Women of the Royal Air Force 1918-19

When I gave a talk at the Petersfield Bookshop a few weeks ago, they very kindly gave me a book I had been pawing in the shop entitled “Women of the Royal Air Force.” I’m likely to come back to it several times, because it is full of interesting information. Today, though, I wanted to start at the beginning. First off, the introduction to the book is written by Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan. She commanded the WRAF. She came from a biology background, but in 1917 was instrumental in forming the Women’s Army Auxiliary Force in France. Her little piece reveals a little bit of the struggle to establish a huge number of women into the armed forces, and to have them taken seriously:

…Altogether some 80,000 or 90,00 must have passed through the ranks, and they were drawn from all classes of the community. The outstanding fact is that they did essential work and did it well. The second is that their morale was excellent, they were cheerful, plucky, and responsive to discipline.

Naturally among these large numbers there was bad as well as good; there were those who tried and trying failed, but at least they, also, answered the call of the country and volunteered for service. It is unfortunate that the few who failed - a proportion of less than 1 per cent - were occasionally of greater interest to the public than the many who did well.

Several thousand people cannot employed without organisation and discipline; even in the earliest days of the women’s services, some of us believed that the form of discipline which would be most effective and most willingly accepted was that of the fighting forces, and it was encouraging to find our theory confirmed by the sure instinct of the women in the ranks; it was treatment "the same as the soldier" for which she asked, and with which she would be content.

Unfortunately it was not in the power of serving officers to authorise this; the women were enrolled and not enlisted, and the best we could do was to approximate their conditions in matters within our discretion to those of enlisted personnel. The system of enrolment has often been referred to as if designed to soften the severity of military service; actually it told against the women in respect of leave, sickness, care of dependents, compensation in case of injury and other particulars; it was against the best interests of the service in failing to give full and comprehensible control. Probably it was also extravagant, since the time of station commanders and other valuable officers was wasted in the administration of two divergent systems, and women had often to be discharged on medical grounds, with two months' sick pay, when the treatment available for enlisted men would have saved for the service.

In spite of these anomalies the W.R.A.F. became an integral part of the Royal Air Force, the great traditions of the air were our traditions, and we had the best of reasons for that self-respect and personal honour essential to Air Force efficiency… We who served as officers are proud of the careful work and unfailing loyalty of our women; but I perhaps know best how often the difficulties due to an unsatisfactory system were overcome by the initiative and devotion to duty of the officers of the W.R.A.F.

In this article, I want to give you a broad overview of the types of jobs that women did in the W.R.A.F, as per the book. The initial deployment of the women was ad hoc:

Most of them were sent to camps under a more senior and experienced officer, but in the early days of the Force in many cases they were sent straight out to command a detachment— sometimes with only the theoretical knowledge acquired during their three weeks training. They were sent out to an R.A.F. unit to start a W.R.A.F. detachment, and it is wonderful that under the circumstances they, with few exceptions, succeeded so well. These officers were responsible for the administration, discipline, and welfare of their women, but they rarely had anything to do with the technical work on which the women were employed. The women usually worked in the sheds and offices under a R.A.F. officer or N.C.O., excepting in a few stations where W.R.A.F. officers had been put in charge of certain branches of technical work.

The majority of the women employed by the W.R.A.F worked in the administrative or clerical branch; ‘but beside these there were women working in most of the technical trades, from acetylene welding to the mending of balloon silk.’