I’m back home after 60 years
AN elderly widow has fulfilled a 60-year dream by returning to live in North Wales where she served as a Land Army girl during the Second World War.
Sybil Hammond, 93, has quit the Isle of Wight in order to settle in a place that held so many fond memories.
She enlisted with the Land Army in April 1942 and was among 200 women who dug fields and planted crops on Anglesey.
Last year she was the public face of an FUW-led campaign to erect a Land Army memorial at Anglesey showground.
Having pined to return to her native North Wales – she is originally from Penmaenmawr – Sybil had a two-week “trial run” in Llandudno before Christmas.
“That made my mind up,” she said. “I knew I was doing the right thing.
“Over the years I have visited North Wales from time to time and on each occasion I’d felt a pang of longing to return here.
“It is such a peaceful and happy place. I never really settled in the Isle of Wight and, being Welsh and proud of it, I wanted to return home to see out the rest of the days that the good Lord gives me.”
At the age of 18 Sybil volunteered as a Land Army girl, and to her surprise she was posted to the Land Army hostel in Menai Bridge.
“By then my parents had moved to Surrey so I had expected to be sent down there,” she recalled.
Her daily chores included threshing, hay making, stacking corn and barley, and planting potatoes and picking them.
The girls, some of whom had lied about their age to enlist, were also put to stone picking, cutting thistles, loading carts, weeding, soil testing and rat catching.
In their spare time they had to do their own washing and mending – all while observing a 10pm curfew.
Knowing how hard they had worked, it always rankled Sybil that their war-time efforts were never properly recognised.
“We worked our socks off,” she said.
“It was often filthy, dirty work. We dug up the grounds of Penmon Priory to plant potatoes, which was hard work. But there was never anything done to remember the girls by.”
Sybil was decommissioned in 1946 and moved to Surrey before marrying and settling on the Isle of Wight.
Every now and again she travelled back up for reunions – always eagerly anticipated – but as the number of veterans dwindled, so did the get-togethers.
Last year, having helped the FUW raise £1,000 for Anglesey’s Land Army memorial, she found the pull of home was stronger than ever.
With her eyesight failing, she arranged to stay at Llandudno’s Abbeyfield residential home.
“My family worried I was too old to move back up here,” said Sybil, whose son Peter is head professional at the Shanklin & Sandown Golf Club on the Isle of W Wight.
“But my doctor assured me I w was fit enough to go.”
FUW Anglesey executive officer Heidi Williams, who got to know Sybil during her fight for Land A Army recognition, said she was a remarkable lady.
“Sybil is an inspiration to a lot of people,” she said. “She is truly amazing.
“At her age most people would have settled for their lot but she felt the pull of home and decided to so something about it.”