Army Girls

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Army Girls is an unique intimate story of the final few women who served in the Second World War and are still alive to tell their tale. They were female soldiers in a war that Britain want to fight without conscripting women. It proved a vain hope, by December 1941 for the first time in British history women were compelled to join the war effort and a generation of girls came of age dressed in khaki, serving king and country. Barbara trained to drive army-style in giant trucks and Grace swapped her servant's pinafore for battledress and a steel hat, Martha turned down officer status for action on a gunsite and Olivia won the croix de guerre in France. Joan saw what war looked like for losers in 1945 Germany and Daphne still misses her school friend who died in action aged eighteen. Commemorating the 80th anniversary of the National Service Act that compelled women to serve, Army Girls captures the incredible true stories from some of the very last living female veterans from the biggest female military force - the Auxiliary Territorial Service - and brings to life a pivotal moment in British history from a woman's perspective. Army Girls like Maud, Vera, Joyce, Jean and Anne share stories and letters in a narrative that travels back in time and sheds new light on being young, female and at war in the 1940s. Army Girls is about belonging, resilience, gender, life and death. More than any other oral history about the veterans of WWII, this book is bedded in the present day. Written in the midst of a global pandemic that has shaped the last year of these women's lives, there are both parallels and paradoxes. Covid-19 is invisible and the national restrictions were lonely, even divisive but the threat is real particularly for the extreme elderly. This book honours those women who fought on both in their extreme youth and now once more in great old age.