Essex Land Girls
Page 5
Where gardening was concerned, training included how to pick weevils out of beans and how to plant tomatoes in greenhouses. From March 1942, members of the Timber Corps would learn how to measure wood, to use a circular saw, to fell timber with an axe, and to light a fire. There were also correspondence courses advertised in The Land Girl, the WLA magazine, with such titles as ‘Elements of Agriculture’. Classes in first aid and firefighting were initiated, and those wanting promotion within the WLA could take a foreman’s course at Writtle and other locations, or move on to such specialisms as hedge laying or thatching. An intensive practical and theoretical gardening course was held in 1942 for ten selected WLA gardeners in Essex.
New courses were introduced from time to time. The Land Girl of December 1943 mentions new first aid and firefighting classes in Essex, and refers to training courses for leaders and for pest destruction training as being ‘in full swing, with seventy-two leaders in charge of small gangs in every district’. Plenty of proficiency badges and certificates were on offer from 1944 for those who took the work seriously enough. However, when there was a great demand (such as at harvest time), many girls were sent off without training.
For those who were going to be working on dairy farms, a training device for milking was developed for the WLA – the ‘Mark One’. This was known as ‘Daisy’ and was made of canvas and wood, with two girls being able to be trained at the same time, one on each side!
East Ender Jill Macey trained on a real cow, however, in Herne Bay, Kent, according to Lynda Burrows’ article in the Suffolk Review. The 17 year old’s first attempt ‘produced four ounces from a cow that usually gave four gallons at a time’ but she ‘quickly improved, and was sent to a farm in Wickham Bishops with twenty cows’ all milked by hand. Gwen Thorogood told her husband, Geoff, that she had some training on a farm at Matching Green in 1940 by the ‘aristocratic owners’, and then worked with the Aston family at Truelove’s Farm, Ingatestone, ‘milking pedigree red polls’ with some back-breaking experiences.
A rather unusual approach to training was an account reported by Michael Foley in Essex, Ready for Anything. He tells of Joan Francis being not only interviewed at home (in Thorpe-le-Soken) by the Essex Land Army welfare superintendent (her local WLA representative), but also being trained by her at her own home. She learned to muck out bullock pens, collect eggs, make butter, and pluck turkeys, although it may be that not all of this training took place in the one location, as Joan worked at Ray Park in Woodford and on a farm in Beaumont (or Beaumont-cum-Moze), nearer home.
Practical and oral examinations took place in a number of branches of the WLA’s work, although these do not seem to have been obligatory. Proficiency certificates were awarded in the following:
• Milking/dairy work
• General farm work
• Poultry
• Tractor driving
• Outside garden and glasshouse work
• Fruit work
• Pest destruction
Courses for those who were ambitious and wanted to train as forewomen involved practical work such as hoeing, laying a hedge, fencing, grooming a horse, and setting a gang to work. There were also lectures on agriculture and the cow and on first aid, farm management, War Ag committee organisation, income tax and sick pay, etc. Machinery, too (tractor, plough, cultivator, disc harrow, hay rake, binder and everything else they might encounter on a farm), had to be seen at work and explained.
The stories of those who do remember their training follow:
Kathy Firmin
I remember my lessons in tractor driving at a school near Wickford … I was told to ‘drive as close to that ditch as you can get’ and I got so close that I ended up in it, in the ditch. But I managed to get it out of the ditch, and was told I deserved a medal, because no one had ever managed that before. This became my favourite job while in the Land Army.
