Dan Snow's History Hit - The Secrets of WW2's Women Soldiers

Episode Date: December 12, 2021

The Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) was the women's branch of the British Army during the Second World War. Formed in 1938 it saw many thousands of women take on a huge range of vital roles in the war effort which had never before been open to them. This included manning anti-aircraft stations, searchlights, plotting rooms and many more. This could be dangerous work and over 700 women were killed during the conflict. Some women also faced dangers closer to home including the behaviour of some of the men they served with. Sadly, the contribution of these women and the risks they endured has often been overlooked. To shine a light on their courage and service Dan is joined by historian, broadcaster and writer Tessa Dunlop and Grace Taylor, a 97 year-old former ATS ‘Gunner Girl’. Tessa Dunlop is the author of the book: Army Girls: The secrets and stories of military service from the final few women who fought in World War II. Tessa and Grace discuss with Dan the reality of women serving on the front line, how allowing women to more fully participate in the war effort marked a radical social departure and Grace's experience as a member of the ATS. 

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. Recently I've been lucky enough to talk to a wonderful Pearl Harbor veteran. I've talked to one of the original Tuskegee airmen, one of the African-American airmen who fought with such skill and tenacity in the skies above Europe in the Second World War. And today I've got another wonderful veteran to talk to. This time I'm talking to Grace Taylor. She's 97 years old. She's a former gunner girl in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. It was a service founded in 1938 and women entered it and performed a range of essential wartime activities. I'm also going to be talking to Tessa Dunlop. She's a well-known historian. She's a broadcaster and writer. She's author of

the fantastic book Army Girls. And we're going to talk about the women who fought, the women who served, and the women who also often get overlooked in the story of the Second World War. It is a very, very great pleasure to have these two wonderful women on the podcast. I've got to say, Grace, age 97, she can use the Zoom better than many people half her age. Fact, fact. If you want to listen to other podcasts about World War II or watch TV shows about the Second World War, by any chance, we've got our own history channel. It's kind of cool. It's the world's best digital history channel. It's probably the world's best history channel, actually. I can say that as a fact. There's no aliens on there. There's no conspiracy theories about Hitler wandering around Argentina. There's just great history with really

good historians. Our Pearl Harbor documentary with Don Wildman, in which he discusses the turmoil that followed Pearl Harbor and his family, in his city, in his state, in his country, is going great guns. So many people watching that. So great to have a US team working on Team History Hit for the first time. It's a huge honor and it's very, very exciting. We're going to be expanding, doing more US stuff over the next year. So please go and subscribe. Historyhit.tv is the website. You can sign up and you get for less than the cost of a pint of beer every month, you get access to the world's best history channel and you get to join the coolest team on earth. Do it. In the meantime though, here is the very brilliant Tessa Dunlop

and the gunner girl, Grace Taylor. Tessa Dunlop, and the gunner girl, Grace Taylor. Hello, welcome on the podcast. Good to have you, Grace Tessa. Hello. Hello, Tessa. Grace, did you want to help out when war broke out in 1939? What was going through your head? In 1939, I didn't think about going into the army, no. I wasn't old enough anyway. But I decided to go in and I went in in 1941. To cut a long story short, my very first boyfriend was in the army

and we used to meet to go to dances. I always did a lot of dancing. And a few months after we'd been meeting, he told me he'd been transferred. He was sent out to Port Said. I got the feeling that if I was to join up, I might meet him again. He was my first boyfriend and I didn't want to lose him. So that was when I decided I would join up, when they posted him away, you see. So there's me, Grace, thinking it was all about patriotism

and winston churchill speeches and you were just uh didn't want to let the boys slip through your fingers i mean i was only 16 anyway you see so i had to go to south end to join up and i was living in brentwood at the time so i had to wait till i had a half a day off um And I caught the bus and went into Southend and I signed on. Well, of course, I didn't tell anyone what I was doing because I was having to live in with my job. And I knew that it wouldn't be nice to still carry on working when I was waiting for them to send for me, you see. But it was only a couple of weeks when they did send for me. How common was that experience, Tessa? What were the reasons that the people that you've interviewed tended to join up?

There was a combination of reasons. I found Grace's story particularly moving. You lost your mum very young, didn't you, Grace, aged 11? Yeah. And you were in domestic service, against your will really, from the age of 14. So effectively, Grace didn't really have a home. One in four girls were in domestic service. It was the job that no one wanted between the walls. And it was very lonely.

