AN 88-year-old from Alveston has this week received special recognition for her contribution to the war effort as a Land Girl.

Audrey Metcalfe, was just 20 when she joined The Women's Land Army (WLA), known as the Land Girls, in her home village of Earls Barton, Northamptonshire.

For almost two years, before she fell pregnant with her first child, Mrs Metcalfe, worked as one of the 80,000 young women who kept the nation going during the Second World War.

"It was dam hard work but I loved it," she said.

In recognition of this effort Mrs Metcalfe, a mother-of-two, last Friday received her Women's Land Army and Women's Timber Corps badge and certificate.

"I feel absolutely wonderful about it. I feel so proud," she said.

The badge has been specially designed by the Garter King at Arms and bears the Royal Crown and shows a gold wheat sheaf on a white background surrounded by a circlet of pine branches and pinecones to indicate the work of both the Land Army and the Timber Corps.

During her time as a Land Girl Mrs Metcalfe was stationed on a large country estate, Chapel Brampton House, where she lived with more than 20 other young female volunteers as well as some Italian prisoners of war.

Talking of her experiences she said: "On the first day that I joined they put me on thrashing with the wheat.

"I suppose because I was so small the Italian prisoners of war used to throw me from one hay stack to the next.

"One day I was having so much fun and screaming the bailiff came a long and told us off.

"During my time in the Land Army we did all sorts of things anything that needed doing on the farm and in the fields really."

Mrs Metcalfe can also remember the devastating bombing of Coventry in 1940.

"We had been sent to work in a field nearby and we had to keep running for cover and hiding under the hedges. It was a very frightening time," she said.