Chapter Fifteen
THE WOMEN’S LAND ARMY
During the summer of 1915, I began to think a great deal about the farms in Wiltshire. I was already on good terms with many of the farmers near Salisbury, as for years I had carried on a branch of the National Poultry Organization Society. I now felt sure that before long there would be no able-bodied men left on the farms and that women would have to carry on their work. I talked this over with Lady Pembroke, and then we discussed it with Lord Bath, the Chairman of the Wiltshire County Council. He agreed that the day must come when women would be needed, but he also knew that the farmers would hate taking female labourers until they were actually driven to it. He tactfully advised us to hold our tongues and to keep ourselves in readiness. I also had a good deal of talk on the subject with Charles Bathurst, afterwards Lord Bledisloe. He thought that the question might become imminent sooner than we expected, as he then believed that all men of military age would be called to the Colours directly after the forthcoming harvest. But it was not until the summer of 1916 that the County Agricultural Committee first asked us to begin training girls as milkers. Wiltshire was thus a pioneer in what eventually developed into the Women’s Land Army. We began on a very small scale. Mr. Louis Greville lent us a cottage at Woodford where we installed six would-be milkers with a very entertaining old Miss Snow as matron of the little hostel. She was the sister of a General and looked like one herself. The girls were taught to milk by Mr. Greville’s dairyman. Several problems arose in that first August. There was naughty Florrie, who was thought to be insane, because she jumped out of the window a night or two before she was going to her first place. We sent for the doctor, who found no traces of insanity and so she went off to Heytesbury but was soon returned as too unmanageable to stay. Then there was Emma, from Dorchester—a most alarming creature. She was expected to arrive one morning, and I met train after train till between eight and nine at night, when she arrived at Salisbury and flew into a furious passion on the station because she was not allowed to take her bicycle to Woodford. She sprang at me like a pale murderess, and then thought better of it and leapt on to her bicycle, saying she should ride back at once to Blandford, I hoped that she would, but as a matter of fact she changed her mind and rode to Woodford, where she and the sporting Miss Snow after all got on very well together. A few days later I found all the Woodford girls in floods of tears, because somebody had brought ‘things in the head’ to the hostel; and after this I was called on to deal with someone whom I described as ‘a tart who stinks of onions’. She soon returned whence she came, as she did not like the dairyman.
After a few months of this, Lord Radnor offered us the Longford Estate Office, where we had room for twice as many girls as we could take at Woodford. These Longford pupils were girls of the so-called ‘educated’ classes, and I always met them at Salisbury station and drove them to Longford. The first time I went to meet a batch, I accosted all the most attractive looking girls that I saw and asked if they were coming to the Dairy School. Most of them looked very much offended, and, drawing themselves up with great haughtiness, they answered: ‘No.’ I learnt my lesson, and the next time I met a train I asked the girls:
‘Are you coming to Longford Castle?’
They always looked rather flattered at this, and if I had made a mistake they answered quite apologetically ‘ No, not to-day’. Then they watched with impressed faces as I led off my little band.
At this time we made a register of about four thousand women, living in Wiltshire villages, who volunteered to go into the fields at times of seasonal emergency and to work as unskilled labourers. These women were useful in harvesting and weeding, but it was becoming obvious that a far more organized service was essential. In the October of that year I went to a meeting at the House of Commons to discuss creating a National Organization to carry on what had hitherto been done sporadically by County Agricultural Committees. We learnt from the Director-General of recruiting that every available man on the farms would have to be called up by the following April and that our Women’s Committees would have to fill the gaps. He said: ‘No man is indispensable except in the fighting line.’ My cousin Sydney Olivier was then President of the Board of Agriculture, and I had tea with him that day to discuss the various plans. All through the following winter, we held meetings with farmers in different parts of the county to explain what was going to be done. They all hated the idea of this ‘Regiment of Women’ coming into their farms, and it was a very depressing experience to go from place to place outlining our programme, and to be met everywhere by rows of silent, antagonistic faces.
The new Women’s Land Army was a corps of women and girls who enlisted for the duration of the war, were given uniform suited for farm work, and, after a preliminary training in the various branches of agricultural labour, were allotted to farms as they were required.
We recruited the Land Army in co-operation with the Labour Exchanges, and we held our Selection Committees in their offices. One day a candidate appeared who was described on her application form as the daughter of a ‘Butler’. She did not give the required two references as to character, saying that she knew no one who could speak for her. I said: ‘ Surely one of your father’s employers would give you a character.’ On this she looked very blank and said nothing.
