Margaret Mitchell and friend at Women's Land Service reunion and anniversary marking end of Second World War

This photograph was taken at a reunion of the Women's Land Service in Wellington at an event marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in August 1995.

 

Margaret Josephine Mitchell (1917-97) (seated left) is sitting inside the Parliament buildings with a friend. She was a Land Girl in Taranaki during the war.

 

The Women's Land Service was the largest of the women's war services in New Zealand during the Second World War (1939-45). 2,711 land girls were placed on farms, and hundreds more served unofficially on family farms, totalling 2,963 different farms.*

*Bardsley, D. (2000). The Land Girls: In a Man's World, 1939-1946, p. 6.