Newspaper clues to a Land Army past

 

                                                                    A Land Army girl on a Fordson tractor

Finding out more about the Women's Land Army experience in Hertfordshire gave me a better idea of what my mother had gone through when she was part of the WLA in that county. Between that and the WLA Alphabetical Index Card that I found, I have sketched the parameters of her service which I interpret as starting May 1, 1942 and ending with her resignation August 12, 1945. But I wanted a clearer picture.

The sites I had visited gave me a general idea of what the Land Girls did and the book, The Women's Land Army 1939-1950, supplied photos of many of the activities. What I wanted was to know what my mother's actual duties had been. I turned to the newspapers to see if there was any mention of my mother which would throw light on her war experience.

Unfortunately, when I tried to apply filters down to the county level to get the news for Hertfordshire where she was stationed, the British Newspapers on Find My Past didn't have any newspapers for that area. But my mother and her parents had emigrated from Manitoba. My search through Newspapers.com was much more productive. It yielded a clipping which merited a photo of my mother on a tractor at the West Hertfordshire District Agricultural Competitions Association's ploughing match just after the war. The story was carried in the Winnipeg Tribune and gave the name and address of her grandmother who lived in Winnipeg.

With family in different places, it's surprising where news will turn up and I wonder who supplied the newspaper with the photo. Perhaps the grandmother named? Interestingly, the article appeared in the paper in January of 1946 although the competition had been held in October of 1945, just months after my mother had resigned from the WLA. The article contains many clues to follow up on but, after the research I've already done, I now know more about my mother's experience in the Land Army.

Through my research, I know that driving a tractor required specialized training and not every Land Girl did it. My mother would have gone through that training and must have been using her skills for a while to be proficient enough to enter a competition. My increased knowledge gives me a greater appreciation for her war experience. 

Sources:

Find My Past https://search.findmypast.com/search/british-newspapers

Newspapers.com https://www.newspapers.com/

Powell, Bob & Nigel Westacott. The Women’s Land Army 1939-1950. Sutton Publishing Limited, Gloucestershire, 2000

Image:

By Ministry of Information official photographer - http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//36/media-36219/large.jpg This is photograph D 128 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30861464