Girls in Khaki

A History of the ATS in the Second World War

Barbara Green

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780752463506
• eBook ISBN: 9780752477831
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Britain's manpower crisis forced them to turn to a previously untapped resource: women. For years it was thought women would be incapable of serving in uniform, but the ATS was to prove everyone wrong. Formed in 1938, the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service was a remarkable legion of women; this is their story. They took over many roles, releasing servicemen for front-line duties. ATS members worked alongside anti-aircraft gunners as 'gunner-girls', maintained vehicles, drove supply trucks, operated as telephonists in France, re-fused live ammunition, provided logistical support in army supply depots and employed specialist skills from Bletchley to General Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims. They were even among the last military personnel to be evacuated from Dunkirk. They grasped their new-found opportunities for education, higher wages, skilled employment and a different future from the domestic role of their mothers. They earned the respect and admiration of their male counterparts and carved out a new future for women in Britain. They showed great skill and courage, with famous members including the young Princess Elizabeth (now about to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee as Britain's Queen) and Mary Churchill, Sir Winston's daughter. Girls in Khaki reveals their extraordinary achievements, romances, heartbreaks and determination through their own words and never-before published photographs.

Nine

A Miscellany of Vital Activities

T he answer to the question ‘where did the ATS serve’ must be anywhere and everywhere in Britain that they were needed to fulfil their designated role of releasing male soldiers to serve in the front line.

ATS duties with the four organisations where they were employed in large numbers, the Royal Artillery, the Corps of Royal Engineers, the Royal Corps of Signals and the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, have been described earlier.

There were many other trades, locations and corps that also needed the support of the ATS; in these roles the girls in khaki helped, in their different ways, to keep the British Army functioning. If pins were stuck into a map of Britain today to highlight all the locations where ATS served, whether singly or in their hundreds, the paper would probably end up being shredded by perforations.

With all the place names mentioned in wartime histories and diaries, we can see why local communities are still aware of sites that played a significant role during those war years. Sometimes there’s a building that was requisitioned by the War Office during the war. There are several of these to be seen around Nottingham, including that at the Trent Bridge cricket ground. There are campsites that may have been redeveloped by a large company that acknowledges its historical context. The old barracks at Warley in Essex fall into this category, as described by Eileen Green in the story below of her ‘different journey’. Sometimes there’s just an area preserved with evidence of gun emplacements, as on the Great Orme in Llandudno, North Wales. Towns that have laid out memorial gardens or, as it is called in Boston, Lincolnshire, the Veterans’ Way, have plaques commemorating the ATS.

It’s probably true to say that most ATS girls moved several times during their service years – not just from training depots to their permanent sites but from job to job as they were required by units to fill vacancies. Halfway through a morning’s routine work an ATS girl might be called into an office and given a posting order and a railway warrant for the next day. Another day and another location on the ‘ATS map’ of the British Isles.

A Different Journey

Eileen Green (née Hansell) was born in Essex and her seven years of service saw her mainly in one location in that county; except for an unexpected journey that she made in the middle of her service.

As D-Day approached in 1944 areas in the south of England and along the east coast were filling up with vehicles, supplies and troops in preparation for that critical event. Eileen was an NCO in Warley Barracks in Essex which, as she recalls, was the only major barracks that had to be cleared of everything, including stores and administrative personnel to make room for D-Day formations. So Eileen found herself on a train heading for Blackpool on the Fylde Coast in north-west England or, more exactly, to Squires Gate camp in Lytham St Annes.

This was a holiday camp that had been requisitioned by the War Department for use as a primary training centre, i.e. a training centre for raw recruits – No. 13 Primary Training Centre. Eileen remembers the chalets in the camp which would, at a future date, become a Pontins holiday camp.

Wartime train journeys were never easy at the best of times. Rail traffic increased; some of the loads carried were so heavy that they slowed down the engines, some of which could manage only 14mph if pulling a dozen or more coaches up a gradient; civilian timetables were constantly altered; cuts had to be made to services during the coal shortage of 1941.

