Land Girls kept the country's wheels turning when the men went to serve in World War II, but they were 'written off'and their efforts largely forgotten. Reporter Jo McKenzie-McLean talks to four Land Girls about their time running the land.

The year is 1942. A tall, fit and healthy blue-eyed, black-haired woman from a dairy farm on the Otago Peninsula walks into the Dunedin war office.

Sadie Lietze (nee Stuart) had turned 19-years-old and her time working at the Tip Top Milk Bar in the Dunedin's Octagon was over. World War II changed everything.

Women across New Zealand were being enlisted for "essential work" and along with 4000 other women across the country, Lietze opted to become a Land Girl and join the Women's Land Service.

The Womens Land Service was established in 1940 under the Women War Service Auxilliary to meet the shortage of male labour caused by the enlistment in the forces.

"Women were being manpowered into clothing factories, woollen mills, tram conductresses, herd testers, hospital personal and of course the armed forces," Lietze says.

Kavinda Herath/Stuff Sadie Lietze, of Alexandra, 94, worked as a Land Girl on a high country station property in Omarama during World War II.

Lietze was interviewed and she chose the Womens Land Service. A week later tickets arrive in the post. She was being sent to Omarama to work at the high country station, Tara Hills.

"Omarama was a place I had never heard of, never been. I had to look in the map to know where Omarama was. It was quite an experience for me. I was just 19. I had never travelled much or been away from Dunedin."

The 94-year-old recalls the trip to the high country station, where she would remain for two years, vividly:

"I left in the morning by the Mail Bus ... My new boss met me in Omarama. As we travelled the three miles to Tara Hills Station in a jogger, a two wheeled cart pulled by a horse, similar to a trotting sulky. Little did I know I would stay two years as a cowman, a gardner, assistant rabbiter and horse breaker, a musterer, a wool classer and a general rouse about.

"I milked cows morning, night - every day of the year and never had a break. You would get Saturday afternoon off to do your washing. I just did everything that was asked. I did it. People say to me, 'why did you do it?' I say, "well, you did it because it was a war effort'."

Growing up on a dairy farm, Lietze was using to milking cows. But the back-aching task of rabbiting was hard, she says.

Kavinda Herath/Stuff Sadie Lietze, of Alexandra, 94, worked as a Land Girl on a high country station property in Omarama during World War II.

"Rabbits were real problem. Trapping rabbits was a fulltime job in winter. Rabbits were trapped, gutted and hung in twos on a fence at the road gate. These were picked up an hung on the rabbit truck and taken to Pukeuri Freezing Works near Oamaru to be later sent to England for food.

"After trapping we poisoned the rabbits. A furrow was scratched along the foothills, carrots were packed into saddle bags and I would walk along dropping sliced carrots into the furrows.

"Two days later I would do it again. I had to dig a huge hole big enough to bury a horse in.

"Then the next day I would drop carrots which had been laced with strychnine. The following day we would pick up hundreds of frozen rabbits, take them in the saddle bags to the big hole. Here we would skin them.

"It was a back-aching chore. In the evening we would stretch the skins on wires and hang them on a line to dry. When we had almost forgotten the pain we would start again on another block."

The biggest hardships were the conditions and the cold, she says.

"There was no electricity. A Delco engine charged batteries for light and the wireless, which we listened to for the War News at nine o'clock. Then I would go to be and be up again at 6am. I just slept in an old hut. You take the sack off the floor and put it on you - it was freezing. Omarama is cold and you put the sack on top of your bedding to keep you warm. I wasn't the only one."

She grew to love the four children who lived at the property, whom she was reconnected with several years ago.

Kavinda Herath/Stuff A photo of Sadie Lietze, during her time as a Land Girl during World War II.

"I don't think I would have stayed if it wasn't for those children. I often wonder why I did it, but you just did things like that. The children were a delight and the only bright spark - other than my dog and horse."

Nevertheless, after turning 21, she returned to the war office and asked to be reposted where she spent the next eight months at a property at Kelso and was treated "like a daughter" before the war ended.

"I went back bundled up my gear, said goodbye to the children, the dogs and horse. The little children were crying. It was so sad. I didn't really want to go either when the time came. But I was posted to a lovely home where I was treated like a daughter. I lived there for eight months and then the war finished and the women's land service was dissolved. It was just finished."

After the war finished, the women were "written off". The lack of acknowledgement for their war efforts remains still very much in the minds of the women who kept the country's wheels turning while the men were at war.

"We were never given a number. We were the New Zealand Women's Land Service which was the same as the Womens Auxiliary Air Force (WAAFS), the Womens Auxiliary Army ... We had a uniform we were given, but we never had a number. That is the sad thing because we are not affiliated with anything and when the war finished they just wrote us off. Nobody knows about us. People grew up and had never heard about us and the work we did. There were no contacts and the New Zealand Government do not even have a record of us. We tried to find out and they don't even know. It's shocking."

Author Dianne Bardsley was instrumental in bringing the courage and determination of the Land Girls to the attention of New Zealanders in her book The Land Girls: In a Man's World 1939-1946.

"I came from a rural background, born at the end of the war. I was very used to hearing my parents making comments like, 'Of course, they had land girls during the war' or 'She was a land girl' and it was obvious from the way they spoke that they were regarded as someone special, and different.

"Teaching at a secondary school years later, I was concerned that there was no literature or drama in senior English classes that dealt with NZ history or events, so I published two plays set during the Second World War - one called Land Girls, the other Glory Boys. I interviewed women for that. Then I could not leave them unknown and undiscovered and every school holidays I would go off searching for them."

Her research took her from Northland to Invercargill and she contacted stations and farms "everywhere", she says.

