Pioneering role in military service played by British women in World War I. During World War I, women in Great Britain heeded the same patriotic call to arms as the British men did, assisting the armed forces in many capacities. Although few women officially engaged in combat, thousands of women served on or near the front lines as nurses, ambulance drivers, gas-mask instructors, and mechanics, and thousands more worked behind the front lines as munitions workers, fund-raisers, seamstresses, laundresses, and spies. By 1917, an immense manpower shortage forced Britain to become the first country in the war to bring women into formal military service with the creation of three female auxiliary units, the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF), and the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS, referred to as the Wrens). By 1918, the three voluntary organizations boasted 25,000 recruits, and by the end of the war, more than 100,000 women had joined.
When Great Britain declared war against Germany on August 4, 1914, thousands of women eagerly looked for ways they could help in the war effort. For many, nursing was the obvious choice and, at first, the only legitimate and acceptable occupation for women in the military. Caring for the sick and wounded was a long-honored role for women, and female nurses had served officially in the British army since the Boer War in the early twentieth century. By the end of the war, more than 23,000 nurses had served in the British military, assisted by another 15,000 women who served as nurses’ aides. In the hospitals closest to the battle lines, nurses were accorded responsibilities far surpassing their normal duties, anesthetizing patients and conducting minor surgery.
Volunteer organizations such as the Women’s Volunteer Force and the Women’s Emergency Corps appealed to thousands more women who wished to protect their children and other non-combatants from a potential German invasion.
Many women served as ambulance drivers and maintenance workers, conveying injured soldiers and supplies between the front and the hospitals behind the front lines. A few women who could muster great resources assisted the wounded in other ways; an example is the duchess of Sutherland, who set up a hospital for wounded soldiers at Dunkirk.
On the home front, many women heeded Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George’s War Service for Women campaign, a program initiated by George and suffragist Em-meline Pankhurst in 1915 to persuade women to work in factories, particularly in the munitions industry, by appealing to their sense of patriotism. Government propaganda referred to women war workers as "100,000 Joans of Arc," applauding their patriotic selflessness. Many women wore badges that proclaimed themselves "Mothers who make munitions," suggesting that a sense of patriotic maternalism helped them reconcile doing work traditionally done by men. Female munitions workers generally worked twelve-hour shifts, making less pay than men but more than the amount women received in other industries. Women in war plants had to face many hazards, not the least of which was the possibility of being bombed by German planes. Many women worked with dangerous chemicals such as TNT, which yellowed the skin and caused the workers to be dubbed "Canary Girls." Other women working in airplane factories had to work with dangerous varnish that covered airplanes. Overall, accidental explosions and toxic chemicals in the war plants brought about the deaths of several hundred female workers.
Many women wanted to take up arms and fight for their nation despite the disapproval of the general public. Some women argued as May Bateman did in 1916 that women had the obligation to assume some of the burden and hardship of combat. Generally, however, the public was scandalized by the notion of women in combat. Women serving as nurses, laundresses, and canteen organizers were viewed as a vital, if unfortunate, necessity of war. Women as combatants evoked multiple objections that displayed the inflamed but hardly unified opinions on the subject. Some traditionalists believed that fighting was a man’s duty and that women had no place in conflict. Many believed that a woman’s place was at home, tending to her hearth and children. Others questioned whether women could deal with the reality of the battleground. Some were concerned with the moral implications of women fighting next to men under such stressful conditions. Some public commentators were concerned that if women served in the military, this might give them grounds for full citizenship—most significantly, the right to vote. Others were simply suspicious of women who tried to act like men, questioning their sexuality and their innate womanhood. The concern of women dressing as soldiers was first seen in the outrage over the military-style khaki uniforms favored by women in the volunteer service organizations. Such garb was seen as posturing and as such was an affront to the male soldiers’ valor and the dignity of the nation. The marchioness of Londonderry, the founder of the Women’s Legion and the colonel-in-chief of the Women’s Volunteer Reserve, addressed the concern of the moralists by assuring her opponents that the women in her organization would not mimic male soldiers or behave in a masculine fashion but rather would perform their duties solely to help men return to active service in an unselfish act of patriotism.
Press Accounts of British Women in War Service in World War I
"England is very proud of the pluck, endurance, and determination of her munition girls—The twenty-six women who were killed and thirty wounded in that explosion in a North of England factory on Tuesday night had, like thousands of other munition workers, faced the possibility of that fate hourly, and probably faced it with jest. Yet knowing that, and realizing their kinship with the men who keep their souls unshaken in the trenches, we may marvel at the courage, and above all the perfect discipline, which after the disaster kept the other girls in the factory unperturbably at their work.
"It fits in with stories one hears from all the deadliest departments of the factories, where, as is well known, the girls, breathing in danger as they work, are reluctant to abandon the task at the end of the term prescribed. Zeppelin nights in some places have put a very hard strain on the nerves of these girls, who in some factories have spent hours waiting in black darkness, knowing that at any moment a bomb may explode the munitions piled beside them. One hears thrilling stories of what happens during those hours—there was, for instance, the singer working in a canteen who for two hours sang away the horror of the night. . . . The girls have come through the ordeal without panic or collapse. They should all have medals for their war service, with special bars for Zeppelin night service." —Manchester Guardian, December 8, 1916.
