Great women from back in the day

I WAS brought up on a post-war Carmarthenshire farm. From a young age I was aware that my mother was as crucial to the running of the farm as my father. Also, any decisions regarding the home and the business were jointly made – but my little ears picked up on the expression “she wears the trousers”, meaning there were farms and rural businesses where the wife was the managing director and chairman of the board, full stop.

I earned my University of Life bachelor’s degree working behind the bar of a popular local pub affectionately known as The Crazy Horse. Observing men in their drink I noted how many were – not exactly afraid of ‘er indoors, but the

squaw back on the reservation held power equal to the sum of everyone else.

Back in the day, if a farmer’s daughter didn’t marry into a farming family, she either pursued educational opportunities or took up work away from the farm, for no other reason than farming was physically demanding.

Today it is highly mechanised and I often notice, especially during harvest time, young women handling huge agricultural machinery with ease.

There’s a television programme in the pipeline about the Spitfire, and a lady to feature is Mary Ellis, now 101 and still bright and shiny as a supermoon.

In 1941, aged 24 and still working on the family farm but holding a private pilot’s licence, she heard an appeal on the wireless for ferry pilots to deliver aircraft from factory to the front line.

With her parents’ blessing she applied, took a flying test and was accepted into the ranks of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), where the females became known as Atagirls – Anything to Anywhere.

There was initially a reluctance by many senior men to allow women to do this work, but the male officers who were operationally nearest to these pioneer WWII female pilots quickly came to appreciate that they possessed one critical quality missing in many men: they were “steadier” than their male counterparts, and less likely to show off and take risks – but paradoxically such a quality was a hindrance to the Battle of Britain pilots themselves.

Mary delivered 76 types of aircraft, some 1,000 in total, including about 400 Spitfires – she was one of the few women to qualify to fly the large twin-engined Wellington bomber, as well as to co-pilot the Lancaster bomber and other four-engined giants.

That such large aircraft could be handled by such a slender young woman filled many with disbelief. When she arrived at one airfield at the controls of a Wellington bomber, astonished RAF officers asked the 5ft 2in blonde where the pilot was. “I’m the pilot,” she said. Only after they had searched the aeroplane did they accept that Mary had flown the bomber solo.

Mary belongs to the same generation as my mother, and it is so telling that they never felt like alsorans in life’s great obstacle race.