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,
