FESTIVE NEWS • DECEMBER 2016 • PAGE 13
THE STORY OF THE LUMBERJILLS
TO RAILWAY STATION
TO
TOWN HALL
SHIRE HALL
CATHEDRAL
TO COUNTY
HOSPITAL
Marion Jones is just three years short of
her century but she is busy on her
computer writing her family history
when I pop in to see her at Great Western
Court in Hereford. A sprightly lady, she
is nevertheless anxious to get the task
finished. She had already turned 90
when her first book was published!
She was 20 when World War 2
started and working in a bank in
Manchester but wanted to do her bit for
the war effort. So she volunteered for the
Women’s Timber Corps and that first
book, ‘Proud to be a Timber Girl’ tells
the story of their forestry work getting
pit props to the mines and more
importantly timber to the trenches at the
Front.
She and the other girls were sent to
the Welsh town of Machynleth for
training and Marion settled into digs in
a nearby village, Esgairgeiliog,
surrounded by forests. But instead of
being given an axe the onetime bank
clerk was put in charge of the office. Her
patriotism was a life changer. She never
did get back to the bank in Manchester.
Richard Jones who worked in the office
at the local slate quarry saw to that. They
married a year after the war ended.
Richard would ironically become
company secretary of the Dovey
Woodlands Company and in 1969 the
couple moved to Hereford with son
Robert when Richard took up a post with
the Economic Forestry Group. He died
in 1989.
History tells us much about the war
and the men who fought in it and even
the Land Army Girls who worked on the
farms, but little has been told about the
girls who served the war effort by
keeping up the vital supply of timber.
Marion with her book and in her smart timber girl
uniform
Marion’s book, full of facts and
anecdotes gives a rare insight into
wartime life in the forests .’
Amongst her treasured possessions of
a full and active life is a letter from
Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen
Mother, thanking her for …’your
unsparing efforts at a time when the
victory of our cause depended on the
utmost use of the resources of our land
have earned you the country’s gratitude.’
With it is a letter from Prime Minister
Gordon Brown who in 2008 finally
recognised the contribution of Marion
and her fellow timber
girls to the war effort on the
he Home
Front with the award of a special badge.
“I am proud of what we achieved for
the war effort, but at the same time regret
that I played a part in destroying those
magnificent ancient broad-leaf forests
and after the war replanting them with
those awful conifer trees,” said Marion
whose memories are a
poignant
reminder of 6000 young women who
‘went to war with an axe.’
George Thomas