They came, they sawed… and we conquered. As the Forestry Commission tries to track more of them down, Ruth Addicott looks at the vital role lumberjills played in the war effort

CHOPPING down trees in their distinctive dungarees, the lumberjills played a crucial role in the war and the search is now on for their stories.

The Forestry Commission is gathering information on the massive contribution made by The Women’s Timber Corps (WTC), who worked in North Yorkshire’s woods during the Second World War.

The WTC was set up 70 years ago.

Timber was crucial to the wartime economy, used for pit props, aircraft and even explosives, and while the men were away at war, women worked in woods such as Dalby and Cropton Forests, near Pickering, and Boltby and Kilburn, between Thirsk and Helmsley.

In freezing temperatures, rain, sleet and snow, they carried out tasks such as felling, measuring logs, loading timber onto trucks and driving vehicles.

Modern day lumberjill, Sarah Bell, 20, from Kirkbymoorside, is a works supervisor with the Forestry Commission.

“These days machines do a lot of the back-breaking work, but in the 1940s forestry was far more labour-intensive,” she says. “The only way to cut down a tree was to use a saw or axe - chainsaws still hadn’t been invented. The girls were made of tough stuff and it’s time their contribution was better known.”

An off-shoot of the Land Army, women came from all over the UK and many were billeted with local families.

Among those to come forward is Edna Holland (nee Lloyd), 87. Edna left her home in Doncaster for the first time when she was 17 years old and spent three years in the North York Moors. Long hours, friendship and the sense of doing something important for the war effort are her abiding memories.

“It was very hard work, but we learnt such a lot,” she says. “We started off by learning to fell a tree, then we were taught how to measure different-sized pit props. My goodness, we got muscles everywhere, but it made us feel really good.”

Being good at maths, Edna was selected to become a tree measurer and in October 1942, she was posted to a lumberjills’ camp at Boltby, near Thirsk.

Boltby Camp was a series of Nissan huts in a field which she remembers as the wettest in the village.

Ten girls slept in one hut with a log burner in the middle. When the girls left the camp in 1945, it was taken over by Italian POWs.

“Our uniform consisted of shoes, boots, jodhpurs, dungarees, two shirts, a green jumper, coat and beret,” says Edna. “The dungarees did not stay like that for long as we cut them off into shorts. We were sent special issue undies, which we didn’t like either, so we cut those off into shorts too.”

“The Forestry Commission men taught us everything. They wanted to make sure we could carry on their good work.”

The lumberjills would be picked up at 7.30 am in the back of a lorry and collected at 5pm in time for the evening meal at 6.30pm. Lunch was a cheese or meat sandwich and a cooked dinner in the evening would consist of stew, slices of meat and plenty of vegetables. On weekends, they’d often go to dances in Thirsk.

“I was amazed to see how trees are felled today on TV by a big machine that grabs the trees cuts them off at the bottom and runs up the trunk stripping all the branches off in one go and then cuts it into lengths,” says Edna.

“The Timber Corps was great, I learnt so much. I think because we were cutting a tree down into pit props and we’d see it through from start to finish, there was a satisfaction in what we did. We knew how important it was for the war and I felt really proud of our contribution.”

Edna’s father worked at Armthorpe Pit in Doncaster and she only recalls him writing once. “He said: ‘You’re not measuring the pit props properly, they’re not straight enough’,” she recalls.

The bleakest moment for Edna was when news arrived that her brother, Bill, had been killed during the invasion of Italy in 1943.

Re-adjusting to civilian life after the war wasn’t easy, but Edna eventually settled down and worked in a shop.

Lumberjills served in North Yorkshire until the end of the war and while there are photographs, the Forestry Commission believes there are many stories still to be discovered.

Pam Warhurst, chair of Forestry Commission England, says lumberjills are one of the last unrecognised stories of the Second World War. “We forget how vital timber was to the war effort and yet so little is known about the women who kept the nation’s forestry working,” she says. “I am extremely grateful to projects like this which are striving to gather information before it slips from our collective memory.”

• If you or a member of your family served in local Forestry Commission woods during the last war please contact Petra Young on 01751-472771 or email petra.young@forestry.gsi.gov.uk