Bomb Girls Britain S Secret Army The Munitions Women Of World War Ii

Author : Jacky Hyams
Publisher : Kings Road Publishing
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2013-08-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781782197164

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Bomb Girls - Britain's Secret Army: The Munitions Women of World War II by Jacky Hyams Pdf

They were the unsung heroines of World War II; the wives, mums and teenage girls, all 'doing their bit' for the war effort, clocking in daily to work in cast munitions factories, helping make the explosives, bullets and war machines that would ensure victory for Britain.It was dangerous, dirty and exhaustive work. They worked round the clock, often exposed to toxic, lethal chemicals. A factory accident could mean blindness, loss of limbs - or worse. Many went home with acid burns, yellow skin or discoloured hair. Others were forced to leave their loved ones and move to live with total strangers in unfamiliar surroundings. Frequently, their male bosses were coarse and unsympathetic.Yet this hidden army of nearly two million women toiled on regardless through the worst years of the war, cheerfully ignoring the dangers and the exhaustion, as bombing, rationing and the heartbreak of loss or separation took their toll on everyone in the country.Only now, all these years later, have they chosen to tell their remarkable stories. Here, in their own words, are the vivid wartime memories of the 'secret army' of female munitions workers, whose resilience and sheer grit in the face of danger has only now started to emerge.These are the intimate and personal stories of an unforgettable group of women, whose hard work and quiet courage made a significant contribution to Britain's war effort. They didn't fire the bullets, but they filled them up with explosives. And in doing so, they helped Britain win the war.

Author : Barbara Dickson
Publisher : Dundurn
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2015-10-03
Category : History
ISBN : 9781459731189

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Bomb Girls by Barbara Dickson Pdf

2016 Speaker's Book Award — Shortlisted 2016 Heritage Toronto Book Award — Nominated An account of the women working in high-security, dangerous conditions making bombs in Toronto during the Second World War. What was it like to work in a Canadian Second World War munitions factory? What were working conditions like? Did anyone die? Just how closely did female employees embody the image of “Rosie the Riveter” so popularly advertised to promote factory work in war propaganda posters? How closely does the recent TV show, Bomb Girls, resemble the actual historical record of the day-to-day lives of bomb-making employees? Bomb Girls delivers a dramatic, personal, and detailed review of Canada’s largest fuse-filling munitions factory, situated in Scarborough, Ontario. First-hand accounts, technical records, photographic evidence, business documentation, and site maps all come together to offer a rare, complete account into the lives of over twenty-one thousand brave men and women who risked their lives daily while handling high explosives in a dedicated effort to help win the war.

Author : Midge Gillies
Publisher : Aurum
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2016-11-18
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781781315514

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Army Wives by Midge Gillies Pdf

Most families have an army wife somewhere in their past. Over the centuries they have followed their men to the front, helped them keep order in far-flung parts of the empire or waited anxiously at home. Army Wives uses first hand accounts, letters and diaries to tell their story. We meet the wives who made the arduous journey to the Crimean war and witnessed battle at close quarters. We hear the story of life in the Raj and the, often terrifying, experiences of the women who lived through its dying days. We explore the pressures of being a modern army wife - whether living in barracks or trying to maintain a normal home life outside 'the patch'. In the twentieth century two world wars produced new generations of army wives who forged friendships that lasted into peacetime. Army Wives reveals their experience and that of a new breed of independent women who supported their men through the Cold War to the current war on terror. Midge Gillies, author of acclaimed The Barbed-Wire University, looks at how industrial warfare means husbands can survive battle with life-changing injuries that are both mental and physical - and what that means for their family. She describes how army wives communicate with their husbands - via letters and coded messages, to more immediate, but less intimate, texts and Skype. She examines bereavement, from the seances, public memorials and deaths in a foreign field of the Great War to the modern media coverage of flag-draped coffins returning home by military plane. Above all, Army Wives examines what it really means to be part of the 'army family'.

