Landgirls And Their Impact

by Kramer, Ann

• ISBN13: 9781844680290
• ISBN10: 1844680290
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-02-19
• Publisher: Remember When Pub

Summary

"The Women's Land Army, better known as the Land Girls, were vital to the war effort from their early days in the First World War and their hard work in the Second World War until they were finally disbanded in October, 1950. Using original interviews and photographs, as well as other primary sources, Ann Kramer explores their impact from their early history to the present day with their achievements finally recognised with a Land Girls' commendation in the form of a badge. Typists, hairdressers and shop girls, as well as those who grew up tending the land, were suddenly expected to handle tractors, milk cows and plough fields with huge horses whilst the Lumber Jills (Women's Forestry Corps) felled trees. Training was minimal and facilities varied from the impressive Dumbleton Hall which Hitler intended to make his home, to huts where baths were rare. The Land Girls' lot was often a hard one - and they knew discrimination - but they gained friendship, love and a new-found knowledge of just what a woman could achieve in time of war and beyond. Their experiences helped ensure the nation could survive whilst its men were fighting but it is their individual stories, many recorded here for the first time, which show the reality of their lives, of how others perceived them, what they learnt, why they became Land Girls in the first place and just how liberating it could be - for the first time, women were wearing the trousers."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
Permissions	p. x
Timeline	p. xi
Interviewees	p. xvii
Introduction	p. xix
First Time Around	p. 1
War Returns	p. 10
Recruitment and Propaganda	p. 24
Who Were the Land Girls?	p. 42
Working on the Land	p. 58
The Lumber Jills	p. 80
Living with Others	p. 96
Acceptance and Prejudice	p. 119
Love, Sex and Romance	p. 134
End of War	p. 149
Reflections	p. 166
Bibliography	p. 178
Index	p. 180
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

The impact of the land girls cannot be ignored. It was not just that women were working and farms had more women than men, women who were not part of the family or, for some of them, had even lived in the countryside before but women were wearing trousers and filling in for men, some of whom would never return from war. For the women, their time as land girls changed their lives and how they viewed their own role in society and the family. Using original interviews and photographs from some of these land girls, historian Ann Kramer delves deeper than any previous study to understand the role of the land girls both during and after the Second World War.