March 24, 2025
History

The Land Girls

The Women’s Land Army is one of the half-forgotten triumphs of World War II. Famous for the posters featuring smiling girls in green jerseys and fawn breeches, that was just one side of the story.

The National Service (Armed Forces) Act imposed conscription on the British public on 3rd September 1939 when Britain once again declared war on Germany, barely two decades after the end of the First World War. There were exemptions such as for those who were medically unfit or in key industries such as baking, farming, medicine, and engineering but nevertheless many men living in the countryside joined up and the government was acutely aware of the perilous position this potentially could place farming in.

Politically speaking, this issue had been ignored over the previous decade and as a result, by the time war was declared, 70% of wheat and cheese was imported and 30% of eggs for example. Overall, in 1939, Britain imported 55 million tonnes of food, very little of which would be possible once the war began.

The Women’s Land Army project had begun – in secrecy – in 1938 under the efficient administration of Lady Denman who offered her own home, Balcombe Place in Sussex, as its headquarters. Born into privilege and wealth, although suffering from a back injury and asthma, Lady Denman was indefatigable, both a leader and campaigner. She campaigned for fairer pay for her ‘girls’ and more clothes rations throughout the war. She brought out a magazine for them and her deputies even went round giving out medals!

The very first Women’s Land Army had originally been set up in haste in 1917 when, after three years of the most dreadful war, the fear of a lack of food both for the population at home and the troops at the front led to this drastic action. Women went out to the country to move cows, drive tractors, work in the fields, to help thatch and to be shepherds.

However, the second world war was a far more critical endeavour as there was a real fear of starvation. Whilst troops fought on the frontline, ‘battalions’ of young women joined up in order to take their place as agricultural workers and grow food without which the frontline and indeed the home front couldn’t be sustained.

Lady Denman trained, ran and oversaw the whole operation. After training, the girls would be sent into the various parts of the country, each of which had its own Land Army sector organising their welfare and work. The girls all came out from the towns and to start with they would agree they couldn’t recognise one cow from another. The older farm hands who had worked for generations just knew so much and, on the best farms, passed on their knowledge.

Much of the life was incredibly tough with insufficient well-made boots to keep out the water. They were mucking out pigs, learning to drive tractors to dig out drainage ditches in order to bring more land into production, milking cows and then cleaning out the byres and learning to drive horses to plough or to cart wheat.  They were only given two sets of clothing which they had to wash and dry by hand before going out again, so it was definitely not some romantic rose covered cottage view of rural life.

In retrospect, the legacy was a triumph of cooperation between town and countryside and between men and women of all ages. Some of the land girls came to love the life and did not want to return to their old desk jobs. They fell under the spell of the countryside and some married the farmers they met or worked with. Some members later wrote how hard it was to readjust to their old lives and jobs.

It was an extraordinary time and through film and novels and sometimes reality, they had a reputation for exuberance and being happy; for being sociable and for walking miles to a dance after a hard day work in the field. Having met with a certain amount of hostility and division in the beginning, in the end they met with triumph.

Come and find Highclere’s girls this September.