Just after the War I was sent to Ramsbury, recalls Dilys Fell, where they were converting an old army camp into a farm. It was staffed by displaced persons and everything from the camp was being re-used. The Nissan huts had been stripped of wood, which was used to build calf pens and the big calves used to eat out of ammunition boxes. My cowshed had been the latrines for the troops.

There was a place we used to call the art gallery where an American soldier, just before D-Day, had decorated what had been their canteen with crayons. On the walls there was a life-size drawing of an American soldier lying down resting his head on his helmet. All around him were pictures of what he was dreaming of; beautiful girls. We used to roll the oats in there for the cows.

Sometime after this I was sent on relief milking to Oswald Moseley's farm near Aldbourne. It was the filthiest old farm I had ever seen, everything you touched was dirty! I told a Land Army representative about it and that I couldn't understand how he had got his attested licence.

I told him I wasn't going to work there any more and didn't. He sold up the farm soon afterwards and I think it was because he'd had his licence revoked. When my farm work finished I got a job at Woolworth's in Devizes on the cosmetics counter where I worked for many years.

Dilys Fell (front) of Brickley Lane working on a farm near Ramsbury which had been converted from an army camp. The calves are feeding from old ammunition boxes.

From: Devizes Voices compiled by DavidBuxton Tempus Publishing ISBN 0 7524 0661 2 £9.99 For a complete list of local history books published by Tempus Publishing visit: www.tempus-publishing.com