Life on the farm
Mary with Janice the cow
"I stood at the end of the bed. Suddenly I realised how quiet it was. I felt alone, completely and utterly alone, like a lost child, longing for home and all familiar things and the people I loved. My tears welled up. Taking heed of this I tried to think of nothing except the business of unpacking, but it was so very, very hard"
Once a month she was allowed to go back home to London to visit her family. But she found these weekends disturbing.
"I saw my folks' tired faces with the sound of gunfire and the more terrifying sound of ‘doodlebugs’. I dreaded the sinking feeling which came upon me every time I stepped off the train on my return journey."
But even on the farm, news of war was always present. Several of her close friends were fighting on the front and her fiancee was also deployed during the war.
"For moral support I relied heavily on mail from home and especially from the front."
Bill was one of her best friends and an RAF pilot officer. She would often write to him and anxiously wait for letters back. His brother Harry had been so eager to join up that he had even lied about his age.
Mary began to panic one day when there seemed to be a gap since his last letter. He was reported 'missing' after he had not returned from a bombing raid in Germany.
"He was the first of my friends to be reported missing or killed."
"When some weeks later my last my last letter to him came back unopened I still could not give up hope. It was impossible that this tall, handsome boy, so full of life, could be dead."
After leaving the Agricultural College, Mary was posted to a farm in Suffolk. It was the first time she had been so far from home and she started to feel home sick.
The end of the war
