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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
The courageous pilots of the Royal Air Force who faced the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, affectionately known as 'the Few', are rightly hailed as heroes. Recently, efforts have been made to recognise the thousands who supported RAF operations behind the scenes. And yet one group remains missing from the narrative: the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. WAAFs worked within the Dowding System, the world's most sophisticated air defence network. Throughout the Blitz, they used radar to aid Fighter and Bomber Commands in protecting Britain's civilians. WAAFs were also behind the discovery of the terrifying German V-weapons. Their work was critical ahead of the Normandy landings and they were present in their hundreds at Bletchley Park. In this thrilling book, Sarah-Louise Miller celebrates their wartime contribution to British military intelligence. Hidden behind the Few but vital to their success, WAAFs supplied the RAF with life-saving information. Here, for the first time, is their story.
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“Richly illuminating, this is a powerful and deeply engrossing history of the women whose unsung war work was consigned for so many years to the shadows: from Bletchley Park to secret listening stations, from the nerve centre of Fighter Command to the espionage of the Special Operations Executive, WAAFs were at the core of Britain’s secret intelligence war. And Sarah-Louise Miller’s vivid exploration has given us an eye-opening range of accounts that pay proud tribute to these brilliant, dedicated women.”
Sinclair McKay, author of The Secret Life of Bletchley Park
“Vividly written and based on superb research, this is undoubtedly one of the best books on the role of women at war so far.”
Michael Smith, author of The Secrets of Station X: How the Bletchley Park Codebreakers Helped Win the War
“A captivating and meticulously researched account of the crucial but hidden role played by the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in the Second World War. I was hooked from page one.”
Lucy Fisher, author of Women in the War: The Last Heroines of Britain’s Greatest Generation
“The women of the WAAF made a vital and secret contribution to Britain’s victory in the Second World War and yet remained hidden from history for many years. Sarah-Louise Miller reveals these remarkable figures, offering us a compulsively readable group portrait of women who operated in almost every aspect of British intelligence. Meticulously researched and compellingly written – a triumph!”
Professor Richard J. Aldrich, author of GCHQ: The Uncensored History of Britain’s Most Secret Intelligence Agencyii
“At the beginning of the Second World War, the prevailing view was that women didn’t have the education, intellect or ability for intelligence work. With a lively mix of personal testimony and scholarly analysis, Sarah-Louise Miller shows how in fact women performed superb work in the WAAF as radar operators, signals analysts, photo interpreters and in many other fields. The Women Behind the Few restores the WAAFs to their rightful place in the full narrative of the conflict.”
Taylor Downing, author of Spies in the Sky: The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence during World War II
“The vital contribution of the enterprising and courageous women who helped to win the battle of the air in the Second World War is brought to life in Sarah-Louise Miller’s important and absorbing book.”
Wendy Moore, author of Endell Street: The Women Who Ran Britain’s Trailblazing Military Hospital
“A rip-roaring read about a previously hidden aspect of the Second World War. Dr Miller shows how behind every good RAF officer there was a brilliant female intelligence officer.”
Professor Michael Goodman, King’s College London
“Sarah-Louise Miller presents an animated, in-depth account of the crucial role of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in the intelligence services during the Second World War. Her book makes an important and welcome addition to scholarship on wartime women.”
Professor Penny Summerfield, University of Manchester
“A marvellous account of a hitherto unknown subject of immense importance.”
Diane Atkinson, author of Rise Up, Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes
“Truly excellent … Goes into fascinating detail.”
Military History Matters
“Excellent … Fascinating stories of vital work.”
RAF News
“A well-researched, fascinating read, at its most sparkling when punctuated with anecdotes and quotes from the women themselves. An important book.”
Julia Bracewell, Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine
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For Isaac, who makes it all possible.viii
CONTENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
PROLOGUE
‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’1 Winston Churchill’s famous words appear on the plaque at Yale College, Wrexham, commemorating one of its most honoured and extraordinary pupils – Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Rosier. A Royal Air Force fighter pilot in the Second World War, Rosier destroyed a Messerschmitt 109 and damaged another on 18 May 1940, shortly before being shot down himself. He escaped his burning Hurricane, receiving facial burns and other injuries which he would recover from in hospital. The group of Messerschmitts had appeared in force and without warning, as he, along with his weary and depleted squadron, had taken off from an airfield in northern France. Speaking later of his experience, he blamed the lack of intelligence for what had happened. Had they had any reliable information on how, when and where the enemy would appear, he argued, the RAF pilots might have stood a chance. Instead, they were caught at a major disadvantage and the already battered force sustained further damage and loss.
This lack of intelligence, and the feelings of isolation and helplessness which it induced in RAF pilots, would not last long. Developments in technology would greatly increase the ability of the military services to collect, analyse and disseminate intelligence that xviwas so badly needed if the numerically inferior RAF was to be able to continue, and perhaps even win, its fight against the Luftwaffe.
