Victory Harvest: Diary of a Canadian in the Women's Land Army, 1940-1944

Based on the diary Marion Kelsey kept while in the Women's Land Army during World War II, Victory Harvest is a personal remembrance of wartime Britain through the eyes of a young Canadian. Financed by a cousin, Kelsey travelled to England to be with her soldier husband. She joined the Women's Land Army and spent the next four years planting crops, milking cows, and driving a tractor. Through Kelsey's diary the reader discovers - as Kelsey did - that agricultural work was vital to the overall war effort in Britain. Kelsey's observations range from descriptions of the bombing raids on civilian populations to more personal accounts of the difficulties of obtaining a bath. She and her husband were reunited on his quarterly leaves and Victory Harvest records their travels through much of England, Ireland, and Scotland amid air raids, bombings, and machine-gun fire, providing a unique travelogue of Britain in the 1940s. Kelsey's tour of duty was cut short when her husband was seriously wounded by shrapnel at Falaise in 1944. Marion Kelsey's indomitable character and enthusiasm shine through her writing and, as a woman and a Canadian, she provides a new perspective on the war.