At 17 I found it more exciting than staying at work in a factory
Book reveals inspiring stories of women conscripted to defend against Nazi threat
Barbara, 96, was 17 when she signed up in 1943 and trained to be a driver in Camberley, Surrey, with the Auxiliary Territorial Service.
Now a great-great-grandmother, she recalls: “I was working at that time as a telephone operator in a small factory making aircraft parts after school.
“I knew that as soon as I turned 18 that would become a reserved occupation and I’d have been sent to the factory floor. That didn’t sound very exciting at 17 so, unbeknown to my manager, on my day off I went to the recruitment office.
“When I told my manager I’d been inducted he said, ‘I’ll put a stop to this’ and I thought, ‘What have I done?’ But the recruitment officer rang him up and said, ‘There’s nothing you can do about it, she’s already in the Army’.
“And that was that. In the end he shook my hand and wished me all the best.”
After a month of basic training Barbara, who was born in Morley, West Yorks, opted for a 10-week stint at an all-female unit driving school.
She says: “It was a very hard, intensive course. We started off on three-ton lorries, then down to K2 ambulances – the big green ambulances with red crosses on the side. By the time we finished the course we were able to maintain the vehicles and kept them in top-class condition.”
Barbara, who now lives in Selby, North Yorks, then spent two-and-a-half years in Anti-Aircraft Command. She later became a driving instructor at a training centre in Wales.
She wed RAF man Stanley Weatherill in 1947. She says: “We both came out of the services on the same day. I never got a proposal. He wrote to my father asking for my hand in marriage and wrote to tell me my father was delighted. I thought he could have asked me, but it was quite funny. We laughed about it many times.”
Women have only been conscripted once in British military history – during some of the Second World War’s darkest days. Now, 80 years on, a book captures the remarkable stories of some of the era’s last surviving veterans. Army Girls, by historian Dr Tessa Dunlop, is an extraordinary insight into the women who served in the Second World War.
Dr Dunlop said: “The recruitment net deliberately targeted young females, an age group identified as commitment-free, hardworking, healthy and obedient.
“These girls were expected to serve day and night, in all weathers, away from home and sometimes under enemy fire and overseas.
“The vast majority did what they were told and didn’t complain.”
Here we speak to three of them.