Eileen’s train journey was, as she describes it, an administrative nightmare. So much to keep an eye on, and she tells the story of how slow it was because they kept being shunted into sidings to allow troop trains to come through. Then they stopped at various stations en route so that local units could provide them with haversack rations and drinks – known as keeping them fed and watered.

Warley Barracks officers’ mess, 1943. This photograph includes: batmen, batwomen, cooks, waitresses, porters, civilians, messing officer and stewards. Pat Christie (ATS) is in the front row, third in from the left. Courtesy of G. Shadrack.

Eileen was involved in keeping records of everything that they took with them from the barracks, from stores to the names of all the ATS girls involved in the move. It was a massive effort for a relatively short period of time – two or three months – until the D-Day landings were completed and they could then move everything and everybody back to Warley. There was plenty of additional administration to be done by the ATS during their time at Squires Gate camp, including keeping records of male recruits who came for six weeks’ basic training.

One interesting difference that Eileen noticed during her time on this section of the coast was that, unlike the southern areas, it was quiet, ‘No risk of bombing’ as she puts it. It was almost like a peace-time existence. She even had the impression that the authorities weren’t so strict about blackout regulations.

Eileen had been an enthusiastic and uncomplaining recruit despite experiencing the ‘teething troubles’ of the early years of the ATS. She had tried to volunteer in 1938 but was turned away as being too young at seventeen years of age. She tried again in 1939 and signed up at Warley Barracks – home of the No. 1 Infantry Training Battalion. There was no accommodation for the women, who were billeted in private homes in the area, which for Eileen meant her own home. There wasn’t much in the way of uniform either. That arrived over months, bit by bit.

Warley Barracks, between 1939 and 1942. Eileen Green (née Hansell) is fourth left on the front row. Courtesy of G. Shadrack.

Basic training was done at Warley Barracks by TA staff – both men and ATS officers. The centre and the training itself were still not very well organised. Eileen’s most lasting memory is of doing drill with male NCOs – a memory shared by hundreds of ATS who went through a similar experience. Drill arguably came as the greatest shock of military life for the majority. Stepping off on the correct foot, shoulders back, head up, keeping in step, changing step on the march, arms swinging to the correct height – all whilst trying to absorb the thundering instructions echoing across the parade ground. Then no sooner does the squad master all the intricacies of a perfect quick march than the taskmaster with the stripes on his or her arm wants it done all over again – as a slow march. Not quite as easy!

Warley had been a military area, particularly for training purposes, since the eighteenth century. In 1881 it became the depot for the Essex Regiment and in 1925 the garrison church became the official Essex Regiment Chapel. Over 1,000 men of the Essex Regiment died during the Second World War. Eileen was very grateful for the survival of one member of the regiment – the man she met at Warley who became her husband in 1942. During the war the barracks became the No. 1 Infantry Training Centre, where recruits of all infantry units came for six weeks’ basic training. Eileen’s husband was on the permanent staff.

The original gym buildings are remembered by Eileen for the dances that were held there during the war. By 1946 there were 300 ATS working in the barracks, as stores and administrative clerks and cooks. Married quarters that lined a nearby street were cleared to provide accommodation for the ATS so that, in turn, there was more room in the barracks for recruits.

Eileen enjoyed her work as a stores clerk; she went on to finish her service as a CSM, responsible for the 300 ATS girls at Warley. More than sixty years later she can even remember the numbers of the various forms that were used in the stores, particularly one called a ‘hastener’ which she sent to suppliers when stores weren’t received on time.

Eileen remembers the periodic lectures laid on for them all by the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA) to keep them up to date with what was going on in military, civilian and political circles, as far as was permitted by the Official Secrets Act.

The last memory, as for hundreds of others, was the Victory Parade in London. They were trained in Bushy Park, north of London, by senior ranks in the guards and completed the 5-mile march without even noticing the distance.

