Paying to the tribute to the women who kept the nation ticking over during the war

Jan 28 2008 By Mari Jones

WORKING in the Women’s Land Army may not have been the most glamorous of jobs during the Second World War, but without these young women this country would have starved into submission.

With the country at war and all able-bodied men needed to fight, there was a shortage of labour to work on farms and in other jobs on the land.

At the same time it was becoming increasingly difficult to get food imported from abroad, so more land needed to be farmed to provide home-grown food. The Women’s Land Army provided much of the labour force to work this land.

The advertising slogan read "For a healthy, happy job join the Women’s Land Army". In reality, the work was hard and dirty and the hours were long.

Some of the girls received training before they were sent to farms; the farmers themselves trained others.

The Timber Corps was set up to teach women to make pit props, necessary for working in mines, which then had to be loaded onto lorries and transported to the mining areas.

The girls of the Land Army looked after animals, ploughed the fields, dug up potatoes, harvested the crops, killed the rats, dug and hoed for 48 hours a week in the winter and 50 hours a week in the summer.

As there wasn’t enough machinery to go round they often had to work with old-fashioned equipment, such as horse- drawn hand ploughs, and to harvest crops by hand.

By 1944 there were 80,000 women volunteers working on the land. The majority already lived in the countryside but around a third came from Britain’s cities.

One former land girl who worked for The Timber Corps was Augusta Jones, who although is now living in a retirement home, lived with her husband Ieuan in Pen y Bryn, Llanfairfechan.

Ieuan had been discharged from the Army and started working at the forestry where Augusta had been sent.

The couple have been married an astonishing 64 years, and Ieuan describes the mother of their four children as an "amazing cook who could cook anything and who kept the house spotless!".

He said: "We met in Corris, which is a little place outside Machynlleth, and we both worked in forestry. We had to plant little trees in the nursery, replant them on the hillside and cut the trees down.

"It was hard, gruelling work but the women did a fantastic job. The timber went mostly to the mines, as all the metal was taken out of the roofs because every scrap was needed for the war effort."

Ieuan, who is 86, and Augusta, 87, were married in 1943 and honeymooned in Llandudno. They have three grandchildren and four great- grandchildren.

Augusta, who is in a home in Menai Bridge, is visited by her husband every other day, and he misses her.

He says: "We’re very fond of each other, I miss her Welsh cakes, apple and gooseberry pies and it was always wonderful at Christmas when the family was together.

"I hope she gets a Land Army medal as she deserves it, they all do. It would make me and the family very proud."