stories from ‘army Hitler forgot’

Diaries from ‘ladies in green’ now available online history:

Previously unseen diaries from the “army that Hitler forgot” – the millionstrong organisation of women who played a vital role on the Home Front in the Second World War – have been published online.

More than 30,000 pages of diaries from women who joined the Women’s Voluntary Services (WVS) during the conflict have been made freely available online by the Royal Voluntary Service Archive and Heritage Collection.

As well as sewing, cooking and knitting, these women learned new skills such as extinguishing incendiary bombs, driving in the black-out and creating camouflage nets.

The “ladies in green”, a reference to their moss-coloured uniforms, also looked after child evacuees, collected aluminium for aircraft and provided practical help, right down to cups of tea from mobile canteens, to those hit by air raids on the Home Front.

Lady Stella Reading founded the organisation in May 1938 as the clouds of war gathered, touring the country throughout 1938 and 1939, telling audiences that “the greatest disservice a woman can do at the moment is consider herself useless”.

By the end of August 1939, 300,000 women had joined the WVS and, by the height of the war, one in 10 women in Britain was a member.

Their diaries, which give an insight into the struggles of daily life during the war, were inscribed on the United Nations cultural body Unesco UK Memory of the World register for their national importance, but have been beyond the reach of the public.

With the help of a Kickstarter campaign, the Royal Voluntary Service has photographed 31,401 pages of diaries from 1938 to 1942 from more than 1,300 different cities, towns and villages across Great Britain and published them online.

Lady Reading’s role as the driving force behind the army of volunteers is being marked by the awarding of the blue plaque at 41 Tothill Street, Westminster.

Anna Eavis, curatorial director at English Heritage, said: “Stella, Lady Reading’s pioneering work with the Women’s Voluntary Services has secured her reputation as one of the most remarkable women of the age.

“During World War Two, she almost single-handedly recruited a million volunteers who provided all kinds of practical support to emergency workers, servicemen and bombed-out families throughout the darkest days of the conflict.

“The London blue plaques scheme prides itself on linking extraordinary people to the places where they actually lived and worked.”

The digitised diaries can be viewed by logging on to catalogue.royal voluntaryservice.org.uk/calmview.

Picture: PA. The Queen Mother with members of the WVS during the Second World War.