A FORMER Land Girl was treated to tea at a special event to honour the Women’s Land Army’s efforts during the Second World War.

Joan Clifford, 92, from Ducklington, was among more than a dozen former members invited to Wallingford on Sunday for the celebration.

It came following an appeal to pay tribute to a group whose wartime service was vital to keeping the nation fed.

Mrs Clifford said: “I feel that we are finally getting recognition. The show organisers made a real fuss of us.

“Being a Land Girl taught me how to work really hard for little pay.”

The Women’s Land Army was set up by the Government in 1939, with women working on farms across the country to replace men who were fighting overseas.

Within five years it had 80,000 members, nicknamed ‘Land Girls’.

Thirty women who worked in Oxfordshire and Berkshire will be honoured at the Royal County of Berkshire Show in September and the tea party gave organisers the opportunity to meet them in advance.

Among the Oxfordshire Land Girls at the party were Betty Hall, who moved from Surrey to work in Blewbury, and Eileen Hannington who was posted to Long Wittenham.

Some of the women’s uniforms were on display and they were presented with special medals to give thanks for their work.

Mrs Clifford, originally from Mill Hill in London, was a secretary at John Laing & Sons Ltd in the city before being called up to work as a land girl in 1942.

She said: “I suddenly had to learn how to farm, drive tractors and milk cows. It was very hard work.”

After a month of intense training in Sparsholt, she was relocated to a farm in Banbury where she worked until 1943.

It was at a farm in Balscote a year later that she met her husband Arthur, 89, and they married in December 1944.

Mr Clifford was not called to war because he had to look after his family’s farm following the death of his father when he was 14.

Mrs Clifford said: “I then moved to Arthur’s farm and continued as a Land Girl until 1947, but the land was poor.”

After the war the couple moved to a farm in Sutton Courtenay where they lived for 62 years.

They now live in Ducklington, near to their daughter, Ann, 64, and their two grandchildren.

This isn’t the first time the Women’s Land Army has been recognised.

In 2009, Mrs Clifford joined 200 other members of the Women’s Land Army and Timber Corps in an honorary service at Dorchester Abbey. They were also invited to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace later that year.

She said: “It was an absolutely wonderful experience.

“The Duke of Edinburgh sat next to me and told me jokes for 20 minutes.

“I’ll never forget it.”

KEEPING COUNTRY FED

The Women’s Land Army – dubbed the Land Girls – worked in agriculture during the First and Second World War to replace the men who had been called up.

The Land Army was first set up in 1915 and by the end of 1917 there were more than 250,000 women working as farm labourers, including 20,000 in the Land Army.

The Government restarted the Land Girls during the Second World War in June 1939. By 1944 the Land Army had more than 80,000 members.

Home-grown food was especially needed because German U-boats were destroying many of the merchant ships bringing food to the UK from the US at this time.

But with food rationing continuing after the war, the Land Army continued until it was eventually disbanded in 1950.