You were quite lonely, weren't you? Yes, I was. Yes. Yeah, I needed company. You see, when you are in domestic service like that, you're the only one. There's no one else your young age. And I was doing something that I know if my mum had been alive, I would never have been sent into service, but it was my stepmother that sent me into service, the same as she sent my older sister. I had a sister who was two and a half years older than me and she sent her into service as well. This person that my father married after my mum died,

she wanted him but she didn't want his children. So that was how I came to be in the service I'd never done housework before but in mostly common sense I suppose really and I was glad to get out of it and the thought of joining the army well I knew I was going to have company and and I'd have somewhere to sleep because you see I couldn't go back home they didn't want me home anymore so and also the other thing that's quite important is until conscription, which was 80 years ago in December this year, girls, you had to volunteer. And a lot of the time, their parents didn't want them wearing a uniform and leaving home. But Grace didn't have that barrier. So she didn't have the parental barrier saying you can't do this, especially not at 16, because Grace added on her age. And the other thing is for Grace, it was a

step up. So a lot of girls didn't want to join the army, though they had high flown ideas about the wrens, darling, or indeed had their own jobs or their own lives. And actually, it was anathema at the beginning of the war, the idea of putting women in uniform, that changed very quickly. them at the beginning of the war, the idea of putting women in uniform, that changed very quickly. So Grace, in many ways, was a gift to this service, the ATS, the Auxiliary Territorial Service, that was needing to grow and fast. And they didn't just want any old girl, they wanted bright girls, and they had to shed the class cloak. They realised by 1941, they needed to replace the men on the gun sites. This was revolutionary, but they needed to find women who could operate high-tech equipment. So it didn't matter where you came from in society, what mattered was your ability. And you were tested quite early on, weren't you, Grace?

Yes, I was. Yes. When they did send for me, I was told to report to Leicester. Glen Parva was the barracks. And on that day, there were about 20 girls arrived at the same time from all over the country, and we all arrived more or less at the same time. I'd never been in a barracks before, and you're taught so much then. You're issued with your uniform and your steel helmets and your gas masks and boots and gaiters and the usual uniforms, you know, and your dress uniform, of course.

But then you're also taught how to march, and we did a lot of what they called square bashing. And we did a lot of marching to bands, which, of course, I love because I just love music. I'm getting a bit full now. I'm going, I'm living it again. Quite emotional, isn't it? The other thing is that, I'm going to quickly step living it again. Quite emotional, isn't it? The other thing is that

I'm going to quickly step in here so you can blow your nose, Grace. But that boyfriend was very significant. It was the first time she'd been hugged since her mama died, really. It was the first time she'd had close contact and affection. And suddenly for him to be ripped away, I think that's when, Grace, you thought, what is this war? You know, why can't I be part of it? And I was very struck actually talking to these women, just how deep the gender divisions were. Men in those early years were fighting a war to protect women. And once you start including women in the war, well, that sent men in the war office, steam was coming off their bald heads. You know, my goodness, you know, how do we frame this war? If we need to put women in uniforms, how do we frame it? How do we make this work for the general public, for the Times reading establishment? You know, and actually, that was where their concern lay. And they didn't pick up on the fact that girls

like Grace were there raring to go, a lot of them, not all of them, they had to conscript and draft girls in. But there were also girls like Grace, who actually given half the chance you wanted to belong didn't you Grace? Yes that's true I needed the company I needed companionship and because I made friends very easy we were all friends to be quite honest I just had three special ones but that was after we were sent to Arborfield for training and that was where they decided what you would be best doing and it was then that I was told I was going to the Royal Artillery. And then you start getting close friends that are going to be in your battery, you see.

I had three special friends. One was Cathy Bott, one was Lil Crow and myself. We were the three stooges that were always together. And we even worked together on the hype finders and the plotting. And Grace, you're getting a little emotional there when you're talking about this. Is that because of, are there painful traumatic memories or are these happy memories?

They're happy memories. They're happy memories. They're things that I'm back living it again, you see. And I did enjoy myself in the army, I must admit that. It was a dreadful war and we had some awful times, but I was also happy because I had got friends and I hadn't had close friends before, you see. And how were you treated by the men you were working alongside? What did they make of all of you guys in uniform?