Barbara Rix
I was sent to an agricultural college in Sussex [from Leyton] to train for six weeks. There were about 80 other girls at the college. We all did a session on horses, cows, small animals, everything really, and they decided what we were best at. On my first day with shire horses, I couldn’t believe they had such big feet! At the end of our training, we were all assembled together and told where we were going. My friend and I both ended up in Essex. She was sent to Woodham Ferrers, and I went to Wix, near Colchester, which all the girls envied because Colchester was a barrack town. But I was the only one on the station in the pouring rain when I arrived, and greeted by ‘Are you the Land Girl? Come with me.’ He was the farmer, and I was the only Land Girl on the farm. [Not so much to be envious about at this stage …]
Rita Hoy
After completing my application at Writtle to join the Women’s Timber Corps [1942] I was accepted for one month’s training and knew that I would need to work all over the country. The training took place near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk for one month, with full board provided and 10s per week. I didn’t like the sound of the wages, less than I had been earning [in an office]. There were 120 of us at Bury St Edmunds station, all in our new uniforms, and we were transported by coaches to the training camp, a small place surrounded by huge forests. Accommodation was in ten wooden huts, twelve girls to a hut, from all over the U.K. The beds were palliasses on wooden planks, with army blankets. The wash basins were made of lead, located in tin huts with concrete floors and no privacy.
Although members of the WLA were not subject to military discipline:
There were lots of rules: you had to report back before 10 p.m. and there was a 6 a.m. bell for P.T. [physical training]. Breakfast at 7 a.m. was usually watery porridge and scrambled, powdered eggs with bread and marge. Then you had to tidy the hut and make the bed and then report to open-sided lorries in the yard which would take you to the woods. Mrs Jackson was the Superintendent in charge of the camp, a very stern lady with tweeds, brogues and horn-rimmed glasses. Mr Davis was in charge once we were in the woods, and he was kind, though also strict, a forester. When we got on to the lorry, we were each given a big black tin box with our lunch, and we had to make our tea in a billy-can after making a fire. Lunch was usually paste sandwiches, a brown roll and a lump of cheese, but we had a meal when we got back to camp around 5.30 after a wash and tidy.
The first lesson was how to cut a V-shaped piece of wood from the base of a tree, and I still have the piece of larch wood cut from my first tree. Then I was shown how to saw a tree into logs for pit props, learning to use a cross-cut saw – ‘pull, don’t push’.
Training for the Timber Corps was obviously more in-depth than for many members of the WLA, and Rita was sent to a saw mill to:
… learn how to push timber through a machine-driven saw and cut it into planks, and learned how to use a tractor, the John Deere being much easier than the larger Fordson. I also learned how to use a long-handle grapple iron to move trees with, fixing them on to the back of a tractor. One of my first trainers at the saw mill had half his fingers missing, not a good start! The last lesson was the administration – calculating and measuring the trees and timbers, which was easier for me because of my office experience. [The end of my training] resulted in promotion to sub-foreman and I went back to Essex to work at Castle Hedingham, with a billet at High Garrett, near Braintree.
Mary Page (née Nichols) on milking duty. (Courtesy of Braintree District Museum Trust)
Mary Page
I didn’t like working in the shoe department at the Romford Co-op when war started. So three of us from the Co-op signed up to the Land Army and were all sent to be trained at Northamptonshire Agricultural College. Here we were treated like royalty, had our own room, and were very lucky. I wanted to be a tractor driver, but was pointed towards the milking parlour. My friend had little hands and was always getting kicked. I was more fortunate, with big hands which were an asset. I found I could milk beautifully … I was pleased to be back in Essex, at a farm in Pebmarsh.
Mary Marsh
r /> Although training for Mary took place outside Essex, like some others, she ended up working in Essex, which was just what she wanted. She first enrolled in the Timber Corps in March 1943 and:
… was taught to use axes, crosscut saws, and circular saws for tree work in saw mills, but got thrown out through being under age and was told to re-enlist when old enough … then joined the WLA in July, with minimal training in Roydon, Hertfordshire, the job mainly learned as I went along.
Betty Shaw
Ending up in Essex, like Mary, Betty ‘travelled from Barking to Chadacre Agricultural Institute in Suffolk in October 1939, for two months’ training prior to starting work as a Land Girl and then went home to wait for a job’.
