The Girls Who Went to War: Heroism, heartache and happiness in the wartime women’s forces
the many topics covered in the lectures was the uncomfortable subject of venereal disease, or ‘VD’. Many girls who had yet to learn the facts of life were shocked at being told about the virtues of ‘French letters’, and even the more worldly wise were horrified by the grisly photographs of syphilitic sores that flashed up on a giant screen in front of them. But for the ATS, sexually transmitted diseases were no laughing matter. National rates of gonorrhoea and syphilis had more than doubled since the start of the war, and it was estimated that one out of every 200 ATS girls had already been infected.
Of all the lectures that Jessie attended in her first week of training, the one that made the strongest impression on her was a talk about Anti-Aircraft Command. To begin with, the Royal Artillery’s ‘ack-ack’ gun-sites had been strictly male environments, but the drive to free up men for fighting roles abroad was seeing the formation of a number of mixed heavy gun batteries. The prime minister’s daughter, Mary Churchill, had been among the earliest ATS girls to join one of them.
The Army was keen to boost recruitment among the current cohort of ATS trainees, and as the girls sat and listened, the speakers pressed home the importance of the guns in defending Britain’s cities against German bombers. ‘When you’re asked what job you’d like to do in the Army,’ they told the hut full of young women, ‘we want as many of you as possible to request ack-ack.’
Jessie was very much taken with the idea of serving on the guns. She had joined the ATS keen to do something meaningful for the war effort, and helping to shoot down German planes sounded a lot more exciting than answering the telephone or working as a kitchen orderly like her old schoolmate Peggy. And the idea that, like Jim, she would be serving in the Royal Artillery appealed to her too. She decided then and there that when the time came, she would put her name down for ack-ack.
After a week of daily drill, even the most uncoordinated recruits had begun to master the basics of marching, and were able to about-turn at a moment’s notice, salute to the side while still moving forwards, and halt without piling into each other. Now that she wasn’t the only girl capable of keeping in rhythm, Jessie was enjoying the regular practices more than ever. She might be petite, but she felt like a small cog in a very powerful machine, and the sound of a hundred feet hitting the ground together was exhilarating.
Jessie was also growing used to the regimented nature of Army life, which infused every hour of her time at the training camp. In the mornings the girls had to dismantle – or ‘barrack’ – their bedclothes, stacking them up in perfect piles. Then they were subjected to kit inspections, in which each item had to be laid out in a prescribed pattern. At night, they had to polish their shoes and tunic buttons until they shone.
Every moment of the day was accounted for – the girls were told when to wake up and when to go to sleep, even when to visit the communal washing facilities, or ‘ablutions’, where they were allowed to shower three times a week. The lack of privacy there was just part of the ATS way of life – a reminder that, like every item of kit, the girls’ bodies belonged to the Army.
The one small touch of individuality they were allowed was a little shelf above each bed, where they could place a few personal items. Jessie had proudly displayed a photograph of Jim, and she saw that many of the other girls also had pictures of their sweethearts back home.
Despite the busy training schedule, Jessie wrote to her fiancé every couple of days, but she was kept so busy that she barely had time to miss him. In the evenings the girls in her hut would stay up singing and chatting together until lights out at 10.30 p.m., and if they weren’t cleaning and polishing their uniforms while they did it, they were doing embroidery. There was a concession in the barracks that sold the patterns, and Jessie was working on a tablecloth.
If the first part of ATS training was about instilling a respect for Army discipline, the second was for sorting the wheat from the chaff. The girls lined up in an exam hall to sit a series of intelligence and aptitude tests, with questions on general reasoning and mathematics. There they were asked to write an essay about their lives before they had signed up, to assess their spelling and grammar.
When the written exams were out of the way, they were given eye checks to establish how far they could see, and a steady-hand test where they had to avoid setting off a buzzer. Then there were memory and visual recognition tests, in which cards showing various German planes were flashed in front of them and they had to try to remember which was which.
By the time Jessie was led into a little room and asked what trade she would like to be considered for, her head was spinning, but she confidently proclaimed, ‘Ack-ack, please.’ A corporal made a note on a clipboard and sent her on her way.
Finally, at the end of their time at the training camp, the girls all gathered to be assigned to their postings. As a corporal read their names off a list one by one, they waited anxiously to hear what their future in the Army would be. Some trades, such as cook, were so unpopular that girls had been known to go to extreme lengths to get out of them, as evidenced by the occasional dollop of mustard in the morning’s porridge.
Since Jessie’s surname was Ward, she was one of the last to hear what role she had been assigned to. Mary and Olive had already been told they were going to an ack-ack training camp in Berkshire, and she crossed her fingers, hoping that she would be setting off with them.
Finally, the corporal came to her name. ‘Private Ward,’ she called out. ‘Anti-aircraft.’
At that moment, Jessie couldn’t have been happier. She was joining the artillery, and would soon be giving the Germans what for.
2
When Margery Pott announced that she had joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, her family couldn’t help laughing. Surely, they thought, she must be pulling their legs – but the serious look on her face told them it was no joke.
‘Fancy Margery doing that!’ was all her sister Peggy could say, a remark that accurately captured the view of the whole family. It was, in fact, a view that Margery privately shared – she was the last person in the world who anyone would expect to join up.
If anyone should be answering the call to war, it ought by rights to be Peggy. A tomboy three years older than Margery, she had always been the fighter of the family. When Margery was a little girl and her best friend Daisy had knocked her to the ground, it was Peggy who had rescued her, marching up and giving her attacker a good walloping.
Growing up, Peggy had always been there to protect Margery, but she had also been a tough act to follow. She loved nothing better than cycling to the local forest and camping out overnight, and her favourite films were action-packed Westerns. Margery was too scared of insects and the dark to join her sister on her expeditions, and their mother didn’t let her go to the cinema in case the cowboy movies gave her nightmares.
As the youngest of three daughters, Margery was the baby of the family, and Mrs Pott kept her wrapped in cotton wool, forbidding her to ride Peggy’s bike for fear that she would fall off and hurt herself. Little did she know that Peggy had already taken it upon herself to give her little sister lessons in secret.
Mrs Pott had a lot on her plate, since she also had her husband’s failing health to worry about. His emphysema, which had prevented him from fighting in the last war, was only worsening thanks to the dust he inhaled in his job as a maltster, turning the roasted barley every day. Mrs Pott kept a spittoon for him to cough into each morning, and poor Mr Pott would hack and hack until he brought up large lumps of phlegm. But at least his employment meant that the family got to live in the maltster’s house, which meant they were the only ones in the little rural village of North Wallington to have running water.
When Margery began secondary school, she felt more in her sister’s shadow than ever. ‘Oh, Peggy was ever so good at games,’ were the words that greeted her when she first arrived on the school playing field. Margery, who had never been particularly good at anything physical, felt her heart sink. In her academic lessons she always did well, but