Land Girl - The Happiest Years of My Early Life

A Memoir of Service in the Women's Land Army 1939-46

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Second Assignment as a Land Girl: Holt Hall Farm, Liverpool – Tragedy and Deliverance

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Angel of Deliverance – Aunt Monica

Aunt Monica brought deliverance once she knew of my injury and circumstances. She was my mother’s young sister, who had entered a religious community in 1936, becoming a nun in the order of St Vincent de Paul. In those days this order of nuns wore a distinctive habit of a blue color and topped with a very elaborate white starched headpiece. I was very fond of aunt Monica and she of me, always giving me the most desirable and expensive Christmas presents and other gifts before she became a nun and took a vow poverty. She was in fact very maternal, and had she married she would have made a perfect wife and mother. She invited me to stay and convalesce at her convent in Sheffield.

My aunt Monica who along with my uncle John rescued me from difficult circumstances and helped me get well.

Aunt Monica – Sister of Charity Magdalen. 1897-1966

Convalescence

It was an ideal and providential solution to my need for care and of healing; my spirits rose and I went very happily. She and the other nuns especially the cook, a Sister Anne, made a great fuss of me cooking wonderful meals from which I put on weight. My lovely room had view out to the Yorkshire Pennines that brought back happy memories of Lower Greenbank Farm, Over Wyresdale and the Trough of Bowland.

The convent offered respectable accommodation for single business ladies as in those days little decent accommodation for single working ladies was available, meals and use of a common room. As might be anticipated rules governed your stay with strict discipline. Guests were expected to be by in 10:30pm, with no male visitors in their rooms and to adhere to a code of ladylike conduct.

Here with the attentions of the nuns, the ability to exercise in the beautiful convent grounds and in pleasant leaved suburban streets my knee improved as did my walking. Besides the physical healing, my spirit was restored. The companionship of the other ladies, and the quiet order and dignity of the convent that was all so very different to what I had been enduring at home, restored my peace and my sense of hope for my future. Overall, I had a good convalescence. I am as grateful to aunt Monica for this opportunity as I was to uncle John for all his help, as without this convalescence in the convent, I do not know what would have become of me. I can only regard it as my salvation.

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Filed Under: Chapter 5 - Holt Farm Gateacre - Tragedy & Deliverance, Part Two Tagged With: Accident, Aunt Monica, Convalesence, Convent, dairy, Deliverance, Holt Hall Farm, Liverpool, milk float, milking, Second Assignment, Tragedy

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About Me

Proud member of the Women's Land Army, Jeanne Flann, nee Harlow, here. Happily retired in Utah after a full and satisfying life that got off to a great start working as a Land Girl in the Trough of Bowland, you can read more about me.

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Book Outline

  • Introduction
  • Part One
    • Chapter 1 – Prologue, the Sullivans, the Harlows and My Childhood
    • Chapter 2 – Joining Up – The Women’s Land Army
    • Chapter 3 – Lancashire College of Agriculture at Hutton
  • Part Two
    • Chapter 4 – Lower Greenbank Farm Over Wyresdale
    • Chapter 5 – Holt Farm Gateacre – Tragedy & Deliverance
    • Chapter 6 – Marshaw, The Trough of Bowland Fells
  • Part Three
    • Chapter 7 – Epilogue
    • Chapter 8 – Recognition at Last
  • Appendix

All Sections

  • Introduction to My Land Girls Memoir
  • Prologue – The Sullivans, the Harlows and My Childhood
  • Joining Up – The Women’s Land Army
  • Lancashire College of Agriculture at Hutton
  • First Assignment as a Land Girl: Lower Greenbank Farm, Over Wyresdale
  • Second Assignment as a Land Girl: Holt Hall Farm, Liverpool – Tragedy and Deliverance
  • Last and Best Assignment as a Land Girl: Marshaw – The Trough of Bowland
  • Epilogue – Life After Being a Land Girl in the WLA

Land Girls Memoirs and Other Memoirs

In the two step process of creating a paper memoir and now converting it into a web based one, it is my hope that my memoir, Land Girl - The Happiest Years of Early Childhood joins other Land Girl memoirs as a member of that genre, and contributes to it.

My husband has his own memoir through the same process as mine, paper memoir first, then website GunnerFlann.com. He too hopes his memoir contributes to the National Service Memoirs genre.

Please let us know if you agree contact me.

Recent Posts From the Blog

  • Introduction to My Land Girls Memoir
  • Prologue – The Sullivans, the Harlows and My Childhood
  • Joining Up – The Women’s Land Army

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