Joyce Stonebridge, who was in the Women’s Land Army and is due to receive a badge from the Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs. (Picture by Peter Frankland, 0563458)

WORKING on the land in wartime brings back happy memories for Joyce Stonebridge.

Stopped from joining the army by her Guernsey-born father, she joined the Women’s Land Army and was stationed at Lakenheath, Suffolk. The Government has recently decided to recognise members of the Land Army with a badge.

Mrs Stonebridge welcomed the idea. ‘Really it’s an afterthought, but better late than never.’  She recalled her time working on the land: ‘It was an education really, with girls mixed together from all over England,’ she said.

The work was mainly potato and sugar-beet growing and haymaking in the summer. Hay was made into traditional stacks as opposed to bales. Mrs Stonebridge learned to drive a tractor. The sun tanned the girls during summer but it was bitterly cold in winter, so much so that Mrs Stonebridge once fainted.