They Fought in the Fields

While troops fought on the front line, a battalion of young women joined up to take their places as agricultural workers. Despite many of them coming from urban backgrounds, these fearless, cheerful girls learnt how to look after farmland, operate and repair machinery, rear and manage farm animals, harvest crops and provide the work force that was badly needed in the years of war. Back-breaking work such as thinning crops, continuous hoeing and digging made way for disgusting tasks such as rat-killing. Yet, despite it all, the land girls were exuberant, fun-loving and hard-working, and became known for their articulate, feisty, humorous and modest attitude. It therefore comes as no surprise that, despite hostility and teasing at the beginning, these robust farm workers won the hearts of the nation, and at the disbandment of the Land Army in the 1950s the farming community were forced to eat their words. With delightful photographs documenting the camaraderie of the Land Army and real-life memories from those who joined, this nostalgic look at one of the real success stories of the Second World War will make modern women proud of what their grandmothers achieved in an era before our own.