the Castle too.

Phyllis: I can remember cutting the gorse, that was the worst job I think.

Irene: I hated burning the old straw. There was always a bit you'd missed and I used to wonder what we were doing it for?

I used to enjoy threshing and bailing in teams. One of you would stand on either side of the bail and tie the straw up by wrapping the wire around and the other one would put the iron needle through so you could connect it through the middle to make a tied-up bail. If you were on with a dosey one though she would wouldn't get the pin in in time and the bails would carry on moving and go off all loose and we'd both get in trouble!

Elsie: I remember threshing once as it got dark and the sunset was beautiful. I wrote a letter home about it and my mother gave it to my father asking what novels I'd been reading!

Interview with Elsie Gwynne, Irene Gwynne and Phyllis Davies.

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