Giles Whittell
SPITFIRE WOMEN OF WORLD WAR II
304pp. HarperPress. £20.
978 0 00 723535 3

Penny Summerfield and Corinna Peniston-Bird
CONTESTING HOME DEFENCE
Men, women and the Home Guard in the Second World War
320pp. Manchester University Press. £55 (paperback, £15.99).
978 0 7190 6201 8

They shared a burning desire to “do their bit”, but they could not have been more different: the flying few, who realized their dreams, and the down-to-earth many who didn’t. These two books about British women in the Second World War could not be more different, either. Exuberant Giles Whittell is a Times journalist and a travel-writer, sober Professor Penny Summerfield and her associate, Dr Corinna Peniston-Bird are professional historians; but both stories are of patriotic women pressing to share what men regarded as their territory and thus, for those who thought about it, advancing the cause of women’s equality.

It is not difficult to understand why the airwomen described in Whittell’s book, Spitfire Women of World War Two, succeeded, even to the point of winning equal pay. They started with advantages of class and experience. The map of pre-war Europe was speckled with little airfields, and women fliers were scarcely more unusual than women drivers. Of course, flying cost more. Conspicuous among the early Spitfire Women were socialites whose first planes had been presents from daddy. More numerous were enthusiasts who had earned a living in flying schools and shows, or even, as in the case of Pauline Gower, commercial work. Being also socially well connected, Ms Gower prevailed when, in September 1939, she suggested that the Air Transport Auxiliary, the organization that ferried new planes from factories to RAF bases, and damaged ones back for repair, could use volunteer women as well as men.

Some senior airmen (among them, apparently, Arthur Harris and Arthur “Mary” Coningham) proved appreciative. Most didn’t. The women were made to go through more training and tests than the men. Until a feisty American millionairess faced him down, the (male) Medical Officer at White Waltham insisted on their stripping for examination. Their mistakes were eagerly reported. But by persistence and professionalism they won through. By the end there were more than 160; twenty-two from the United States and more than twenty other foreigners. Allowed at first to fly only the tamest of trainers, they advanced by stages, each strictly examined, through Hurricanes and the continually updated Spitfires to bigger game. Eleven of the toughest women eventually qualified to fly four-engined bombers.

Whittell’s story may be news to many, but in fact, as his helpful note on sources shows, the women’s side of the ATA has been considerably written about, not least by the women themselves. Some of them survive and have been duly interviewed. The strength of Whittell’s book is as a collection of stories of unusual young women living colourful lives and doing skilled, resourceful, brave and risky work, which cost sixteen of them their lives. Reading it is a bumpy flight as well as an exciting one, the gallant ladies being presented in a kaleidoscopic, unsystematic way confusing to the serious inquirer. But the author’s enthusiasm carries the day.

Very different is the Home Guard story. It began on May 14, 1940. Only four days after the beginning of Hitler’s Blitzkrieg, a German invasion began to seem possible. The War Minister, Anthony Eden, called for Local Defence Volunteers. The response was immediate. Women as well as men volunteered for the Home Guard (as Churchill insisted it be renamed) and in some places and by some recruiters they were accepted. Then the War Office realized what was going on and put its foot down: No women! Why not?, demanded the heroine of this story, Dr Edith Summerskill, MP for West Fulham and formidable feminist, supported by a meagre sprinkling on both sides of the House. The best argument the War Office could offer was the principle that no matter how much use might be made of women as auxiliaries to the armed forces, they could not be allowed to use lethal weapons. What patriarchal, paternalistic, or pathological thinking sustained the principle never appeared.

The logic of this position was carried to its absurd uttermost when the general in command of Britain’s anti-aircraft defences, Frederick Pile, pointed out that ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) women could perfectly well do all the things that men did in his ack-ack batteries, thus freeing thousands of soldiers for more active service. The Prime Minister himself thought this a good idea, but did not think to stick an “Action This Day” on it. The War Office remained immovable, forcing on General Pile the compromise that although women soldiers could work the searchlights, range-finders and so on that aimed the guns (they also, as it turned out, were expected to do guard duty), they couldn’t load or fire them.

Determined women, however, were training with rifles in many localities and under a variety of hats. War Office control was imperfect and, besides, it lacked moral authority so long as it was unable to arm the Home Guard properly. This was the time when Noël Coward pointedly sang “If you can’t provide us with a Bren Gun, / The Home Guard might as well go home”. Some Home Guard units welcomed women, put them into uniforms or accepted home-made ones, and retained them until the end of hostilities. Where no such acceptance was offered, another door opened. With Edith Summerskill again in the van, and with support from the Tory MP Mavis Tate and Professor Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan (too feminist to retain high office in the ATS), an organization called Women’s Home Defence grew to a strength of many thousands, doing very much what the Home Guard did and actually overlapping with it in many places. The War Office remained uninterested. When at last in 1943 manpower shortage drove it to sanction some female input, its Women’s Home Guard Auxiliary personnel (destined for office and cookhouse) were distinguished by no more than an armband and a plastic brooch.

Was there, then, notwithstanding all the War Office’s obstructions, a Mum’s Army as well as a Dad’s one? Yes, and Penny Summerfield and Corinna Peniston-Reid have done a fine service to unearth and display it in Contesting Home Defence. Their search has required all their diagnostic skills as “cultural historians”, and their expertise in the particular discipline of oral history. They found that interviewees’ recollections of the Home Guard came inevitably through the filter of the BBC’s perennial hit show, Dad’s Army, on which they dwell rather long. Of such stuff is public memory formed. Films, radio and television, novels, cartoons, all cultural phenomena bearing on the theme of women as defenders of their homes and country are grist to the Penny Summerfield mill, and they are painstakingly analysed in pursuit of the end to which she has long been dedicated: determining just what was British women’s experience of the Second World War.

Geoffrey Best's Churchill and War was re-issued in paperback in 2006.

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