In his August 1940 speech, Churchill attributed the smaller number of casualties in the second of the twentieth-century world wars in part to the ‘Few’ – the courageous pilots of the Royal Air Force. He also acknowledged that improved strategy, organisation, technical apparatus, science and mechanics were playing a vital role in keeping the RAF flying. Indeed, the planes and weapons used by the British armed forces, and the ability of the aircrew who so famously and gallantly flew in the Battle of Britain, were critically important to any potential British victory. There were, however, more secret developments in technology, as well as a number of personnel who were highly trained in using new machines and systems as they were developed and commissioned for duty. While the dogfights took place in the skies above Britain, RAF personnel laboured behind closed doors, using this new technology to collect, process, analyse and disseminate the vital intelligence that would keep the RAF functioning and ensure that Britain remained in the war.
Among these personnel were many women – women who, like Aileen Clayton, were members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. Air Chief Marshal Rosier worked closely with Aileen, who was the first WAAF member to be commissioned for intelligence duties when she was promoted to officer rank in July 1940. She worked in the Y Service, an organisation tasked with the monitoring and interpretation of enemy radio transmissions. Rosier considered her an extremely important member of the Y Service, acknowledging that she was a ‘woman in a man’s world’.2 Aileen and her colleagues passed RAF Fighter Command warnings of impending enemy raids, their targets, their identities and other vital intelligence which xviimade it possible for attacks to be successfully countered. Technical developments, Rosier admits, contributed greatly to British success in both the Battle of Britain and the Second World War. Equally as vital in both, however, was the ‘extraordinary resilience and adaptability of women who showed that they were supreme’ in using such technology. Rosier suggests that without these remarkable and courageous women, the direction of events in and the ultimate outcome of the Second World War ‘might have been very different’.3
When intelligence work is done well, it is expected that it will remain hidden from public view. For decades after the conclusion of the Second World War, very little was publicly known about intelligence operations and systems that had functioned for its duration. After the revelation of the Ultra secret – the wartime work of the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park – in the mid-1970s, the story of British codebreaking and wartime intelligence work began to finally be told. ‘Ultra’, the name given to wartime signals intelligence obtained by the decryption of enemy radio and teleprinter communications, became the star of the 1940s British intelligence show and has been the subject of much research, as well as many books and screen tellings of the story of how the Enigma codes were broken. It is, however, only a small part of a much larger story and the monitoring of enemy signals traffic was not limited to Bletchley. There were many other men and women involved in producing information, without which the Allied knowledge of the enemy’s tactical dispositions and intentions would have either been incomplete or missing entirely. Among these men and women were Aileen Clayton and her WAAF colleagues, who were employed in intelligence work throughout the Second World War.
The very nature of intelligence work creates challenges for historical researchers when it comes to investigating intelligence xviiihistory. Intelligence and espionage are inherently extremely secretive and for much to be publicly known about the intelligence world somewhat defeats the point of its existence. Historians look to primary sources for their information – sources from the historical time period they are studying. In the realm of intelligence history, these records can be difficult, and sometimes impossible, to find and access. Despite the decades that have passed, some intelligence files from the Second World War remain classified and sealed. The National Archives continues to declassify records and make them accessible, but classification issues, post-war upheaval, archive fires and disasters and a process known as ‘weeding’ mean that sometimes the files have been locked, lost or destroyed. Historians of the intelligence world can and must use official records, and for this book, the files used are housed in the National Archives, the Imperial War Museum, the Military Intelligence Museum, the International Bomber Command Centre, the Bawdsey Radar Trust, the Association of RAF Fighter Control Officers, the Air Historical Branch, the Medmenham Association and Bletchley Park. The intelligence world can be murky and spectral, however, and to be able to gain as full a picture as possible of its history, it is critically important to remember that it is, and has always been, populated by people. Many of these men and women, sworn to secrecy until they were released from their oaths, have left behind their personal memories, in the forms of diaries, oral histories, letters, written accounts and interviews. These sources are invaluable and help to fill the inevitable gaps in the official records. They are especially precious when it comes to studying women in intelligence history. Intelligence historians Christopher Andrew and David Dilks call intelligence the ‘missing dimension’ from ‘most political and much military history’.4 Within this dimension, they say, there is another xixmissing dimension – that of women. Historical records tend to be recorded by men about men and it is common for them to omit or mis-record women and their work. This is even more true in the world of intelligence, where it is commonly assumed that women were typists and secretaries and not much else. Sometimes misleading and inaccurate nomenclature was intentionally used to hide what women were truly doing, on the grounds of intense secrecy. In other instances, their work may have genuinely been misunderstood. Personal records – from men and women – are therefore critical in helping us to understand not only what women did but what it meant and how they felt about it. In this book, both official primary source records and the personal words and memories of those involved have been used to tell the story of wartime WAAFs working in British air intelligence.
