Overall, more than half a million women served in the armed forces during the Second World War. This book tells the stories of just three of them – one from the Army, one from the Navy and one from the Air Force. But in their stories are reflected the lives of hundreds of thousands of others like them – ordinary girls who went to war, wearing their uniforms with pride.
1
The morning of Sunday 3 September 1939 was a sunny one, and Jessie Ward was out digging potatoes in the garden of her family’s house in the little village of Holbeach Bank, Lincolnshire. A petite girl with big blue eyes and dark hair, she looked far younger than her 17 years, but despite her slight build her mother always made sure to keep her busy with chores. That particular day Mrs Ward was looking after a sick friend’s little girl, so Jessie had even more to do than usual.
Just after 11 o’clock that morning, Mr Ward called his wife and daughter into the living-room, where they found him listening intently to the bulky wooden wireless set. There was a crackle, and then the clipped tones of Neville Chamberlain rang out of the machine. ‘This morning,’ he announced, ‘the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note, stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.’
Jessie saw her mother and father exchange an anxious glance.
‘I have to tell you now,’ the Prime Minister continued, ‘that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.’
Mr Ward leaned forward, holding his head in his hands. ‘It can’t happen again,’ he muttered. ‘It just can’t.’ Jessie knew that her father had spent much of the last war watching his fellow soldiers in the Royal Warwicks being gassed and slaughtered in front of him, and had witnessed his best friend being shot in the head.
‘Well, we’ll probably be invaded, being so close to the coast,’ said his tiny wife, matter-of-factly. ‘I’d better take Tina back to her mother. Jessie, you’ll have to do the Sunday dinner.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ Jessie replied, as the little girl began to howl. Whether it was because of the imminent invasion, or because she was missing dinner, Jessie wasn’t sure, but she was surprised to find that she herself felt nothing at all. Unlike her father, she had little idea of what war might bring, since the last one had ended four years before she was born.
Jessie went back out into the garden, and nodded over the fence at Mr Crawford, the elderly man who lived next door. ‘Do you think we’ll be invaded?’ she asked him.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘Even if we are, the Germans aren’t going to hurt the likes of us.’
Jessie’s father came marching out into the garden just in time to catch Mr Crawford’s remark. ‘You silly bugger!’ he shouted. ‘You’re the first ones the Nazis’ll get rid of. Your wife is blind and you’re an old man!’
‘They wouldn’t do that,’ Mr Crawford protested weakly.
‘They would,’ retorted Mr Ward. ‘I know the Germans. They wouldn’t waste food on people like you!’
Jessie was shocked – not so much by her father’s anger, or by the grim prophecy in his words, but at the fact that he had said ‘bugger’. She realised she had never heard him swear before.
In fact, it was rare to hear Mr Ward raise his voice at all, other than where Germans were concerned. He was a kindly man, whose health had never been the same since he had returned from the trenches 20 years earlier. It didn’t help that he had to work six days a week, hammering away in his little cobbler’s shop – and keeping it open until 9 p.m. most nights for the sake of the local farm labourers. Most of his customers only had one pair of dilapidated old boots to their name, but Mr Ward would work miracles on them, knowing that their owners couldn’t afford to buy new ones.
While Jessie’s father was out working all hours, his wife had free rein to boss their only daughter around. Fanny Ward was small, pretty woman, but her demure exterior belied a sharp temper, and Jessie had learned from a young age never to displease her. Every time she dropped a ball of wool she was winding or accidentally broke a cup in the kitchen, she was bound to get a clout round the ear.
Whenever she could, Jessie escaped to her grandmother’s house to play on their beaten-up old piano. She had inherited a talent for music from her father’s side of the family, and when she sat and played her cares seemed to melt away, the music transporting her to a realm of pure joy. Mr Ward was proud of his daughter’s musical talent, and put aside a shilling a week to pay for her to have lessons.
The only thing that came close to playing, as far as Jessie was concerned, was dancing. As she grew older, she and her best friend Joan started attending the dances that were held every week at the little church hall in Holbeach Bank. She knew she was a good dancer, and she enjoyed showing off her skills, but her mother made sure that her confidence never went to her head. ‘Do I look all right, Mum?’ Jessie asked her one night, as she was about to head out. ‘You’ll do,’ Mrs Ward replied. ‘But who’s going to be looking at you, anyway?’
When Jessie left school her piano playing proved a useful source of income, as she began giving lessons to the village children. But most of her time was still dictated by her mother, who kept her busy helping with knitting for the local wool shop, doing the gardening, cleaning the house, cooking and running errands.
There wasn’t much to look forward to in Holbeach Bank, beyond one day marrying a boy from the village and moving out – and to begin with, the advent of war didn’t make much difference to the sleepy community. Most of the local lads were farm labourers, so they were exempt from conscription, and the village was so tiny that no one thought it worth installing air-raid shelters.
But for Jessie’s father, the new war brought with it a new sense of purpose. He was thrilled when he heard on the wireless that men up to 65 were needed to help defend their country, as part of the Local Defence Volunteers or ‘Home Guard’. Now Mr Ward spent his spare time back in uniform, practising his marching and going out on night patrols, armed with an old First World War rifle. Wherever he went, he walked about with his chin up and his back straight as a rod. The neighbours joked that if you cut him, his blood would be khaki.
But Jessie’s father’s new pastime meant that she was left alone in the house with her mother more than ever, and she began to grow desperate for something that would take her away. One day, she spotted an advert for a waitress at a little truckers’ cafe on the road to Holbeach proper. It was hardly glamorous, more of a ‘greasy spoon’, but Jessie jumped at the chance to get out of the house, hurrying to the cafe and offering her services.
‘Are you sure you want the job?’ asked the woman who ran it, looking at the slip of a girl in front of her. ‘We get some pretty tough types in here, you know.’
‘Oh, that doesn’t bother me,’ Jessie replied. If she could put up with her mother, she was sure she could handle a few truckers. The other woman didn’t look quite convinced, so Jessie suggested helpfully, ‘If you like, you can serve the posh customers, and I’ll look after the tough guys.’
‘You’re on,’ said the woman, hastily handing Jessie an apron as a group of burly-looking men came in through the door.
On the evenings when Mr Ward was at home, the family always gathered to listen to the BBC’s 9 p.m. bulletin and hear the latest news of the war. In May 1940 they all sat in shock as they heard that the British Expeditionary Force was being evacuated from Dunkirk. An armada of fishing boats, crabbers, trawlers, shrimpers and yachts had answered the call for assistance, bringing back hundreds of thousands of exhausted soldiers while the Luftwaffe pounded them from overhead.
The new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, told the country that the evacuation