I was in what they called heavy ACAC, mixed battery. So there was 50-50 really really half men and half girls when we first formed they were well we said older men they were sort of 30 above you know but ancient oh yes grandpas almost as old as you dan no i mean you're 15 years younger than me oh i see them in a different light now but um after the battery was formed we were trained on the guns of course and um the young men that were in the battery were shipped out and they were replaced with these older men well they treated us like their daughters so it was fine but we were sorry to lose the young lads that were trained with us, you see, but they needed to send them abroad.

So we had the older men. But I mean, they were very fit. I mean, we thought they were old. But I mean, when they're in their 30s, they're still pretty fit, aren't they? We're all right. Yeah, you know, we cling on to a bit of the old youth. Grace is interesting because Grace had no problems on her gun site. But quite a few of the other women I've worked with and I've seen their letters home complain about, quote unquote, and this is Lady Martha Bruce, who later became a lieutenant colonel. She was a radar operator. She writes home to her mother, Kitty, Countess of Elgin. It would be all right if it wasn't for the dirty old men. There was quite a few issues and quite a lot of those older men find the younger girls tiresome.

Now, Grace didn't find any of this and she found all the men respectful. So I have to say Grace was an exception. But there were some issues and actually the head of AA command, General Sir Frederick Pyle, changed that ruling about older men. And by the end of the war, he was bringing in younger recruits again who didn't find, quote unquote, it's so hysterically unorthodox working with women. But you didn't find that, did you, Grace? No, because once our battery was formed and we had got the, as I say, the older men, we all stayed as a battery. It wasn't changed again and we were with them right through until the battery was disbanded.

We all got on well together. There was no hanky-panky going on. Unfortunately, I did lose one of our, you know, I told you I had three, two other friends, there were three of us. But Cathy, I don't know how or who it was with, but she managed to get pregnant. But it wasn't with anyone on the gun site. It was someone she'd met outside. And that was immediate dismissal. Paragraph 11. I know it seems like we're going off the subject, but actually Parliament, all their concern wasn't about girls being hit by enemy raiders. It was about whether girls became

promiscuous. And there was a big parliamentary committee, the Markham Committee, sent to investigate derogatory rumours in the service in 1942. What's interesting, Dan, is of course, in this current climate, there was no equivalent investigation into the male army, just, you know, the female services. And you found that very unfair, didn't you? You're quite angry about that today, Grace, aren't you? Yes, it was a shame, really, because we got on so well. But then, of course, it meant that there was just Lil and I, you see, but we got over it. But I mean, Lil was disappointed the same as I was that she'd done this, you know, because we didn't even know that she was going out to meet anybody. My spare time was just spent in the naffy. Grace, people think about women serving in the war away from the front line.

You were in an anti-aircraft battery. You were firing explosives at German raiders, bombers. You were on the front line. Well, yes, I suppose so, really. But we did it as we were told. You see, we were trained to use these instruments, and I enjoyed it because I knew I was good at it. And I had very good eyesight in those days and hearing, of course. And you had to spend hours and hours learning about anti-aircraft recognition, you see, because you needed to know whether it was your own or your enemy that you were tracing. And once you picked it up in the sky of course then you put your instrument

on it and it was the girls that had to find out or work out where the plane was so you needed the bearing and the angle and the height for the information to be passed over to the guns there were four 3.7 guns on each gun site. And then the command post is actually in the centre of them. So your information is being transferred to these big guns for the men to fire. The girls would never fire the guns. Well, they couldn't lift the ammunition anyway. They were very big shells.

So there were men that were on the guns, of course. They were doing their bearing and angle and height from the information we'd given them. It's an interesting point here, Dan, which you probably know, actually, but until April 1941, girls couldn't be on operational sites. That changes in April 1941. This very far-seeing Pyle, the head of AA command, does pre-war research because he sees this is going to happen. He sees he's going to get the male dance, dimwits as he refers to them. One has latter stages of venereal disease, one a glass eye, one can't fire a gun. So he knows he needs girls. So he gets a female electrical engineer, Caroline Haslett, before the war to prove girls can do this. He knows the big stumbling block will be women being permitted to relinquish that non-combat status.