"It is quite impossible to keep pace with all the new incarnations of women in war-time—bus-conductress, ticket-collector, lift-girl, club waitress, post-woman, bank clerk, motor-driver, farm-labourer, guide, munition maker. There is nothing new in the function of ministering angel: the myriad nurses in hospital here or abroad are only carrying out, though in greater numbers than ever before, what has always been woman’s mission. But whenever he sees one of these new citizens, or hears fresh stories of their address and ability, Mr. Punch is proud and delighted. Perhaps in the past, even in the present, he may have been, or even still is, a little given to chaff Englishwomen for some of their foibles, and even their aspirations. But he never doubted how splendid they were at heart; he never for a moment supposed they would be anything but ready and keen when the hour of need struck." —Punch Magazine, June 1916.
The only officially recognized female combatant from Britain was Flora Sandes, a middle-class woman seeking the excitement of war. A week after the war began, Sandes joined St. John’s Ambulance brigade and went to Serbia as a nurse but later found combat more to her liking, finishing her service as a decorated sergeant in the Serbian army.
The vicious reality of war and the rising death toll gradually softened the harsh public stance against women serving in the military. In 1917, the British government finally accepted the recommendation of the female leader of the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) for women to officially staff administrative jobs held by men wherever possible, enabling more able-bodied men to fight on the front lines. This led to the creation of the three auxiliary women’s units designed to support the army, air force, and the navy. Each unit was to be led by a female commander and follow a hierarchical military-style authority, but the ranks were purposefully different from those held by men. Women did not receive their commissions from the king as the men in command did. Female officers held the title of "administrators," noncommissioned officers were "forewomen" or "assistant forewomen," and enlisted women were "workers."
The first of the three auxiliary units, the WAAC, was established in early 1917 with the idea that women would work in the canteens, serve as clerks and telephone operators, and instruct civilians and soldiers in the use of the gas mask. Any British woman who was eighteen was eligible for service and could be sent abroad at age twenty. Typically, applicants had to present personal recommendations and undergo a medical examination by a board of female physicians before being allowed to serve. Recruits had to sign a contract understanding that they had to obey military authority and were subject to fines and imprisonment if they violated the terms of their enlistment. Before being shipped to their units, most received several weeks of intensive military training even though they were not expected to engage in combat or even to bear arms. Although the WAACs wore military-style uniforms and held different ranks, the women were not saluted, they were tried in civil courts rather than military tribunals for infractions, and generally they were not treated as real soldiers in the Royal Army.
The WRNS was established in November 1917. The terms of service and other regulations were drafted by three women, Dame Katharine Furse, Tilla Wallace, and Edith Crowdy, who had been invited by the first lord of the admiralty to develop a "Naval Organization of Women." The Wrens served as paymasters, coders and decoders, telegraphists, signalers, and draughtsmen as well as other positions that released able-bodied seamen to active service. Among their myriad duties, they fitted depth charges, washed life-belts, and manned listening stations.
The WRAF was the third women’s auxiliary unit to be created. Since 1917, women had served in all-female companies in the Royal Flying Corps. Women in these units lived at home to diminish the threat of improper behavior between men and women and to keep operational costs down. In 1918, the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service combined to create the Royal Air Force, from which the Auxiliary Women’s Royal Air Force emerged. Most of the recruits were enlisted to occupations such as mechanics, radio operators, parachute packers, armorers, cooks, and nurses, but there were no female pilots.
In one of the more unusual occupations during the war, hundreds of women were employed by the British War Office as intelligence workers, ranging from adolescent Girl Guides to octogenarian grandmothers, often entrusted with secret reports issued by Military Intelligence 5, Counterespionage (MI5) in London.
Few female spies seem to have been killed during the war, but those who died in the line of duty quickly became martyrs for the cause. One of the most famous spy-martyrs was Edith Cavell, a nurse who secretly helped Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium until her capture and death by a German firing squad in 1915. Propagandists used the image of an innocent nurse murdered by Germans as a way to illustrate the alleged atrocities by Germans in Belgium. Other women, such as Muriel Doyrell-Browning, were employed as linguists for the War Office and wrote subversive propaganda dropped in Germany and other enemy-occupied territories.
The official involvement of women in the war effort brought about a dramatic shift in public opinion. Following the creation of WAAC, women who wore sharply turned uniforms became more respected, as the uniform came to represent efficiency, service, and patriotic duty. By 1918, women who were not in uniform, whether in the volunteer organizations or in the auxiliary units, began to be criticized and mocked by the popular press as unpatriotic "slackers."
British Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs) stand with their ambulances along the British western front.
No matter how accepted the sight of women in military uniforms became, the message for women was that this was a temporary arrangement borne out of the extremities of war. When the male soldiers returned home at the end of the war, most women were displaced from their jobs and forced to return to women’s work or to no paid work at all. Many disillusioned soldiers resented the women, whom they believed had usurped men’s traditional jobs, and many of the women’s accomplishments and skills were ignored. Ultimately, the women who served in the war, whether in the auxiliary units, the volunteer units, or the war plants, during World War I all helped pioneer the way for future generations of women who would come to hold vital positions of genuine military authority in all of the royal armed forces.
