[issybird]

Thank you, fascinating! One other role that absorbed a lot ofwomen near the front was as canteen workers. The Salvation Army, YMCA and YWCA all were signifiicant presences (the YWCA to provide services for other women workers, not the soldiers).

But women's war work had a much wider scope than the men's. Especially after the insitution of the draft in 1916, the men's role was essentially military, with the exception of those in reserved occupations who generally were doing their pre-war job. For the women, war work was virtually anything that got them out of the house or service.

Class was significant component. Again, in contrast to the men, where the lower classes were other ranks and the upper classes officers, with the women, the upper classes were those who served abroad, while the lower classes worked as land girls, in munitions factories, and at pretty much any job that freed a man for service at the front.

As with the other ranks, though, there are much fewer first person accounts of the canary girls, for example. As hard and grim and tragic as service on the front was for women, there was a romance, a thrill to it, that Vera discusses. Not so much for a factory worker, although it was equally liberating for those who performed it.