Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Jambusters - Julie Summers

I love reading about the Home Front in WWII. Some of my favourite books have been diaries & letters of the period because they offer such an immediate response to challenging times. Jambusters is a narrative history but very much based on interviews & diaries of the women who were members of the Women's Institute, the WI, during WWII.

The WI began during the Great War. Based on a Canadian model, it was an organisation that brought rural women together to learn new skills & share their experiences. It also became a support to isolated women & a social outlet away from farm & family where they could have a voice. It was also remarkable in being fairly classless. Rural life in Britain in the early 20th century was still quite class bound. The local landowner & his family either employed many of the local population or took the lead in social & community activities. The WI wasn't structured around class at local level & it was a robustly democratic organisation for the time.

When war was declared in 1939, the government soon realised that food production was going to be a vital part of the war effort. Food imports had been disrupted by the war & they knew that every available resource would have to be tapped. The WI was the perfect organisation to spread the word about government programs & they took on this role with enormous success. I hadn't realised that the WI's constitution was based on non-sectarianism & was very strongly anti-war. This meant that there were many discussions at the National Executive level about just what the members could do for the war effort. They decided that they could be involved in food production & the reception of evacuees from the cities & these two areas became the focus of the WI during the war.

The government took full advantage of this vast volunteer workforce although red tape made it difficult for the WI to always be as involved as they wished. The image of WI members making endless pots of jam is a cliché but it is based in truth. The first harvest at the beginning of the war was a bumper one & there was an enormous amount of fruit to be preserved if it was not to go to waste. WIs all over the country mobilised to turn the fruit into jam although they had trouble getting extra supplies of sugar from the government. This is the kind of irritation (along with the endless forms to fill in) that frustrated women who just wanted to get on with the job. However, in spite of this, the jam was made & distributed or sold to keep the WI going because as well as all their charitable endeavours, the WI had to be self-supporting. When the Dig for Victory campaign was in full swing, excess produce was sold to bring in much-needed funds. I loved this quote from Cicely McCall, educational organiser for the National Federation of WIs,

Jam-making was constructive and non-militant, if you liked to look at it that way. It accorded with the best Quaker traditions of feeding blockaded nations. For those who were dietetically minded, jam contained all the most highly prized vitamins. For those who were agriculturally minded, the scheme saved a valuable crop from literally rotting on the ground, and it encouraged better fruit cultivation - thought not, one can only pray, of plums only. And for the belligerent, what could be more satisfying than fiercely stirring cauldrons of boiling jam and feeling that every pound took us one step further towards defeating Hitler?

In August 1941, an editorial in Good Housekeeping summed up the role that women were expected to take on,

Yours is a full time job but not a spectacular one. You wear no uniform, much of your work is taken for granted and goes unheralded and unsung, yet on you depends so much. Not only must you bring up your children to be healthy and strong, look after your husband or other war workers so they may be fit and alert, but you must contrive to do so with less help, less money and less ingredients than ever before.

Of all the stories in this book that exemplified that statement, it was Edith Jones whose organisation & industry just amazed me. She was a farmer's wife living near Shrewsbury. Married in 1914, she & her husband Jack were tenant farmers at Smethcote. Apart from running the farm with Jack, she grew vegetables & fruit, preserved what they couldn't eat, kept chickens, made & mended clothes & anything else that was needed. Edith was determined to keep up with her reading & her diary intersperses daily farm news with the latest political drama & the fears of the coming war.

There are so many great stories in this book. I loved the mobile canning vans that were given to the WI by the American Federation of Business and Professional Women. These vans made it possible to preserve the harvest in all sorts of areas that couldn't afford the equipment. The skills that women learned were also important. Not only in food preservation but sewing for evacuees, knitting for the troops & skills in accounting & good business practice that were essential to account for every penny earned from the sale of goods. As rationing continued, the make do & mend ethos took on great importance & many of the women would have carried on these ideas into their post-war lives. In fact, the WI's members had considerable input into that post-war world as a result of the surveys they completed on topics such as housing conditions, the availability of sewerage & piped water in rural areas. I had no idea just how primitive conditions were in many parts of rural England in the 1940s & was even more amazed that so much was achieved without the mod cons we take for granted.

