Before the Second World War, hard work for girls meant cooking and sweeping floors. But the Land Army changed all that and suddenly women were doing a variety of jobs from cutting down trees to catching rats.

Janet Aston from Oak Street, in Coseley, remembers when her eldest sister Edith joined the Land Army. Edith was one of hundreds of women from the West Midands who served, while the menfolk were overseas.

Many of their stories came to light again and told in the Express & Star following the recent decision to officially recognise their work.

Janet says: “With the country at war and all able-bodied men needed to fight, there was a shortage of labour on farms and in land-based jobs. It had become more difficult to get food imported from abroad, so land in England needed to be farmed to provide homegrown food.

“The advertising slogan was, ‘For a healthy, happy job join The Women’s Land Army’. However, in reality, the work was hard and dirty and the hours were long.

“On her visits home from Herefordshire, Edith always said how hard the work was.

“However, later she said that those years were perhaps the best in her life. Like the other girls, she habitually had to lift hundred-weight bales of straw and hay.”

Janet says that Edith never forgot a horse that she worked with while out in the Herefordshire fields. “Edith learned how to use a threshing machine and how to plough a field with the assistance of a great gentle shirehorse named Flower,” she says.

“In fact Flower didn’t need much guidance, she already knew exactly what was expected of her. She would even make her own way back to the stable at the end of the working day. Edith told us about an incident when she was standing immediately behind the horse as it stepped backwards.

“Realising that she was about to crush Edith’s foot, Flower held her hoof suspended in mid-air. So when Edith was moved to another area she was broken-hearted at having to leave the horse behind.”

By 1944 there were 80,000 women volunteers working on the land. The majority already lived in the countryside but around a third came from Britain’s industrial cities.

“I remember Edith telling me how some of the women had the misfortune to be billeted at a farmhouse, where they could be treated like slaves,” says Janet, who works at the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley.

“They were expected to cook a meal for the farmer and his family after a hard day’s working in the fields. Thankfully, Edith was more fortunate, billeted at a hostel and taken out to farms in Herefordshire by van. Everyone had to contribute to the war effort.”

Although the women worked hard, they were not paid the same wages as men.

If a man earned one shilling an hour, which is around five pence, a woman earned just over ten pence, which is four pence.

Janet says Edith’s future husband lived in Hereford, and they met when he was home on leave from Germany. “Sadly, when she died 17 years ago there was no medal of recognition for her wartime efforts.”