"I stayed in rural B&Bs and became a sleuth, looking for them. What an inspiring lot of women. It is scandalous that archives had no records, and they were basically neglected in war histories. Yet 28,000 men went from the rural sector into the armed services and they were replaced by 4000 women, mainly from the cities and new to farming. And meat and wool production went up during that time. The land girls literally grew food for Britain and armed forces in the Pacific."

After the men returned from war, the women were not only forgotten, but some - who wanted to remain on the land - were moved on.

Kavinda Herath/Stuff Daphne Attfield, 92, of Alexandra, worked on her family farm in Mataura, keeping the wheels turning, as part of the Women's Land Service for three years until her brothers came home from World War II.

Daphne Attfield, 92, of Alexandra, was brought up on a dairy farm in Mataura, Southland. When the war broke out and her brother joined the Navy, she took his place on her father's mixed farming property.

"I had always been a tomboy and my mother virtually had to keep me inside. I just carried on the farm what I had been doing all my life. We milked cows, fed calves. We had a team of horses that had to be looked after and fed, groomed, harnessed up ready for work and taken down to the blacksmith occasionally to get shoes on their feet. There was a lot of cultivation to do, hay making, harvesting, thinning turnips, fencing.

"It was very important. It was very necessary. There was such a shortage of men and we didn't have all the help that farmers have today with all their machinery. It was all hands on. That is why the women became so important to go out and do that. A lot of men were dead against it, that these women should be on the land. I don't know why they had it against us but we proved we could do it. They just had to get in and do it and it was necessary. I don't think the wheels would have kept turning without us."

While Attfield "had it easy" staying at home doing what she was brought up to do, some women were less fortunate.

"Some were sent to high country stations. They were sent to farms and the men weren't very nice to them at all. They did not treat them well, they expected far too much of them. They were really horrid to some of the girls. We all finished up with sore backs. We were lifting and doing things that our backs weren't made for. But I have survived. I thoroughly enjoyed it. When my brothers came home from the war and I was told I had to leave home and go and get a job I thought that was a bit hard on me. I had kept the wheels turning and I thought the place couldn't survive without my help. But that was life."

Kavinda Herath/Stuff Margaret Reid, 94, of Lake Hayes Estate, spent five years in the Women's Land Army in England during World War II. She was initially trained as an aircraft inspector before becoming an excavator driver filling in bomb craters and digging drains in fields for food production.

Life former Land Service Woman Margaret Reid was more in the coalface of the war efforts.

Reid, 94, of Lake Hayes Estate, served with the Womens Land Army in England for five years driving excavators on farms to develop land for food.

"I was trained as an aircraft inspector. I had to learn to file to 10,000 of an inch and weld. I only did that for three months because I couldn't sleep because there were air raids on. They put me in the Women's Land Army and I was driving an excavator. The first thing I had to do was fill in a crater in a park a land mine the German's had dropped and I had to put the earth all back in.

"When the raids were on we used to have to get underneath the excavators because the Germans used to come and machine gun you when you were working in the fields. When we heard the German plane, you could hear the difference, we would turn the motor off and get under the excavator. A lot of men in tractors didn't hear the aeroplanes and they were killed. Some Germans were nice because they would drop bombs in fields and not land them in built up areas. You just hoped they didn't hit the excavator. I was out in the country where hundreds were killed in the towns. A lot of the houses were bombed there."

The women were "most important" to the war effort, doing "everything", most land girls working on farms and living in hostels, she says. However, Reid found herself billeted to a home in Hull with only one other who "wasn't much help".

Kavinda Herath/Stuff Margaret Reid, 94, of Lake Hayes Estate, received recognition from the Queen after serving five years in the Women's Land Army in England during World War II.

"The house I was billeted to in Hull in only had three walls in my bedroom which had been bombed and one wall was gone. It was all open."

The change of life had been a shock to the young woman, who had been used to living like a "lady" drinking tea out of China tea cups and studying languages at university.

"My family was quite nice. We had nice afternoon tea out of nice cups and behaved very well. It was a shock to be called up and have to drive an excavator. My mother had a rifle loaded under the stairs just in case the Germans came and she would have shot them. She was a better shot than my father he used to tease her. When I think about it I don't know how I ever did it at 19, but it It certainly changed my way of life for the better in some respects, because I would have still been having afternoon tea and not going anywhere but I have done so many things . . . By the time I got out at 24, I just wanted to be free so I went to Norway and learned how to ski."

Reid's efforts were recognised soon after the war ended, which included receiving a certificate of appreciation from the Queen. In New Zealand, acknowledgement from the Government was given by way of a certificate less than five years ago.

Kavinda Herath/Stuff Margaret Sanders, 93, of Cromwell, was born in Naseby, worked on farms as a Land Girl in Central Otago until she was married and moved to a farm in Southland where she continued to work on the land.

Cromwell woman, Margaret Sanders, says she felt honoured to finally receive the recognition. The 93-year-old, who was born in Naseby, worked on farms around Glenfoyle, Central Otago.

"I had to help working on the land ploughing disking with horses. There was no tractor. All the work was done with horses. I would get up at 3am so horses got a good feed then start work in the morning about 4am before the heat came in Central. It was just so hot. All the women had to help on the farms. Come what may, it had to be done."

Kavinda Herath/Stuff Margaret Sanders as a baby with her mother .

After working on farms, women like Lietze, Attfield and Sanford, chose to stay on the land. They married farmers, brought up families and up until recent times, met every year with their fellow Land Girls for an annual reunion.

"We had reunions," Lietze recalls flicking through one of many scrapbooks with photos, newspaper clippings and Land Girl memorabilia filling the pages. "There would be anything from 20 to 30 women, but they are dying off - we are all old."