backs to the land

to help to feed the nation. Most were as green as the verdant surroundings into which they were transplanted.

They had to learn new skills, turning their hands to everything that the departed workforce regarded as second nature - milking cows, ploughing fields, cleaning pigsties and harvesting crops. Many took to the country life with alacrity, married farmers and never returned; for others the transition was more traumatic.

They were united by a common cause, yet until relatively recently felt ignored and under-appreciated. It was only thanks to the efforts of the Queen Mother that they were allowed to take part in the annual remembrance parades in their trademark uniform of green jerseys and fawn breeches.

Two chroniclers have sung their praises - Nicola Tyrer's They Fought in the Fields, and Angela Huth's The Land Girls, which forms the basis of a new film by director David Leland, and features Anna Friel, Rachel Weisz and Catherine McCormack.

''If you go into any farming community you can feel their enduring legacy - they often married and settled down there,'' says Leland. ''In my village the building where they billeted more than 50 girls was still known as the Land Army House until it was knocked down a year ago. Up the road was an RAF camp, and the girls wreaked havoc in terms of the degree of sexual and social anarchy, and the mixing of classes. Women on the land tended to be restricted to potato picking, planting and fruit picking, but in the war they took on traditional male tasks by driving tractors, ploughing fields and so on. Some

of the girls I talked to were a bit reserved about the film. They said: ''You won't portray us as people who only wanted to have a

wild time. We did a lot of work, you know.'' And they did.

''They fed us when food was a serious problem. Because we used to feed ourselves from the Empire, agriculture was never taken seriously. With the blockade we had to grow food everywhere, even on road-sides. Everywhere was being ploughed up. I was intrigued how ordinary lives are affected by extraordinary events. They came from every walk of life, and were thrown together

in a totally unknown environment, often away from home for the very first time.'' Leland ensured that his actresses could turn their hands properly to all the tasks undertaken by the Land Army. McCormack mastered driving an old tractor, Friel took on milking and Weisz threshed corn. They lived together in war-time camaraderie in deepest Devon. ''There was no way I was going to have actors who could not be convincing about doing the work. Even the farmers who helped us were proud of them in the end,'' says Leland.

Friel warmed to her acting assignment. She says: ''It represented a huge turning point for women. Women were stuck back in the kitchen again in the fifties because I think it scared people how much we could do. Rachel and I lived together in Devon for three months . . . Catherine was just up the road. We learned how to milk cows and drive tractors and thresh, and so on.'' And those characters spilled over into real life.

It was real life for three of the original

girls, all now in their seventies: Elsie McIlree (nee Paterson) from Milngavie, Heather Balderstone (Browne) from Orkney, and Doreen Mitchell (Scott) from the Borders, who all share memories and experiences of lives that were changed for ever. These are their remarkable stories.

Doreen Mitchell of Hendeland, Cappercleugh, near Peebles, liked it so much down on the farm that decided to stay. She married the farmer's son, produced a family of four, and now lives near the same farm her son runs. She gazes out over rolling Border countryside near St Mary's Loch where she arrived as a city exile.

I was working in the public libraries in Edinburgh when the call-up came. I had been on a harvesting holiday with a friend which gave me the idea of joining the Land Army. It's hard to believe, but they said there were no places, and sent me to train in Glasgow as a naval fitter. I worked in Rosyth Dockyard, which meant getting up at 4.30am to take a bus up from home in Leith to Waverley to join the train over to Rosyth to start work at 6.30. Work officially stopped at 4.30pm, but there were no trains until 6.30pm so you just worked on and they gave you overtime. I was making a lot of money but I was not happy.

I hated the job - it was monotonous. Fitter? Futter was more like it. You just filed away at little bits of metal.

I applied again for the Land Army. I was interviewed, and told this time that I could go. So I went to the shop steward at the yard, but he said: ''Oh, you cannot get out of the dockyard, the only way is if you are pregnant.'' Eventually I demanded to see someone in authority, who said didn't I realise that the government had spent #350 training me to be a fitter? I pointed out I would be working a damn sight harder on the land than I was there, and for less money. They let me go.

I had the choice of going into a hostel or on a farm. I took the farm because I felt I would get more into it. If you were in a hostel you were taken from one farm to another. I was sent down to Kelso to Chatto, a hill farm, which was right up in the Teviots. I was there for a year, until the farmer sold it, and as his successor did not need a land girl I was sent to Hendeland where I have been prisoner of war ever since.

I arrived in 1945, and married in 1950; my husband was the farmer's son, Jim Mitchell. I have a grandson up there now, and he is the seventh James Mitchell on the farm. Earlier

in the war when I was at Leith Academy we were evacuated and my mother and brothers and sisters were sent to Selkirk where I went

to school for a bit. Then I was sent back

here again as a land girl - I must have been meant to stay.

I was flung in at the deep end. The young herd showed me how to milk. By the time I came to Hendeland I was more experienced. On a hill farm everyone does everything - there were no specific duties. I went from being a 9st weakling to 11st, perhaps because of the good food and the healthy exercise.

