THE BATTLE FOR WHEAT
The Women’s Land Army (WLA) was re-formed during the last few months leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War in June 1939. Great Britain would soon enter a conflict that some hoped would be done and dusted in a few months, but in the event dragged on for six long years.
Even when the last shot was fired there would be many more years needed to get our country back on its feet. Food was in short supply; homes had been wrecked and many hundreds of thousands of bereaved families left wondering what on earth would happen to them next. Th at meant the WLA was kept busy for 11 years by which time nearly a quarter of a million women had volunteered to serve.
Mobilisation
During 1939 the government began mobilising all its armed forces and realised that our nation was not only vulnerable to invasion but incapable of feeding itself in the event of a blockade. We had become increasingly dependent on supplies flowing in from Commonwealth countries, while we instead had concentrated on building up one of the largest industrialised nations on earth. This situation had not been helped by the continual drift of farmworkers from the land into better-paid jobs in factories and mines.
Despite its immense industrial capability, Britain was
