Doreen Birkenshaw
Birstall
Served: 1943 - 1946; Hertfordshire, Harrogate
Doreen Birkinshaw lives with her husband Jack in Birstall, where she was born. Except for her years as a Land Girl she has always remained loyal to her home village. In 1939 she left school at 14 and took up a job in a confectionery shop. At 16 she changed jobs to work in a gown shop. At the age of 17 she signed up for the WLA and on 10 July 1943 she set out for the tiny village of Coughley in Hertfordshire. The local accent could not have been more different.
Doreen arrived at a hostel which housed about 40 young women. "There was no formal training you just had to learn on the job," said Doreen. She did mainly what she calls fieldwork. This involved working every job on a farm with the exception of the animals. The days were long and hard and sometimes they worked seven days a week. During harvest time they often began work at 7am and finished 15 hours later. She drove the tractor, built the stooks, forked the sheaves onto the trailers, chased the rabbits and lead the wheat or barley into the farmyard to be stacked. When all that was complete, and 'all was safely gathered in', they spent equally long days threshing the harvested grain.
The social life for the young women was very limited. There were two tiny pubs nearby. There was a bus once a week while London was a 2/9d train ride away. Only three miles to walk to the station. About once a month they had a dance in a barn on a local farm. Occasionally a few paratroopers livened up the evening.
Two incidents still stick in her memory – the first when she was on a private farm where the farmer ploughed with horses. He asked her to take the two horses up to a field. She turned round, a slip of a girl from Birstall, to face two enormous shire horses. Asking how she was to achieve this task, the farmer assured Doreen: "Don’t worry they’ll take you." To her delight, they did. Another day she was asked to stand by a broken gate to stop the cows going into the next field. What turned out to be a V2 rocket exploded in the sky above her. When she had regained her composure the cows were not in the next field, they had disappeared.
For her last six months she was posted to Harrogate. It meant she could go home every weekend, but she really missed her friends in Coughley. She maintained close friendships with three of her colleagues and saw a lot of her friend in Huddersfield. She left the WLA early in 1946.
"It was a wonderful time, it feels like only yesterday," reflects Doreen on her time as a Land Girl.
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