Bomb Girls--Britain's Secret Army

by Jacky Hyams

  To describe their work as hazardous is something of an understatement. The Bomb Girls endured much: exhaustion, fear, sacrifice, separation from loved ones, personal or family tragedy – not to mention the enormous risks to their own lives and physical welfare as they worked. Yet these women, all ages, married or single, from different backgrounds, were a crucial link in the long chain that made up Britain’s wartime endeavour.

  The men were sent off to fight, fire the bullets, drive the jeeps, fly the planes and drop the bombs. But it was the Bomb Girls who helped make the final victory possible. They too were amongst the country’s true heroes of wartime.

  CHAPTER 2

  WORKING IN A BOMB FACTORY

  When war was declared in 1939, the idea of women getting directly involved with war work was not, at first, a serious consideration. Back then, a married woman’s role was to remain at home, looking after the family. It was generally assumed, at first, that life would continue very much as before.

  Single women worked mostly in ‘women’s jobs’ in an office or a shop. Or they worked in service, or as nurses or teachers. Once a woman got married, her working life usually ended. Moreover, at the outset of war, it was firmly believed that men would deeply resent any idea of their wives or daughters being ‘called up’ or conscripted (having to register for compulsory military service) into any kind of war work.

  Yet even before war actually broke out, women were ready to get involved. Many had already signed up for part time voluntary war work. At the time war broke out, the WVS (Women’s Voluntary Service, now known as the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service) already had l65,000 members and their earliest task was to help in the evacuation of over one-and-a-half million mothers and children from the cities at risk of bombing raids to the comparative safety of the countryside.

  In due course, the WVS went on to provide much-needed support for the thousands of people in Britain whose homes were bombed or destroyed. As uniformed volunteers, their work was to organise rest centres, food, clothing for bomb victims, and a great deal more. By 1941, their ranks had swelled to over a million.

  Other voluntary women’s work was to be found in the NAAFI (the Navy, Army and Airforce Institutes) running clubs, bars, shops and other facilities for servicemen and their families. Throughout the war, 96,000 NAAFI volunteers ran over 10,000 outlets, including 900 mobile shops.

  Yet war has a nasty habit of rapidly destroying the established social order. In October 1939, every man between the ages of 18 and 41 not working in a ‘reserved’ or essential occupation (an important job necessary to the country’s survival) was required to register for service in the Army, Navy or Airforce. Britain’s ‘call-up’ had started.

  THE WOMEN ARE CALLED UP

  Within a year, it became clear to the Government that without women getting involved in paid war work there would be a severe shortage of essential labour. With so many men away fighting, women were urgently needed to take their place. Everything pointed towards non-voluntary conscription.

  So while large numbers of women continued in their voluntary work through the war years – somehow managing to fit the unpaid work in with running the home and looking after their family – other women were gradually drafted-in to paid war work.

  Historically, women had worked in paid work in wartime. During the First World War, 1,600,000 women had been paid to work in a wide range of ‘men’s jobs’ – as bus drivers, post office clerks as well as more traditional women’s jobs like teaching and nursing. The munitions factories of the time employed 950,000 women, all of them risking their lives and health to help the war effort. But these ‘modern women’ – or ‘munitionettes’, as they were called at the time – came forward and voluntarily signed up for the work; they were not conscripted.

  So the idea of women being called up proved to be controversial, even shocking to some: servicemen and politicians were vocal in their dismay at the idea of ‘men’s work’ being taken over by women. There was outcry too at the very idea of women joining the Armed Forces (the Army, in particular, was regarded in those days as too sleazy or rough for ‘decent’ women). Neither did the idea of women stepping in to work in reserved occupations appeal to many people.

  Yet the imperatives of war were rapidly overtaking such doubts. There was a huge labour shortage; the munitions industry desperately needed an extra 1.5 million workers. The authorities had already been forced to conscript men out of essential factory work to send them into the Forces, now the ammunition was urgently needed for the troops, and machines could only do so much. Someone had to stand on the production line, fill the bombs, make the bullets, produce the spare parts and help make the war machines to ensure the troops had what they needed to fight a world war.

  The official Government line was that they preferred to encourage voluntary conscription, but in the end the desperate need for workers won. Through various government initiatives and the Essential Work Order (which meant that the State was in charge of all recruitment) the first women’s call-up for war work came in March 1941, a decision which would eventually affect every able-bodied, available woman in the country between the ages of 18 and 50.

  In a speech in March 1941, the then Minister for Labour, Ernest Bevin, made an urgent appeal to women to come forward for war work, mainly in shell-filling factories. He said he did not want women to wait for registration to take effect; he wanted an immediate response, especially from those who might not have been in employment before. But he warned: ‘I have to tell the women that I cannot offer them a delightful life. They will have to suffer some inconveniences. But I want them to come forward in the spirit of determination to help us through.’

