7. The Forestry Song by Paul Clark
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The 1983 community musical documentary drama Sheltered Lives presented a vibrant picture of local life in the 1930s and ‘40s. As an example of this, Paul Clark’s song1 describes a wonderful new experience for young people: there was a national shortage of wood resulting from preparations for the Second World War and this mobilised the government into being ‘very clever under such duress’:
Let schoolboys chop our forest down; they’ll be a great success! Girls did not at first feature in the local scheme in Wolverton: But planners underestimate our girls from Wolverton Who want to help to win the war and have a little fun… Ultimately however, females would be mobilised throughout the country, just as the British Women’s Land Army had – eventually - been set up for the First World War in January 1917. This was re-formed in June 1939, in preparation for the Second World War. Over 200,000 Land Girls worked in the WLA from June 1939 until November 1950.[2] Moreover, the Forestry Commission rose from 14,000 in August 1939 to 44,300 in February 1941. This growth included several thousand members of the Women’s Timber Corps, affectionately christened ‘the Lumberjills.[3] A local woman who was interviewed by Living Archive for the Sheltered Lives production described her experiences: ‘I was about 17 when I was posted to Bury St. Edmunds for training in Forestry. This involved only felling then. We didn’t do the sawmills till I came down to Bletchley. We lived in Nissan huts. It was quite rough but thoroughly enjoyable. I loved it. ‘The Forestry was attached to the Land Army. We wore their green beret with a tree on it. We weren’t paid a great deal… but it was very enjoyable especially when we had time off. The training was in how to fell trees. We would chop a ‘V’ in the tree and then cross cut it to finish it off. ‘I was posted to Simpson Road in Bletchley to Latham’s wood merchants. The men working down there had rather a shock when us girls arrived. We were all foreigners because London to Bletchley people in those days was like another country. It took a little while to be accepted… There were bandsaws there and large circular saws. Tree-trunks would come in by lorry and I’d to take them up on a gantry and put them on the bandsaw. Mostly we’d cut up elm for coffin slabs, or elm and oak for railway sleepers and pit-props. ‘You generally had two on a saw, the sawyer and the one on the end - so we were just the sawyer’s mates.’ ‘We took an awful amount of risk. I think now about this big gantry and the huge trees I had to pick up - there were no safety measures at all.’ (Gwen Irvin) [1] A download of the performance of this song from 2020, originally from Sheltered Lives, is supplied on the webpage THE MILTON KEYNES SONG BOOK - Home (mksongbook.org) with Marion Hill and Brad Bradstock. [2] See Homepage - Women's Land Army.co.uk (womenslandarmy.co.uk) [3] See 1939-1949 — 100 YEARS OF FORESTRY IN SCOTLAND (forestcentenary.scot) |
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