In the extensive coverage of the Battle of Britain by authors and researchers, it is almost always the brave young pilots of Fighter Command who are the focus. In recent years, the parts played by Bomber and Coastal Commands have rightfully begun to be recognised and celebrated too. The gallant and sacrificial work of these commands must never be forgotten, and the men who served within them are deserving of the glory bestowed upon them in British history and national memory. Consisting of around 3,000 aircrew from fourteen different nations, the international force known as the ‘Few’ are as precious to the British public today as they were during the summer of 1940, as a symbol of courage and determination towards victory in the face of the grim situation the country faced. During the battle, the daily news reports and visible dogfights overhead gave the people of Britain proof that all was not lost. They were needed, as a tangible sign of hope. Their story, though, is part of a much wider narrative of the Battle of Britain. xxUnseen and yet vital to the success of Fighter, Bomber and Coastal Commands, there were thousands of men and women assisting in the battle in various capacities. Though the balance of history has, in some respects, been redressed in the study of Bomber and Coastal Commands, there remains another hidden few. Responsible at least in part for Britain’s victory in the summer of 1940, and in other major aerial victories, but generally not included in the popular telling of their stories, were thousands of members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, working to collect and disseminate intelligence that would greatly assist the Royal Air Force in its fight against the Luftwaffe. This book, while not wishing to diminish the marvellous achievements of the Few, focuses on these women, who have hitherto been neglected or have gone unnoticed, despite their vital intelligence contributions. Unlike Churchill’s Few, for the WAAF intelligence personnel there was no publicity and no glamour – in fact, there was barely any recognition at all. Behind the Few, they worked day in, day out, supplying the RAF with life-saving, resource-preserving, force-multiplying information, playing a significant role in the saving of lives, the winning of battles and, ultimately, the Allied victory in 1945. Here is the story of this other missing few, and with it, a true redressing of the balance of the history of British aerial warfare in the Second World War.
Notes
1 Hansard, HC Deb, 20 August 1940, vol. 364, cc 1167 (Winston Churchill’s ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’ speech).
2 Aileen Clayton, The Enemy Is Listening (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1980), pp. 11–12.
3 Ibid., pp. 12–13.
4 Christopher Andrew and David Dilks, eds, The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 1.
1
THE WAR, THE WAAF AND WOMEN IN INTELLIGENCE
WOMEN IN ANOTHER WORLD WAR
We got on with it, it was what we had to do. After the bombing stopped, we’d have a cup of tea – that calmed the nerves. Once, when a raid during the Blitz knocked out all of our windows, the chair back covers from our neighbours’ armchairs floated into our front room and we had to sort out whose were whose and return them.1
For Mary Knight and her family, dealing with bombing raids in their home city of London became a part of life in the early years of the Second World War. Absconding chair back covers the least of their worries, British people learned to cope with danger and difficulty on a daily basis, problem-solving and experimenting in different ways to greet and overcome the many new challenges they faced. They made things, mended others and made do with what they had, and rationing of food, fuel and other materials altered life considerably. These weren’t just social responsibilities – they were necessary activities, as the German war machine ravaged Europe and cut off vital supply lines. The conditions of this total war blurred the boundaries of social spheres and plunged Britain 2into a fight for survival, in which every person was required to play a part. The bombing offensives, made possible by advances in air power and weapons technology, brought the war to villages, towns, cities and everyday lives, inevitably involving men, women and children in the fight. The way in which people fought differed, ranging from creating new recipes to cope with rationing to flying fighter planes to defend the country in battle. Men were needed in the military services in great numbers and as they were recruited and conscripted, a vacuum appeared in the workforce. Just as they had in the First World War, women stepped into this void, filling roles that had long been strictly the domain of men, as well as those that resembled their peacetime work.
They worked with the Women’s Land Army, producing food and keeping British agriculture going. These women, numbering around 80,000 at their peak, made a significant and valuable contribution to Britain’s food production during the Second World War as a rural workforce. They also staffed factories and shipyards, building ships and aircraft and manufacturing munitions. They served as drivers in buses, fire engines and ambulances, worked as engineers and mechanics and kept the railway network functioning. They saw Britain through bombing raids as air raid wardens, evacuation officers and fire officers and administered first aid and medical care as nurses and volunteers. Women kept Britain fed and fighting in many civilian capacities, working hard to ensure that the jobs traditionally carried out by men continued to be done.
There was, however, another arena in which they were badly needed, as another manpower vacuum appeared – in the military services. War, the great destabiliser of the twentieth century, necessitated military experimentation, and as more and more men were needed in combat and overseas positions, the British government 3appealed to women to step into military roles previously unavailable to them. The integration of women into the British armed forces was, in some ways, an experiment, necessitated by the incessant demands of war. Fighting and warfare had long been considered a strictly male sphere, but such a move was not without precedent.
