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Army girls: the secrets and stories of military service from the final few women who fought in World War II

2022; Oxford University Press; Volume: 98; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ia/iiac241

1468-2346

Christina Chatzitheodorou,

Gender, Security, and Conflict

In Army girls, historian and Royal Television Society broadcaster Tessa Dunlop tells the story of the last surviving women who served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) branches of the British army during the Second World War. Through her interviews, Dunlop weaves beautiful memories from the war into a complex tale, and provides insight into what it was like to be a twenty-year-old girl living in a country at war. As the book is written for a non-academic audience, Dunlop does not claim to present new arguments. Rather, the author seeks to recall and share the experiences of these women, their thoughts and concerns, in what was perceived as a man's domain. The book has three parts and each chapter follows a thematic approach featuring several characters. This might be initially confusing, but as the story unfolds, readers become more familiarized with the characters and their personal stories. The first part, ‘Novel war’, begins with Olivia, who ends up trapped in French territory. Olivia's story shares similarities with Britain's first tepid reaction to the war. Her decision to leave for France for her gap year in January 1940 reflects the initial numbness that overtook Britain in the first months of the war—what later became known as the ‘Phoney War’. In the second part, ‘Long war’, a change of attitude emerges and from then on, Churchill's Britain would fight ‘on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets, in the hills’ (see Winston Churchill's 1940 speech widely known as ‘We shall fight them in the beaches’). The third part, ‘Foreign war’, deals with the end of the war, when Britain wavered between the wish to return to the status quo ante (before women were conscripted in the military) and the need for women personnel in occupied Germany in the wake of the Cold War. As Dunlop demonstrates, old mentalities regarding women's place were not broken due to the war: they were just suspended until the war was over. Yet, through their service, women became aware of their worth and this ‘was a genie that could never fully be put back in the bottle’ (pp. 219–20).