One of the ladies on the committee here whispered to me that I had made a mistake. The girl’s father was no ‘Butler’. He was a ‘Cutler’—a gipsy man who went about the village streets grinding knives on a wheel. We eventually managed to find out something about the girl, and we took her. She was a wild creature, supremely good at managing horses and cattle, but quite unable to live with other girls in the hostel. She refused to eat in a room with other people, but she would heap her food on a plate and go away alone to eat it outside. She told me strange stories of her life. One winter they found an empty house in a lonely part of the downs, and then a lot of other gipsies joined them and they took possession of it and lived there all through the winter. If anyone was seen approaching, the gipsies cleared out and hid in a wood near-by till the stranger had passed. They lit no lights at night lest these should betray them; and the rooms in the house were dark except on moonlight nights. Sometimes tremendous fights sprang up in the darkness. They often began by a man giving his wife a thrashing. The woman screamed and so did other women. One after another joined in till the brawl became general, everybody hitting out right and left. After a time the floor used to become oddly slippery, and then in the morning they would find it covered with blood.
Now that the Land Army was an official organization, we had to keep a great many fresh rules. We soon had five or six training schools in different parts of the county, and one of my first official jobs was to hold a court martial in one of these, on a girl who one night got out of bed and clambered out of the window. I acted as President of the Court and a Board of Agriculture official came to show us how to conduct the case. I never saw a more hideous monster than the prisoner, and the Prosecuting Officer asked her a question which I thought was a foolish one, as there seemed no likelihood of its being answered. She said:
‘What did you go out for?’
The girl would have made her fortune on the stage. She took every advantage of her hideous face, and showed great histrionic skill in pausing for some time before she answered, and turning her head from side to side with the most ridiculously coy expression. This interval attracted all eyes to her face, and then she said with a grin:
‘Because two boys wanted to see me again.’
Obviously no boy could ever wish to see her once, much less twice; and I had great difficulty in saving myself from breaking into a fou rire which would have ruined my reputation in the Land Army.
One morning I got an S.O.S. message from one of our North Wilts workers asking me to come at once to deal with a most critical case. When I arrived I found that this lady had been away from home for a few days, during which her secretary opened a letter from a fa
rmer’s wife complaining that her husband was carrying on a liaison with one of the milkers whom we had sent him. The secretary at once wrote and accused the farmer of seducing the girl and threatened to remove her. The farmer declared that he would prosecute the Land Army for defamation of character and he demanded the name of the informer. The wife implored not to be given away.
I could not think what to do, and could only rely on my very official appearance in stiff khaki uniform, which made me look a great deal more important than I felt. Two members of the Committee came with me and we were shown into the dining-room to wait. As I sat there I prayed earnestly that I might know what to say when the farmer appeared. I looked out of the window and saw him going out of the house and disappearing among the sheds with a gun in his hand, and I sat for some time expecting to hear a report. I did not. After a while he came in, still carrying the gun, and he sat down facing me on the opposite side of the dinner-table, against which he leant the gun. Thus we faced each other—I, flanked by my two lady supporters, and he with his quaking wife on one side, and on the other, the rather impudent-looking girl who had been accused.
I opened the interview by saying in a very dignified tone:
‘If you will look at your contract, you will find that the Land Army has the right of moving its members from farm to farm at its own discretion. I propose now to remove Jane Smith from here. I think you probably know my reason, but I advise you not to ask me for it’.
He looked taken aback, and said after a moment:
‘Will this do any injury to the girl?’
I told him he could leave that to me.
By this time he looked frightened and he said:
‘What am I to do if you take my milkers away? I have seventy cows in milk and only one man to milk them. Will you let me have another girl?’
I answered: ‘I will ask your wife what she thinks about that.’ Then, turning to the wife, I said: ‘Would you like to have another milker?’
She said that she would. Neither the farmer nor the girl had another word to say and I made the exchange the next day. Then Jane Smith came to see me in my office. She told me that she was hopelessly in love and couldn’t live without this farmer. I felt very sorry for her, but I had to tell her that I was sure that he had not the slightest intention of leaving his wife and children for her sake. She had come into his life too late and would never mean anything to him. I begged her to make up her mind to forget him; and as, by the rules of the Land Army, I was now obliged to discharge her, I put her into a gang of unenrolled girls who were planting trees in Grovely Forest, and I hoped she would pull herself together and be happy there. After that, she three times ran away from Grovely and went back to the farm, and each time the farmer himself brought her back to me and begged me to keep her. At last I had to send her back to her relations, as there was nothing more I could do for her. I never knew what became of her.
Towards the end of the war, when the shortage of food became very acute, recruiting processions went through the East End of London with speakers and bands collecting recruits for the Women’s Land Army from the streets and lanes of the city. These were then sent to the various counties in parties of about twenty or thirty, and we tested them for a fortnight or so before they were actually enrolled. Very few of these women knew anything about country life and many of them were quite unsuitable for farm work. Two of our would-be milkers were terrified at their first sight of a cow, having expected that they would look like the joints of meat hanging in butchers’ shops, which had hitherto been their only acquaintance with cattle.