Author : Daisy Styles
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2016-01-28
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781405924351

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The Bomb Girls by Daisy Styles Pdf

On an ordinary day in 1941, a letter arrives on the doormats of five young women, a letter which will change everything. Lillian is distraught. And whether she tears, hides or burns the letter the words remain the same - she must register for compulsory war work. Many miles away, Emily is also furious - her dream job as a chef will have to be put on hold, whilst studious Alice must abandon her plans of college. Staring at an identical letter, Elsie feels a kindling of hope at the possibility of leaving behind her brutal father. And down in London, Agnes has her own reasons for packing her bags with a smile. Brought together at a munitions factory in a Lancashire mill town, none of them knows what lies ahead. Sharing grief and joy, lost dreams and gained opportunities, the five new bomb girls will find friendship and strength that they never before thought possible as they unite to help the country they love survive. Praise for Daisy Styles 'A great read that I think will appeal to fans of wartime sagas and authors like Donna Douglas . . . From dances to disasters, encounters with handsome Yanks, rationing and relationships, The Bomb Girls has all the ingredients of an excellent wartime drama and I thoroughly enjoyed it!' Onemorepage.com 'The story is full of drama, love, heartbreak, friendship and in some part some comedy . . . It's full of twist and turns and is a real page turner' Laurahbookblog

Author : Rosie Archer
Publisher : Quercus Publishing
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2015-12-31
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781784291556

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The Canary Girls by Rosie Archer Pdf

In love and war, who can you trust? 1944, Hampshire. Her face still bearing the scars from the explosion at the factory, Rita Brown is nonetheless back on her feet. She's caught the eye of local wide boy Blackie Bristow, who's sweeping her around the country in a life of shady glamour. But there's a war on, and life is not all fun and games. Some of the local men are taking advantage of the topsy-turvy world to break more than just hearts, and standing up to them comes with its own costs. Rita keeps calm and carries on with a little help from her friends at the factory. But then she discovers someone there has been leaking secrets to the Germans. With D-Day on the horizon, Rita must work out who she can rely on - and fast.

Author : Roger Rawlings
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2017-12-04
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781438467337

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Ripping England! by Roger Rawlings Pdf

Examines an all too often neglected period of postwar British cinema and popular culture. Ripping England! investigates a fertile moment for British satire—the period between 1947 and 1953, which produced the films Passport to Pimlico, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and The Lavender Hill Mob, as well as the seminal radio program The Goon Show. Against the postwar background of fading empire, universal rationing, and the implementation of a welfare state, these satires laid the foundation for a new British cultural identity later fleshed out by the Angry Young Men, the Movement poets, the Social Realists, and those involved in the satire boom of the 1960s, which lives on even to this day. The peculiarity of these satires and the British identity they shaped is better understood when seen in relief against postwar cinematic cultures of Italy, France, and the United States. Roger Rawlings places postwar British film in the context of contemporaneous European national film movements and contrasts it with Hollywood’s comedies and satires of the same period. British satires of the late forties and early fifties held up a mirror to a nation that was in the throes of change, moving from a colonial empire to an inward-turning island culture. Ripping England! looks at the all too often neglected miracle of postwar British cinema and popular culture.

Author : Jacky Hyams
Publisher : Kings Road Publishing
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2019-09-05
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781789461466

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The Day War Broke Out by Jacky Hyams Pdf

Sunday, 3 September 1939: the dawn of a new conflict that would engulf the world, following the words of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: 'This country is at war with Germany'. By the time World War II ended in 1945, nearly half a million people from Britain and its empire had lost their lives, and the world had changed forever. Eighty years on, a look back at the lives of British people in September 1939 reveals a very different world from the one we know today. Unprecedented hardship lay ahead for a country where free healthcare for all was unknown: strict rationing of food and petrol, conscription for both sexes, and personal tragedy year after year amidst the chaos of Britain's bombed out cities and ports. What was it really like to be living in Britain in September 1939? The Day the War Broke Out is a fresh insight into the hearts and minds of a nation on that fateful day. With exclusive personal interviews, untold stories, wartime diaries and newspaper reports, it reveals the innermost fears and hopes of a society on the brink of war: through the eyes of young mothers fearful for their families, bewildered children painfully cut adrift from loved ones, and men of all ages, many now facing combat for the second time in their lives. These are personal, intimate snapshots from eighty years ago - when the entire world, virtually overnight, seemed to have been turned upside down - and of how a nation faced this new world with courage, humour and stoicism.

