The Lumberjills

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Second World War placed a tremendous strain on Britain's natural resources. One of the most important materials for fuelling the war effort was wood - used to make everything from ammunition boxes to Spitfires, Britain's timber would be harvested at an unprecedented rate during the war. It was a forgotten army of women who stepped up to make this happen, felling trees through freezing winters, splitting logs in hazardous sawmills and managing entire forestry operations.

So what did this job entail? How risky was it, and how were these 'Lumberjills' considered by society at that time? Dan is joined by Joanna Foat, author of Lumberjills: Britain's Forgotten Army, to uncover the obscured world of the Women's Timber Corps.

Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.

You can take part in our listener survey here.

If you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at [email protected], we'd love to hear from you!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history. During the Second World War Britain faced
0:04.8	a grave crisis, while several grave overlapping crises, to be honest, but one of them was a shortage
0:10.4	of wood. Britain imported a vast amounts of its wood and it needed wood for a galaxy
0:16.1	of reasons to support the war effort. As a result, the British government was so desperate
0:22.1	that they did the unimaginable. They turned to women, I know. They turned to women to
0:28.7	chop down Britain's trees. So this is a podcast which, unusually for me, celebrates the
0:32.7	chopping of trees. But let's give them a pass on this particular one, given that they
0:36.6	faced a crisis of fascist forces on the other side of the channel. And before anyone
0:40.8	joined the dots on the catastrophe that we were unleashing on the planet. These women
0:46.6	formed the women's Timbercore. They went into Britain's forests and chopped down trees.
0:52.8	They became lumberjills. It is a great story and I've got the expert on the lumberjills
0:57.9	on the podcast right now. She's Joanna Fote. She's written a book called Lumberjills,
1:02.7	Britain's Forgotten Army. And you can look at some really cool pictures of these young
1:08.4	women at her website, thelumberjills.uk. It's really worth going and looking at some of
1:16.0	these incredible, strong, powerful young women. Chopin wood, chopin wood, everyone's favorite
1:23.1	pastime. So on the podcast day is yet another contribution by women in the Second World War
1:28.6	that's been a large year of her look. Not only more though folks, it's been on the podcast.
1:33.1	Enjoy.
1:54.1	Jo, thanks for coming on the podcast. You're welcome. Lovely to be here. It's yet another secret
2:01.5	unit of women working away to advance the war effort who we've forgotten to remember.
2:07.0	Who are the women's Timbercore? So the women's Timbercore were a group of women who were
2:12.9	working in the forests in World War II. They were actually doing the same job in World
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.