The year is 1943, and a month into their service as Land Girls, Bee, Anne, and Pauline are dispatched to a remote farm in rural Scotland. Here they are introduced to the realities of lending a hand on the land, and grueling work and inhospitable weather makes it a struggle to keep their spirits high. Soon one of the girls falters, and Bee and Pauline receive a new posting to a Northumberland dairy farm.
Based on Barbara Whitton's own wartime experiences, Green Hands details life for Britain's women volunteers, illuminating their friendships, daily struggles, and romantic intrigues with intimacy and careful nuance. Originally published in 1943 and repackaged here with a contextual introduction by an Imperial War Museums historian, Whitton's autobiographical novel paints a sometimes funny, sometimes bleak picture of her wartime past.Barbara Whitton is the pseudonym for Margaret Hazel Watson (1921-2016). During World War II, she served as a volunteer for Britain in the the Women's Land Army (WLA), the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), and the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) as a driver. She chronicled her wartime experience in stories and novels.