'Hidden army' of a million Brit women who helped topple Hitler on the World War Two Home Front

The group was formed in 1939 by Lady Stella Reading, wife of Rufus Isaacs , the Earl of Reading, after she was asked by Home Secretary Samuel Hore to set up a female voluntary service.

Initially named the Women's Voluntary Services (WVS), the ladies played a vital role in the war effort and completed 44 different tasks during the bloody conflict.

By the end of 1939, the group had more than 30,000 members. However that number had swelled to an astonishing one million women in 1945.

Dubbed “the army Hitler forgot”, the WVS ran mobile canteens for those fighting the fires caused by the Blitz and even helped evacuate kids out of the cities on donkey carts.

In the pictures, women are shown combing dogs whose hair would be cut of and used to sew the clothing of brave British troops.

HEROIC WOMEN

Another snap, shows volunteers carrying kitchen waste on their shoulders – material which was used in the production of munitions.

The ladies also helped salvage metals such as aluminium for bullets by collecting pots and other household goods from homes.

They also collected rubbers from old wheels to help make tyres for warplanes, fire hoses and boots.

This commodity became scarce, after the Japanese-occupation of Java in Indonesia, leading to the WVS volunteers to salvage rubber from discarded tyres which had been thrown into ponds and rivers.

The group also made over 100,000 camouflage nets between the 1943 and 1944 to help shield out brave boys on the front lines.

They also carried out around three million garment repairs for troops in every year of the war.

Matthew McMurray, a WVS archivist, said: “If these million women hadn't been doing all these things on the home front we would've lost the war.

“You are fighting a war in terms of production – it is about who can produce the most aircraft.

“These women kept moral up. Without these women we wouldn't have been an effective fighting force and history wouldn't have turned out the same.”

On the selfless work the women carried out, Matthew added: “In all the tens of thousands of records I have, nobody ever gets mentioned by name.

“The work they were doing is their duty to do and they were not looking for recognition or reward for it.”

After the war, Lady Reading was told by the government that she had three years to prove the WVS could still play a role in British society.

And prove it she did. In that time, the group helped establish the country’s welfare system including our National Health Service.

Later they helped with disasters such as the 1957 Lewisham train crash in December 1957 and the East Coast Floods in 1953.

Today the group, which was renamed Royal Voluntary Service in 2013, is made up of 78,000 male and female volunteers who play an important role in keeping the NHS running.

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