Wednesday, 29 October 2008
Debs at War
More book-buying shenanigans today... was in Blackwells and my eye was caught by the title Debs at War, because I thought it might refer to my heroine, Deborah Mitford. It doesn't, but closer inspection didn't make the book look any less interesting - the full title is Debs at War: How Wartime Changed Their Lives 1939-1945, and it's about those who were debutantes shortly before war broke out. Anne de Courcy, the author of this book (and maybe known by some as a biography of Diana Mitford/Mosley), interviewed 47 women who were pre-war debs whose lives were dramatically changed by the war. They entered the Services, as Wrens, WAAFs, FANYs or ATS; they became nurses or VADs; some even started factory work and tried to hide their background.
As before, I'll try to give an overview of a book by its chapter headings. The difference, of course, being that I haven't read this one yet...
- Childhoods 'We were taken down to say good morning to our mother'
- A Question of Upbringing
'You won't need exams'
- Coming Out
'The whole point was to find a husband'
- The Approach of War
'I stood in the room that had been my nursery, listening to Chamberlain declaring war'
- Joining Up
'I wasn't going to get on with anything else until we'd finished with Hitler'
- FANYs
'Posh girls driving staff cars'
- ATS
'We were the rough, tough ones'
- Fun in Wartime 'Boyfriends were more important than bombs'
- Factories
'We were working too hard to flirt...'
- Nursing
'Sometimes the ambulance bells never stopped'
- Love and Marriage
'...and then we got engaged. Crazy, really, wasn't it?'
- Bletchley
'How much German do you speak?'
- On the Land
'We don't want any bloody land girls here'
- The Class Barrier
'We'd never met girls like these before'
- Wrens
'We began to learn to do without sleep'
- The Air
'Why are you bringing up only half an aeroplane?'
- Afterwards
'The war made us feel capable of doing something'
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This sounds like a really interesting companion to some of my other "war time" interview collections. Another one for the "when will I ever get time to read all these" wishlist!
ReplyDeleteSounds great, thank you ! I added it to one of my lists. They grow, and grow, and grow (I have more than 500 titles on them)...
ReplyDeleteI've read Anne de Courcy's "1939:The Last Season". She is very good on that time and social stratum.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the perfect book!
ReplyDeleteI found this book fascinating. One of the debs featured, Christian Miller, wrote a memoir called A Childhood in Scotland, which I wholeheartedly recommend (published by Canongate, I think) - quite interesting to compare her childhood to that of the Mitfords.
ReplyDeleteI've had my eye on this along with a few other books by de Courcy, which are generally not published in the US.
ReplyDeleteI read 'Debs at war' earlier this year. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is just the way history should be written, in an engaging style.
ReplyDeleteA bit late posting on this - have been away for a couple of weeks. Ditto peta's comment and others.
ReplyDeleteBletchley: Now that was an interesting place - have read about it several times in the last year.
I just finished the author's biography of the three Curzon sisters-not bad-Debs at War sounds better
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