- “Back to the Land” is one of a number of songs written for land girls to sing. This one was part of a land army opera written by two talented Surrey members. Miss P. Adkins (words, with assistance from J. Moncreiff) and Mrs. E.K. Loring (music). A recording of the official WLA song can be downloaded here, from Stuart Antrobus’ site on the Bedfordshire Women’s Land Army.
- The poetry section of this site shares a range of poems reflecting on time in the WLA. ‘Remember Us’ by Hilda Gibson is particularly poignant.
- The hymn ‘We plough the fields and scatter the good seed’ is very appropriate and
- Laurie Lee’s description of the WLA, from ‘Land at War’ paints an evocative picture of Land Girls.
This young, sun-tanned, green-sweatered, cord-breeched army of one-time shop girls, typists, mannequins, mill girls, hairdressers, parlourmaids, was throughout the war in the forefront of the battle. They figured in every ordeal and triumph wartime farming has had to offer. They filled the early gaps in manpower. They drove their ploughs on the winter pastures of 1939; they were the spearhead tractor-drivers of countless tough reclamation jobs; they went through all the campaigns of winter and summer, struggling with storm and mud, milking, sowing, harvesting, threshing, living in wild unfamiliar parts of the country, among strangers and stranger ways, often completely cut off from the world in which they had been brought up. An army of girls, tackling a life which many a man would find exhausting, suffering from callouses, chilblains, and aching bones, but buoyed up all the time by an extraordinary curiosity and devotion for those tasks which seemed to be, somehow, so much more virtual than the aimless jobs of the city and factory to which so many had been accustomed.