SETTING THE PRECEDENT: WOMEN IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR
‘She has taught the bravest man among us a supreme lesson of courage; yes, and in this United Kingdom … there are thousands of such women, but a year ago we did not know it.’2 Addressing the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Lord Asquith was speaking about Edith Cavell, the British nurse famous for her indiscriminate saving of soldiers’ lives on both sides and for her part in aiding the escape of over 200 Allied soldiers from German-occupied Belgium during the First World War. For her now celebrated acts of courage, Edith was arrested by the Germans and accused of treason, resulting in her death by firing squad on 12 October 1915. Following her execution, she became a public symbol of the Allied cause, appearing in recruitment posters and messages around the world. Her story was, as Asquith pointed out, a revelation to the world of the kind of courage in the face of danger that a woman could possess, and it proved that women could carry out roles unexpected of them during wartime. The prevailing attitude towards women in military service during the First World War was, unsurprisingly given the historical context in which British women had no right to vote and no independent legal status, that if they absolutely had to serve it should be in a non-combatant, non-dangerous support capacity only. Society’s praise and admiration went to those women who did what was 4expected of them by remaining at home as sources of unwavering support, fortifying their menfolk to go to war while they took care of the family. In 1914, the ‘separate spheres’ ideology, which dictated that a woman’s place was in the domestic realm of her home, was firmly ingrained in British society. Women were expected to care for their children and keep their homes in order, providing support for the men of the military from the comfort and safety of their kitchens and living rooms. Necessity for their involvement with the armed services was dictated by the ongoing, bloody war and the increasing shortage of able-bodied men to fight it.
The First World War witnessed the creation of various military auxiliaries and capacities in which women could serve in aid of the war effort, and they did so in vast numbers. The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) and the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) recruited women who would march and carry out drills, wearing uniforms just as their male counterparts did. There was, however, at no point any question that these all-female auxiliaries were anything more than support units. Established in December 1916, the WAAC’s members served as cooks, clerks and office workers or secretaries, messengers, waitresses, driver-mechanics and domestic workers of various sorts. The War Office had identified that these non-combat jobs were being carried out by men who were needed in battle, and so male soldiers were replaced by women from the auxiliaries in canteens, offices, transport, stores and army bases. Over 57,000 women served with the WAAC, in Britain and overseas, before it was disbanded in September 1921. Formed in November 1917, the WRNS carried out similar tasks, but members did not serve aboard active-duty warships. It was in the final year of the First World War that air power really came of age. Initially, the Royal 5Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service bore the brunt of the responsibility of air defence, but on 1 April 1918 the two combined to form the newly established Royal Air Force – the first separate, entirely independent air force in any country. The RAF was given its own ministry, the ‘Air Ministry’, with a secretary of state for air, and over 290,000 personnel lined its ranks.3 Before the creation of the RAF, members of the WAAC and the WRNS worked with the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. When the RAF was established, its leaders were so concerned about the loss of their specially trained women that it was decided to simultaneously create a women’s air service, which could continue to train women to work on air stations. On 1 April 1918, the Women’s Royal Air Force was established and over 2,000 of its recruits had previously served with the WRNS, in the Royal Naval Air Service. Like its naval and army counterparts, the WRAF served mostly as a support unit and in very similar capacities. In 1918, women could choose from four basic trades: clerks and store-women; household; technical; and non-technical. By 1920, the number of available trades had increased to fifty and included tailoring, catering, driving, pigeon-keeping and photography. WRAF members were either ‘immobiles’, meaning that they lived at home and served at their local station, or ‘mobiles’, who could be transferred to other stations if necessary. Some members – namely domestic personnel, medical and clerical staff and drivers – were sent on overseas service after 1918, in France and Germany. In 1919, the order was given to close down the WRAF contingent on the Rhine, and the RAF sections there were so unwilling to lose their airwomen that they delayed the disbandment as long as they possibly could. By April 1920, the WRAF had employed 32,000 women and they had shown themselves to be an extremely valuable asset to the RAF. 6This experimental service, formed out of nothing but sheer necessity, had had irrefutably successful results.
