From labour camp to hill farm, how Katie's long journey led to the Dales

Nestled in the tiny hamlet of Booze, the stone farmhouse overlooks the sweeping hills of Arkengarthdale and with the only access via the steepest of paths, it's off-limits to coach parties and daytrippers.

Inside little has changed since Katie and her family moved in more than 40 years ago. The house does now have electricity and running water, but the furniture is a little frayed around the edges, an ancient range looks like it's seen better days and should it get cold, and if often does, there's a row of jumpers hanging behind the living room door. Her's is an almost forgotten way of life, but Katie admits she hasn't always appreciated the Dales' quiet charm. For many years it was a reminder of how different things might.

Born in 1941 to a reasonably affluent family – both sets of

grandparents had established profitable businesses, Katie should have wanted for little in the Romanian village where she grew up. But with Stalin's sights set on expanding Communist rule throughout Eastern Europe, as his troops marched on millions were caught in the crossfire.

"One of my earliest memories is of my mother being sent away to one of the labour camps," says Katie, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Dales heroine Hannah Hauxwell. "I remember holding on to her skirt begging her not to go. At the time my father was in the Army and if I'd never seen him again I wouldn't have been too upset.

"I'd never really got to know him, but my mother was different. We were so close and then all of a sudden our little family was ripped apart." Katie was not reunited with her parents for another 12 years and in between she watched the poultry firm and thriving farm her grandparents had built up destroyed and the country she loved ruined.

By the time she was nine years old, the Russian militia again arrived in the village and after commandeering all farmland, they began rounding up more workers to fill the ever-growing camps where many had already lost their lives.

"It was very hard for the older people," says Katie. "All of a sudden, they had their farmland and businesses taken away. They could still see their vineyards, but they couldn't even take a piece of fruit from the bushes. The Communists set up a State farm, but the land and the climate was so different from Russia and the farming methods they used over there didn't work in Romania. People who had spent all their lives carefully tending crops saw everything they had worked so hard for left to fall into disrepair."

Soon after, Katie heard her mother had been freed from the camp and had joined her husband in England where he had managed to secure work on a farm after leaving the Army. The news was little cause for celebration. Along with her grandparents, Katie was ordered on to a train along with hundreds of other Romanian families. None knew their destination, but when they did finally arrive their worst fears were confirmed.

"Before we were sent to the camp I was aware that things weren't normal, but I didn't know how bad the situation was," says Katie. "The adults did their best to keep a lot of things from us, but when we overheard the soldiers were coming we were all very scared.

"The only thing we grasped on to was the fact we'd been told to bring hand tools. If we were going to be sent to work, it meant we wouldn't be killed."

For much of her life, Katie has tried her best to forget the five years she spent living under the camp's brutal regime. However, nearing her 70th birthday, she recently decided that her story was worth recording for posterity and revisiting her childhood for a book Wrong Time, Wrong Place has been a painful experience. Over the last few months, she has relived the months she and her grandparents lived like moles in dug-out shelters, the days she spent weak from lack of food and water and the unremittingly harsh treatment of the guards who ran the camps.

"It was so much worse because we didn't know when or if the nightmare would end," she says. "Food was in such short supply that we were forced to eat unripe crops and whenever a delivery of bread came there was such a massive rush, the guards built a narrow waiting area. If anyone couldn't fit in they said they were too fat and didn't need feeding."

While sustenance may have been in short supply, the diet of propaganda fed to the camp's children was not. Katie was taught about the glories of Stalin's regime, a lesson which was difficult to stomach as she learned her grandfather had been tortured for four days, falsely accused of attempting to contact the outside world.

During the winter months, Katie still remembers her hands turning to ice as she and the other children were forced to clear snow from the roof of the guards' houses and how in the summer harvesting the cotton left them on the brink of exhaustion.

"You couldn't think too much about the future," she says. "But suddenly rumours started around the camp that we might be freed. It was an incredible feeling, but we tried not to get our hopes up until we

stepped outside the gates."

On January 3, 1956 as the final vestiges of Stalin's rule crumbled, Katie and her family were finally set free. By the summer she had been issued with travel documents and was boarding a plane to a new life in England. It should have been the beginning of much happier times, but Katie admits the clouds of her childhood have cast a long shadow over her life.

"There was part of me that struggled to understand how my mother could have left me in Romania," she says. "I know she thought it was for the best in the long-term and wanted to get settled over here, but I never really got over losing her. By the time we were reunited, many years had passed and our relationship was never the same again."

Taking on the dilapidated farmhouse in Booze, Katie and her parents tried to carve out a new life for themselves as hill farmers. They soon had a herd of dairy cows, but finding acceptance in the Dales, where many of the neighbours had been farming for generations, was not always easy.

"We managed to secure the farmhouse because no one else wanted it," she says. "It was the kind of place no self-respecting Englishman would have ever taken on.

"When I arrived, I couldn't believe how much food was available. It was a different world. However, I was 14 years old and because I couldn't speak a word of English it was very difficult to fit in. Fortunately, you don't need to speak English to work with animals, so I started helping out on the farm. It was hard, whenever we weren't looking after the animals we were doing plastering and trying to make the place liveable."

When her parents died, Katie, who has never married, took over the running of the farm with her son. Today their livestock herd has been scaled down to a few suckler cows and Katie supplements her income ironing for one of the nearby pubs. She's secretary of the parish council and over the years has become a familiar face to those who live nearby. However, while her accent remains distinctly Eastern European and most know she grew up in Romania, she has until recently avoided going into details about her journey to the Dales.

"I'm 68 and knew that if I didn't write it down now, I might never do it," she says. "It has been very difficult. There were a lot of memories that I'd suppressed and a lot of things I hadn't talked to anyone about for many, many years. In the countryside people say everyone knows your business, but I still get asked, 'What made you come to Yorkshire'. Now I can give them a copy of the book and

say, 'That's why'."

Katie has never been back to Romania, but the addition of satellite television – the farmhouse's only modern concession – means she can access European news channels and occasional she gets a glimpse of her home country.

"I lead a very quiet life and don't tend to go very far from here," she says pointing down to Langthwaite, the nearest village. "I don't think I ever truly found peace in the Yorkshire Dales, but it did give me a home and living and for that I'm grateful."

n Wrong Time, Wrong Place is available to buy from Reeth Post Office or the CB Inn in Arkengarthdale. It can also be ordered by sending a cheque for 12, plus 2.95 for postage and packing, made payable to Katie Willkomm to Fountain Farm, Booze, Arkengarthdale, Richmond DC11 6EY.