Description
The ten women in this book were born between the wars, they grew up in the devil's decade and survived and served in history's most fatal conflict - together they have lived more than 1000 years. Grace added on her age to enter the army/ATS: 'I joined up cos I was lonely. I was a domestic servant at 14 and thought fighting a war had to be better than that.' Hannah was a Lumberjill: 'we was bombed out and you had to do something. How 'ard could chopping trees be? Mind them axes were sharp. My friend took her toes off.'
Cast under the shadow of World War II, in a Britain where teenage girls did what they were told, Last Women Standing is a series of deeply personal stories narrated by ten centenarians looking back on young lives defined by service, secrecy and endurance.' Manette swapped the Land Army for the Wrens: 'I was followed in Egypt. Because I spoke fluent French they thought I was spy.' FANY Joyce joined the SOE support network. 'I worked on the transmitters. It was awful when the line went dead, you knew something dreadful had happened.'
Poignant and wry, these exceptional veterans served a war machine initially wary of female service that went on to control and conscript unprecedented numbers of women. Today, in a world surrounded by numerous existential threats, their collective voice, curated by award-winning historian Tessa Dunlop, is a powerful reminder that against the odds, a generation of marginalised young women rose to the challenge when Great Britain was fighting for its life. Theirs is an extraordinary story of survival, both then and now.