David's Digest

My father employed two landgirls during the 2nd World War. One was the daughter of the Chief Rabi in Norwich and the other came from an even more genteel background, also from Norwich. Their urban upbringing meant they were not immediately very useful, although one of them was quicker to learn than the other. She was the one who later had an affair with the head cowman. I still remember his wife coming into the farmyard and giving her a good thrashing. I was just a boy at the time with no great understanding of such matters. But as far as I know the land girl left to work on another farm, the affair blew over and everything returned to normal.

The above might seem to indicate the said ladies were more trouble than they were worth. There is no doubt some of them did cause problems and perhaps my father was unlucky with the ones he was allocated. But others in our village virtually ran the farms on which they worked. They became stalwarts of the War effort and contributed significantly to the Dig for Victory campaign.

More than 60 years on I doubt if many people realise how close this country came to starvation. At one point, after German submarines had sunk whole fleets of merchant ships bringing food to us across the Atlantic, we were within just a few days of running out. Of course, we didn't find this out until well after the conflict was over. But it was a close run thing.

At the peak of their employment in 1944 some 70,000 land girls worked UK on farms. There were few tractors in those days so it was mainly hand work and using horses. Can you imagine what that meant to girls reared in towns who had never before been near an animal bigger than a dog?