The uniform must have been designed by people who had never had to work . . . something ladies thought you should wear. I mean, you can imagine it was not exactly quick to put on and all those laces on the boots. You could apply for Wellington boots but they were in scarce supply. Those big coats were too heavy to wear.

The best job was the milking. I hated all the tedious tasks but I didn't mind the heavy work. At Chatto on my 21st birthday, I was working up in one of the high fields, spreading muck. The farmer, who was quite stout, came trudging up with a telegram. He thought it might be bad news . . . but it was from mum and dad wishing me Happy Birthday. And he had to pay the one shilling and sixpence delivery charge. We were allowed to do most things: the only ritual I was shielded from

was the castrating of the lambs. That was not deemed appropriate for a young lady.

They said in the library that I would never stick it in the country. I had always been a good-time girl, enjoying going to the dances. But the lack of city life didn't bother me: you went to whist drives, and little dances in the country halls to raise funds for the Red Cross and so on. One of my best memories is of walking over the hill from this farm to a village called Pennymuir in the full moon, carrying baskets of goodies for a hostess whist. I was and still am a great reader, and I became keen on photography after buying a camera for five shillings.

News of the war filtered through. The local paper usually had all the results of the Highland Show on the front page - and you had to read about some war disaster on the back page. VE Day was no big celebration - we were just pleased it was all over, but nothing much actually happened.

By this time I was really enjoying the job. And I'd

met Jim. It wasn't exactly a whirlwind romance: we became engaged in 1947 and married three years later. When he was

in his cups after a

dram or two he would tell people: I remember Doreen coming to Hendeland with my mother who went to meet her in Selkirk.

She arrived in the steading and was the

most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Well,

as I kept telling people, he would say that because up to that point he had never seen anything but sheep.''

Elsie McIlree was living in Partick when she was called up in 1942, aged 18. Miss Paterson, as she was then, had just started a secretarial job in an office - and found herself on her way to a farm at Colm Bay near Aberdeen. Now she and her husband Bill live in a compact modern home in Milngavie - but the outlook is distinctly rural.

I was called up and told to go to some office or other. You had to decide if you

had any preference. For some unknown reason I said The Land Army. It was either that or the Wrens, because I had a brother in the Navy. I had my medical and was given my papers with instructions to go to a training centre at Grantown-on-Spey. There you had to fill barrows with logs and carry them miles and if they fell you had to start all over again. The idea was to toughen you up. It certainly did.

You were given some say over where you wanted to go. I chose the Aberdeen area because I'd been on holiday there as a child. From then I was on my own. I was the only land girl on a dairy farm. One of the first things I did was to learn how to drive. We milked cows by hand, cooled the milk, bottled it, and then I did a milk round to deliver it

all. In the winter it was horrific trying to drive out to the main road - you always had a pail of sand and chains.

It was certainly rather different from sitting behind a desk. You were up at 4.45 in the morning. The owner was a gentleman farmer, and a local JP who was on all sorts of committees. He was terrified of cattle, and

he would not go near any of them. His nephew ran the farm for him, with a couple

of byre men, and two schoolboys who came in to help out.

When I used to deliver the milk every door would be open and you walked right in. They could tell me at eight in the morning what

had gone on at midnight. It was one of these gossipy little villages where everyone knew everybody else's business.

By the time I came out in the morning the byremen already had cleaned out the byre and were washing the cows. My first job was to start on the milking. We milked them, then we had a machine for cooling the milk, and we bottled it. We would put it into the van, and then I went for breakfast, before starting the deliveries. Sometimes I had to go to Aberdeen to buy pig meal or feeding stuff for the animals or hens.

In the afternoons you were out in the fields, and then you would come back for the afternoon milking. I would finish about 5pm, depending on how much there was left to do. In the evenings you used to read, do your washing, or go into Aberdeen to see a film. On a Saturday I went down to the local hotel for a blether. I held my 21st birthday there and I came in at 4.15 and got changed straight away into my breeches to go right out again.

I have one photograph from those days, and some say I have not changed all that much facially. The uniform was a khaki greatcoat, and breeches, with thick woollen socks, a shirt and tie, and sturdy shoes. For working you

had a bib and braces overall. A woman used to come every four to six months and bring you a new issue of shirts and overalls and to see if you had any complaints. The only complaint I had was that every time I wanted to come home the old boy used to take to his bed. He was very chesty but I got to the stage where I never told him until it was two days before I was due to go, so he could not drum up an excuse.

We were paid #1 a week but it just got stuck in the purse because there was nothing to spend it on. My only mistake was when I was milking by hand and the farmer came in to watch. You used your shoulders to keep their legs away. I became all nervous and the cow put its foot in the bucket. It was the only time his face fell. I used to accompany the vet and learned all about the animals, and how to stick my finger up a cow's nose, and twist their head to stop them kicking. In the winter it was quite nice to nestle up against the cow for warmth. Even the hens would get to know you. When I drove in with the car they would come down in their droves. One or two may have gone under the wheels . . .

