Out of the Cage: Women's Experiences in Two World Wars by Gail Braybon & Penny Summerfield

Author:Gail Braybon & Penny Summerfield [Braybon, Gail & Summerfield, Penny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9781136247330
Google: LXptpQzbS_0C
Goodreads: 5020994
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-03-05T01:35:26+00:00

18 Joan Welsh in WAAF uniform in Trafalgar Square (Courtesy of Age Exchange Theatre Trust)

Theoretically, women conscripted under the National Service Number 2 Act had a choice between the services, Civil Defence, the Land Army and industry. But in practice the usual destinations were the ATS and munitions where shortages were most acute, so to get into one of the others it was important to apply as a volunteer well before being called up. The WRNS had a particularly ‘well-bred’ image. It was composed entirely of volunteers each of whom was supposed to provide three satisfactory references, and alone among the services it was not subject to military discipline, which meant that loyalty rather than the threat of court martial was supposed to keep its members in line. Internal discipline was as strict as any girls’ boarding school, however. One Wren remembers being put on a charge of mutiny for daring to suggest that the time of the weekly pay parade should be changed so that the Wrens would not miss the bus into town for the evening cinema show. Officials discussing discipline problems in the ATS said that in comparison the WRNS was ‘like a Sunday School’.22

In contrast to the glamour associated (not altogether appropriately) with both the Wrens and the WAAFs, the poor image of both the ATS and the munitions factories did not help their recruitment. The ATS was seen as the ‘Cinderella service’, its status symbolised above all by its uniform which was khaki-brown compared with the smarter navy- and airforce-blue of its sister services. A reputation for immorality hung over it, deriving in some people's eyes from the ‘camp-follower’ image of the WAACs of the First World War (‘the groundsheet of the army’), though all the women's services were the targets of such comments at times, as if a woman automatically abandoned moral restraint when she put on a uniform. ‘Up with the lark and to bed with a Wren’ and ‘Backs to the land’ were among the bawdy sentiments directed at the WRNS and the WLA. One woman reported that she had mentioned to her doctor that she was thinking of joining the ATS. ‘He said “Don't you dare!”. He had seen an ATS camp. Spent their time in the bar with the men.’ Another young woman said, ‘Oh, I couldn't join the ATS. All my friends would think I was one of “those”.’ Women received contradictory messages. Uniforms (especially trousers) were supposed to rob them of their femininity, so magazine advertisements urged them to compensate with lavish use of cosmetics, yet they were simultaneously publicly condemned for making themselves ‘cheap’ by such means. A young man commented candidly that the image of service-women's low morals resulted more from soldiers’ rapacity than anything the women themselves did.23

Factory work was considered monotonous, and factory women a ‘rough lot’ by some of those outside. Daughters quoted their mothers’ memories of women going ‘barmy’ after a few weeks on repetitive work in the First World War, and others claimed to know that there was ‘a very low class of girls in the factories now’.

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