Our Land at War

by Duff Hart-Davis

  During the war the eight jam-makers of Rosedale, a village on the North Yorkshire moors, produced three and a half tons: they brought the fruit to the reading room of the village hall in market baskets, and because they had no electricity or gas, they had to boil up their vats on an oil stove with water carried by hand from a source a quarter of a mile away. They had help from children, who picked blackberries and topped and tailed gooseberries, but by any measure theirs was a phenomenal achievement.

  Elsewhere, some of the jam-makers’ sugar came from pilfering in offices, which were allocated a certain amount for the inmates’ tea: at mid-morning the official tea-maker would put a spoonful into each cup, and another into a tin. Once the tin was full, it was taken home by one of the working women – and managers who knew about the little racket paid no attention.

  People in East Anglia, where the Government encouraged the growing of sugar beet, made their own sugar substitute. Chopped up, boiled for twenty-four hours and squeezed in a home-made press powered by a car jack, the beets yielded juice, which was then boiled again to thicken it, and the result was pungent black treacle.

  Better by far was honey: beekeepers could sell every drop they did not need for themselves, and a special dispensation allowed them to buy sugar for feeding their bees in winter. Whether or not they had any bees was another matter. According to the records of the British Beekeepers’ Association, the number of registered hives rocketed during the war, but many of them stood empty – and many were home-made or patched up with odd bits of wood, for permits were needed to buy timber, and people had to make do with what they could scrounge. With keepers away at the war, hives were less well managed than usual, but bees seem to have been more self-reliant then than now, and pests and diseases were fewer, so that colonies probably survived without much attention. There were also more feral colonies, and, when these swarmed, they were likely to occupy any hive they found uninhabited, thus keeping up numbers.

  The war encouraged apiarists to close ranks. At a monthly meeting of the British Beekeepers’ Association in 1940 it was decided, after discussion, that ‘psychologically’ it was time for beekeepers to get together, even if physical reasons made it difficult just at that moment. In spite of the problems, enough cohesion was achieved for county associations to send generous gifts of honey to submarine crews: in December 1940 Sussex sent 500 lb, and by February 1941 the total had risen to 802 lb. In March 1941 another minor success was recorded by The Farmers’ Weekly:

  The shareholders of the Market Rasen School Beekeeping Company, under the direction of Peter Hesslewood, its 13-year-old chairman, have achieved a dividend of 150 per cent. The company, with a capital of £10 in shilling shares, has sold honey to the value of £28 9s 11d during the year.

  Experience soon showed that the fumes of German high explosive were particularly obnoxious to bees, and this made them an extra hazard for ARP workers who were liable to be stung when they went into action, rescuing people and clearing up after a bomb had fallen. Beekeepers tried to minimize the danger by storing a bottle of chloroform in the top of a hive, together with pieces of rag that could be soaked in the spirit and stuffed into hive entrances as soon as possible after an explosion had taken place, to stupefy the inhabitants and keep them at home.

  Like honey, beer was never rationed. Complaints about beer being deliberately weakened were generally unfounded: statistics in The Brewers’ Almanack show that during the six years of the war its strength went down marginally, from 1040.93 specific gravity to 1034.54, but that the amount produced every year rose from 25,532 barrels to 32,667. Sometimes beer did run short, and publicans shut their front doors, adorned with notices saying ‘Closed’, so that they would not disappoint their regular customers who knew the way into the bar round the back. One publican, at least, was determined that agricultural workers should get their fair share:

  A man that’s working in the fields needs his beer, ’specially with the food they got to eat nowadays. But I rations ’em. I says to ’em, ‘Now look here, you want your beer regular, don’t you? Wouldn’t you rather have a pint with your dinner every day than four pints one day and three the next?’

