Crier Profile - Joan Bradley
Since this recorded conversation in 2001 about her experiences as a wartime Land Girl, Joan Bradley has sadly died. She lived with husband Walter in Cage Hill.
We were nearly all from Yorkshire and Lancashire to start with. I remember a few of us at Manchester exchange station Ðthat had been bombed. Manchester had been bombed a lot. I'd been a nurse, which I'd enjoyed, but we'd had air raids, and I couldn't stand the suffering of the children. Where I'd lived was a cotton mill and coal mining town, Leigh in Lancashire.
We didn't know, but when we got to Cambridge we had to get on a little branch line to Swaffham Prior - we'd all lived in towns, we'd no idea where we were coming to, it was terrible! - a little branch line, with this little train, it was puffing along. We got on this lorry and came down to into the village and into the hostel. That big house where Michael Marshall lives, that was our hostel. Our drivers, they were Conscientious Objectors. They worked with us, they were in huts down station road. The big farmhouse opposite where the school is, behind there, that's where the huts were. They were nice fellows, and one of them was our foreman. We nearly all worked down in Swaffham Fen and Burwell Fen. We were in two gangs. We were the War Ag - War Agricultural Committee - cultivating the Fens, because they were all overgrown, for food. They'd just started to cultivate them. We had dungarees, and in summer we cut them off and made them into shorts. We had greatcoats, and we wore smocks, and wellington boots. If we were going somewhere posh we had green jerseys, and hats.
The roads down the fens had just been built, concrete. We did everything. Planting, harvesting, stacking, sugar beet, potatoes, putting up corn stacks: it was all done by hand. We had Italian prisoners and German prisoners - the Germans had a lot of guards, because they wanted to escape, but the Italians wouldn't dream of trying to escape - they used to come and talk to us - three of the girls married Italian prisoners. They had lovely voices - they used to sing a lot. They were very clever - if you gave them half a crown, they could make you a ring out of it.
We started off at half past seven. We had a docky, a little tin with sandwiches in - not all that much in, you know what the war was like - we had grated carrot in our sandwiches, and dripping. And spam - that wasn't too bad. They had an urn in the hayloft which was supposed to keep warm all day but by ten o'clock it was cold. We had a sweet ration - us girls from the Land army used to bike over to Burwell to get our sweet ration from the sweet shop there...he was ever so nice, the old chap, he was sorry for us so he let us have a bit more than he should.
There were planes, too - over the other side of Devil's Dyke, at the far end...I think they were New Zealand airmen. Well, we were in the hostel, and we heard this terrific bang, and flames - and there was a plane taking off from the other side of Devils's Dyke, a bomber - it was loaded, and couldn't get over and it hit the Dyke.
There were four pubs in the village then - the vet's, that was the Rose and Crown; on the corner opposite, that was the Cock; the Red Lion that's still there, and right down station Road, the Allix Arms. They were all full up, because there were army camps all round here, and they all used to come because they knew there were about fifty land girls here. The village was packed here every night. I'd never been in a pub in my life - my mother and father were chapel people, and his father had started the Baptist chapel in Leigh. So we didn't come to the Rose & Crown for quite a long time, we had gramophone records, then we decided (three of us, Irene, Mary and myself - we'd all met on Manchester station. We all married local boys). We didn't know what to do but we went in, and we had one shandy between the three of us - and then the landlady next door, somebody told her I could play the piano so she got all the music out and got me playing piano in the pub. I'd only played in Sunday school before - (laughs) it didn't matter really because I'd just sit down and play and they all used to gather round and sing, some were local songs. You couldn't hear me play so it didn't matter if I made any mistakes! That was good - after that I used to spend quite a lot of time in the pub but till then I didnÕt - well, as far as I knew, girls didn't - well, we didn't like to go in go in pubs then. That's where a lot of the girls met local boys, in the pub. I met Walter my husband there, in the Rose and Crown, and I didn't dare tell my parents that either! They were all right after, but I didn't dare tell them for a long time. We had all the soldiers and the airmen in the pubs, then the Yanks came and joined the war. They came from Lakenheath and round there, but they discovered there were all those land girls in the village and they were queuing up down the lane to the hostel, with the nylons ...(Laughs). They were quite nice, you know...Some of our girls married Americans, and went to live there.
It was hard work. It wasn't easy, by any means. They had rows - they used to divide the field, after the tractor and spinner had gone round, and put them in sacks - the tractor would come round and pick up the sacks, or it might be a horse and cart, as often. We worked when it was raining, snowing... I remember picking potatoes and we had icicles hanging from our noses, it was so cold and wet and horrible.
The first day back after I got married, we were potato picking. All you could get in those days for wedding rings were nine-carat gold. You couldn't get anything better, but I didn't want one of those. So he bought me a platinum one. First day back with my platinum wedding ring on I was potato picking. When I got to the end of the row we were doing, the girl I was working with - it was Mary, who lives up in the Beeches - I said "have you seen my wedding ring?" and it was gone. It had come off when we were picking - I told the ganger, Tom, who was a Conscientious Objector Ðhe stopped the tractor and got all the girls together and we went all up and down my stretch, looking - Fen soil, you know what it's like, it's black and very fine, like sand. But they couldn't find it, nobody could find it. I was heartbroken. Anyway, the girls all clubbed together with their threepenny bits and sixpences, to go buy a wedding ring. It was ever so good of them, because they didn't have much money. I went to Cambridge to the jeweller's. There was one there opposite the market place, and said I wanted a wedding ring, and of course, they'd just got these nine-carat gold ones. That's it, then, that's the nine-carat gold....and I said I wanted one and I tried it on and I said "all right then, that'll do." And she got the little box out and I said "that's all right, I'll keep it on." And she gave me such a look. I'll never forget that woman's face. I didn't tell her - I just wanted to get it on my finger and get out of the shop! It was just over a pound, I think. I kept it on, and I've still got it. I wrote to Walter - he was on the high seas by then so he didn't get it for a long time, but he wrote back and said don't worry, I'll get you another one, when I get home. We couldn't afford one, not for a long, long time. Ten years later, I got this one, this is the twenty-two carat gold. It's still there, so I haven't lost that one!
I stayed in the land Army for about a year after we were married. Walter was in India. I went home to my parents. He wrote to me a lot. I didn't see him for three years. He came back in forty-seven. When I came back, first of all we lived with his parents - this is their house. Then we had one in Fairview Grove, one of those, an Airey house, that have brick on most now.
The Land Army were there till the war finished, and they disbanded. There were quite a lot of Land Army camps dotted around...there was one at Quy, but they left before we did. We used to go all over the place...we used to get invited to dances, in Bottisham, and here in the village too. We were paid eighteen shillings. We were well looked after, really.
It's a different world altogether. It's not like it used to be. We never wished we were doing anything else - we enjoyed ourselves, we really did.