I wasn't homesick. There wasn't time. And you were so tired at the end of the day, you

went to bed really early. You could have a bit of rest in the middle of the day then it was

out again for the milking at three o'clock. I worked there for three years. At the end of the war I went back into an office job, but became ill. They discovered I had a germ on the

lung - it was a TB infection from the cattle. There was no treatment: you just had to rest until it cleared up.

Despite that, you felt you had been well looked after and fed in comparison to the rest of the population. We weren't conscious of what was going on in the war and when

my mother wrote she didn't mention the bombings in Clydebank.

It was strange coming back into city life; I found it was more confining. I had been a city person up to that point. When we did go back to visit the farm it was all gone, just the corner shop remained and the hotel. Mainly the fields had been built over with houses.

On the farm you were in a world of your own and cut off from everything but it was easy to make friends, providing you could understand the language. You were mainly treated like one of the boys, but when I tried to watch the bull mating they roared with laughter. By the time I had perched up on the fence, it was all over. The rest, though, was a real education.

She lives in scenic splendour on Orkney, welcoming guests to her

bed and breakfast establishment

at Heatherlea, Birsay. Heather Balderstone has found her taste for the rural life remains undimmed. In her teens she was desperate to play her part in the war effort.

My mother took me to along to the Scottish Office but they said they wouldn't take me until I was 16. The family were all away and

it was a very upsetting time: my brother was

in the Navy and my sister in the Army. They were all doing their bit, and I wanted to do mine. Fortunately, my birthday was just a few months away.

I wasn't given any training - just sent off

to a farm at Maxton near St Boswells and expected to get on with it. I was met off the train by the farmer, who took one look at me and muttered: ''Thon wee bit shilpit lassie'll nae dae ony guid!'' It's true that I was barely 8st then, but with all the country cooking my weight went up quickly to 10st.

I got a uniform eventually, but it came in dribs and drabs. I worked first in the dairy,

but the farm was quite advanced and had mechanical milking machines. One of the men lugged the churns up to the dairy and poured them into the cooler. I filled all the milk bottles by hand. And then it was a case of clearing everything up and putting it all in

for sterilising. Your hands became cracked from the soda. Then it was off to feed the

hens, collect the eggs and make the butter.

I was billeted in the cottage, the former

herds' cottage.

The farmer's wife was very kind, eased me into it and took my age into consideration. There were two lads with horses, and some other people came to help at harvesting time, but I didn't work in the fields at all.

The nearest town was St Boswells, but

I was stuck on the farm until I got my bike. I was on my own for a lot of the time. Young girls nowadays are so sophisticated, know everything about what is going on in the world. Yet in those days you just didn't. Your horizons were a mile around you and that

was it. After a year I moved to another farm near Blythe Bridge. I spent all my money on buying a bike at five bob a week. I whizzed around the Borders any time I was free. I was very proud of the bike, and the fact that I had bought it myself.

I was supposed to be going on to agricultural college but, because I had left school early, the course was at least three years ahead of what I had been learning. I did not get on very well so I was shovelled off to a secretarial college in Dorset. Then I tried to get into the Wrens but they only wanted cooks. I managed to join the Army as a secretary before the end of the war and I was posted all over the country from London to Inverness.

I can recall the victory parade in London because my sister was in it. I watched

it in London West End, outside a theatre where Cicely Courtneidge and Jack

Hulbert were standing on the balcony cheering too.

On reflection I wished I hadn't left the Land Army: it was wonderful, although you worked dashed hard. What I liked was the sense of community with the people around you.

It was quite a breakthrough and an eye-opener for people coming from the towns and cities to find out about the everyday jobs carried out by farming people, wives and daughters. It was a good training for life, and gave you an ability to get on with a wide

range of people.

You learned to be very adaptable and

take things as they came. My mother did

come down to see things were all right. She was just glad I was settled in and doing

something useful.

The Land Girls did get forgotten about, no doubt about it. I am quite sure Britain

would have been sunk if they had not beefed up the farming.

The most difficult aspects were lifting and heaving. What I did enjoy was forking up the stooks and building the hayricks. There is a special way to do it; you go round and round and you have to weave the sheaf in a certain way with the cuts on the outside and the heads pointing in. You had to twist the fork, and your wrists became quite strong.

We ate quite well on the farm. We had plenty of vegetables and soups. You were

so jolly hungry you ate the lot. You wore overalls for working, and kept the breeches and stockings, pullover and shirt plus titfer

for best. I liked the uniform; everyone else seemed to think it was ghastly.

It gave me a taste for rural living that has never left me. It was at a very formative age - after all I had not experienced anything very much at 16. I was married just after

the war, and travelled around to Nigeria

and Germany with my first husband who

was in the Army.

If there had not been a war I would just have easied and osied my way through life. You take for granted what your mother tells you - in the Land Army you had to start thinking for yourself right away.

l The Land Girls is on release from September 4.

l They Fought in the Fields by Nicola Tyrer (Mandarin paperback; #6.99)