Digging for victory and diving for cover!

This Mother’s Day I’ll be thinking of my Mum Joan Clark (nee Hide)

I often remember trying to get my Mum to talk about her experiences in the war but she would always say ‘Oh I didn’t do anything very exciting really, you should talk to your Dad about his days in the Navy’.

One story that my Mother told me that will always stick in my mind was the time she had been working as a Land Army girl in West Sussex during the summer of 1941 The Battle of Britain had been raging overhead for several months and rumours were beginning to get about that farm workers were being attacked whilst working in the fields.

On this particular Summer’s day in 1941 it was just like any other, and my mother was working in one of the many large greenhouses situated around the farm tending to the rows and rows of ripening tomatoes. Suddenly the peace was completely shattered by the loud roar of an enemy fighter as it dived towards them opening fire with its cannon. Before my Mother had even time to react her a quick thinking colleague had forced her under one of the tables of tomatoes as glass and shrapnel came showering down all over them. My Mother was lucky but her colleague had been badly cut on his back and was later treated in hospital.