It may be hard work pulling up sprouts in frost-bitten fields, but for land girls Prue, Stella and Ag there are compensations - a healthy supply of good-looking lads from the farms and the forces.

Anna Friel, Catherine McCormack and Rachel Weisz play the stunning heroines in the film Land Girls, which portrays the rough - and the raunchy - side of life in the Women's Land Army during and after the war. But were those days really a heady mix of mucking out and rolling in the hay? Helen Mead asked two former Land Girls from Bradford.

Teresa Barraclough, 72, was born in India. She was seven when the family came to live in Bradford. Teresa went to Undercliffe School and after leaving at the age of 14 she got a job with the Post Office in Forster Square but left a year later to join a touring dance troupe as a chorus girl. Now a mother-of-four, she lives in Odsal. She has ten grandchildren and one great grandchild.

I was 17 when I joined the Land Army. I was stationed in a little village in Norfolk. There were about 40 girls altogether in a big country house called Thurning Hall at Briston. It was miles from anywhere.

I was really nervous when I got there - we were looking at fields miles long with rows of crops, they seemed to go on forever. We were given uniforms - jodhpurs, long socks, brown shoes, a green pullover, a blouse, a pair of dungarees and wellies.

I remember the first job we were given - hoeing sugar beet. The field was vast and looked as if it stretched beyond the skyline. It was exhausting. The heat was unrelenting in summer and in winter it was freezing cold. The toilets were in little wooden huts and they would ice over in winter.

We did sugar-beet bashing, carrot picking, flax-pulling, apple picking, there was always loads to do.

Every day we'd be given date sandwiches to take out with us, and on the night we'd have a light meal. We didn't have much to eat. If the soldiers stationed locally were out on manoeuvres they would cook in the barns and give us some food.

The only other man at the hall was the overseer, but we managed to meet a lot of men when we weren't working. We all had quite a few boyfriends who we met at dances at the army bases in the nearby towns - Fakenham, Sandringham and Cromer. We were invited by British, Dutch and American airmen. They were great nights - I was very flirty. I went out with a few Dutch airmen, and went on leave with a man from London.

We also met men in the pub in the village. Even though we were tired we would cycle the four miles there and back every night - one would pedal and another would ride on the crossbar.

But we didn't go rolling in the hay like I've heard they do in the film - we used to have to pile up the haystacks, we were far too busy to romp in them.

Sometimes there were German and Italian prisoners of war working in the fields near us. The Italians were very good-looking, but we got on better with the Germans! We couldn't mix with them though, they were kept separate.

Eventually I got engaged to a lad from much closer to home - Leeds. We were going to get married. I was released from the Land Army and the banns were read out, and then he sent me a note to say he was in hospital in Norfolk, being treated for a sexually transmitted disease.

I was horrified. Although I went out with a lot of men I would not have sex before marriage. I went to see him in hospital and he said he still wanted to marry me. But I called things off.

He was the only person I was serious about. My mum could not believe I bypassed all those airmen! Some girls did get pregnant - I had a friend from South Yorkshire who went off to have a baby. We all asked where she had gone - none of us knew she was expecting. One girl went to Rotterdam and got married, and a few girls stayed down there and married local men.

When I think back about my time it was so much fun. We all came home at Christmas and after more than three years I came back and went to work at the Post Office. After working outside for so long I was very brown and blonde and all the lads were after me. I was in the canteen one day and I heard one saying: "She's lovely looking - I'd like to take her out." That man, called Charlie, had just come back to Bradford from being a Prisoner of War in Germany. We married after six months and we're happy to this day.

Joyce Burton, 71, was born in Bradford. After leaving school she went to work in a textile mill and joined the Land Army to escape from it. She lives in Clayton with her husband Eric, who she met while serving in the Land Army. The couple have a son and five grandchildren.

When the war was on it was difficult to get out of the mill, so I joined the Land Army along with my sister Hilda. We were nervous when we left but it was easy settling in - everyone made us feel welcome, we were all in the same boat. We were stationed at a country house at North Creake near Fakenham in Norfolk.

There were about 30 girls in all, aged between 18 and 28. We'd come from all over the country. There were a lot of Geordies and quite a few from Leeds-Bradford.

Believe it or not, romance didn't enter our heads - we were nave in those days. But we were all young and I suppose some of us were bound to meet people and have relationships.

We were kept busy - picking potatoes, carrots and apples, a lot of hoeing, sugar beet - but for all the hard work I never felt tired at the end of the day. We met a lot of local farm workers and sometimes worked together. During the harsh winter of 1947 we were snowed in three times in the village and were out snow shovelling with the local men. We were much quicker - what they did in a week we could do in half a day!

There were thousands of airmen - people used to say that Norfolk was one big airfield. I went out with a few of them - we used to meet them at the White Swan in the village. We'd play darts and dominoes, or go to dances in the village hall.

We also went out with local men - one night I had two dates fixed up by mistake and I couldn't believe it when both of them were on the bus to Fakenham. When I got off the bus I had to choose who to go out with and picked Eric.

I'd already been out with his mate, Nelson, who then started seeing one of my friends.

Eric was a good -looking lad, all the girls were after him and he had been out with a few from the hostel. We had a 10pm curfew during the week and midnight on a Saturday. One night

I'd been out with Eric and came back to find I'd been locked out. I was grounded for a week until Eric wrote a lovely letter to the matron.

There was not one pregnancy among us. There wasn't any hanky panky, the girls were treated with respect by the lads.

We did a lot of cycling in the beautiful countryside - we had a wonderful time.

Eric used to cycle 26 miles each way to see me - all for love. He was a farm worker - one of 12 children whose dad had a smallholding. He would work on other farms until 1pm and then work at home. We got married after a year and settled in Bradford. I was very lucky to meet Eric - we've been very happy together, and I keep in touch with a lot of friends from my Land Army days.

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