will be women being permitted to relinquish that non-combat status. And so Carolyn Haslett concludes in her research, girls could do everything except the heavy work involved in loading, manoeuvring and firing guns. So that hopped over the gender issue so that Churchill could present this to Parliament. Yeah, we're going to conscript girls. They will be working on gun sites, but they won't be firing the guns. So they won't be combatants. Now, now of course you're just as likely to die and one of the women I work with her best friend died on a

gun site aged 18 because the shrapnel that's falling doesn't discriminate were you ever afraid Grace when you were out there no never entered my mind it never entered any of our minds no you were told to do the job and you did it how you knew how to do it and you were doing it well you never had time to think about yourself tell dan about that night in plymouth that terrible night in plymouth well they put us on a gun site that was on crown hill just outside plymouth we were overlooking plymouth actually and we were called out on the raid because Plymouth was being bombed and we were out firing all night and they were dropping their bombs and they flattened Plymouth. We were out all night and in the morning when we were told to stand down before we went back to our

barrack room we were told that the girls that had been on duty all night could have the morning off and as a special thank you they allowed us to go down into town. Demeth was flattened when we went down into town and I can remember where the rank of shops had been blown up the owners of the shops were trying to collect what they could of their stock and there was a like a paste table was put up with all these bits and pieces of makeup on and we went and had a look and my favorite was californian poppy perfume and they had some on there they were selling for six pence a bottle so i bought this perfume i was so pleased to be able to buy perfume again, you know. But of course, I found out after that the Americans had just arrived by boat into Plymouth. And I think it was the Americans that really attracted the Germans to come and bomb because they wanted to knock the Americans out as well because they were helping us, weren't they?

You listened to Dan Snow's History. We're hearing from Tessa Dunlop and Grace Taylor about the women of World War II. More coming up. Hi, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and in my podcast Not Just the Tudors, we talk about everything from sex to spying, wardrobes to witch trials. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Subscribe from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes,

who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Tessa, what other jobs? We've got the anti-aircraft batteries. Give me a sense of the galaxy of jobs that these women were doing. There was a galaxy. I have to say what fascinated me about this, the anti-aircraft sites particularly, you know, Grace is the original drone girl. Fascinated me about this, the anti-aircraft sites particularly.

You know, Grace is the original drone girl. These were predictors, height finders, radar, all the new tech. And it was girls in charge. And interestingly, America, still that part of the army, recruits more girls than men. The queen drones, apparently, they're referred to. And Eisenhower was so impressed with our mixed batteries and how well they worked that they replicated them, the Americans. It was a massive success story. And of course, managed to fit into those gender specific

roles. All the trades broadened out. So initially, it's just five jobs, which is why the ATS was unpopular. Nobody wanted to be just a dog's body to the army. There was you could be an orderly or a cook. They never had enough cooks. Because of course, if you think you've got one and a half million Allied soldiers coming into Britain, you need to cook for them well by now the ats is rebranded you know it's action through adventure etc and girls are dreaming of a great big gunny oney they don't want to cook so that's one of the crises that actually ironically that the ats has to deal with that they've rebranded themselves and you can go into signals there was a lot of wireless interceptor girls one of my favorites nan. You're not allowed to have favourites, but you know what I mean. Sometimes

they touch your graces. So Nanza was taught Morse and then she goes up to Harrogate and is on the Morse intercepting German Enigma encrypted communications. Betty, because she spoke German, was seconded to Bletchley Park. Then also you have lots of clerks. Clerks are massively in demand once we start sending girls over into Europe to back up our Allied push post D-Day. That was another nightmare for government. Parents think this is the end of the war. What do you mean you want to send away our little flower into all those men? This was the big concern. The big concern was not Jerry bombers. It was parents worried about Allied men and their behaviour. They couldn't get enough female volunteers because if a girl wanted to volunteer, they had to have parental permission or their husband's permission.

And so that was got rid of and they were directed overseas by February 1945 to back up the British Army of Liberation. And lots of women, thousands of ATS girls were in liberated Belgium. They were operating the gun sites from Belgium. They then move into occupied Germany. And they're a big part of our backup army doing all the clerical work. Jones sent 180 letters home from occupied Germany, working in the legal department. And it was fascinating. And also, of course, into Italy. Then there was the elite corps, the Fanny, who came into this ATS umbrella. But I think for me, one of the reasons I was so struck by Grace's story is that in many ways, you were the epitome of what the People's Army, this new brand army wanted. You were talented, Grace. You wouldn't have been spotted had it not been for the war. That little

story about the perfume, she was military, but she was also feminine. She retained her femininity. That was really important. They didn't want to defeminize you know our future mothers the language dan it's just extraordinary how 80 years ago i mean grace you'll tell us this it was a totally different world wasn't it yes the more i think about it you know i think did i really go through all that you know grace what's it like for you now seeing women commanding naval ships piloting fighter, serving on the front line as engineers and other combat roles? What's that like for you now thinking about that?