All three women’s military auxiliaries were formed towards the end of the First World War and only after heavy manpower losses and casualties were military jobs officially handed to women. The British government and military leaders had resisted for as long as possible, their traditional patriarchal views and attitudes unwavering, but eventually they had little choice but to allow the recruitment of women. Though the women of the auxiliaries proved themselves to be capable and courageous, their service did not change the situation or status of women in the short term. Women were doing things that they had not previously been allowed to do, but the War Office and the British government made it very clear that these special concessions had only been made under the emergency conditions of war. Though these women wore uniforms, in many cases they had to buy their own, and they were not given traditional ranks or badges. They were not referred to as soldiers but as ‘workers’ or ‘amazons’, or by the War Office as ‘camp followers’. They were considered members of the women’s services rather than the British military, and because they were legally civilians, they were not integrated into the armed forces. By 1921, all three of the women’s military auxiliaries had been disbanded. The Great War placed immense pressure on the British economy, which did not witness a swift return to its pre-war state. By 1921, unemployment was at a record high in Britain and working women were forced to give up their jobs to men who had returned from battle. The economic cuts and concessions by women extended to the military auxiliaries, which were deemed unnecessary and were axed. No peacetime women’s auxiliaries existed. Ultimately, it seemed as if the British government and military were keen to return to a 7world where women were not involved in the armed forces, their argument being that women had only ever been put in uniforms to replace absent men who were needed on the front. Now that the men had returned and were not required in mass numbers to fight a war overseas, women in uniform became an unwelcome sight and a redundant concept. The only military capacity in which the British authorities were willing to permanently allow women to serve was that of nursing, which was recognised as a necessary part of the services. The Nurses Registration Act was passed in 1919, formally recognising nursing as a profession and integrating nurses into the military. Apart from this, there had been very little lasting change for women in the British military services as a result of their work in the First World War auxiliaries. Nevertheless, the experiment had proven a point. Asquith recognised that the war had revealed women of conspicuous courage, like Edith Cavell, through providing them with opportunities to demonstrate their bravery and abilities – abilities that, prior to the war, the government and the military were sure they could not possess. Such bravery was not easily forgotten, and in 1939, as the world went to war again, women once more found themselves working in environments and roles unfamiliar to them.
WOMEN IN FIRST WORLD WAR INTELLIGENCE
In 1909, the British Secret Service Bureau was established with separate sections for foreign intelligence (later the SIS or MI6) and domestic intelligence (MI5). From then to 1919, over 6,000 women served in the bureau, which would not have been able to function efficiently without them. Though for a large portion of this period they could not vote, let alone hold political office or work in 8permanent civil service roles, they were recruited to work for the bureau in their thousands. Their work was mostly clerical in nature and they laboured behind the scenes to record messages, organise files and provide refreshments for the (all-male) senior staff. Due to the increasing unavailability of men as they were sent to the front to fight, women became a vital, if unseen, element of First World War intelligence organisations. Their work included the organisation and analysis of surveillance information and the dissemination of this information to the appropriate civil and military authorities, but this contribution was very much peripheral. When classified documents on British intelligence were opened for the first time in 1998, they made little to no mention of women or their contribution to intelligence work in the First World War. This is hardly surprising, given that clerical workers in any setting remain almost always in the background, and is especially understandable in the intelligence world, where due to the fascination with spies in popular culture, secretaries would inevitably remain in the shadow of the glamorised secret agents.
Whether or not they were noticed, or whether anyone thought to record their presence or the significance of their work, they were certainly there, working to ensure that British clandestine activity continued effectively and efficiently. The Registry at the Secret Service Bureau was expanded during the First World War and by November 1914 it was staffed solely by women, with Lily Steuart at its head. Women played a ‘more important role in the Security Service than in any other wartime government department’.4 Though restricted to administrative work, the women involved in secret work proved to be vital to the smooth running of the service. Despite their clear ability to carry out hard work under pressure, the 9women were expected by most of their male colleagues to be ‘good ladies serving tea and finding files’.5 A post-war ‘Report on Women’s Work’ stated that the service had been looking for women who possessed ‘intelligence, diligence and above all, reticence’.6 Though they were looking for clever women who could be restrained enough to keep secrets, the British intelligence authorities believed that behaving in such a way was difficult for women. In 1915, it was decided that the service would not recruit women over the age of forty, and in 1916 the maximum age was lowered to thirty, ‘on account of the very considerable strain that was thrown on the brains of the workers’.7 Women, it seems, were not considered wholly capable of intelligence work, even as clerks and secretaries. It was believed that the only women who might possess the desirable qualities to be able to work in intelligence were those who were educated and who naturally had inherited a ‘code of honour’ – ‘gentlewomen who had enjoyed a good school, and in some cases a university education’.8 Despite the class and age restrictions and the limited opportunities within British intelligence, women did prove themselves to be capable and essential during the First World War.
By 1929, MI5, now distinct from the SIS as Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, had two branches. ‘A Branch’ was responsible for administration, personnel, records and protective security (then called ‘precautionary measures’), and ‘B Branch’ was responsible for conducting investigations and inquiries. Within A Branch, the Registry continued to be staffed and run by women and of the branch’s four section heads two were women, though neither of them was allowed to hold officer rank. Mary Dicker ran the Registry and was controller of female staff, and A. W. Masterton had become the first female controller of finance in any government department.910By the end of the First World War and into the 1920s and 1930s, women had proven themselves to be reliable and capable within the British intelligence network.
