Sisters in Arms
Women in the British Armed Forces during the Second World War

Jeremy Crang provides a compelling new history of women who served with the British armed forces during the Second World War.

Jeremy A. Crang (Author)

9781107601116, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 April 2023

353 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.574 kg

'Jeremy Crang has produced a clear, wide-ranging and highly readable examination of the auxiliary women's services which draws on fascinating personal testimonies to reconstruct the experiences of members from recruitment through to demobilisation.' Juliette Pattinson, author of Women of War: Gender, Modernity and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry

During the Second World War some 600,000 women were absorbed into the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and the Women's Royal Naval Service. These women performed important military functions for the armed forces, both at home and overseas, and the jobs they undertook ranged from cooking, typing and telephony to stripping down torpedoes, overhauling aircraft engines, and operating the fire control instruments in anti-aircraft gun batteries. In this wide-ranging study, which draws on a multitude of sources and combines organisational history with the personal experiences of servicewomen, Jeremy Crang traces the wartime history of the WAAF, ATS and WRNS and the integration of women into the British armed forces. Servicewomen came to play such an integral wartime role that the military authorities established permanent regular post-war women's services and, in so doing, opened up for the first time a military career for women.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Prologue
1. Revival
2. Organisation and recruitment
3. Training and selection
4. Work
5. Status and discipline
6. Necessities of life
7. Medical matters
8. Off duty
9. Overseas service
10. Demobilisation and the creation of the permanent women's services
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Military history [HBW], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], British & Irish history [HBJD1]