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a friend might come in useful one day. In fact, she had a particular day in mind. The very first that Gordon could manage to get a pass and come over.
    ‘You won’t find me chopping or sawing then. Bet your sweet life on that.’ Her face softened, and she hugged herself in excited anticipation, making her full breasts jiggle enticingly so that Tom-Tom, watching from a few yards away, very nearly walked into a tree. ‘Ooh, I can hardly wait. I haven’t seen my lovely Gordon for a whole week. It’s mortal agony.’
    At the end of the day the work wasn’t over even then. The girls were given lectures on hygiene, first aid and fire fighting. They were told how timber was a vital munition of war to provide pitprops used in the production of coal, railway sleepers and even telegraph poles. They discussed how the Women's Timber Corps had proved those pessimists and cynics wrong who’d believed women could never replace the young woodsmen and foresters who‘d been called up. On the contrary, they were playing an important role in the victory of production.
    At first the old foresters did the felling and a huge shire horse dragged the felled trees into a nearby field where it was the task of the timber girls to cut them into carefully measured lengths. They soon learned the importance of well sharpened saws and axes, how they must never drop them and must always carry an axe with the cutting edge downwards.
    ‘Too easy,’ Lou announced, after a few days of this. ‘Why do we only get the boring part? I want to fell trees, not just slice them up.’
    Feeling adventurous, she asked Tom-Tom's permission if she could give it a go herself.
    He was doubtful, as was Gracie but, undeterred, Lou lifted the axe and made the first swing, missing the tree completely and ending up with the four and a half pound axe buried in the ground. When he had stopped laughing, Tom-Tom again demonstrated the correct procedure, the stance, the right swing, the angle of each cut and Lou teasingly plonked a kiss of thanks on his whiskered chin. But even with Gracie’s help they made little progress upon the thick sturdy trunk, and he returned some time later to find them both leaning against it.
    ‘What are you two up to now?’
    ‘Trying to push it over.’
    Shoving back his hat, he scratched his head and softly muttered, ‘Why need England tremble?’
     
    Despite the wet weather which continued throughout that week, they were a cheerful bunch and as they bumped along in the truck Lou and Gracie were relieved to discover that the other girls came from similar backgrounds to their own. They’d been hairdressers, clerks, shop assistants, typists, many from industrial towns, so working outdoors was a new experience for them too.
    Freckle-faced Tess was their blunt talking, oil-streaked, unsympathetic driver. She’d worked in a wool shop before the war but now, at only twenty five, had gained considerable experience driving for the Timber Corps. Her first task each day was to start up the lorry using its winding handle, since it was too ancient to boast a self starter. No easy task. Lou readily took on this job so that Tess could sit behind the wheel and be ready to pump the pedals when the old engine burst finally into life. Woe betide anyone who was slow at jumping aboard before she set off. Tess waited for no one.
    Someone would choose a song, Off To Work We Go being a favourite, and Buttercup, as the lorry was fondly named, would finally cough, lurch forward, and bump along the deserted lanes in time to the rousing singing of it’s happy occupants. It was not always so straightforward, sometimes it would splutter to a halt, the engine dying after only a mile or two and the passengers would have no option but to walk the rest of the way, while Buttercup followed on later, in her own good time.
    But walking or riding, there was always time for talk, or a ‘bit of crack’, as Lou called it, and as they talked, the girls grew closer.
    In their