ANGELIC NURSES AND FEMMES FATALES
Where women in Britain were restricted to clerical work within First World War intelligence services, elsewhere in Europe women did labour as field agents and spies. ‘La Dame Blanche’ was a network of spies in German-occupied Belgium which provided intelligence on German troop movements to the Allies. By the end of the war, La Dame Blanche consisted of almost 800 members, many of whom were women.10 Among them were nuns, nurses and midwives, all of whom could move around unrestricted, carrying intelligence reports in their whalebone corsets or disguised in soap or chocolate.
When British nurse Edith Cavell was arrested for helping Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium, the Germans claimed that her network was also smuggling intelligence back to the Allies. Edith was sentenced to execution for espionage and chose not to appeal her sentence. Even those British intelligence officers aware that she was feeding them intelligence found it inappropriate to execute a woman, and an image was circulated in British propaganda which ignored the allegations against Edith and instead stressed her role as a nurse to patients from all over the world. Surely, they declared, this angelic, caregiving woman could not be suspected of being an agent. Edith became a public martyr and the British government seized the opportunity to capitalise heavily on her execution. News reports, postcards and posters cited Edith’s ‘murder’ as a recruitment technique. It worked – after her execution, British Army 11recruitment did noticeably increase. The extent to which Edith was actually involved in British intelligence remained unclear, but the British reaction to the accusation against her reveals much regarding attitudes towards the involvement of British women in espionage during the First World War.
When women in the La Dame Blanche network were caught, some were treated equally to Edith Cavell. Gabrielle Petit, a Belgian woman who passed intelligence to the British Secret Service, was executed by firing squad in 1916. She had been offered amnesty in exchange for information on her colleagues, but she heroically turned the offer down and remained silent. The British intelligence community were willing to work with foreign female spies and accept intelligence from them, well aware of the risk they were taking in obtaining and disseminating it. This willingness, however, apparently did not extend to risking the lives of British women – at least not publicly. The outrage in Britain over Edith Cavell’s death was twofold. Britain was rocked not only because the Germans had dared to kill a woman essentially in cold blood but also because they had dared to kill a British subject. The combination of imperialist superiority and traditionalist patriarchy evidenced in the reaction to Edith’s death, both by the British leaders who circulated the propaganda and by the public who reacted to it, explains why women were not wanted in First World War British intelligence in any other capacity than serving tea and finding files.
In stark contrast to Edith Cavell but also illustrating why women were not welcome in British intelligence is the example of Mata Hari. The First World War reaffirmed the enduring image of female spies as charming seductresses who used their sexuality to ensnare powerful men and prise information from them. This image was firmly lodged in the minds of important men through the case of 12Mata Hari. A Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan, Mata was famous throughout Europe for her shows, which usually involved exotic dancing and the removal of most of her clothing. Eventually, she supplemented her income by seducing government and military officials, including Germans, honey-trapping them into giving up intelligence. As the First World War continued, such liaisons brought her to the attention of the British and French intelligence services. She claimed she was trying to help France with her plan to embed herself within the German High Command but was named as a spy by a German attaché in some papers he sent to Berlin, which were intercepted by the French. She was convicted of being a spy for Germany and was executed by firing squad, just as Edith Cavell had been. Such an example contributed to the already existent archetypal idea of the ‘femme fatale’, a female character who relied on charm and seduction to manipulate men into giving up national secrets. Men, it seemed, could make honourable, trustworthy spies, like Richard Hannay in John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, or Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Women, on the other hand, were not trustworthy and had proven traitorous and deceitful as spies in the past. The ingrained fear of women like Mata Hari was evident in depictions of such female characters in popular culture, both before and after Mata had been identified as a spy. This popular and enduring image of the seductress spy is an ancient idea stemming from biblical examples such as Eve and Delilah. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s depiction of such a woman in the form of Irene Adler appeared in 1891 in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’. Mata Hari, it seemed, merely confirmed that men should be worried about and fearful of female spies. This image was indeed enduring, and by 1939 the British intelligence services remained in no hurry to recruit women. Despite providing abundant evidence of how effectively 13they actually could work in intelligence and how vital their contributions were, women were remembered more for their ability to use sex as a weapon to bring down men, kings and countries than they were for their successes and trustworthiness.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR WOMEN’S AUXILIARIES