Author : Jacky Hyams
Publisher : Kings Road Publishing
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2015-09-03
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 9781784188368

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Frances Kray - The Tragic Bride: The True Story of Reggie Kray's First Wife by Jacky Hyams Pdf

The first full account of the beautiful, innocent young woman who married Reggie Kray - and became trapped in the violent and terrifying world of the Kray Twins.She was young, very beautiful and had everything to live for - but the life of Frances Shea, wife of Reggie Kray, remains one of the most tragic stories of the Sixties.Courted by Reggie as a schoolgirl, Frances was lured into an outwardly glamorous world of nightclubs, expensive clothes and showbiz parties. Yet she very soon discovered the real world of the Kray Twins, the hidden, twisted world where violence, drink, drugs and terror dominated everything.Frances broke away and briefly enjoyed other relationships, struggling to maintain her freedom. Yet Reggie would never let her go. Paranoid and obsessive, he monitored her every move, stalking her night and day.By the time she married Reggie in their ‘Wedding of the Year’ in 1965, Frances and her family had become inextricably linked with the Twins’ downward spiral from gangland extortion and brutality into senseless murder and mayhem.Trapped, desperate and unable to cope, just two years later Frances died from a drug overdose.Only now, 50 years later, in a revealing and shocking examination of the facts, the truth about the life of Frances Shea and her short marriage to Reggie Kray is finally revealed in this new, revised edition. With hitherto unseen photographs, documents and revelations, the book explodes the many myths surrounding the marriage. In doing so, it uncovers the sordid reality of the Kray world - and shows how the effect of this tragic, doomed relationship haunted the lives of Frances’s loved ones right to the end.

Author : Helen Walmsley-Johnson
Publisher : Icon Books Ltd
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2015-06-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781848318458

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The Invisible Woman by Helen Walmsley-Johnson Pdf

‘Stylish and wittily written ... a brilliant read that should encourage us all to challenge the cult of youth, and learn to love ourselves a little more along the way.’ My Weekly There’s nothing middle-of-the-road about middle age. From coping with bodies that are ‘heading south’ to rampant ageism in the workplace, this time in our lives, in the words of Bette Davis, ‘is no place for sissies’. From family, finances and work to cosmetics, fashion and sex, 60-year-old Helen Walmsley-Johnson – the irrepressible voice behind the much-loved Guardian column ‘The Vintage Years’ – shows, with warmth and a wicked sense of humour, how we can reinvent middle age for the next generation of women.

Author : G.W.L. Nicholson,Mark Osborne Humphries
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Page : 709 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2015-11-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780773597907

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Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919 by G.W.L. Nicholson,Mark Osborne Humphries Pdf

Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson's Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919 was first published by the Department of National Defence in 1962 as the official history of the Canadian Army’s involvement in the First World War. Immediately after the war ended Colonel A. Fortescue Duguid made a first attempt to write an official history of the war, but the ill-fated project produced only the first of an anticipated eight volumes. Decades later, G.W.L. Nicholson - already the author of an official history of the Second World War - was commissioned to write a new official history of the First. Illustrated with numerous photographs and full-colour maps, Nicholson’s text offers an authoritative account of the war effort, while also discussing politics on the home front, including debates around conscription in 1917. With a new critical introduction by Mark Osborne Humphries that traces the development of Nicholson’s text and analyzes its legacy, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919 is an essential resource for both professional historians and military history enthusiasts.

Author : Michelle Cornish
Publisher : SolVin Creative
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2021-05-23
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781990221101

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Love Overseas by Michelle Cornish Pdf

Love is hard. Love and war is devastating. England, June 1940. As the war intensifies in Europe, Elizabeth Lewis is laid off from her job as a photographer's assistant. Air raids and rationing turn her thoughts to working for the war effort while her cousin Dot dreams of dances and romance with a Royal Air Force pilot despite Betsy’s warnings that a war is no time to fall in love. But when Betsy meets Leonard Wilson, a handsome serviceman from Canada, she’s instantly smitten. After witnessing the perils of war firsthand, Leonard isn’t afraid to live in the moment, and he’s eager to correspond with Betsy when he returns to the front. Betsy reluctantly agrees to continue her relationship with the good-looking private even though she fears this will only bring heartache. Against her better judgment, she takes comfort in Leonard’s letters, and after getting to know him, finds it impossible to deny her true feelings. Will Betsy disregard her fondness for Leonard to protect her heart, or will she give in and find strength in love as the war rages on? A tale of love and war and a journey halfway around the world. Inspired by true events.

