Scotland’s Land Girls: Breeches, Bombers and Backaches ed. by Elaine M. Edwards (review)

During World War II, the British government recruited females ages seventeen and up for the Women’s Land Army, a volunteer civilian organization formed to improve Britain’s food supply during wartime by having women replace men called up for military service. Although the Women’s Land Army in Britain was formed in 1917 and lasted until 1950, it is mostly associated with World War II, during which time membership peaked at more than 80,000. Some 8500 of those Land Girls worked in Scotland, mostly on dairy farms in the Lowlands. There, they helped raise livestock and produce and harvest crops, thus helping feed the nation during a time of food scarcity. In Scotland’s Land Girls: Breeches, Bombers and Backaches, a dozen former “Land Girls” provide vivid first-person accounts—some written, some oral—of their time in the Scottish Women’s Land Army.

Scotland’s Land Girls describes how the Girls received uniforms and several weeks’ training in dairy, poultry, and harvesting. They were then dispatched to farms, where, among other tasks, they groomed lambs, milked cattle, cleaned dairy equipment, spread manure, hauled stones, turned hay with pitchforks, and cleaned and oiled farm implements. They did most work manually, at a time before the widespread use of hay-balers and other mechanized farm equipment.

The Land Girls worked up to fifty hours a week, for which they were paid a paltry twenty-eight shillings. There was little effort to match their abilities with certain kinds of work, and their living conditions varied greatly, from “stately homes and purpose-built hostels to accommodation that was similar to a nineteenth-century bothy [hut], without a bath or another Land Girl for miles for company” (21). In addition, the Girls matter-of-factly described on-the-job hardships. One described a horse stomping his hoof on her heel, recalling, “It was agonizing. My heel was blistered and became very swollen” (34). While washing milk bottles and machinery, another Girl noted that “the freezing cold of the rinsing water in the dead of winter caused the hacks and raw hands that pained me till the coming of spring” (39). Delivering milk year-round, even “in howling winds and in ice and snow,” resulted in itching, burning blisters, and inflammation on hands and feet (41). Cow-milking began at 4 a.m., fieldwork at harvest time could run until 9 p.m., and workers often endured mud-encrusted eyes and lips from wind-blown dust.

One might cringe with pity reading these passages, but, as it turns out, all twelve subjects look back on their Land Army years fondly and nostalgically. Among the reasons that Land Girls signed up were a desire to get away from home, to work with animals, and to have new experiences and independence. In many ways, it was a hugely liberating time for them, as they shouldered the responsibility of operating heavy equipment, working with plough horses, and repairing machinery with scant supplies (one fixed a balky gearshift using only a screwdriver). Many met like-minded females, formed lifelong friendships, thrived on the satisfaction of hard work, and felt a sense of shared purpose during wartime. A number of them stayed on as Land Girls for years after the war ended. In one of the book’s interviews, former Land Girl Mona McLeod said, “The Land Army opened up a whole new world for me. The long-term effect of this was a wonderful escape from the very narrow life in which I had been brought up” (129). Another, Jean Forbes Paterson, wrote that, “even when doing the most mundane jobs, we managed to sing, laugh and enjoy life with all its ups and downs” (39). The book’s editor, Elaine Edwards, notes that the Girls “possessed a certain stoicism and...