Army Girls

Army Girls is an intimate and unique story of the final few women who served in World War II and are still alive to tell their tale. They were female 'soldiers' in a conflict that Britain wanted 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 gun-site 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.

Capturing the incredible true stories from WWII's biggest female military force - the Auxilliary Territorial Service - and the oldest - the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, Army Girls is about belonging and resilience, life and death. Army Girls like Maud, Vera, Jean, Betty and Nanza share precious memories and letters in a narrative that travels back in time and sheds new light on being young, female and at war.

More than any other oral history focused on the veterans of WWII, this book is bedded in the present day. Written in the midst of a global pandemic that has shaped the final furlong of these women's lives, there are both parallels and paradoxes. This book honours those women who fought on both in their extreme youth and now once more in great old age.