WOMEN’S GREAT PART

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4403, 17 March 1941, Page 5

WOMEN’S GREAT PART

THE WAR EFFORT. GREAT RESPONSE IN BRITAIN. (Official News.) LONDON, March 14. Women in uniform are serving with every branch of His Majesty’s Forces as telephonists, radio operators, cooks, caterers, clerks, typists, bookkeepers, lorry drivers, and mechanics. W.K.E.N.S. (Women’s Royal Naval Service), W.A.A.F.S. (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force), F.A.N.N.Y.S. (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry), all are doing a full-time job most competently. The main function of a woman serving with the fighting forces is to release men for combatant duties. The extent to which this has been achieved is illustrated by the fact that when the W.A.A.F.S. were established as a separate service in June, 1939, the R.A.F. specified four categories in which it was thought they could substitute for men. Since then the number has grown to twenty-six, and new trades are constantly being added. In emergencies, too, they have risen to the occasion magnificently. During the operations off Dunkirk the W.R.E.N.S. took over at a moment’s notice job after job that had previously been done by men and so set free scores of sorely needed officers and ratings to assist in the evacuation. RELEASING MEN. Women in the civil defence services, also in uniform, play the same part in releasing men, but through determination or force of circumstances the women warden, fireman, ambulance driver or shelter marshal, has as yet taken a larger share than any of her sisters in the danger zone. No woman has as yet won the George Cross, but sixteen of the George Medals have been awarded to women.

Women in industry in the last war nlayed a bigger part than women in and other category of professional war work. Out of 1,330,000 additional women who then found employment no less than 790,000 were industrial workers, and it seems as if history would repeat these proportions. Mr Bevin, the Minister of Labour, has called for 500,000 woman workers before August, 1941. The number of young single women available could not fill this demand, but recruits are expected to be drawn from civilian industries and from the numbers of married women who have served in industry. It was in this connection that Mr Bevin asked for women to volunteer as “Minders,” who would look after the children while the mothers were working. INDUSTRIAL WAR WORK. There are many reasons why the majority of women choose industrial war work. Good wages is certainly a factor, the probability of being able to live at home is another, and, perhaps most potent of all, the fact there is no upper age limit. This, however, does not mean that it is an easy life. The work is hard and often dangerous, but it is vitally necessary, and every woman engaged in it can be well aware that she, too, is playing her part in the nation’s war effort. Women on the land have a hard row to hoe in more senses than one. Agricultural work demands skill and knowledge, and is often so heavy that farmers are doubtful about taking on women as workers. However, the 9000 girls of the Land Army now replacing men on the farms have proved their value. They are generally employed in the specialised branches poultry, dairy, young stock, fruit, and market gardening—but a tour of the British countryside shows them handling many heavier jobs—cranking a tractor, or shouldering a calf as automatically as if physique counted for nothing. Not are the paths of gallantry closed to their calling. One famous section in East Kent found shrapnel falling on their tractors. None of these girls asked for a transfer. Instead they applied for tin hats—and got them—and went on ploughing. SAVING CARGO SPACE. Women in the villages are saving cargo space by making jam. Through their own countrywomen’s association, the women’s institutes, they prepared a scheme and submitted it to the Government. The idea was approved and the necessary amount of sugar released. Jam-making centres were set up in village halls, in empty garages, sometimes in farmhouse kitchens, and every woman in the village lent a hand picking, preparing the fruit, and making the jam. Between June and December, 1940, they made 17,015 tons of jam over and above the amount they had always made for their own needs. Reckoning that the average family eats about three pounds of jam a week, these village women made enough to supply 244,246 families for a year.

The Women’s Voluntary Services for Civil Defence is a wartime organisation, but a civilian one with a membership of 843,000. Some of its members wear uniform, the majority do not. There are no privates, offiers or badges of rank. Its work varies from sewing parties to driving mobile canteens out to feed the firemen and rescue squads during air raids. Most of the “mobiles” in London, Coventry and other target cities bear battle scars by now, chips and dents made by shell splinters. In the early summer of 1940 the W.V.S. took charge of the refugees arriving from the Continent. In London 8794 were met and taken care of. Since September the major part of the work has been with the victims of air raids running rest centres, finding and furnishing new homes, equipping and staffing nursery schools for babies who have been made orphans, organising canteens in shelters. LIAISON OFFICERS. The W.V.S. are the liaison officers between the people of Britain and their kinsmen and well-wishers overseas. Every day bales of clothes and comforts come in to the central depots to be distributed to centres in target areas. By the end of February, 1941, 727,11 i garments had been given out in London alone. More

than a third of these came from overseas—from the Dominions and colonies, the United States, Mexico, South America, and even little Tristan de Cunha. A vast bundle from the Hawaiian Chapter of the American Red Cross lies next to a small parcel of hand-knitted woollens marked “With love from four telephone girls in New Zealand.” Baby clothes from Uruguay, sheepskin coats from Queensland, children’s dresses from Massachusetts all go out to the women of the bombed cities Who say: “To think it’s come all that way. They are good friends.” Britain’s greatest asset is her genius for improvisation. Centuries of freedom have accustomed British women to think for themselves. Amid the chaos and destruction of war they are emerging to take their full share of the national responsibilities. The fine attributes of the female mind, the eye for detail and dislike of waste, are proving of inestimable value in doing the nation’s housekeeping from day to day. THEME WITH VARIATIONS. “Never have so many owed so much to so few.” —Churchill. “Never have so few taken so much from so many.”—Hitler. “Never have so few pursued so many so far.” —Metaxas. “Never have so many run so far from so few.” —Mussolini.