With the post-war amalgamation of regiments and the shrinkage in army numbers, Warley Barracks was sold and is now occupied by the Ford Motor Company. With her and her late husband’s connections to Warley Barracks, Eileen is happy with the recognition that Ford gives to the historical site.

Commemorating the ATS of Warley Barracks and Essex

The Essex Regiment Chapel still exists there and is used for regimental occasions; the old depot officers’ mess became the Regimental Association’s headquarters and one of the three original gyms remains.

In 2001, after a great deal of research and hard work, a plaque was installed in the chapel:

To commemorate the service by women of the Auxiliary Territorial Service stationed at Warley Barracks and elsewhere in Essex during the Second World War.

Presented by members of the Chelmsford Branch ATS/WRAC Association

4 March 2001

The branch secretary Gina Shadrack (whose story is told with that of the Royal Army Education Corps) managed to get the details of eighty-one ATS members who had served in Essex. The list demonstrated the range of occupations in the ATS – from Ack-Ack operators to ambulance drivers, from cooks to clerks, from telephonists to teleprinter operators.

Ann’s Story

Ann Atkinson (née Spice) served for six years in the ATS as an orderly. This is one of those trades, like cooks and clerks, that sometimes get overlooked in the reckoning of the ATS contribution to the war effort. These girls, like Ann, kept the army fed and watered, well-turned out, comfortably housed and properly documented – in so far as any of that was possible in wartime.

Together with her sister she enlisted in Kent; as was the way of these things her sister was sent to London for basic training while Ann went to Glen Parva Barracks in Leicester. She then went to work in the officers’ mess in Budbrooke Barracks – the home of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

Ann Atkinson (née Spice), 7 February 1947. Courtesy of A. Atkinson.

One day the staff were told that they would be looking after a Very Important Person who would be dining in the Mess with a group of about a dozen of his officers. Until the day arrived they didn’t know who the visitor was going to be.

It was General Montgomery, who commanded the British Eighth Army at the Battle of Alamein. Ann was supervising in the dining room and the kitchen staff asked her to get the general’s autograph, having brought in their autograph books in anticipation. The first problem was that none of the mess staff were allowed to speak to Montgomery directly. All comments were to be addressed to one of his officers. However, he did agree to sign the books; the one member of the mess staff who didn’t get a much-prised signature was Ann herself because she had only a small diary not a proper autograph book, which wasn’t acceptable for some unknown reason. She did carry a memory of the enormous limousine that the general and his entourage travelled in, though.

What Ann and some of her colleagues didn’t understand was why General Montgomery had suddenly turned up at Budbrooke. In fact the reason or at least one of the reasons was quite simple. Montgomery had been commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in September 1908. In December of that year he joined the 1st Battalion on the North-West Frontier in India.

The ATS contingent eventually left Budbrooke and Ann moved to COD Chilwell, where she worked in the ATS officers’ mess. The photograph of Ann shows clearly the ATS shoulder badge. At the end of her service she travelled to York to be demobbed.

Paying the Bills

Betty Mitchell (née Ellis) throws an interesting light on reasons for joining the ATS together with reasons for supporting and publicising its existence and achievements during the following sixty years.

When Betty left school in the late thirties she worked as a cashier at Sainsbury’s – a good job with a well-known company that she describes as ‘very efficient’. When she raised the question of joining one of the women’s ser...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• One Organisation
• Two Recruitment and Basic Training
• Three Alongside the Royal Artillery
• Four Alongside the Corps of Royal Engineers
• Five Alongside the Royal Corps of Signals
• Six Alongside the Royal Army Ordnance Corps
• Seven The ATS on Wheels
• Eight The ATS Band (and Other Musical Talents)
• Nine A Miscellany of Vital Activities
• Ten On Location Overseas
• Eleven The ATS and Society
• Epilogue
• Select Bibliography
• Copyright