'My mother hid letters sent by my WW2 sweetheart'

Phyllis Vincent said parents exerted more authority in her youth, compared with today

A 102-year-old woman who served as a land girl during World War Two has recalled the betrayal she felt when letters from her sweetheart were kept from her by a disapproving mother.

Phyllis Vincent, who now lives in a care home in Cambridge, was called up to the Land Army as an 18-year-old in 1940 and worked on a farm in her native Devon.

She had already begun a budding romance with Ron, an RAF gunner, but believed she had been rejected when her letters went unanswered.

She says she recalls "all of it" - especially as the country pauses for reflection on Remembrance Day.

Phyllis lived with her family in Suffolk before her move to Cambridge

Phyllis met Ron on Torquay seafront when the country was on 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."

Phyllis said she had preferred the idea of working on the land to the possibility of being in a factory "with all the bombs dropping"

The couple reunited when he was on leave, but her mother's deception meant the relationship was doomed.

At the time, her mother claimed Ron had come looking for her while she was staying with an aunt. Then the letters inexplicably stopped.

"My mum kept the letters from him because she wanted me to marry another chap," explained Phyllis.

Advised by friends to "love again", she began seeing a wounded soldier called Norman, while still pining for Ron.

'Angry and hurt'

She eventually found all of Ron's letters while her wedding guests were waiting at the church.

She said: "She [my mother] gave me a letter from Ron on my wedding day, of all days, saying he was safe in France. I felt very angry and hurt.

"In those days, parents had more authority over you."

Phyllis and Norman went on to have two daughters and two sons, and moved to Australia at a time when the Ten Pound Pom scheme enticed people to a new life Down Under.

The family returned to Devon, with Phyllis eventually moving to Red Lodge, near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, as a widow, to live with her son, Peter, and daughter-in-law Etwin.

About 80,000 women worked for the Women's Land Army during World War Two

Speaking of Remembrance Day and the futility of war, she said she had lost many of her school friends during the conflict.

"Boys studied hard, left school, had a couple of jobs, got called up and got killed. It seemed a waste of life to me," she said.

"I remember all of it, especially night after night expecting to get bombed any minute, hearing planes going over.

"[Once], I was riding a bicycle to work, I heard sirens went and I was going to jump off and run in for shelter in the town hall.

"As he machine gunned across it went through my bicycle wheel and missed me entirely."