On the day after they arrived, I always had a personal interview with each of the recruits, and one morning there came in rather a pretty little woman who was the wife of a Canadian soldier with whom she had come across. She looked so desperately ill that I said I thought she was not strong enough for farm work. She answered me very politely:
‘I am always very pale and I assure you it doesn’t mean anything. But Madam, I hope you will pardon me for appearing before you without any make-up. I promise you it shall not occur again. Salisbury seems rather a one-horse place and I wasn’t able to find anything this morning.’
I thanked her and accepted her apology.
A few days later the matron of the hostel sent for me to come at once to discharge this Mrs. Harding, who had come in roaring drunk the night before, had been sick all over the bedroom which she shared with two other girls, and was now in a most violent and defiant mood. I knew that my uniform would hide my fears, and I nerved myself to meet this virago.
Mrs. Harding was brought in before me by the matron. She did not look violent at all, but more ill even than she had looked the day she arrived.
I said to her: ‘I hear you were the worse for drink last night.’
I expected an outbreak of violence, but instead she looked quite miserable and said nothing at all. I went on:
‘You know I said when you joined that I thought your health was not good enough for this work, and I still think so. Possibly quite a little drink will bowl you over, when other people would not be affected at all. But you now wear the King’s uniform, and it would never do for you to be seen drunk in the street, so I am afraid I must give you your railway ticket and send you back to London this afternoon.’
She burst into tears and begged me to hear what she had to say.
She then told me that both her parents had been confirmed drunkards, and that when she was three years old, a philanthropical society had taken her from them and sent her to Canada. She had lived there ever since, and had been so carefully guarded that she had never tasted drink. When she came to London she went to stay with a sister who was still living there. This woman was a drunkard too. In her house Mrs. Harding tasted spirits for the first time, and from that moment she had been quite unable to stop, and had drunk steadily for a fortnight. After this she realized what was happening to her and resolved to pull herself together. She thought that her only hope was to get away from London and to join the Land Army. She ended by saying, ‘If I go back to London, I know I shall be dead in less than a month.’
I was much moved by this story, and after a good deal of talk with the woman, I suggested that she should sign a pledge promising to become a teetotaller for as long as she remained in the Land Army. She agreed to accept her discharge without question if and when she broke this pledge. I made the signing of the pledge into something of a ceremony, the matron and I both solemnly witnessing the signature.
The next problem was what was now to be done with Mrs. Harding. She was a skilled milker, who in the ordinary course would swiftly have been drafted off to a dairy farm in some village where she would have been alone in lodgings. I told her this and pointed out that she might feel lonely and depressed entirely among strangers, and that this would make it harder for her to keep sober. The alternative was to send her with a gang made up from girls who were now in the hostel to work for a few weeks at forestry in Grovely. This would mean plenty of company, but I was obliged to tell her that she might not find it very congenial company. Her dormitory companions of the previous night were furious with her and I thought the whole gang might be unfriendly. She put herself most touchingly into my hands. Afterwards I told her story to the other women and asked them if they would do their best to help Mrs. Harding and so really to save her life. They showed the most delightful spirit, promising to do their best to keep her happy and to save her from a relapse. She stayed with that gang for some months and was quite sober all the time. Her husband was, before long, badly wounded and invalided out of the Army, and then she went back to Canada with him. I have often wondered what happened to Mrs. Harding. It was a most tragic instance of the hereditary effect of alcohol. I have never felt more sorry for anyone, and I greatly admired the way in which the other women rallied round her and helped her along.
One Saturday evening one of our Group Leaders brought in two girls who wanted to join the Land Army that very night, saying that they could give
no references as to their character. They were art students, and they looked very superior and refined. When I tried to find the reason for all this hurry and mystery, the Group Leader said:
‘May I tell Miss Olivier?’
They said that she might.
She then told me that one these girls had been going to be married on the following Monday, but that her engagement had suddenly been broken off. She had therefore fled from home, and she now wished to bury herself in the heart of the country.
I still maintained that I could not enrol her till Monday, and I told her to come to me alone that morning. When she came I said to her:
‘Tell me what happened about your engagement.’
She answered: ‘Well you see, I got mixed up with a gang of the greatest jewel thieves in Europe.’
Clutching at my few poor treasures I said:
‘Are you a jewel thief?’
She declared that she was not; and then she told me that she had made friends with the most charming young man whom she had introduced to her Amateur Dramatic Society at Blackheath. He had acted there in various plays, and she had taken him about with her to stay with several of her friends. After a time, it transpired that he was robbing them right and left, and, worst of all, he had made his largest scoop in the house of the parents of the young woman he was going to marry. They naturally suspected her of being an accomplice of the burglar, and insisted on the engagement being broken off at the last moment.
Without Knowing Mr Walkley Page 16