I envy them. Yes, I do. I envy them because it would have been nice if I could have stayed in, really. But as Tessa knows, I married while I was in the Army. Oh, go on, tell Dan about your love story. It's too good. Tell him about meeting Bob on the gun site. We were stationed actually on a gun site

between Cheltenham and Gloucester. And this chap used to drive. We had 1,500 weights and three tonners that stayed with us all the time, of course. I mean, we had lots of other girls that weren't working on the gun site that were doing office work. We always had men. It was the soldiers, the men that were doing the cooking, but we did have girls working in the

office and they used to do the wages and things like that. But I don't know how we got together. We were in the naffy, I know, and we used to sit chatting and, you know, having a cup of tea and your cake during the evening. And that's how we first started talking. It progressed and we got on very well and we fell in love. That September, we decided we would get married because I knew that I had no home anyway. Now, I couldn't go home to mum and dad or anything. And I thought, well, you know, that would be a good idea, really.

If I got married, we'd have a home together and I'd be with the man I love. Are we allowed to tell him about the nightie and where the nightie came from? Come on it's too cute. Yes this was at a gun site where we were firing again we were on duty and we were at the command post and we did shoot this plane down. The pilot bailed out. We saw the parachute coming down, but it was a couple of fields away because our gun sights were mostly always in the country. And when the raid was over, we were allowed to, the girls that were on duty, only about 20 of us were on duty,

at the command post, we were allowed to go and collect this parachute and they allowed us to share it have so much each my piece of parachute my sister that was still in civvy street she made me a nightdress out of it and it was it was lovely nylon white nylon and it did make a very nice nightdress out of it but But, of course, in the army we wore pyjamas. I kept that and I wore that on my first night. Not that it was any good because nothing happened, but at least I knew that I had a decent nightie to wear. Yes.

That was made out of the parachute. And are you proud of the role that you and your comrades played in the Second World War? Yes, I am. Yes, I'm very proud. Because, you see, once radar came in, we were told nothing. It was all kept very secret. We weren't allowed newspapers.

We never had a chance to listen to the news. We didn't know what was going on anywhere else. We were just in our own bubble. And we knew that these two wooden huts arrived and they were parked up against a high hedge on the actual command post. And we were curious, of course, what these two sheds were. They had aerials on top and we didn't know that there was such a thing as radar. The girls that were trained on them, I think there were about three girls that used to work in each hut. One was a receiver and one was a transmitter, I found out since. Then they built an underground room where we used to

do the plotting. And then by the end of the war, Grace, you're in the plotting room, aren't you? You're taking these commands, you're watching the light flash on this glass table. What's interesting, Dan, is in 1944, obviously, they need to provide air cover for D-Day. And also, you've got the threat that we know is pending, which is called Operation Diver, where we've got to be alert to these potential new V1, these new cruise missiles that might be coming over. So the AA command is severely stretched. And you're down on Lizard's Point, the furthest southerly tip, in a tent. That was strictly forbidden. Girls weren't allowed to be in tents, but they had to jettison all the rules, didn't they? Because the sow

stretched right across the south coast and on into those estuary bits coming into London where the V1 bombs might drop. And in fact, it was the biggest movement of gun sights and girls that that happened during the war and because the Germans had been tricked by Operation Fortitude to no avail no attack arrived where you were and you could watch that flotilla of ships couldn't you go and no enemy raiders yeah on D-Day of course I was at Land's End and I was under canvas we had these tents all round the field. Each tent held both girls. And in another field, there were tents for the men, of course.

Yes, we were on duty, of course, and we were able to see. We were mostly firing out to sea because we were on the top of the cliffs, of course. And we saw all the ships going through, but we didn't know why. All these little tiny boats, you know, were all going in one direction. but we didn't know why all these little tiny boats you know were all going in one direction and we didn't know why but of course they were making their way towards the coast but of course we found out after what I was going to say was once they brought in the radar of course the girls that were on the instruments were also trained to do the plotting so we had the usual glass table and their headphones and microphones, and we had to track the planes as they went across on the table. And it should be said, Grace, because you were

married, you got relatively early release, although your husband then goes and is serving in occupied Germany. But it made a big difference to you, the army, didn't it? A lot of women, Dan, the 1950s, as you'll know, is a very conventional decade. A lot of women, they have this extraordinary experience that stayed with them. The genie never fully put back in the bottle but a lot returning to domesticity to being a mother and a wife as the beverage report wanted them to but Grace was an exception you absolutely fired up and you you got a very good job didn't you I did you see because when the batteries were disbanded, myself and another little Cockney girl were sent up to Glasgow, St Johnston, just outside Glasgow. And we were sent there and it was from there that I was demobbed.

