ON day seven of our series on the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, MARK SMITH looks at the women's contribution...

THE message was clear: Women, we need you. All over the country, bright, garish posters began to appear in libraries, railway stations, hospitals, anywhere women would see them.

"Reap the harvest of victory!" said one. "Pitch in and help!" said another.

It was a nationwide call to join the Women's Land Army and thousands of women answered.

The call-up would have come as no surprise to the women of Britain. On November 11, 1939, just nine weeks into the war, the Queen (the present Queen's mother) had made a broadcast to the nation that made the new, total nature of war clear.

"In other days, war was an affair of the fighting forces only," she said. "Now this has all changed. We, no less than men, have real and vital work to do."

The recruiting began right away. By 1941, all single women aged 20-40 were obliged to register for war work; then married women with the exception of those who were pregnant or had young children.

Within two years, almost 90% of single women and 80% of those who were married were involved in some kind of war work.

Agnes Harper was one of the thousands who answered the call. She is now 85, but on a sideboard in her home in Anniesland, Glasgow, there is a framed photograph of her from her days in the Land Army.

It shows a confident and happy Agnes in the regulation uniform of jodphurs, thick socks, khaki jacket and peaked cap, set at a cheeky angle. With her lipsticked smile and glossy hair, she looks just like one of the women on the call-up posters: strong, happy and proud.

Not that Agnes would use any of those words of course. She says she was pleased to do her bit, but prefers another word that better reflects what the war meant for her and millions of other women. She prefers the word "free".

"My father was quite a strict man," says Agnes. "He thought that if you went to the dancing, you were looking for men. I had had boyfriends but nothing more than going to the pictures. In Glasgow, I was always watched."

That all changed when Agnes joined up. The first time she tried she was told that at 17 she was too young. Six months later she tried again and got in, but only just.

"We got a medical examination and I got in by the skin of my teeth because I was just hitting 5ft," she says. "The doctor said to me: The Land Army will either kill you or cure you."

Agnes was then told to report to a farm in Insch, Aberdeenshire, and remembers arriving and realising that not only had she had been separated from the friend she had joined up with, but that conditions on the farm were shockingly basic; there was not even electricity.

"I was very homesick for the first three months," she says. "Everything was different and I cried every night. It only changed when I came home on leave after two months. When I went back after that, it was lot better because I had got to know people on the farm."

In the years since the war, the image of the land girl in headscarf and dungarees has become a glamorous icon and Agnes wore them like everyone else, but the work was backbreaking rather than beautiful.

"All I did for the first two months was pull turnips," she says. "Mind you, there were a lot of young boys around and the farmer was a lot more lenient with us than with them."

Agnes was also now around 150 miles from her conservative father. "We got a lot of freedom in Aberdeenshire. I met soldiers at dances and I met my husband there too."

At its peak in 1943, the Women's Land Army had 80,000 members. but it was not the only arm of the mass mobilisation of Britain's women. The RAF set up the WAAF, the Navy took on Wrens and the Army recruited through the ATS.

In May 1942, the Women's Timber Corps was also formed to keep the supply of wood going during the war. Thousands of women - they came to be known as Lumber Jills - felled and sawed and carried all over Scotland, including Elizabeth Gaw, of Carntyne, Glasgow.

Earlier this year, Elizabeth, who is now 86, attended a celebratory lunch at Glasgow City Chambers to honour the contribution of the women of the Timber Corps and Land Army.

At the time, she told how she was almost turned down for the Corps for being too short, but proved herself while training in Perthshire.

"They told me I would not be able to move a log and I went ahead and tipped it right over," she said. "I went on to be one of the best there was."

Agnes Harper was also at that lunch in Glasgow and it meant a lot to her.

"We never looked for recognition," she says. "But when there were parades for anniversaries, the land army was never there and it's only in the last two or three years that has changed."

Last year the Government created a commemorative medal for the women war volunteers and 30,000 applied for one, including Agnes. It was not much for three years of hard work on a farm, but it was a welcome, if belated thank you.

"We were not well paid," says Agnes. "It was about £1 a week, but the work we did in the land army helped free up a lot of men. What we did was crucial to the war effort."

She picks up the picture of herself from those days and carefully puts it back on the sideboard. Medals and lunches are all very well, but that picture is the only thing Agnes needs. WOMEN AT WAR WOMEN'S LAND ARMY: Established in 1939. By 1943 it employed 80,000 women on farms across the country. WOMEN'S TIMBER CORPS: Set up in May 1942, it recruited women from the age of 17, although some were as young as 14. As its peak 6000 women worked for it. WAAF: The female auxiliary unit of the Royal Air Force was set up in 1939. At its peak in 1943 it employed 180,000. WRNS: The women's branch of the Royal Navy, known by everyone as the Wrens. By 1944 there were 75,000. ATS: Formed in 1938, the women's branch of the Army grew to 217,000 by 1943.