They were the forgotten women of World War 2.
Go to any New Zealand small town and you are bound to see a statue to fallen soldiers of two World Wars, those who gave blood overseas in the battle for freedom.
No such memorial has been bestowed on more than 4000 women of the New Zealand Women's Land Service, the "Land Girls" who toiled away on the farms to keep the country fed.
They came in their thousands from towns and cities to take the jobs of men who were wearing khaki overseas.
They kept the troops and the home front fed and, by all accounts, they worked like Trojans.
Most had never experienced the hard physical work of farming, but during the war years production of wool, mutton, milk and other necessities was not simply maintained, it thrived to record levels.
Seventy years after the war began, the Land Girls could soon be granted the same recognition as other war veterans by having plaques made with WLS (Women's Land Service) on them as a homage to their valuable contributions to the country.
Returned servicemen can mark their graves with the plaques outlining their self sacrifice, but the land girls could not until one was accorded the honour this year.
Juliet Peter, one of the few surviving land girls, said she would not be seeking this memorial.
It was not a matter of self sacrifice for her to leave her home and join the Land Service, "it was simply what needed to be done," she told NZPA.
"You didn't look for any reward other than the satisfaction of doing a job in war time when all the country was involved in one way or another.
"It was the natural and appropriate thing if we wanted the country to win the war," she said.
Now 94, Mrs Peter resides in a Wellington rest home but can still vividly remember her time as a land girl on a Canterbury sheep farm.
She was a 24-year-old fine arts student when she went to work on the 1200ha labour-intensive Rydal Downs farm northwest of Rangiora.
Working for the Ensor family, she and fellow land girl Sylvia Ragg learned how to be "jacks of all trades", and how to survive on the isolated, self-sufficient farm while also producing food for the rest of the country.
"You did the jobs as they needed to be done - we did everything from feeding lambs to harvesting."
She also learned how to drive a tractor - a technology which had only recently replaced the horse-drawn plough.
She would drive it all day long, harvesting and sowing crops.
"I quite readily availed myself with the chance to drive a tractor.
"I enjoyed it enormously and I felt very proud of having four wheels under me instead of four horse's legs," she said.
Mrs Peter was also a budding artist, and captured the experience in her paintings and drawings.
After the war, she went back to art school in Canterbury and the men resumed the farm work.
She and the other land girls have received little acknowledgement since - their feats go unmentioned on their epitaphs and there is little about them in the New Zealand's history literature.
Dianne Bardsley, author of The Land Girls: In a Man's World, said the land girls should be acknowledged as war veterans, and their largely untold story deserved its place in popular history.
"The work they did was quite remarkable, and essential to keep people fed.
"Some of them had worked as hairdressers before they went to these places, miles from anywhere, not knowing what crutching was, having never milked a cow, or worked a dog or ridden a horse.
"The interesting thing is that after the men came back from the war they slipped back into their old ways and the women went back to their roles and were simply overlooked," Ms Bardsley said.
In Britain, the land girls were officially recognised last year, and there have been calls here for the same to happen here.
The Ministry of Veteran's Affairs recently granted a one-off plaque to land girl Doris Buckrell after a request from her children.
The ministry is in consultation with the Returned Services Association to see whether the honour can be bestowed to other land girls.
While Mrs Peter might be reluctant to receive the recognition, a leading advocate for the instalment of the plaques, Paul Buckrell, estimated about 2000 of the women or their surviving families were likely to request them.
