Essex Land Girls (20 page)

The presentation of proficiency badges and certificates, and of arm bands for long service, were made at different venues around the county by high-status ladies such as Lady Denman and the County Chairman Mrs Byrne, MBE, JP. Such presentations were made to dozens of WLA girls at a time, and were recorded in the local papers.

There was no discipline as such, except dismissal, which meant at worst a redirection to an auxiliary service. Dismissal was only for unsuitable conduct or because of complaints from farmers regarding work output or attitude. Resignation, incidentally, was firmly discouraged unless, according to
Land Girl – A Manual
, there were health or ‘urgent, private’ reasons. As a deterrent, they were advised that: ‘You are feeding the nation; if you drop out, someone may starve.’ The girls in hostels had wardens to keep an eye out for them, but those billeted with families did not receive as much supervision as was intended.

There were supposed to be district representatives visiting every Land Girl monthly and introducing them to local activities, but very few girls featured in this book can remember such visits. According to Albert Poulter (in
Albert’s Witham
), the ‘local representatives were appointed on the basis of their local standing and therefore might well side with the farmers’ (presumably against the Land Girls). It is a fact that the representatives were usually (though not always) of a higher-class status than the Land Girls and held in some awe. Many of those in Essex mentioned Mrs Solly-Flood, and Eileen Burrows was one of six WLA girls who accompanied this Essex representative to a WLA lunch at the Mansion House in London in 1943. Vita Sackville-West, writing about the WLA from her standpoint as a representative in Kent, admitted that she and her kind belonged ‘to a different class of birth and upbringing’.

Incidentally, the Essex author Margery Allingham, a contender for the Agatha Christie throne at one point, was apparently a WLA supervisor (per one of her 1943 letters), as well as organising evacuees, her ARP work and role as a First Aid Commandant and ‘emergency food officer’ (see references in her biography by Julia Thorogood).

Food played a part in many memories of the war and the WLA.
Connie Robinson
recalls not only ‘queueing for chocolate’ but the ‘lovely apple pies and puddings’ when billeted at Pebmarsh, near Halstead, but she also remembers asking for sauce for her bread and cheese and being told it was ‘too expensive at 4½
d
a bottle’. She also mentioned one farm worker referring to elevenses as ‘a beaver’ which needed translating, and another getting eggs out of a nest and eating them raw ‘but we never tried it’.

A happier memory was of the fruit in the orchard at New Hall, Boreham, looked after by
Joan Carpenter
alongside a gardener. She enjoyed the luxury of fresh peaches when in season, although excess produce was also used to feed the elderly at a local hospital. Lemons were more of a novelty, and when
Barbara Rix
took one home to East London, her nephew ‘bit into it’ and was not impressed. Nancy Caton in
Clavering at War
recalled the ‘lovely fruit cakes’ made by the farmer’s wife in Uttlesford, and glasses ‘of hot milk straight from the cow’.

The inevitability of lunches of cold tea and sandwiches with either beetroot, grated carrot, cold baked beans, jam or cheese, featured prominently in many memories, as did having to ‘put in a claim’ for a new flask if the one you were supplied with was damaged. One thing you had to remember, according to
Dorothy Jennings
, was to make sure your lunch box was secure, otherwise your sandwiches ‘would be crunchy’ thanks to the insects inside. The cold tea was especially welcome during the corn harvest, when
Eva Parratt
remembered that ‘it was like nectar’.

In
The
Land Girl
of January 1943, ‘D. Hudson’ of Essex wrote recommending wild foods such as elderberries for pies and as an alternative to currants (when dried). She also points out the merits of two different types of wild, edible fungus: Lepiota (a kind of mushroom of a creamy colour) and beef-steak fungus (which grows on trees and is a livery colour). According to this Land Girl, horse meat was very tasty, especially in steak and kidney pies, and soya bean flour mixed with almond essence was an excellent substitute for almond paste. At a time of rationing, of course, she writes that ‘dandelion coffee and herb tea might not be exciting but they are a change’, and they saved using up precious coupons.

Larger hostels had not just a cook to look after the girls but a whole team. At Mark Hall in Harlow, for instance, local members of the St John’s Ambulance, and even schoolgirls, were roped in to help prepare afternoon teas for the 100-plus Land Girls living there. The kitchen was in a Victorian wing, with a large, scrubbed, wooden table, and many hands involved in preparing, usually, sandwiches, which were taken upstairs, or even to one of the dormitories if any of the girls were confined to bed. The kitchens here also provided packed lunches, but one girl (featured in
A History of Mark Hall Manor
) revealed that many of the girls would prefer to have lunch at Victoria Hall in Old Harlow, where you could get ‘a hot main meal, a pudding, and a cup of tea, all for five old shillings’.

Florence Rawlings
did not stay at her first billet in Ramsden Bellhouse for long as ‘insufficient food’ was provided; she cites ‘thin spam slices for a main meal’ as an example. However, most evening meals dished up in hostels and billets revolved around vegetables, vegetables and more vegetables, with just an occasional appearance of meat or a sausage. Suet or sponge puddings were a regular feature, but in spite of their stodgy, bulky nature, did not seem to have any effect on the girls’ weight, thanks to the physical work they were doing.

It was a matter of fact that everyone’s diet changed during wartime. Rationing meant, in particular, a shortage of meat, so rabbit catching became popular, pig clubs sprang up (which meant pooling the pieces after slaughter), and chickens were a popular source of meat and eggs. American Spam was more readily available, and powdered eggs were in the shops as a substitute, although not popular. Land Girls did have, in some cases, extra rations of cheese, but there could be hostility in village shops if rations were collected for a group of girls at a time, the wrong assumption being made.