  Women did, however, have a choice. They could either sign up for the women’s sections of the Armed Forces – the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service), the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force), or the WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service commonly known as ‘the Wrens’) – or they could register to work in a reserved occupation, in a factory or in farming.

  Single women aged 20 and 21 were the first to be called up. By the end of 1941, women up to the age of 30 were also required to register for either the Armed Forces or factory/farming work. In due course, the call-up was extended to women up to age 50. These successive groups of women had to register for the call-up at their local labour or employment exchange. Across the country, groups of women stood patiently on the street, waiting for their turn to register. Announcements giving details of the registration date for each specific age group were printed in the newspapers. Everyone knew they had to do it.

  So great was the need for women workers that eventually, when trained nurses were in very short supply, any woman up to age 60 had to register to be called up. Former textile workers up to age 55 were also conscripted. (Wives of men serving in the Armed Forces, however, were regarded as exempt from any war work that might take them away from home.)

  Single women, however, were categorised as ‘mobile’. Under the Government’s Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, any able-bodied person could be sent anywhere as part of the war effort: the Government could order them to leave home and go wherever their labour was needed. Their travelling expenses would be paid by the Government and they would be given help with their accommodation needs and training if required.

  If training could not be given on site, mobile workers were relocated to an appropriate training centre for a set period of time before they could start their job and their accommodation was arranged for them. At the beginning of the war, there were special eight or 12 weekday and evening training courses set up by local government in London for those willing to pay a fee (£1 2s 2d) to learn how to be munitions workers. Women came from as far as Scotland to attend the courses. (The cover of this book depicts a group of women attending one of these courses in Lambeth, South London.)

  What this all meant was that huge numbers of women were being relocated to another part of the country, a daunting prospect for the thousands who had never left the
confines of their local area. Though for a few, of course, the chance to get away to a new environment and be free of the confines of family restriction was welcomed – as was the pay-packet.

  WOMEN’S WAR WORK BEGINS

  Between 1939 and 1945, more than 500,000 women served in Britain’s Armed Forces. They were not permitted to serve in battle, but they took over important supporting Forces roles as drivers, radar operators, medical orderlies, working on anti-aircraft posts, as military police and wireless operators and in many other different types of important jobs.

  Britain then was still a class-bound society. The women who opted to join the Armed Forces tended, mostly, to be from upper- and middle-class backgrounds – the WRNS was regarded as the most exclusive force, the ATS the least appealing, given the Army’s bad reputation. So in most cases, it was the women from ordinary working-class backgrounds who opted to sign up for factory or farm work.

  The idea of working on the land held much appeal for some more free-spirited women who liked the prospect of an outdoor life. The Women’s Land Army (WLA) was originally formed during WW1 and it re-formed in 1939. More commonly known as the ‘Land Girls’, and initially a voluntary service, the WLA totalled 80,000 women workers in WW2. In fact, this proved to be a very tough option, with back-breaking 70-hour working weeks and very poor pay from the farmers employing them: £1 85s a week, which was increased to £2 85s a week in 1944.

  The consequence of all this was that large numbers of women were undertaking jobs they might never have been considered for previously, even at the time war was declared. Within a short period of time, women were working everywhere: in munitions, aircraft factories, repairing planes, as mechanics or engineers, helping build ships, driving fire engines and ambulances – or turning up on night duty as air raid wardens.

  At war’s peak, 7 million married women were engaged in full or part-time war work in Britain, and 90 per cent of single women were employed in munitions factories. In so many ways, war work, despite the blackout perils and shortages experienced in day-to-day life, carried in its wake a newfound economic independence for all women.

  Certainly, they had no other option once female conscription had been introduced. Yet in areas with high levels of unemployment, the chance to work, earn, and play a role in helping win the war was far from unwelcome. (In the event, some women voluntarily opted to work in munitions factories even before the call-up.) Yet whatever their circumstances, all involved tackled their assigned jobs with determination and gusto. This was a time when people really were ‘all in it together’. Every person’s contribution mattered.

  RESERVED OCCUPATIONS

  At the outbreak of WW2, these were the skilled or important jobs necessary for Britain’s survival:

  * Doctors

  * Teachers and university lecturers

  * Farmers, agricultural workers and students of agriculture

  * Scientists

  * Police

  * Merchant sailors

  * Railway workers

  * Dock workers

  * Utility (water, gas, electricity) workers

  * Certain sectors of the Civil Service and local authorities

  * Certain types of engineering and factory work

  * Miners (this was not a reserved occupation at the beginning of the Second World War, but in 1943, conscripts were sent to work in the coalmines alongside experienced workers, giving birth to the Bevin Boys, named after Ernest Bevin, then Minister of Labour).

