The Land Girl Called John: The Remarkable Story of Enid Barraud

The Land Girl Called John: The Remarkable Story of Enid Barraud

We recently learned about the Women’s Land Army and the remarkable work these women did for the war effort. Today I want to tell you about Enid Mary Barraud, although many of her friends knew her as “John.”

She was born on the 7th of February 1904. She was educated at St Bernard’s High School in Essex, later passing the University of London matriculation examination in 1922. For around fifteen years before the war, she worked in London as an insurance clerk. She described herself as “mentally male, physically female” and preferred the name John among friends. She also shared a relationship with her partner, Dorothea “Bunty” Haines, at a time when relationships like theirs were misunderstood or hidden.

When the war broke out in September 1939, Enid joined the Women’s Land Army almost immediately. She was one of its earliest recruits. She moved into the countryside around Little Eversden in Cambridgeshire, where she had recently bought a cottage. For someone leaving city office work, the adjustment to farm life must have been enormous. The work was physically exhausting and often muddy and cold, but Enid seemed to embrace it.

Her experiences on the land inspired her to write. Between 1941 and 1945 she contributed articles to newspapers and magazines. She shared her honest accounts of rural life and the realities of wartime farming. Her words were authentic because they came directly from her lived experience. She also wrote poetry and later collected many of her observations into books, including Set My Hand Upon the Plough after the war.

Not everything was easy. After several years on one farm, she was dismissed as unsuitable. It must have felt unfair, especially as wartime labour priorities had shifted. Rheumatism forced her to leave the Women’s Land Army in 1944, and she criticised the limited support available to workers that were leaving.

 She went on to work in publishing before joining zoological research at the University of Cambridge, where she contributed to scientific studies and continued her writing.

Enid Barraud died on the 26th of July 1972, aged 68.

Do you think stories like Enid Barraud’s help us understand the home front in a more personal way?