We Serve by R.M. Neill-Fraser was published in 1942 and it’s a humorous account of life in the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service). I can’t find out anything about the author but the book is listed in this article from the Imperial War Museum website.

I was lucky enough to pick this book up for a couple of quid from a secondhand bookshop recently and it was really the illustration on the title page which attracted it to me, it looked like a fun read, and it was.

It begins:

Our draft was born in Winterleigh and we felt very small and weak when we gathered at Headquarters that morning. We stagggered under our heavy suit-cases. We trailed rugs and pillows and clutched paper bags from which sandwiches and fruit already straggled. Some of us came grandly in cars with anxious parents looking their last on soldier daughters. It didn’t matter how we came; when we entered the barrack square we were all the same – soldiers.

I think that this book must have soothed the qualms of many parents at the time. Up until then young women usually only left their home to get married, it must have been such a worry to hand daughters over to the army, where the parents couldn’t keep tabs on them.

On the other hand what an adventure for the young women who according to this book, and what I’ve been told myself from those who experienced the life, had a much easier time than the men who had been conscripted, as you would expect. It might sound terrible but for a lot of them it was the time of their lives, and something they looked back on constantly as a great experience.

Whether We Serve was written with the purpose of placating parents – I have no idea, but it does give the impression that the women were being well looked after and were having an enjoyable time going to dances and meeting suitable men, who they were well able to handle!

A fun read, especially if you’re interested in women’s experiences in World War 2.

Unfortunately there are only two illustration in the book. This is the other.