Land Girls and Their Impact, Ann Kramer

Land Girls & Their Impact, Ann Kramer

For a long time after the Second World War the Land Girls justifiably saw themselves as members of a forgotten army. In recent years that has changed - in 2000 members of the Land Army were finally invited to join the Remembrance Day march at the Cenotaph, and at the end of 2007 a special badge was awarded to the surviving land girls.

Kramer begins with a look at the Land Army of the First World War, formed in 1917 at the high of the first U-boat crisis partly to better organise the large number of women already working on the land. She then moves on to look at the revival of the Land Army just before the start of the Second World War, before moving onto to a series of thematically organised chapters, looking at recruitment, the girls themselves, the work, the timber workers, daily life, the reaction the land girls inspired in the rural communities they were working in and finally love and romance. She then finishes with a look at the way the end of the war impacted on the land girls (the Land Army remained in existence for much longer than I had realised), and a final chapter reflecting on the impact of the Land Army and the way it has been remembered since.

The well written and well organised text is supported by material provided by thirteen former land girls, either in interviews or in written form, and from shorter interviews with another eight land girls. Their memories, supported by extracts from various wartime publications, are at the heart of the success of this book, which should help to maintain the current level of interest in the Land Girls.

Chapters
1 First Time Around
2 War Returns
3 Recruitment and Propaganda
4 Who Were the Land Girls?
5 Working on the Land
6 The Lumber Jills
7 Living with Others
8 Acceptance and Prejudice
9 Love, Sex and Romance
10 End of War
11 Reflections

Author: Ann Kramer
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 183
Publisher: Remember When
Year: 2009


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