The real war heroines

Millions Like Us: Women's Lives in War and Peace, 1939-1949

What a lot of books there are on How Women Won the War. Whether they were nurses or volunteers, steel-workers making shell-cases, in uniform doing a job or in a housecoat stretching the rations, their part in the war effort was not always so dangerous as that of men. Yet it was every bit as strenuous, and considerably less celebrated.

Millions Like Us brings all these experiences together. To write it, Virginia Nicholson has read hundreds of memoirs and diaries and interviewed women from all walks of life who survived the years of snoek and snood. The work would be stronger if the author didn't occasionally overstate women's contribution - she only just stops short of claiming that the battle of Matapan was won by the code-cracking girls at Bletchley Park. Yet her passionate engagement in the lives of those she follows, how they changed as the war progressed, drives the story forward and provides some fascinating insights.

It is hard to remember just how different women were then. They could say things like "I saw a hole in his sock and yearned to darn it - that's how I knew I was in love", and no one squirmed with embarrassment. They spent hours fretting about lipstick and stockings, because "letting yourself go" was unforgivable. And yet it is worth remembering what they endured. Imagine being left with a bombed-out home, dead and injured children, no money, no ration books, no food or shelter. Or being a nurse working 15-hour shifts, coping with shattered bones and errupting entrails amid the stench of gangrene, while having to listen to the patronising taunts of senior doctors and surgeons.

Or putting in a full day's work at the munitions factory, and then going home to wash, iron, clean the house and look after the children.
From the end of 1941, they were encouraged to join the services to free up more men for active duty.

They had no idea what to expect so the posters were all they had to go by, and most admitted that the smart uniform was what drew them - especially to the Wrens, whose ensemble had been designed by Molyneux. Like the men, they had to endure a training designed to crush individual identity.

But though they had to work the same hours for two-thirds of the pay, there were few perks. Wrens were not allowed the traditional Navy rum ration.

And while every male locker had its pin-up, no female locker could sport a male movie star, even fully clothed.

The public hated seeing women in uniform. It made the girls more masculine, they'd stride about, swear, drink in pubs - it could only lead to One Thing. "They come into this pub at night and line up against that wall," said one landlord. "The soldiers buy them drinks, and when they're blind drunk they carry them into the street. And we're paying for them too!" For the wearers, however, a cap and tie offered emancipation and respect. They could get lifts day or night, and no driver bothered them. They could sit down with girls who were their "betters" and feel comfortable. "In a uniform, you felt part of something bigger."

Yet when the peace finally came, women were worn out. They didn't have the energy to stand up to the men who came back from the war, who didn't want a career wife - kids were the priority, and "asking him to use a condom was tantamount to asking for a divorce". Nicholson is profoundly sympathetic to the way they retreated into their hearth-and-home mentality, while at the same time feeling that women lost a vital opportunity to shape the post-war world.