  UPHEAVAL AND SEPARATION

  In September 1939, Britain was a very different place to the world we know today. Your position in the social pecking order defined your position in life, usually for good. And Britain was not, by any stretch of the imagination, what we’d now consider an affluent society. Unemployment and widespread poverty across the country from the late Twenties to the mid-Thirties had already blighted millions of lives. Six million homes, for instance, lacked an inside toilet, an equal number even lacked a hot water supply. There had been serious attempts to improve the lives of the poorest: huge slum clearance programmes had been underway in the thirties, but these ceased abruptly as wartime drew closer.

  The announcement of war meant separation, upheaval and disturbance for virtually everyone in the country, rich or poor. Normal, everyday life was disrupted in so many ways. Strict rules were put in place concerning food and other types of rationing; small children were evacuated to the country to live with total strangers; husbands or sweethearts were sent off to war for unknown periods of time in far-flung countries, or captured by the enemy and incarcerated in prisoner-of-war camps.

  Air raid sirens disturbed night-time sleep, heralding bombing raids that sometimes destroyed homes and lives. Hastily constructed Anderson shelters (steel air raid shelters erected by families in their back garden: cramped and cold, they did save lives) sprang up all over the country. And thousands of people, workers and members of the Armed Forces, were on the move, travelling across the country to wherever their job or role sent them.

  Because the all-important munitions factories were dotted across the country, many away from the big city centres, conscripted munitions workers who had to leave their family home to work there were sometimes sent to live in workers’ hostels or estates specially constructed close to the factories. Or they tried to find ‘digs’ – rented rooms in other people’s homes. For many young women, conscription into munitions work some distance away meant travelling to unfamiliar surroundings – amongst a sea of unfamiliar faces.

  This was more emotionally difficult at the time than we could imagine today. Mobility for ordinary working people was quite different then: people used trains and buses for local travel or at holiday times, but in more remote rural areas, cycling or walking often tended to be the only way to get around each day.

  Many women, married or single, had never ventured far beyond their home, family and locality. Car ownership for the masses was still to come; flying wasn’t yet an everyday experience. So the sheer discomfort or strangeness of being moved to an unknown place, far from home, added to the other difficulties of working in wartime. Not only did many girls miss the familiarity and warmth of their family environment, the long hours they had to work (a 50-hour working week was not unknown for those working in Royal Ordnance factories) plus the pressure to keep up production quotas, working in round-the-clock conditions, meant that the Bomb Girls, like most of the population, would be an exhausted workforce by the time the war was over.

  In areas with heavy industry, like the Midlands, a small number of women had already been working in factory jobs before the war began. Yet many of the younger Bomb Girls who were called up had previously only ever worked in service, perhaps as serving maids or kitchen staff for a middle-or upper-class employer, a common mode of employment then for young women, especially in rural areas.

  On the plus side, the need for large numbers of women to work in munitions factories brought valuable employment to remote, deprived areas of Britain where jobs of any kind had traditionally been hard to find for many years. Moreover, the pay in munitions factories was good. The average for all women’s pay in the early wartime years was around £1 12s 6d. Yet a week working in a big Royal Ordnance factory would bring in between £2 and £4 a week. With overtime and bonuses, a woman’s weekly pay packet could be boosted to as much as £8. In some parts of the country it wasn’t unusual for a Bomb Girl’s pay packet to exceed the sum of money her father had been bringing home, causing family friction sometimes. Yet male pride, for now, had to be cast to one side. What mattered was winning the war.

  WHEN HOME BECAME A HOSTEL

  Munitions factories were often located in fairly isolated parts of the country, hence the need to construct special, purpose-built hostel accommodation for their workers. There were not enough rural homes in these areas to provide sufficient accommodation for the women being sent there. And even if the homes had been available, young women, away from home often for the first time, free of all tie
s and earning what was usually more money than they had ever seen before, could be regarded as an added responsibility for families in private houses who might consider putting them up. Officially, any munitions worker wishing to live in a private home near her place of work was free to do so – but such accommodation wasn’t always available.

  The workers’ hostel accommodation was built close to the factories and designed to be totally self-contained. Some experienced male munitions workers and their families, relocated from one large facility to another, would be housed in specially constructed housing estates or camps close to the factory, consisting of semi-detached bungalows with two or three bedrooms.

  Many of the big hostel complexes were long, low, camouflaged brick buildings with a manager in charge. A typical hostel camp could house up to 1,000 munitions workers and the complex would have had everything the workers could possibly need: a hairdressing salon, living quarters for visiting husbands or sweethearts, (though most married women preferred to request leave to go home if their husband came home), a hospital, a chapel and an air-raid shelter, fully kitted out for any emergency.

  The weekly charge for this accommodation was £1 2s 6d, which included two meals a day. These meals were served to the workers, cafe style, in a large communal dining room in the main administrative building, which also housed a kitchen, a post office and a cinema. Living quarters for the women were in ‘huts’, built in units to accommodate between 50 and 90 women in one building. Each hut usually had its own communal living room with chairs.