And of course, then I came down to London because I was born in Ilford in Essex. And I came down to London and I knew that I'd got to find somewhere to live and start furnishing it. that I'd got to find somewhere to live and start furnishing it. And the furniture that I bought was utility, where you had to have coupons to buy it, and I had to pay for it weekly. And you got a job. Tell them about your GPO job.

Yes. My first job, of course, was my sister was working as a GPO telephonist, and she said, well, why don't you come and join us? It's good money. So I did, and I had to well, why don't you come and join us? It's good money. So I did. And I had to do, I don't know how many weeks it was, schooling. I had a long time. Anyway, I passed and I got in.

And I was GPO telephonist for 20 years after that. And of course, by this time, of course, Bob's home and he's got his regular job. And we were doing fine. She's being modest because it was the job that all the girls wanted. It was a cracking job. And also those tests and the selection, you were kind of match fit from being in the army, weren't you? Well, I'd been used to wearing the headphones and the mouthpieces, you see.

And I was so interested in the map reading and learning all the codes. And in those days, of course, it was manual. The telephones were manual. And then you went on to the automatic later. By the time I left, of course, I was manual. They telephoned with a manual and then you went on to the automatic later. By the time I left, of course, I was one of the seniors. I'm not surprised. So, Tessa, why do you think we still sometimes overlook the contribution of women in the war effort?

Grace, why do you think the men are recognised over the women? Well, I don't think people realise that there were 300,000 ATS girls and I don't think people realise how many of us there were. But it was such a large range of jobs. I only watched the programme yesterday and they were talking about the men on the barrage balloons, but it was the ATS girls that did that. When I was watching it, I thought, well, that's not right.

It was the girls that did the barrage, not the men in London anyway. War was the man's work. And in 1939, Woman's Own famously said, you know, men will go to their posts and women must stay by theirs, i.e. the home, the domestic arena. And Churchill, this is a big U-turn for Churchill to come out and say we need conscription. Didn't happen until late 41. And the reason he didn't want it and the Defence Committee agreed with him was they thought it would be bad for men's morale. What were men fighting for if women were fighting alongside them? Men needed to be fighting for their women back at home. They were fighting for their country, weren't they? I know, Grace, but this was a shift. So by the end of the war, suddenly you have the bricks and mortar of public life for girls in uniform, but it's a game of catch up. But also it's called

the Helix Effect, Dan, and it's where men are heroes. Men are on the front line. Men are being killed. Women were killed, but not in nearly the same numbers. What's interesting is just how differently we think about war today compared to back then. 770 ATS girls were killed in accidents, in shrapnel, in bombs. I didn't know that number. Did you not know that? It's quite a number. Obviously, nothing compared to the quarter of a million men who died. But it is nearly twice the number of British service personnel who died in Afghanistan in a 10-year conflict. To give you some idea of just how conflicts changed over the years.

But of course, if men are dying, we're going to fate them first. They're the heroes, and girls are the handmaidens to war in the Second World War. I don't think people realise how much the girls did do, you know. I don't think they realised how much they were needed to help the men do their job. Men always need women, don't they, Grace, eh? Of course they do. And the book's called? The book is Army Girls. Army Girls featuring 17 women and all their letters as well. I took a huge amount from the letters that they wrote home because I think

memory can corrupt sometimes experience. And I hope everyone enjoys it. It's out and it's tied in with the 80th anniversary of conscription for women when girls like Grace were told they had to step up and serve. But guess what? Grace was already doing just that age 17. They didn't call me up because I was already in. Thank you very much indeed. It's a great honour to meet you, Grace,

and wonderful to have you finally on the podcast, Tessa. But thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. but thank you thank you very much thanks folks you've reached the end of another episode hope you're still awake appreciate your loyalty sticking through to the end if you fancied doing us a favor here at history hit i would be incredibly grateful if you would go and wherever you get these pods give it a rating five stars or it's equivalent a review would be great please head over there and do that it really does make a huge

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