As the coming of another war looked increasingly likely in the late 1930s, all three of the women’s military auxiliaries were reformed in preparation for its outbreak. The Women’s Royal Naval Service retained its original name, but the WAAC was renamed the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) and the WRAF became the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). The Munich crisis in September 1938 brought about the hasty formation of the ATS and every British county was tasked with raising several companies within the ATS which would be affiliated to a local male army territorial unit. One of these companies was to be a Royal Air Force ATS company, which would be affiliated to an auxiliary RAF unit. On 28 June 1939, just two months before the outbreak of the Second World War, the RAF ATS companies separated from the ATS altogether and by royal warrant the WAAF was established. The WAAF was not to be an independent organisation, but it was not completely integrated with the RAF either. The Air Ministry recognised the need to economise manpower if Britain stood a chance at winning the war, and they also recognised the need for trained ‘womanpower’ in being able to provide enough men to fight. It was proposed to ‘employ women on certain operational duties’ in the place of men, with a view to keeping the RAF flying.11 In December 1941, the British government passed the National Service Act (No. 2), which made provision for the conscription of women. Women could choose to 14enter the armed forces, to join the civilian Women’s Land Army or to work in industrial production of war commodities, such as munitions, tanks and planes. To begin with, the Act made all single women between the ages of twenty and thirty liable for conscription, and the WAAF received a flood of applications. Following this, a royal proclamation on 10 January 1942 activated the National Service Act, calling up all those born in 1920 and 1921, which was later extended to include all those born between 1918 and 1923. As a result, the WAAF continued to grow, and by July 1943, it was at its peak strength, containing 181,000 women. These women comprised 15.7 per cent of the total strength of the RAF.12
The three services trained their members to provide vital support towards the war effort, and by 1944, some 494,000 women had served within their ranks. Many of them provided clerical and domestic assistance to the British government and armed forces, just as they had in the First World War. Though in some respects their position in the military had not changed, in other respects, it had to. Again, necessitation born out of the lack of available men, combined to some degree with increasing and developing availability of opportunities for women in a world where they were now able to vote, resulted in a different women’s military to that which had existed in the First World War. Along with the important and valuable clerical and domestic roles they filled, women were invited to work with anti-aircraft artillery and on radar stations, learned to encode and decode vitally important secret messages and were even parachute dropped into Nazi-occupied countries as clandestine agents with the Special Operations Executive. That being said, the eventually wide array of opportunities available within the women’s military services was not immediately on offer when the WAAF was formed in 1939. Initially, the WAAF endured social ostracism, 15harsh conditions and occasional governmental disapproval, but WAAFs worked hard towards the British war effort, nonetheless. They served in a domestic capacity as drivers, orderlies, batwomen, catering personnel in hospitals and messes, and in a medical capacity as nurses, medical and air ambulance orderlies and dental surgery attendants. They also served as barrage balloon handlers, despite initial concerns in the Air Ministry that they might not be physically strong enough to handle the huge airborne bags of gas in high winds. They served as equippers, parachute packers, meteorologists, assistant armourers and many other clerical and support roles. WAAF members did not fly unless it was by sheer necessity or to carry out air checks. Some did receive special permission to accompany aircrews on training flights, but these were usually within the UK or were after the tide of war had turned, in territories controlled by the Allies. The only instance where they flew themselves with official permission was when the RAF begrudgingly allowed thirty (out of almost 1,500 volunteers) female service pilots to serve with the Air Transport Auxiliary, ferrying planes between airfields and factories.
A common misconception about women’s military service in the twentieth century is that their involvement in the First World War led to immediately wider opportunities in the Second. To begin with, entirely the opposite was true. Rather surprisingly considering the advances women had made, which included obtaining the vote, the classes of employment of the WRAF in 1918 were ‘very much more numerous’ than those proposed for the WAAF in 1939.13 In 1918, women in the WRAF could be involved in administrative work, household work (cooks, mess orderlies and waitresses, laundresses, general duties, pantry maids and vegetable women), non-technical work (shoemakers, tailors, fabric workers, 16motorcyclists, washers and telephonists) or technical work (acetylene workers, armourers, camera repairers, coppersmiths, electricians, aero-engine fitters, instrument repairers, machinists, magneto repairers, tinsmiths and sheet workers, turners, vulcanisers, wireless mechanics, drivers, draughtswomen, upholsterers, painters, carpenters, dopers, sign writers, photographers and store-women). In 1939, their somewhat underwhelming choices were those of cooks, light car drivers, equipment assistants, clerks (including General Duties) and fabric workers. The whole question of a women’s reserve had been raised in 1936 but was considered at that time ‘not desirable’.14 Such an attitude is evident in the lack of options for women’s work in the WAAF at its formation, despite how useful and effective women had proven to be in the WRAF in the First World War. Their work had not resulted in changed attitudes and views towards women and war work. Though some women had broken out of their traditional roles into fields that were usually reserved for men, this had not had a lasting effect as is sometimes claimed. Very early on in the Second World War it became clear that the manpower situation for the future was serious and that in order to solve the problem, women would have to be trained to do jobs within the RAF to release more men for duty. Just a month into the war, RAF stations were desperately asking for airwomen, voicing a need in particular for personnel to operate teleprinters, telephones and radar equipment. It was soon evident that many of the roles keeping men at home when they could be sent into action elsewhere were those relating to intelligence and communications. Just as war had forced the British government to stray into uncharted territory by creating first the WRAF and then the WAAF, the RAF would stray even further in the Second World War, by employing women in highly secret work gathering and disseminating information. The 17Air Ministry searched for intelligent women in the WAAF who could be trusted to work behind the scenes, in secret intelligence branches and organisations, as very few women had before.
