THE stories of a brother and sister who both did their bit for their country’s war effort have come to light and there is hope of find out more.

Historian Pauline Taylor has collected photographs and information about her mother and uncle over the years.

But she is keen to find out more, particularly about her uncle, who she believes to have been part of the British Resistance in the Second World War.

Her mother, Annie Rosetta Balls, did her bit in the Women’s Land Army in the First World War. She was the youngest child of Simon Balls and his wife Mahala Emma, born in 1871 in Little Horkesley.

Pauline says: “Annie was born on September 22, 1903, and was always known to her father as Sonny.

“She was very beautiful and highly intelligent and during the First World War, when the family lived at Enfields Farm, Boxted, she helped on the farm as an early member of the Women’s Land Army.

“In this photo of her, aged probably only 14, she is in her Land Girls uniform, which appears to consist of a rather large, possibly khaki, canvas top worn over jodhpurs and boots with a huge and – on anyone else, I am sure – very unflattering peaked hat, but being my mother she is able to wear it with style.

“The top half of the outfit buttons up to the neck and has a turn-down collar.

“The sleeves are long and puffed at the top with narrow wristbands, and this garment is finished off with a wide belt and two pockets,” she adds.

She says country girl Annie was well suited to the tough tasks put before Land Girls.

“She was extremely good with horses and learnt to plough as well as any man with a team of two heavy horses. She was also the only person her father, who was the farm bailiff, would trust to hold a horse if he needed to give it any medical treatment it would not like.

“The most important duty she had was to drive the pony and trap to North Station, Colchester, to collect the rations for the German prisoners of war who had been sent to work on the farm.

“She confessed to me her father always knew if she had whipped the horse up the hill at Mile End on her way home, and that she would get into a lot of trouble for this.”

Pauline says unlike some of the girls who signed up to help out on the land in the Second World War, the work was second nature to Annie, who died in 1982.

“She was a country girl through and through, and knew all about good farming techniques, how to treat animals with respect and especially how to manage the heavy horses.

“From her I learnt about hedges and ditches and how important good deep ditches, which drained the right way, were to keeping the land in good condition.

“Conservation of the rainfall was very important, which meant that roads did not flood then as they do now.

“She knew how to lay a hedge, how to prune fruit trees, how to rotate crops and all about harvesting.

“She loved animals, but was not sentimental about them. She would wring a chicken’s neck and hit a rabbit on the back of the head at harvest time. Rats were hated because of the diseases they spread and the hen house had to be foxproof.”

Annie’s older brother, Walter Frederick Balls, was known to everyone as Fred and would go on to play a significant part in both world wars.

He enlisted for the First World War when he was officially still too young.

“Despite his mother informing the recruiting office of his true date of birth, they would not release him. This happened to many young men at that time,” she says.

Instead, he sailed to Gallipoli on July 21, 1915 with the Essex Regiment 14th Battalion.

“They were in Gallipoli for nearly four months before being evacuated on December 4, 1915 and moving on to Mudros. From there they went to Alexandria on December 17, 1915 and they remained in the Egypt/Palestine theatre after that.”

But the horrific things he witnessed in Palestine had a long-lasting effect, as they did for many soldiers.

“He was very badly shellshocked, but he very rarely spoke of his experiences except for the occasional reference.

“When he arrived home, he was very ill according to my mother. She said his nerves were shattered and his beard, eyelashes and eyebrows never grew properly again on one side of his face. I remember this.”

She says after the war the family moved to Vinesse Farm, also in Little Horkesley, and Fred became a highly skilled bricklayer, working on the restoration of several listed buildings and helping to construct the new airfield at Wormingford.

Despite being too old to be called up, he joined the Home Guard and may have been one of the members of the British Resistance.

He died in 1969.

Pauline says: “He was a very brave man and a very modest, kind, one.

“I am trying to discover more about the Resistance Groups on the Essex/Suffolk border as my cousin, Fred’s son John, and I are becoming more and more convinced that he was a member.

“None of these men expected to survive should there ever have been an invasion and even their closest family could not be told of their involvement.”

Anyone who can help Pauline find out more can contact her at ap.taylor@virgin.net