The Role of Women Time Past

WW1 showed that middle class women were capable of so much more than a life of idleness, wearing restrictive clothing and having the vapours. Many of them rose to the challenge and became nurses, land girls, train drivers and a whole lot more.
My GM was already the breadwinner and ran a ladies' tailoring business. After he returned from WWI, my GF never worked again and became alcoholic. They had six children.

My mother trained as a nurse at a London teaching hospital during WWII and lived in London throughout the Blitz. My mother gave up work when she got married in 1945. I believe there was pressure on women to go back to being full-time housewives after WWII so that they did not take work away from the returning men.

I know many women took on what were traditionally men's jobs during WWII. Some became welders, others drove heavy lorries, I believe Princess Elizabeth, as she was then, learned to drive and maintain a lorry.

A " sweet little old lady" in our church, a long time stay at home mum, told me of her time in WW11 driving ambulances around London: in the Blitz: in the dark: with no street signs..wow!

They were tough those women during the wars. I like the saying about women. "A woman is like a teabag. The longer she is in hot water the stronger she gets".
My mum was a telephone operator and had to traverse the city to get to and from work. She often had to run to the nearest air raid shelter when the bombers arrived.
One time she arrived home to find every window in her house had been blown out and the houses on the opposite side were just rubble.
My MiL joined the women's army.
They were dangerous times but the women stepped up and kept things going.

My mum was a driver in WW2. They probably called her a chauffeuse or some such thing. She drove top brass and sometimes visiting celebrities to their required destinations around the UK. She had to drive one such person to Coventry about a week after the bombing. She couldn't believe her eyes.
I wish I'd ask her more about her role.

My mum was also a driver in WW2. She didn't talk much about the war but she did marry my dad so one good thing came out of it!

During WW2 my mother worked at a Royal Ordnance Factory where they made the shells, bombs and bullets. They did not work there through choice, they would likely be thrown in jail if they refused. It was very dangerous work, sometimes the girls would have their fingers blown off or the constant exposure to the explosive material would turn them yellow. Some areas were very dangerous and the women could get blown up, a gruesome and terrifying sight for anyone working nearby.

When you think of how most of us were affected by the covid lockdowns and these women in WW2 had 6 years of wartime shortages, queuing, bombing, evacuation, air raids, bereavements and sheer fear which they probably could never share as mostly everyone was in the same boat. And then in 1945 husbands came home, who were badly affected themselves, to life where their young children didn't recognise them and their wives had run the show without them for several years. How on earth did they get over that?

I too wish I had asked my parents more about it. Maybe it was so awful that the only way to cope was to put it out of your mind.
The women I love reading about are the women who flew aeroplanes around the country delivering them to different airports. They just had a book of instructions to follow for each different type of aircraft. Or the women of Bletchley Park who kept their war time work secret for so long. Do women like that exist now? Could young women today step up in the same way?

My mother made some poor choices as a girl and it cost the rest of the family very dearly.

She was originally (before she married my father) from a middle class background. She told me that young women like her were put under a lot of pressure to "do their bit" during the war, She got a job in a munitions factory where she made friends with a group of young women from a very different background. In those days respectable young women did not go into pubs alone and certainly not into the bar. They might go with their husband or boyfriend and always sat in the lounge.

It was on one of her outings with her new girlfriends that she met my father and began an affaire with him. My father was not called up until near the end of the war as he worked on the Liverpool docks. It was a reserved occupation. Such men were very much resented because they were free to play "fast and loose" with the wives and girlfriends of men who were on active service. Her fiance was an officer in the army so she two-timed him.

Well the inevitable happened. My mother fell pregnant (with me) and she and my father were forced to get a special lisence and elope. Soon afterwards my father was called up into the navy, leaving my mother living in a filthy little hovel near the Liverpook docks.

Liverpool - especially the docks area - was bombed extensively and my mother said that it affected her "nerves". For the remainder of her life she had panic attacks which were brought on by the least stress. A family get together or party or day out was sufficient to trigger one. We called them her wobblers.

I was born while my father was away and we never really bonded. Looking back, my appearance on the scene ended his free and easy batchelor life and he had to step up and be a father. I believe he always resented me for that. When my sister came along 7 years later her birth was planned. She was the golden princess.

Unfortunately life is not like Downton Abbey where the Earl forgives the chauffeur for running away with his daughter and takes them both back. My mother's actions in jilting her fiance (from a good family and close friends of my grandparents) led to a split which lasted many years. My father was never accepted into the family and my mother was never really welcomed back. I did not meet my grandmother until I was 4 and fortunately she tool a fancy to me.

My mum was a single parent in WW2 because dad was in the army for 6 years. She worked in a munitions factory putting the tail fins on bombs. She never thought of herself as a strong person but, boy oh boy, she was.