  In the great drive to grow vegetables one of the leading figures was Cecil Henry Middleton, the first radio celebrity to talk about gardening on the BBC. In 1939 ‘Mr Middleton’ was already familiar to millions of listeners, for he had been broadcasting fifteen-minute talks called In Your Garden ever since 1931. His early talks had gone out at 7.10 on Friday evenings, but in the autumn of 1936 his slot was moved, by popular request, to 2.15 p.m. on Sundays. He also made some pioneer appearances on television, broadcasting from a specially built plot at Alexandra Palace; but when the BBC abruptly closed down its television service on the outbreak of war (in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon), he extended his wireless series to embrace the Dig for Victory campaign, which he was chosen to launch.

  There was something immensely reassuring about his voice and manner. He addressed listeners as if they were close friends, and so comforting was his seamless flow of advice and anecdote, of common sense and gentle humour – like that of a benevolent uncle droning on in a Northamptonshire accent – that he attracted three million listeners. His habit of pronouncing ‘herbaceous’ ‘herbyceous’ was much mimicked by music hall comedians; but research carried out in 1940 revealed that In Your Garden was easily the most popular programme of its kind. He also contributed an influential gardening column to the Daily Express, and when he appeared as Roy Plomley’s guest on Desert Island Discs in November 1943, he revealed a remarkable range of musical tastes, from Ständchen in Schubert’s Schwanengesang to the snorts, grunts and whistles of Albert Richardson in ‘The Old Sow’ (‘Susannah’s a funniful man’, etc).

  Horticulture was in Mr Middleton’s genes, for his father was Head Gardener at Weston Hall, the Sitwell family’s house in Northamptonshire, where he grew up with that formidable trio of intellectuals Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell. He began work in 1899 as a seed-boy, aged thirteen, in the Sitwells’ garden, and after a spell in the seed trade and studying at Kew Gardens, he developed a particular love of flowers; in the words of one contemporary, ‘he could not love an onion where a dahlia might grow’. But in wartime he recognized that the need for vegetables was paramount, and hoped that his regular listeners would not desert him:

  In happier days we talked of rock gardens, herbaceous borders and verdant lawns; but with the advent of war and its grim demands, these pleasant features rapidly receded into the background to make way for the all-important food crops … Presumably most of my old friends still listen when I hold forth on Leeks, Lettuces and Leatherjackets, instead of Lilac, Lilies and Lavender … These are critical times, but we shall get through them, and the harder we dig for victory, the sooner will the roses be with us again.

  Cosy as he could be, he also tried to push Government policy in the right direction by suggesting that too much of the Dig for Victory effort was being concentrated on people in towns and cities, whereas country-dwellers had far more space in which to expand their output. He also acted as an adviser and writer for Boots, which then promoted itself as ‘The Gardener’s Chemist’. For the most part, his radio talks were a mixture of practical advice and accounts of his own recent experience, burbling gently on from one subject to another:

  I wonder how many of you have sprayed your potatoes this year? I’m afraid we didn’t get much suitable weather for the job after early July, and a good many of the crops must have been missed. It’s no use talking about it now, of course … I have noticed a good many white butterflies about and you know what that means – caterpillars on the brussels and other greens if something isn’t done about it. I find a tennis racket a very good thing for swatting white butterflies. I’m getting quite expert at it and developing quite a good overarm stroke, but even so, you can’t swat them all.

  When a small book of his talks was published in 1942, it faithfully preserved the ambling gait of the broadcasts. Page
after page went by without a new paragraph, which made things rather tiring for the reader; but this did nothing to deter his fans, and the book has been reprinted several times. What shines through it is the author’s inexhaustible enthusiasm for all aspects of garden work, his attention to detail, and his willingness to describe even the most basic processes. His instructions for digging new ground remain precise and perfect:

  Cut each spadeful out neatly, not more than six inches at a time, drive the spade in vertically to its full length and turn it completely over, leaving it like that without chopping it up or trying to leave a neat surface; the rougher you leave autumn digging the better, with plenty of holes and spaces for the frost and snow to get into it.

