Real Lives: Margaret has landed a medal for war effort

MARGARET Edwards is finally being rewarded with a medal for her time spent as a Land Girl during the Second World War.

EDINBURGH-born Margaret Edwards, aged 85, was this week told that she will receive a medal for her war-time efforts as a Land Girl, joining hundreds of others who were recently rewarded, after going unrecognised for years.

She was born on July 25, 1924 to London-born army regular Edwin Houps and his shopworker wife, also called Margaret.

She attended Craiglockhart School and Tynecastle High. The leaving age at the time was 14 unless you could secure work so she got her first job at a grocer's on Morningside Road.

She moved to Penicuik when she was 15 and went to work with the Valleyfield Paper Mills producing secret papers and maps for the RAF, although she didn't know that until well after the war.

Her job initially gave her reserved status but when the work moved to Glasgow she lost her status and was called up at the end of 1942.

She had to travel to Jackie Lowe's Farm, at Monktonhall, to begin work as a Land Girl.

"We did everything, believe you me. We were young and strong and we just got stuck in. We had to feed the bullocks and do threshing, where all the bales of hay and corn had to be opened up individually and they were crawling with mice, and we were terrified," she said.

Occasionally she would receive help from PoWs held in a camp in Gullane.

"If it was a rainy day the PoWs said they didn't want to go out and the boss agreed so they would stay inside sewing cabbage bags."

"I walked out of the Land Army because of the prisoners, because we started hearing stories about death camps. We thought it was rubbish but then we started getting photos back of dead babies and we couldn't bare to be around these prisoners of war. They were going to take us to tribunal, but before long five more walked out."

After the war she decided to go to Germany to help with the clean-up and she was sent to Martinique Barracks, near Aldershot, before being shipped out of the country.

However, her trip was cancelled when she caught the eye of a young gunner who had just returned from South Africa, Iorweth Winn Edwards, a Welshman serving in the Royal Artillery.

They were married on July 12, 1947, on the very day he was demobbed. Their only daughter, Margaret, was born just over nine months later.

Margaret went back to work at Stenhouse Cross newsagent, and spent the next few years taking on various jobs.



Margaret is trying to arrange a get-together for all of the Land Girls from Jackie Lowe's Farm and Scarletts Farm Road, who used to meet up at the Labour Hall Dance Hall. Contact her on 0131-346 2554.