Jambusters was the basis of a drama series, Home Fires, that has been shown in the UK. It's been released on DVD here & I'm looking forward to seeing it. I read Jambusters in just a couple of days & felt quite exhausted as well as full of admiration for the women who did much more than their bit in keeping morale high & the country fed during WWII.

22 comments:

  1. I was disappointed that Home Fires turned into a wartime soap. The book is much better - IMHO - although lots of people love Home Fires!

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    1. I'm only 2 episodes into the series but I'm enjoying it so far. It's great to see such a wonderful cast in a story focusing on women for a change. It is a bit soapy but well done soap so far!

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  2. I also enjoyed reading this, for all the reasons you mention...and the TV series (which we saw here last year) was excellent!

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    1. I've just started watching HF & enjoying it so far.

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  3. I enjoyed Home Fires, but truly, I tried starting this book three times before I gave up and gave it to a friend, who also failed! I shall blame it on reading several books at once, and this didn't hold my attention at the beginning - though when I dipped into it, the book was interesting.

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    1. I'd had the book on my tbr pile for a little while but once the mood struck, I couldn't put it down. Sometimes it's just a matter of finding the right book for my mood.

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  4. This sounds like my kind of book, Lyn, and it reminds me of a marvellous book about a women's correspondence club, called 'Can Any Mother Help Me?' Would love to know if you have read it.

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    1. I tried to read CAMHM but it just didn't grab me. Maybe it was the wrong moment. I'll try again one of these days as I love that kind of social history.

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    2. I loved that book when I finally got around to it. The title had put me off, but once I realised it wasn't about teething/potty training I really enjoyed it!

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  5. I really enjoyed this book, and I learned so much from it! I was very impressed with the women, their commitment and their industry,and their ingenuity.

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    1. I'm always impressed by the amount women got done during the war & especially after reading about the lack of running water etc. I had no idea things were so bad in rural areas. The red tape didn't help either!

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  6. There is only one thing I can say: I must read this book! Thank you as always Lyn dear.

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    1. I hope you can get hold of a copy, Rose. I think you'd especially enjoy it with your own emphasis on living a green life.

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  7. I watched and liked Home Fires, too. I like reading about the human side of war, what ordinary people who weren't on the front lines did just to keep life going. Some of my favorite books of this type are Nella Last's WWII diaries.

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    1. Oh yes, I love a good diary. Have you read Mrs Milburn's Diaries? Her son was a POW in Germany for much of the war & she wrote the diary to let him know how they all managed. Very good.

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    2. No, I haven't even heard of Mrs. Milburn. Now I'm on a mission to find her diaries! Thanks!

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    3. Mrs M is OP but I'm sure there would be secondhand copies around. Originally published in 1979, edited by Peter Donnelly. Reprinted in 1995. Can't resist looking things up, it's the librarian in me. Just checked Abebooks, lots of cheap copies available!

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    4. Yes, I ordered a copy the other day.

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  8. Such a clever title, I can't think why they changed it for the TV series - which has got soapier and soapier. (There's obviously a third series in the offing as they finished on a cliffhanger, but although I only watched it a couple of days ago, it has already vanished from my mind without trace ... talking wallpaper, but quite enjoyable!)

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    1. I'm halfway through Series 1 & I can see the soapier elements already but I'm enjoying it so far so I'll keep watching.Jambusters is a great title, isn't it? The author's brother came up with it.

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  9. You've sold me on the book. I loved the tv series so this looks like it's right up my alley. I also love reading about the war at home, I own Millions Like Us but haven't started it yet. Great review!

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    1. I'm glad you enjoyed the series, I'm looking forward to the rest of Series 1. Hopefully I'll get to it at the weekend.

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