  It seems sad that he was shabbily treated, first by Hitler and then by the BBC, for whom he worked. His house in Surbiton was destroyed by a bomb, forcing him to go and live with relatives in Northamptonshire. When he fell ill with bronchitis, and a stand-in had to read his script, his fee was reduced; and when he put in a claim for extra petrol coupons, necessitated by his constant travelling, the BBC dismissed it as ‘grabbing’. The Corporation also prevented him from taking part in the radio Brains Trust on the grounds that he was ‘an amateur expert’. In contrast, millions of citizens were grateful for his unfailingly cheerful and practical advice – but he only just survived the war. When he died of a sudden heart attack outside his home in London on 18 September 1945, tributes, written and floral, poured in from all over Britain. The historian Philip Ziegler considered that ‘he did as much as anyone to convince doubters that running an allotment was a pleasant and profitable pursuit’.

  Lord Woolton’s time as Minister of Food ended in November 1943, when, to his great disappointment, Churchill moved him on to become Minister of Reconstruction. But his skill in feeding the nation for three such difficult years was demonstrated by the fact that, in spite of rationing – or perhaps because of it – the population ended the war in better health than they had enjoyed before. Children were taller and heavier, and their teeth were in better condition, mainly due to the shortage of sugar and sweets. Infant mortality rates had fallen, and civilians were living longer. Hitler killed 60,000 Britons by bombing, but the war left the survivors in better shape than ever.

  Nine

  Girls to the Fields

  End, in the language of a farm, is another word for

  beginning. Work without end. Amen.

  Rachel Knappett, Land Girl

  Even before the onset of hostilities, the urgent need for more labour on farms spurred the Government to resuscitate the Women’s Land Army, originally founded in 1914. In spite of its title, the WLA was an army only in the sense of it being a large force, and its unarmed soldiers were known as Land Girls. When the Ministry of Agriculture put out a call for 10,000 women to work on the land, there was an enormous response: by September 1939 more than 17,000 women had applied. Many old rustics were sceptical, if not downright antagonistic. Women working on the land? The idea was ridiculous, and entirely inappropriate. Women, they said, could manage light farm work like milking or feeding chickens or weeding crops, but they were simply not strong enough to pitch sheaves onto a cart or control a bull or haul a tractor out of a bog.

  Ignoring insults, girls applied to join in droves – and at first there were far more than the county committees could place: the organization was overwhelmed by sheer numbers, and many of the applicants had to wait months before finding a post. By November only 1000 had gone to jobs on farms. Nevertheless, the WLA was in being, and the army climbed rapidly to a peak strength of 80,000 in 1943.

  The honorary head of the organization – its Commander-in-Chief – was the formidable Lady Denman (generally known as Trudie), pioneer of birth control, passionately keen hunting woman, first President of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, and wife of Lord Denman, former Governor-General of Australia (it was she who had named the capital of Australia Canberra at a ceremony in March 1913). The WLA was organized on a county basis, but its administrative headquarters were at the C-in-C’s home, Balcombe Place, a substantial early Victorian house in Sussex.

  When the fifty-strong staff arrived for the first time at Balcombe station, their train was met by a fleet of cars, including Trudie’s Rolls-Royce, ready to ferry them to their new quarters; and at the house, while they waited for bedrooms to be allocated, they were refreshed with cocktails. ‘Never did staff enjoy pleasanter surroundings or a friendlier atmosphere for their work,’ wrote Trudie’s biographer Gervas Huxley. They could swim, play tennis, darts and ping-pong, pick flowers in the garden and dance in the music room. Not surprisingly, ten days after they had arrived, Lord Denman moved out and took up residence in a hotel. But if Trudie pampered her headquarter staff, she also, like a mother hen, adopted a fiercely protective attitude towards the huge army which she had helped to create, defending the girls against attacks from misogynistic farmers on the land and hostile bureaucrats in Whitehall. She herself moved freely around the country, lending moral and administrative support to the county branches, and in 1941 she wrote to the Queen asking if she would become the Land Army’s Patron – a suggestion Her Majesty accepted at once.