One thing you needed in the WLA was a sense of humour.
Dorothy Jennings
illustrated this with a handwritten poem (the original song dates back to 1920s, but the post-war Elvis Presley version is most remembered):

Are you lonesome tonight?

Is your brassiere too tight?

Are your corsets all falling apart?

Does the size of your chest

Wear big holes in your vest?

Does your spare tyre

Reach up to your heart?

Are your stockings all laddered?

And your shoes wearing thin?

Do you hold up your bloomers,

With a big safety pin?

Are your false teeth all worn?

Do they drop when you yawn?

No b*** wonder

You’re lonesome tonight.

The ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign, supported by the WLA, had worked very well, keeping the country from starvation. British farmers had to be persuaded to grow sugar beet to replace the imported cane sugar, which had been threatened by U-boat raids in the Atlantic early in the war, and sugar beet they grew – in abundance. Not only sugar beet, though; a report on the wartime harvest, published in November 1941 by the ladies of the Literary Circle of the Loughton Women’s Institute, reads:

Driving through the Essex countryside in August, everywhere was corn, oats, wheat and barley … never had we seen so much corn … even in front of a great country mansion there stood sheaves of corn where formerly there was a vast green lawn.

The amount of land used to grow crops increased by 50 per cent during the war years, an incredible result, with the Land Army heavily involved in harvesting these crops (although much of the acreage has since been built on, of course). Writtle College itself, the virtual headquarters of the Essex Land Girls, devoted not only its 500 acres to vegetable growing, but even grew Brussels sprouts on its front lawn, setting a proud example.

Land Girls identified as Ivy Barker and Peggy Frazer at Writtle College, cutting hurdles to stop aircraft landing. (Courtesy of the Writtle Archive)

It was largely thanks to the WLA that this country did not starve during either world war, when so many civilians in Holland, France and Germany were malnourished or worse, during the Second World War particularly. The Germans were not able to starve the British into submission, thanks to home-produced foods grown in parks and gardens, on waste land, village greens, allotments, and even grass verges.

As early as June 1944, an Essex farmer was quoted in
The Land Girl
as saying that out of his seventy-five employees, ‘25 were members of the WLA, and four out of five of these raw recruits. Nevertheless production per head has been higher than before the war.’

In November 1947, the
Harlow Gazette
reported a devastating blow for the 100 Land Girls still billeted at Mark Hall – a fire which virtually destroyed the building, once the long-term home of Mr Gilbey of the famous wine and spirit merchants. Only ‘a blackened shell’ remained in the 200 acres of surrounding parkland. When the alarm was raised, many girls ‘were in night attire’ but all ‘safely got out into the grounds … [though] able to save little of their personal belongings …’ (not even precious bicycles or, in one case, an engagement ring). The voluntary fire brigade from Old Harlow were first on site, but the flames drew crowds of onlookers who tried to help, including British and American servicemen:

The alarm was raised at about 11.30 p.m. by 18 year old Betty Belton whose home is at Chelmsford. On being awakened by thick smoke pouring into her bedroom, she immediately aroused Miss Baker and together they ran from room to room warning the girls of their danger … Two of the girls who were sleeping on the first floor told a
Gazette
representative that they were nearly overcome by smoke … the girls were marshalled together and taken to St Margaret’s Hospital, Epping, for accommodation until the morning. Then they were allowed to go to their homes until other billets could be arranged.

The cause of the fire was never openly publicised – a careless cigarette? No one knew.

Amazingly, no one was killed or seriously hurt. The bulk of the Mark Hall girls were relocated to an ex-army camp in Fen Lane, Orsett, which had also been a prisoner-of-war camp. Although alterations were made, including additional toilets and heating, with improved dining and recreation rooms and sick bays, there was a question in the House of Commons in February 1948 pointing out that members of the WLA were walking out of the hostel because of the ‘bad conditions there’. At this stage there were still only eight showers for 120 girls, and twenty-four washbasins for washing clothes and bodies. Tom Williams, the Minister of Agriculture, assured the Commons that all issues were being addressed and resolved because he was ‘anxious to bring the hostel up to standard’.

A few months later, these same Land Army women at Orsett were helping to identify an outbreak of the potentially devastating Colorado beetle in the Tilbury area, mapping out suspect areas and helping to inspect potato crops. This is the subject of a 1948 film in the British Pathé archives, showing six ‘young girls with keen eyes’ using insecticide as part of the Land Army’s ‘Flying Squad’. The outbreak was serious enough to merit the use of army helicopters to help with spraying the insecticide.

One girl who was still in the WLA five and a half years after joining at the age of 16 was Audrey Mitchell, featured in the
Chelmsford Chronicle
on 4 February 1949:

[She] now lives by herself in a home-made caravan next door to Peverill’s Farm, Little Waltham. She made the caravan in seven months with the help of a girlfriend and a farm worker. In her spare time she adds to her collection of furniture and draperies, most of which she has made. For company she has a dog Chum and a black and white kitten, and spends her evenings cooking, washing, ironing and playing records on her own gramophone. The alarm clock goes off at 5.30 every morning and she is out till the evening, except for a light mid-day meal. She comes from Woodford Green and worked in an accountant’s office before joining up in 1943. She has since worked on farms at Danbury (one a fruit farm) and at Little Waltham. Her usual job is on the tractor. She built the caravan because she got tired of living in lodgings but couldn’t afford to buy something. She likes it and is not lonely because there is too much to do.

So many members of the WLA in Essex (as elsewhere) were ripe for romance, and a high proportion found it – in many cases, permanently. Marriages between WLA girls and troops or farmers were a regular occurrence throughout the war years, with ‘about six’ Land Girls from Coggeshall House alone marrying local lads (according to historian Stan Haines) and settling locally post-war.
Celia Waldman
remembered one of the Land Girls at the Thundersley hostel (in 1941) leaving the WLA to marry a Polish soldier.