Life for a Londoner in the Land Army
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My mother Eileen joined the Women's Land Army in June 1940. Her writings – public and private – give an insight into what life was like for a nineteen-year-old Londoner thrown into farm work in Somerset. An article by Eileen was carried in the December 1941 edition of "The Land Girl" Her article in "The Land Girl" painted a generally happy picture of her time but her later reminiscences revealed the loneliness of the city girl neither accepted by the farm workers or the farmers themselves – especially when she was placed on a farm in Street, where she commented “I worked for a bully”. I have put together the following from notes in an old exercise book that I found when clearing her house about her first month’s “training” in Erdington, Somerset: Everything was old and in need of repair at "Burnt House Farm". A disaster had struck it long ago and the present tenant, Mr Yatton, seemed content to include himself in the farm's ill fortune. Mild,