BRITISH INTELLIGENCE IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Historically, intelligence in Britain was gathered by the individual branches of the military. In 1909, however, the Secret Service Bureau was founded, containing various departments with different purposes and roles. MI5 was the domestic arm of the service and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6) was the foreign section, responsible for gathering intelligence overseas. In addition, the Government Code and Cypher School was founded in 1919 and was responsible for providing signals intelligence to the government. In 1936, the Joint Intelligence Committee was established and became the senior government intelligence body in Britain, encompassing MI5, MI6 and the GC&CS. Working alongside and yet independently of the JIC were the military intelligence branches. The British Army delegated intelligence duties to the Directorate of Military Operations and the Directorate of Military Intelligence, and the Royal Navy contained the Naval Intelligence Department. The Royal Air Force utilised its Air Intelligence Branch. In 1939, therefore, British intelligence was not the responsibility of one single organisation. Rather, these several bodies within the British government and armed forces shared the responsibility, all with different individual duties and methods. The outbreak of the Second World War acted as a catalyst for a mass reorganisation of British intelligence apparatus. While centralisation of intelligence was not always practical, it was, to some extent, desirable, as it would prevent the wastage and duplication 18of resources and would aid timeliness in the provision of accurate and useful intelligence. The need to better coordinate intelligence collection had, to some extent, been realised after 1918, but it did not result in action until 1939. By 1940, the individual organisations were finally beginning to successfully coordinate and collaborate, sufficiently enough that they managed to produce a much more efficient, if still not perfect, system.
British intelligence was split into two different types: ‘special’ intelligence was civilian in nature, encompassing MI5, MI6 and the GC&CS, and was not primarily concerned with military matters. Rather, it reported on political issues and handled overseas human intelligence operations. Under Foreign Office supervision, the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park came under this category. ‘Service’ intelligence, on the other hand, was military in nature. The Admiralty, the War Office and the Air Ministry produced, through their various individual intelligence sections, material which was concerned with facts about the enemy’s military position. The relationship between military and civilian intelligence organisations was often uneasy. Military leaders preferred impressive field command and military tactics to spying, which they deemed dirty work. It was obvious, though, that cooperation and collaboration between the two different types of organisations was essential if the Allies were going to win the war. The RAF needed to know certain things about its German counterpart, the Luftwaffe. It helped to know, for instance, what kind of aircraft it possessed, in what numbers, where they were located and what they were capable of. It was useful to know where they might take off from and where they were stored when they were not flying. Knowledge of the basic tactics the Luftwaffe used, and any changes in these tactics, was valuable. This information could be obtained 19in various different ways and would provide the RAF with a major advantage in the coming war.
WOMEN IN BRITISH INTELLIGENCE DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR
In the historical context of the First World War, entrenched traditionalism, separate spheres ideology, patriarchy and to some extent imperialism all contributed to the argument against using women in wartime British intelligence. By 1939, with another world war looming, the argument was growing weaker with the increasing mobilisation of women. However much they did not want to, the British intelligence services had no choice but to turn to women to fill positions that were at risk of being left empty if kept only for men. By 1939, the Registry at MI5 was an exclusively female preserve. Women were working at MI5 and the SIS as clerks and secretaries, also involved in propaganda, censorship and misinformation. There were, however, no female intelligence officers in either service. Over the course of the Second World War, the number of women employed in both MI5 and MI6 increased heavily, most of them in clerical and office roles, subordinate to the male intelligence officers who begrudgingly accepted them.
In addition to the fear of Mata Hari-type women and ideas about the general lack of capabilities women possessed, there were those men who did not consider it safe for women to be employed in intelligence roles, due to their inevitable proximity to areas susceptible to enemy bombing raids. The reality was that German bombing was often indiscriminate, rendering most of Britain unsafe, not just government and military installations. The weakness of this argument is also obvious in a proposal for the formation of the WAAF 20from April 1938, in which it was pointed out that ‘a woman working at an RAF operational station is probably much safer than a woman working in an aircraft factory’.15 Writing in 1943, Leonard Taylor, the editor of the Air Training Corps Gazette, questioned whether war work was ‘suitable’ for women, or if it was ‘unfeminine’ and might ‘lessen a woman’s charm’.16
