Land girls: disquiet on the home front

By Julia Llewellyn Smith Published: 9:00PM GMT twenty-seven February 2010

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Previous of Images Next Molly Stevens, from Charlbury, Oxfordshire, outlayed the Second World War in the Land Army. She is graphic here in 1944, operative a grain branch machine. Photo: John Lawrence Molly Stevens, a former land lady right afar elderly 83, at her home in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, recalls dancing with American soldiers. "Some of the girls were flighty, but it was wartime. We didn"t know how majority time we had left." Photo: John Lawrence

Its positively ridiculous," bellows Jean Procter. "Its insulting. Its unequivocally galling. I feel unequivocally seditious about this." What on earth is creation the resolute Mrs Procter, elderly 91, so angry? Road functions by her village? A new appointments complement at her surgery?

The theme of her madness is a new book, Once a Land Girl. The supplement to Angela Huths best-selling 1994 novel Land Girls, that was incited in to an acclaimed movie starring Rachel Weisz, Anna Friel and Catherine McCormack, it would appear submissive regretful fare.

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But the small discuss provokes snub between the strange land girls women who milked cows and brought in the collect to feed Britain during the Second World War, when immature farmers were afar fighting.

Having endured tiresome work for low compensate and to top it all no central approval for 60 years, the 27,000 flourishing members of the Womens Land Army (WLA) are mad to be portrayed as nymphomaniacs, in graceful tan breeches, immature jumpers and red lipstick, some-more vigilant on bedding men than hefting sacks and castrating pigs.

"The novel and movie are positively ridiculous," declaims Mrs Procter, who founded the British Women Land Army Association in 1960. "Weve outlayed 47 years perplexing to teach people as to what we did, and afterwards this foolish story comes along about us removing off with the farmers son. There were no farmers sons; marry transposed them.

"Where I worked there was a rancher with one tooth, who chewed tobacco and squabble it out in his hand. He put full of blood in front and at the back of each word he uttered, so there was frequency going to be any canoodling there. I snorted with delight when I review about the farmers mother welcoming us with wine. They loathed us since marry taken the places of their dear sons."

Mrs Procter and her peers recollections of hold up as a land lady might be less raunchy than Huths, but they are no less gripping. Young, mostly exploited, far from home and with no believe of farming, the WLA still played a critical purpose in the victory.

"At the commencement of the war, 70 per cent of the food was imported. By 1943, that figure was reversed, in no small magnitude due to the Land Army," says Terry Charman, comparison historian at the Imperial War Museum, whose stream Ministry of Food muster highlights land girls efforts. "There was rancour from farmers about receiving their jobs away, but as the quarrel grew darker and France fell, people recognized how critical they were."

At the rise in 1943, 83,000 served in the WLA. During the lifetime, from 1939 to 1950, it concerned 250,000 women. Mrs Procter volunteered, elderly 18, in 1939. "I had lerned to be a childrens nurse, but I saw a glamorous print of a lady with golden hair, corn underneath her arm, so I thought: Ill have a bit of that. Of course, it was zero similar to that. It was cleaning pig plod and picking maggots off sheep."

Many of the volunteers were city girls, fervent to shun the Blitz, but with no thought of nation life.

Molly Stevens, 83, became a land lady in Oxfordshire in 1943, elderly 17, after her home in Sheffield had been bombed. She had never seen a cow and on her initial day was frightened to find she had to travel by a flock to reach the farm. Doreen Sackville, additionally 83, who worked in Warwickshire, was asked elderly seventeen to purify the longhorn out. "I was petrified, seeking around for the greatest flare I could find to strengthen myself. Id never finished a days work in my hold up before, it was a distressing shock to the system."

The girls were paid usually twenty-eight shillings a week, homogeneous to �42 today. While Huths characters lived in a plain but lifelike farmhouse with amatory hosts, majority genuine land girls found themselves in remote homes but physical phenomenon or indoor plumbing. "My breakfast was a dual inch-thick cut of bread boiled in the farmers bacon fat. He had the bacon himself," Mrs Procter says.

Work was relentless, starting at around 5am and in summer mostly stability until midnight. In southern England, girls ploughed fields in "Bomb Alley" where rivalry planes mostly dumped over-abundance inclination on their lapse from London. During oppressive winters, the girls dug ditches, trapped rats and picked crops, customarily with no mechanised help. "It was back-breaking and freezing. I once cut my finger really bad whilst slicing mangold tops, but it was so icy I didnt notice," recalls Mrs Stevens.

But couple of girls complained. "It wasnt pleasurable. You were possibly sweating or jolt with cold, sleepy to genocide and flea-bitten, but it gave you good satisfaction," Mrs Procter says. "Once, at the finish of threshing, I had fourteen blisters on my hand. I had to go true to divert twenty cows. I usually popped the blisters, cleared my hands and got on with it."

There was small room for quality of being female on the farm. "Our muscles grew huge," says Mrs Proctor. "I was 5ft1in, but when I tied together I could lift my husband."

Nature brought compensations. "The small lambs and piglets were lovely, and theres zero to kick saying the jewelled dew on spider webs."

Yet for all their tough labour, a renouned parable endured bolstered by Huth that land girls were omnivorous maneaters. Wags subverted their aphorism "Back to the land" to "Backs to the land".

"Its comprehensive filth," says Mrs Sackville. "Im no prude, but these were trusting times. I was far as well disturbed about what my Dad would contend if I got in trouble."

For girls stationed nearby troops bases, however, hold up was some-more lively. Mrs Stevens, who lived in a lodging place with 40 alternative girls, recalls dances with American soldiers. "We desired them since they had copiousness of food; we used to move a doggy bag. Some of the girls were flighty. One left the lodging place since she was profound by her RAF chap. But it was wartime. We didnt know how majority time we had left." Others recollect flirtations and even contingent marriages with the handsome, blond German prisoners of quarrel who worked in the fields with them.

Having oral to hundreds of former land girls, Huth admits that half discuss it her they never saw a man. "But the alternative half say: You didnt put in sufficient sex; we were at it all the time." What concerns Huth some-more was capturing the joie de vivre. "They were you do hideous work, but 95 per cent of them pronounced it was the most appropriate time of their lives, that they thrived on the fortify and the fitness."

For all their heroism, the WLA was the usually piece of the Forces to embrace no wages after the war. "One crony lost her feet in a threshing machine, but as far as I know she perceived zero from the Benevolent Fund," says Mrs Sackville. Only last year after decades of campaigning, were land girls strictly recognized by the supervision with a pinned token and certificate.

"A lot us were discontented it took so long, and we got no pension," says Mrs Stevens. She continues in land-girl spirit. "But you took up the quarrel and that was it. We all survived, and Id do it all again tomorrow."

* Once a Land Girl by Angela Huth is accessible from Books at �7.99 and 99p p&p. To order, call 0844 871 1516 or revisit books.telegraph.co.uk