Women as Veterans in Britain and France after the First World War

The legacies service in the First World War had on women's lives and the privileges it afforded some of them.

Alison S. Fell (Author)

9781108425766, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 July 2018

224 pages, 23 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.6 cm, 0.47 kg

'An important read for anyone interested in women in military service, veterans and their political influence, or the social impacts of war.' A. A. Nofi, The NYMAS Review

This is the story of how women in France and Britain between 1915 and 1933 appropriated the cultural identity of female war veteran in order to have greater access to public life and a voice in a political climate in which women were rarely heard on the public stage. The 'veterans' covered by this history include former nurses, charity workers, secret service agents and members of resistance networks in occupied territory, as well as members of the British auxiliary corps. What unites these women is how they attempted to present themselves as 'female veterans' in order to gain social advantages and give themselves the right to speak about the war and its legacies. Alison S. Fell also considers the limits of the identity of war veteran for women, considering as an example the wartime and post-war experiences of the female industrial workers who led episodes of industrial action.

Introduction: back to the front: women as veterans
1. Women as veterans in the commemorative landscapes of interwar Britain and France
2. The afterlives of First World War heroines
3. 'That glorious comradeship': female veteran groups in the 1920s
4. Writing as a veteran: women's war memoirs
5. Women's wartime industrial action and the limits of female veteran identity
Conclusion.

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