Remembrance Day: ‘My mother hid my WW2 sweetheart’s letters’

Phyllis met Ron on Torquay seafront at the brink of war in the summer of 1939 – but her mother forbade their courtship from the beginning.

A few months later, she was sent off for Land Girl training, where Ron visited her and sent her coded letters in an attempt to outwit her mother.

She was then assigned to a farm, where she was paid 32 shillings a week.

“I quite enjoyed it, apart from getting up at 04:30 – I wasn’t too keen on that,” she said.

“I lived six miles from the farm and at first I didn’t live in.

“It was hard work; I milked the cows, then had breakfast, then clean their mess up, and there was field work.

“I learned to drive a tractor, I learned to go up and down and turn the earth.”