Hilda Gentry
Training at Writtle College for three weeks, Hilda’s course was ‘for pest destruction and rat catching. I learnt how to mix rat poison, how to gas rabbits, how to kill the moles with poisoned worms and how to put ferrets down holes to flush out the rabbits. But rats were the main pest in the barns’ (rats did not just eat the grain voraciously, but were known to harass livestock, and pollute drinking water and food with their droppings). She was sent out hoeing on her second day, although her only experience was on her allotment and in her garden, and received ‘training on the job’.
Uniform
The general consensus was a pride in wearing the uniform of the WLA which was sent to the girls by post on joining. The choice of a predominantly green uniform was not too popular, however, green generally being considered unlucky, but the other colours had been ‘taken’ by the rest of the services. It was certainly more flattering than that of the First World War, although the following official description may not sound particularly attractive:
• Serviceable rainproof mackintosh
• Khaki overall coat
• Two fawn shirts with turn-down collar
• Pair of corduroy breeches
• Pair of dungarees
• Green knitted pullover
• Three pairs of fawn stockings [the woolly type, more like long socks]
• Pair of heavy brown shoes
• Pair of rubber gum boots
• Brown felt hat
• Green armlet with red royal crown on it
• Badge to wear on civilian clothes
The girls were enterprising in their interpretations of the uniform, however, rolling up the breeches or dungarees to form shorts, dispensing with the stockings and adopting a variety of jaunty angles for the hat with the assistance of a steaming kettle. If you were lucky enough to have a dressmaker in the family, then you could remodel the uniform to fit, and this was not uncommon. A manual was issued to all volunteers detailing how they could make shoes waterproof and make stockings last longer, etc. but many girls mixed some civilian clothing with their uniforms – unless expecting a visit from a WLA official. In The Land Girl of August 1940, there was an article on ‘How to Wear’ the WLA hat correctly.
Looking good in uniform: Iris Jiggens (née Bush). (Courtesy of Janet Ouchterlonie)
Two years later, the misuse of uniform was attacked as an unnecessary expression of personality in the same publication. The writer argues that ‘red ribbons’ or a ‘red tie and fancy shoes’ added to the ‘uniform’ result in something that is not uniform at all, by definition. Uniform replacements were only provided free of charge if they were ‘worn out by fair wear and tear’ to the envy of some of the female farm workers. Extra items, such as ties, could be purchased with clothing coupons, bearing in mind the rationing prevailing at wartime, with ten extra clothing coupons available to replace work clothing.
Writtle College had supplies of second-hand uniforms for sale, but underwear (and even sanitary towels), which were available for other services, were not provided for members of the WLA. Armbands, incidentally, were ‘updated’ to represent the length of service with an extra ‘half-diamond’ for each six months’ experience, and a special one after two years’ continuous and satisfactory service.
Caring for the uniform was stressed in many issues of The Land Girl. An anonymous ‘Committee Member’, writing from Essex in April 1942, refers to a visit:
… to a hostel … with the Chairman of the local War Agricultural Committee, a farmer. The girls were complaining of their worn gum boots and showed them to us. In no case were they really worn – holes had been made by treading on stubs, or by side-shoots tearing them whilst hedging and ditching. Quite a number of soles were coming away from the uppers, but the farmer said he was sure this was caused by drying them against a fire. The girls on my farm, who have worked in the land for years, tell me that a pair of gum boots will last for a year at least.
Babs Newman was proud enough of her uniform to wear it ‘to local dances’, and kept the smarter parts of the uniform for ‘walking out’, i.e. ‘brogues, breeches, jumper, hat and tie’. As for Hilda Gentry, she favoured ‘the “trench” coat, just like an army officer’ but was less keen on the ‘army boots’. More practical memories were detailed by Florence Rawlings, who remembers ‘darning my socks [or ‘stockings’] till they were nearly all darn … with dungarees that were far too big’, but she felt the uniform was generally ‘smart … so I was pleased to keep it clean’.
The arrival of her uniform was something ‘exciting’ for Eva Parratt, while for Doreen Morey, the uniform ‘arrived in dribs and drabs’, including ‘gum boots that didn’t fit [but I] had to squeeze into them … and an ankle-length mac which was much too big’. Rita Hoy mentioned a beret rather than a hat, to distinguish her role in the Timber Corps.
