While the men were away fighting, there were many people left at home who felt they had to do something to help the war effort. Many girls joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force or the Women's Royal Naval Service while some joined the Land Army.

The Woman's Land Army was set up by the government to compensate for the severe shortage of farm labourers due to World War 1.

The Land Army reformed during World War 2 and by 1944 there were 80,000 women volunteers working on the land in a variety of jobs.

Two such women were Marion Hogg and Doris Wright, both living in Hamilton.

Marion was 20 when the war started and was working as a cake finisher in Lewis's department store in Glasgow.

"I really wanted to joint the WAAF or the Wrens," she explains, "but they wouldn't take me because I'd lost my thumb in an accident."

Instead she joined the Land Army and was sent to what is now the Scottish Agricultural College in Auchincruive near Ayr for a month's training.

"I loved Auchencruive," she says. "I went down with another girl from Bothwell. She was quite well off and she didn't like the velvet breeches we had as a uniform so she had jodhpurs made specially made. I met some very nice girls while I was there and although the work was hard we had good fun.

"We were always starving because we were doing heavy work outside in the fresh air but there wasn't much to eat because of the rationing. There was a van that came round selling tea bread and that's how we used to feed ourselves. We also used to go to a church in Ayr where they'd feed us up with dried egg and chips - we thought it was luxury!"

After their training the girls were spilt up, some going to farms and others, like Marion, going onto horticultural centres.

"My sister got me a job at the castle that used to be in Laightstonehall," she explains. "I had the job of planting tomatoes and lettuces. It was a great job and I liked the old couple who had the place.

"I got to take home some of the produce, such as lettuces, leeks, celery and tomatoes and it certainly helped supplement our rations - we never starved."

But Marion's days as a Land Girl were numbered. At the end of her second year a glowing report was sent to her superior in recognition of all her hard work.

"She was responsible for placing us in jobs," says Marion. "She took exception to the report and decided to move me somewhere else.

"I met a car in Carluke which took me to a big castle in the middle of nowhere. When I got there the lady of the house told me I had to do all the housework and black-lead the huge range in the kitchen every morning. When I asked about war work she said there wasn't any so I refused to take the job. She was just trying to get a servant because they were scarce on the ground. We had my nieces and nephew, who'd been evacuated from Essex, living with us and I told her they needed me more."

Marion, disillusioned, left the Land Army and went back to being a cake finisher.

"I was dancing-mad," she laughs. "I was never away from Glasgow and I spent half my life in the city because the girls I went out with let me stay over after nights out. I had the time of my life.

"My father always said that if it was safe enough to go out dancing it was afe enough to go out to work and I remember one morning getting ready to catch the bus when we heard that Clydebank and Dalmuir were being bombed. My father said I'd be OK and they wouldn't touch me so there I was on the bus in Argyle Street listening to the bombing. He was right though - I still went to my work!"

Like so many romances during the war, Marion's was a whirlwind affair with more than a hint of the fairytale about it.

"Out of the blue I got a letter from the Middle East from a chap I'd known from bible class," says Marion. "I hadn't seen Jim for eight years but in his letter he asked me to meet him in the Salon in Glasgow because he was coming home on embarkation leave. I met up with him and three weeks later we got engaged. He was in the Long Range Desert Group and was sent to Abyssinia with the medical team and then India before coming home."

Marion can't actually remember how she celebrated VE Day but there was probably dancing involved!

"The war wasn't over for me until all my family were back," she says. "My brother and his wife were in the forces and my other brother was a POW in Italy. I also had to go down to Windsor to look for my sister so that she could be reunited with her children, who were living with us. Her husband was on his way back from Burma and, although she'd met someone else, I persuaded her to come back to Hamilton so they could be a family again."

Doris Wright, originally from Hull, also started the war as an evacuee.

"I was sent to Ampleforth in North Yorkshire," she says. "Being away from my family was quite sad - I was settling in but some of the other young ones wanted their mums and dads and that used to upset me. Some of the country people had different ways to us city folk and it was hard for some of the children, there was always a little bit of rivalry between the evacuees and the local children."

Doris spent a year as an evacuee, but when the children turned 14 they were sent home to start work.

"My father wouldn't give me permission to do any of the jobs I wanted to do," she says, "but you didn't need parental permission to join the Land Army because it wasn't a military force.

Doris was 17 when she and a friend joined. They were supposed to report to a base a few miles from home but it had been bombed so the girls were sent to neighbouring Lincolnshire.

"We lived in a hostel with 30 other girls. As you can imagine, I learned lots of things apart from farming!" laughs Doris.

"The first farm I was on had a gang of girls and they had to teach me all the jobs. Some jobs I was good at and others I wasn't. I'm only 5ft tall which was ideal for working with horses - I was out of their view when I was leading them so they did everything I told them. I was also good at bending jobs, such as sowing potatoes but being small meant I wasn't any use at things such as haymaking.

"It was a complete change in life working on the land but the social life was very good. We were surrounded by aerodromes and the RAF boys were fed up seeing WAAFs so they paid attention to any girl that was dressed a little bit differently. We had wonderful uniforms with velvet breeches, although some of the well-off girls had theirs specially made so that the cut was better.

"I worked with a lot of Cockney girls who had had quite a rough civilian life but they were the salt of the earth and very kind."

Even although Doris was surrounded the RAF, it was a paratrooper she bagged as a husband.

"Owen was in the area for his training for the Normandy landings but they kept him back and eventually he went to Arnhem instead," explains Doris. "He was taken prisoner and put in a POW camp near Leipzig for nine moths until the end of the war. He wasn't treated very well but he always said the Russians were treated terribly and he thanked his stars for what he got. Apparently the other prisoners who'd been there for a long time weren't very nice either and weren't willing to share what they had - they had their own routine and their own people who could get them things and they didn't want that spoiled by new prisoners.

"He came through it though and when he came home I was still a Land Girl and still there for him.

Doris and the other Land Girls were given time off for VE Day and she went home to Hull to celebrate.

"I went to a street party at the local school in the afternoon and at night I went to a huge party in the town centre," she recalls. "We just made the most of it. Everybody danced with each other - nobody refused. It was just wonderful."

The biggest celebration for Doris, however was when Owen was released from the Prisoner of War camp.

"We weren't allowed phone calls at the hostel when suddenly I got a phone call out of the blue," she explains. "He'd been brought back to Britain and was quickly issued with a new uniform, a travel warrant and sent home because there were so many returning they couldn't cope with the numbers. He phoned for me when he got home and I came straight up to Glasgow Central - I'd never travelled so far in my life.

"I wondered I'd recognise him because I'd seen newsreels in the cinema showing how emaciated the POWs were," she continues. "I remember thinking that I mustn't let him see how shocked I was but when I got off the train I walked straight past him.

"Suddenly I heard this voice shouting, 'Don't you know me then?' I hadn't recognised him because his face was like a big moon. They'd been fed on just fluids in the camp and his face had swollen up.

"Because Owen was taken prisoner, I just can't forget what they did and I'm left with that. Because Owen was taken prisoner, the Germans are still the enemy to me and I don't think it'll never change with my generation. I just can't forget what they did and I'm left with that."