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The Frontline Women of the First World War
The First World War saw one of the biggest ever changes in the demographics of warfare, as thousands of women donned uniforms and took an active part in conflict for the first time in history. Female Tommies looks at the military role of women worldwide during the Great War and reveals the extraordinary women who served on the frontline. Through their diaries, letters and memoirs, meet the women who defied convention and followed their convictions to defend the less fortunate and fight for their country. Follow British Flora Sandes as she joins the Serbian Army and takes up a place in the rearguard of the Iron Regiment as they retreat from the Bulgarian advance. Stow away with Dorothy Lawrence as she smuggles herself to Paris, steals a uniform and heads to the front. Enlist in Russia’s all-female ‘Battalion of Death’ alongside peasant women and princesses alike. The personal accounts of these women, who were members of organisations such as the US Army Signal Corps, the Canadian Army Medical Corps, the FANY, WRAF, WRNS, WAAC and many others, provide a valuable insight into what life was like for women in a male-dominated environment.
'Elisabeth Shipton is a stand-out researcher and with this book she stakes a claim as a great writer in her own right.'
Dan Snow,
7th September, 2018 in Military, Women in History
The history of the Auxiliary Territorial Service – the ATS – really began in the middle of the First World War. As early as 1916, in the face of heavy casualties on the French battlefields, the British government was forced to acknowledge that women were needed in the army to tak…
27th March, 2017 in Military, Women in History
On 28 March 1917 the first women were enrolled into the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and embarked for France three days later. Yet in 1914 the suggestion of women in the army would have been considered ridiculous by the War Office. Why in 1917 was there such a big U-turn? When wa…
1st November, 2016 in History, Military
Nine days after moving her into sheltered accommodation, my mother had a stroke and died. It was heartbreaking to begin the gargantuan task of re-packing and sorting all her possessions again so soon after we had ‘got her straight’, as she would have said. There were a few boxes…
15th December, 2015 in Military, Women in History
The majority of writing about women during the First World War tends to focus on their roles as nurses or workers on the Home Front, but few look at the militarisation of women that took place during those four and a half years. In 1914 war was very much a man’s world and it was…
