War

By Romanie Andrews

What Did The Women Do?

Jobs undertaken by women during the war included:

Mechanics

Engineers

Tank drivers

Building ships

Working in factories - making bombs and aircraft parts

Driving fire engines

Plumbers
Huge numbers of women were involved in the war effort and many joined the armed forces
even though they did not have to:
-640,000 in the armed forces;
-55,000 serving with guns and providing essential air defence;
-80,000 thousand in the Land Army;
Plus many more who flew unarmed aircraft, drove ambulances, worked as nurses and worked
behind enemy lines in the European resistance.
Seeing as men were taken away to war, women were needed by the government to do the jobs
that men did before the war started. It was very different for the women, as well as the men,
because they were thrown in at the deep end with all the manly jobs, instead of being stay at
home mums/wives.

Trenches
Trenches in World War 1 were long, narrow, muddy ditches dug into the
ground. This is where the soldiers lived all day and night slept in, ate
in, cleaned themselves in, etc.
Soldiers in the trenches did not get much sleep. When they did, it was
in the afternoon during daylight and at night only for an hour at a time.
They were woken up at different times, either to complete one of their
daily chores or to fight. During rest time, they wrote letters and
sometimes played card games.
The trenches could be very muddy and smelly. There were many dead
bodies buried nearby and the toilets sometimes overflowed into the
trenches. Millions of rats infested the trenches and some grew as big
as cats. There was also a big problem with lice that tormented the
soldiers on a daily basis.

Friendship
War was not just about death and fighting, lots of friendships were
formed and memories were made. Bonds would have formed between
people in the trenches that worked side by side, but also with soldiers
on the opposite team. For example, Christmas 1914 (the first
Christmas since war broke out), many soldiers joined together,
unofficially, and celebrated the holiday together, leaving aside the fact
that they were slaughtering one another just hours ago. It shows that
the people they are when theyre in the trenches, are not the people
they truly are. All of them are equal, being forced to work as soldiers.
Some letters that were sent home talk about personal experiences
with soldiers they were fighting against, where they became friends for
a brief 5 minutes, or let one past without killing them.

Food
Even though food was very short in Britain during World War One, families often sent
parcels to their fathers and brothers fighting at the front. The parcels contained
presents of chocolate, cake, tobacco and tinned food.
At the beginning of the war, soldiers got just over one pound of meat, the same
amount in bread and eight ounces of vegetables each day.
Some soldiers worked in field kitchens which were set up just behind the trenches to
cook meals for the soldiers who were fighting.
By 1917 the official ration for the average British 'Tommy' was much smaller. Fresh
meat was getting harder to come by and the ration was reduced to just 6 ounces of
'bully beef' (which we call corned beef today). Soldiers on the actual front line got
even less meat and vegetables than this.
'Maconchie's meat stew' and hard biscuits was a meal that many soldiers ate. Sadly,
the meat was mostly fat. This, along with a shortage of fresh fruit and vegetables, was
responsible for many soldiers to suffer from starving.