International Women’s Day 2023

At this time of year a lot of articles are published and programmes broadcast, celebrating some of the most remarkable achievements of outstanding women, over the years.

I always pause to reflect upon the contrast between the ones who achieved fame and celebrity and those who didn't.

In terms of World War Two this contrast can be stark.

Consider for example, the women of the ATA (Air Transport Auxiliary) here in Britain (or its American equivalent, the Womens Airforce Service Pilots or WASPS.) Their courage was astounding, flying unarmed aircraft from one airfield to another or from factory to airfield, often flying solo a plane normally intended to carry a crew, with every possibility of being spotted and shot down. It is only in recent years that their stories became publicised, with names such as Mary Ellis and Nancy Stratford becoming known.

Yet what about the women who worked on airfields keeping the planes airworthy? They knew they faced aerial bombardment when the airfields came under attack and there were instances of outstanding heroism under such fire. Nameless women also worked long hours in the factories to keep the aircraft production lines moving, or risked illness, injury or worse in the munitions factories.

It has been said that our ingenuity won the war. It certainly played a great part. Increasingly over recent years more and more has been revealed about the various deception strategies most of which were designed by men. However, some women made a phenomenal contribution to the successful outcome of the war and saved many lives through their inventiveness.

I'm thinking for example of the extraordinarily intelligent Heddy Lamar who wanted to be a full-time inventor but whose beauty restricted her to the life of a movie star (with experiments set up in her dressing room.) She invented frequency-hopping technology which helped torpedoes find their target.. although it caused the death of enemy submariners it conversely saved the lives of a great many Allied seamen. It is also said to have paved the way for modern wifi technology.

Another woman, Joan Curran, invented the use of radar chaff to conceal aircraft from enemy radar detection, while Hazel Hill at the age of just 13, using her mathematical prowess, worked out how the Spitfire and Hurricanes could carry 8 guns instead of four. In order to get her plans approved, her father had to take the credit as no-one would have accepted the word of a schoolgirl. Mrs. Beatrice Shilling invented a restrictor which regulated the fuel flow in these planes to prevent them from stalling in a nose dive. All of these women deserve to be remembered and celebrated for their contributions.

The role of women in nursing during both World Wars with the Queen Alexandra Royal Army Nursing Corps has been celebrated in many books, articles and films and rightly so. However, less is said about the courage and selfless service of the nurses in our city hospitals who stayed at their posts even during air raids.

A lot, too, has been published and broadcast about the way women joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service and ran the farms and kept Britain from starvation especially as the Axis powers blocked shipping across the Atlantic. These women often came from a very different background and toiling on farms, in all weathers, was completely alien to them. In thinking about acute food shortages, we should also pause and reflect on all the housewives who kept their families fed by juggling ration books, coupons and whatever sustenance they could produce in their own garden. It was of course even harder in Occupied countries where apart from rations being virtually at starvation level, women might find themselves with an enemy soldier billeted in their home, taking the best of whatever was available. Some resorted to collaboration horizontale as a means of securing extra food or much-needed medicines for their child or an elderly parent. We have all seen images of these unfortunates being marched through the streets after their towns were liberated, heads shaved and often half-naked, to be jeered at by the onlookers many of whom had themselves offered little or no resistance to the occupier.

A decisive final victory relies upon a series of smaller successes in the field and it is truly thrilling to read about or watch films about, some of the great battles and campaigns. Each of these, though, conceals suffering, tragedy and heartbreak for the wives, mothers, lovers, sisters and daughters, anxiously dreading the news which would leave their lives devastated by the loss of their beloved. This is another kind of courage too rarely spoken of: the courage to keep on keeping on, in the face of almost unbearable grief. In the First World War there was a famous propaganda poster exhorting women to let their men go i.e. enlist. How much harder was it for those women old enough to find themselves having to face this for a second time, when much to their horrified disbelief, war broke out again?

So in addition to the hardship, the drudgery, the hunger, the material losses (through air raids) the women during these long six years (six years!) lived in fear of losing their menfolk. Or, had to continue to survive despite their new status as widows or fatherless daughters, or in the knowledge their beloved brother would not be returning. Mothers persuaded to let their children be evacuated to a safer place, showed great courage and had to bear this burden of separation as well. In Occupied countries perhaps your men had been taken as prisoners of war, or for slave labour, or were being held hostage, or were involved in clandestine terrorist (ie resistance) activities which could lead to massive reprisals.

The various Resistance movements across the world, wherever the enemy occupied a defeated country, owed a huge debt to the women who acted as couriers or radio operators or helped produce and distribute clandestine literature to counter the enemys propaganda and raise the morale of the local population. Many women found the courage to give shelter to those on the run from the enemy forces and to aid and abet the escape or evasion of Allied airmen, fully aware of the dire consequences if discovered. The story of the escape lines is now well-known and for some of the most famous Allied agents (such as the Australian Nancy Wake of the French Andrée Borrel) this work marked the beginning of their engagement with the clandestine life. Once infiltrated to an occupied country these agents relied upon countless women (and men) sitting in freezing huts for long hours, listening for and transcribing their messages. The intelligence gathered by women at these stations around the country (not exclusively Bletchley Park) listening for agents' scheduled transmissions or listening into enemy radio traffic, played a vital role in the prosecution of the war.

One thing all of these women held in common apart from their stoic determination to defeat all that National Socialism stood for, was their steely resilience. They all have my deepest and most humble admiration.