Armed with pitchforks, axes, and sensible shoes, the Women's Land Army fought on a battlefield of muddy potato fields and freezing barns. This episode tells the collective story of Britain's Land Girls across two world wars, starting with the Women's Farm and Garden Union's 1916 warning of a coming labor crisis and the government's response: a grant of 150 pounds. By 1917 the official WLA was born, taking on 23,000 workers at 18 shillings a week to replace an estimated 100,000 male laborers, while some 300,000 women in total worked the land.

Revived in 1939 under Lady Gertrude Denman, the second Land Army swelled to over 80,000 members by 1944 and spun off the Women's Timber Corps, known as the Lumberjills. More than a third of recruits came from London and northern industrial cities, forcing a cultural collision of class and geography. We  ...