Author : Allen Packwood
Publisher : Grub Street Publishers
Page : 374 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2018-10-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781473893917

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How Churchill Waged War by Allen Packwood Pdf

An analytical investigation into Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s decision-making process during every stage of World War II. When Winston Churchill accepted the position of Prime Minister in May 1940, he insisted in also becoming Minister of Defence. This, though, meant that he alone would be responsible for the success or failure of Britain’s war effort. It also meant that he would be faced with many monumental challenges and utterly crucial decisions upon which the fate of Britain and the free world rested. With the limited resources available to the UK, Churchill had to pinpoint where his country’s priorities lay. He had to respond to the collapse of France, decide if Britain should adopt a defensive or offensive strategy, choose if Egypt and the war in North Africa should take precedence over Singapore and the UK’s empire in the East, determine how much support to give the Soviet Union, and how much power to give the United States in controlling the direction of the war. In this insightful investigation into Churchill’s conduct during the Second World War, Allen Packwood, BA, MPhil (Cantab), FRHistS, the Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, enables the reader to share the agonies and uncertainties faced by Churchill at each crucial stage of the war. How Churchill responded to each challenge is analyzed in great detail and the conclusions Packwood draws are as uncompromising as those made by Britain’s wartime leader as he negotiated his country through its darkest days.

Author : Jacky Hyams
Publisher : Michael O'Mara Books
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2017-10-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9781782438175

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Spitfire Stories by Jacky Hyams Pdf

Spitfire Stories, published in association with Imperial War Museums, is a fascinating anthology of first-hand stories from Spitfire heroes and heroines of the Second World War. The Spitfire is the world's most iconic aeroplane. Coming into its own during the Battle of Britain, it became famous during the Second World War as the only plane that could match the enemy fighters in the sky. Yet, even today, the history of the Spitfire contains many hitherto hidden or little-known stories of the men and women behind the plane; not only the gifted creators and inventors who brought the Spitfire to life, or the brave fighter pilots from many countries who triumphed in battle, but also the thousands of other people whose lives were affected by their personal connection to it - engineers, ground crew, factory or office workers, and their families. Spitfire Stories recounts the memories and stories of these people, from the birth of the iconic Spitfire in the 1930s to the present day. Among these accounts is the extraordinary tale of the fighter pilot who only discovered, fifty years on, the tragic truth of his last Spitfire flight, the businessman whose blank cheque changed the course of the war, the ninety-five-year-old Royal Air Force engineer who was determined to be reunited with his beloved Spit before he died, and the little girl who inspired the plane's creation - and went on to marry a movie star. Using documents, letters and photographs from the Imperial War Museums' unparalleled archive, plus exclusive first-hand interviews, these stories of the Spitfire are a revelatory collection of small but significant histories, to be treasured by all who love and admire the iconic plane.

Author : Leo P. Brophy,George J. B. Fisher
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 528 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 1959
Category : Chemical warfare
ISBN : UOM:39015060541524

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The Chemical Warfare Service by Leo P. Brophy,George J. B. Fisher Pdf

Author : Stephanie Bearce
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 112 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2021-09-16
Category : Education
ISBN : 9781000490084

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Top Secret Files by Stephanie Bearce Pdf

Spy school, poison pens, exploding muffins, and Night Witches were all a part of World War II, but you won't learn that in your history books! Crack open secret files and read about the mysterious Ghost Army, rat bombs, and doodlebugs. Discover famous spies like the White Mouse, super-agent Garbo, and baseball player and spy, Moe Berg. Then build your own fingerprint kit and crack a spy code. It's all part of the true stories from the Top Secret Files: World War II. Take a look if you dare, but be careful! Some secrets are meant to stay hidden . . . Ages 9-12