Land Army girls
Hello Richard,
Just behind my childhood home in Rutland was an old Land Army camp. It took the form of a Nissen Hut and a brick built water tower.
Many of the middle aged ladies in the village had been in the Land Army and had arrived in the village through becoming members of the Land Army.
Mrs Day, Mrs Green, Mrs Nash, Mrs Harris etc. etc. These were some of the nicest, hardest working ladies one could imagine, and they stuck together for years after the war in the way they had as Land Girls in the war.
Mrs Day used to look after me, and came to own the camp, which she turned into a house.
They used to tell the most amusing tales of events in and around the camp.
The Land girls comprised a real mix of girls coming from all walks of life, and many came from urban slum dwellings, who had never seen the countryside, whilst others came from richer backgrounds and really struggled to cope with the mud, cold and physical work.
Italian and German prisoners of war made up the other part of the workforce.
In 1945 the local village football team was comprised of 9 Germans & two 16 year old villagers.
The Germans were kept in a hutted prison camp, but the Italian's bedded down in farm barns. One of these barns still had lovely murals on its walls as late as the 1970's, when I last climbed into the hayloft.
Regards
Nick Balmer
|