  Joining the WLA could be a daunting experience. Having never left home before, many of the girls were apprehensive about going on long journeys, especially as they had no control over where they would be sent: they might be suddenly dispatched to the far end of the country. Sixteen-year-old Grace Wallace, from Blackpool, abruptly found herself at Aberystwyth, on the west coast of Wales. ‘I looked all around,’ she remembered, ‘and all I could see were hills. I felt so trapped in.’

  One volunteer from Derby, who weighed only eight stone, was greeted at her destination with a blast of sarcasm. ‘What have they sent you for?’ demanded the farmer. To which she retorted, ‘There’s many a big potato rotten’ – and when she left he apologized, admitting that she and her colleagues had worked very well.

  Recruiters naturally preferred farmers’ daughters, or girls who had lived on the land and understood country matters; but nearly a third came from towns and cities. Their first hurdle was an interview, and nineteen-year-old Emily Braidwood was surprised to be summoned to an office in Oxford Street, in the West End of London, where she sat in front of a lady with what she called ‘a five-pound-note voice’ (perhaps it was Lady Denman herself, who also had a house in London):

  She wore a beautiful silk dress, a silk scarf, and she twirled a gold pencil continuously in her long fingers as she fired a barrage of questions at me. She wanted to know if I thought it was all feeding chickens, with lovely weather. I responded: ‘I have been hop-picking, you know, since the age of three.’ She jumped back as if I had fleas … I left the interview thinking ‘That’s that.’ I felt elated when I received a letter to say I had been accepted.

  After the interview and a medical examination Emily was issued with her uniform – fawn-coloured aertex shirt, stout corduroy breeches with a flap-down front, dark green pullover, knee-length woollen socks, overalls, an overcoat, an oilskin and a fawn felt hat embroidered with the WLA badge. Everyone hated the breeches, partly because they were so stiff that at first the wearer could hardly sit down, but – worse – because they increased the apparent size of one’s behind.

  Along with a dozen other girls from all parts of England, Emily took the train to Clacton-on-Sea, where the party was met by a lady with a clipboard from the Women’s Institute and sent off to various billets. Emily found herself lodging with Mrs Wagstaff, a genteel widow with three sons, in a village called Little Clacton. Mrs Wagstaff was friendly enough, but ‘there was a kind of hostility in the village. Servicemen were accepted – not the Land Girls’, and the girls felt that their host was brave to take them in.

  Next morning they went into action. Having broken the ice on their water jugs for a wash at 6.30, they were picked up by a lorry and driven out to a distant field, where the farm foreman held up two enormous sugar beets, one in each hand, demonstr
ating how to bang them together to knock off the half-frozen mud. Another task was to decapitate the beets with a billhook before throwing them onto a heap. After the first hour or so there was almost a mutiny – but the girls settled down and got on with it.

  Sugar beet was their most hated crop – and the horror of dealing with it was vividly described by Mary Schofield, who abandoned office life in Leeds for a farm in the plain of York:

  Row upon row of wet, muddy beet, half ploughed out but still needing a good tug to free them from the sticky earth. Working backwards up a field, and pulling two rows at a time, one with each hand. Every time I took a step backwards the leaves emptied half their rainwater down the tops of my boots, and every time I pulled a couple of beet they poured water over my hands and arms and dungarees. Banging them together to remove as much of the soil as possible, of course added mud to my dungarees too.

  All over England recruiting went swiftly ahead. Muriel Berzins, who worked in a grocer’s shop, became convinced that she would go mad if she ‘became old counting food coupons’. So when a friend came home from the WLA looking tanned and fit, she too joined – even though, being less than five feet tall, she caused great hilarity when smothered by her new uniform. Young women from towns and cities adapted with extraordinary speed, happy to cut their nails short, abandon rings and other jewellery, and sleep in wooden bunks. For day after day they weeded rows of turnips or swedes, dug drains, cut back hedges, planted potatoes and cabbages, pruned fruit trees, helped with hay and harvest, killed rats, milked cows by hand, looked after calves. Some farmers admitted that they were better than men with livestock, and that animals responded well to their gentler care – but often they became exhausted. One girl who milked twice a day in Devon would fall asleep in a chair after tea with her hands still going up and down.