From Thorpe Bay, Maude Hansford trained initially at Bishops Stortford in Hertfordshire, where she remembers that uniform supplies were deficient. For starters, there were not enough gumboots, which seemed to be only available ‘for those working in the milking sheds’, meaning the girls wore ‘boys’ boots and gaiters’. Maude also recalls that the initial waterproof macs ‘had leaky seams’, although these were eventually replaced by sturdier coats. As for Jean Watsham, it seems that she did not, in reality, join the WLA herself, but her older sisters did, and she shared not only their work experiences but also their uniform because it meant she could sometimes get in ‘half price to a dance or cinema’.
Where hairstyles were concerned, short hair became more and more the practical option both for Land Girls and for munition workers. For those who couldn’t face the chop, film star Veronica Lake was recruited for a short propaganda film meant to popularise victory rolls, which kept the hair out of the face. The WLA manual produced in 1941, by W.E. Shewell-Cooper, even comments on the use of make-up, suggesting it was toned down to avoid being conspicuous, except for ‘parties and local village dances’ – and points out that volunteers would ‘get such a healthy colour’ that ‘rouging will not be necessary’.
Home from Home
Living away from home was a new experience for most of the young girls who joined the WLA. Many girls lived in billets during their time in the WLA, some in a number of different places, moving around as required, and some stayed for the duration in one location, travelling by bike or lorry to different farms, with bikes often provided by the WLA.
Around half their wage was deducted for board and lodging, although some were lucky enough to be able to travel home on a daily basis. When conscription brought in more members from 1942, the War Ag provided hostels, some requisitioned and some purpose-built. These would accommodate mobile labour gangs, and the girls were frequently paid by the War Ag and not, as previously, by the farmer.
The first Land Girl ‘settlement’ in Essex was at Cranham, visited by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr R.S. Hudson) in the summer of 1941, and reported in the Essex Chronicle on 11 July: ‘The girls, about twenty of them, are happy and contented … Most of them are town girls, and they have acclimatised themselves to the new conditions.’ By April 1942, a report in The Land Girl mentions ‘eight barrack hostels, one hutment, and eight house hostels’ in Essex, with a December 1943 refer
ence to ‘33 hostels and three more due to open over the next six weeks’.
One of the larger, livelier hostels was in Church Road, Thundersley, near St Peter’s church. Iris Jiggens often spoke fondly of the ‘lively hostel in Thundersley run by Mrs Hodgson’ where she lived with dozens of other Land Girls. This hostel is where Betty Cloak from Leigh was billeted, and where Emma Shaw, from nearby Kenneth Road, worked as a cook; both remembered by descendants still in the area. Joyce Willsher also mentions the Thundersley hostel in her accounts of her Land Army days, and Eva Parratt wrote that this hostel had ‘wooden bunks … I remember my bunk split down the middle’.
Betty Cloak (née Ryan) at the hostel in Thundersley. (Courtesy of Ray Sinclair)
Aged just 16, Jean Levesque (who eventually settled in the United States) wrote of arriving at Mark Hall in Harlow:
A beautiful driveway leading to the house … turned over for the Land Army [with] a great many huge rooms [and] a great many girls … We had bunk beds, 14 girls to a room [and] I was right near the windows [with] a lovely view of the countryside. It was beautiful. There was a large room for entertaining … we were always well chaperoned and had to be in by 10 p.m. I recall a huge room where we lined up for our meals, which were very good. Outside in the lovely estate, we used to have walks and picnics …
Others wrote of the huge pond and great marble fireplaces in what was (in 1943) the largest hostel in Essex. On the opening day in September, Mrs Solly-Flood, the organising secretary for Essex, greeted the girls on their arrival, following their march from Harlow Station. She gave a speech emphasising their role in the community, and met the warden and the ‘head girl’. Even the Bishop of Chelmsford managed to fit in a visit to the hostel, such was its standing.