IN October 1974 more than 1,000 former members of the Scottish Women’s Land Army gathered in Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall for their first reunion since the Second World War.
The army had been 9,000-strong during the conflict, doing a wide variety of jobs on the land, working in all weathers.
Nationwide, the WLA had originally flourished during the Great War. It was re-formed in June 1939 in response to the need to create a new rural army to replace the huge numbers of male land workers who had joined the armed services.
“The land army fights in the fields. It is in the fields of Britain that the most critical battle of the present war may well be fought and won”, said Lady Denman, director of the Women’s Land Army.
Involvement in the WLA was voluntary, at first; conscription followed in December 1941. Membership peaked at 80,000 in 1944. The Women’s Timber Corps was formed as a separate branch of the WLA in 1942.
Members of the Scottish WLA are seen (above) in a recruiting march in Glasgow in 1942. The main image shows Land Workers returning to a women’s hostel for lunch.
In addition to the 80,000 in the WLA, another 160,000 women replaced men in various transport services during the war, as Andrew Roberts points out in The Storm of War, his history of 1939-1945.
In an interview on the Women’s Land Army website, former Scottish Land Girl Jennette H. Foley recalled: “Our jobs were to work on the farms. The Women’s Land Army, I thought was so glamorous to join — and then I never worked so hard in my life!”
* https://www.womenslandarmy.co.uk;
* www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-womens-land-army
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