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Showing posts from April, 2014

Book Competition

Following on from last week's post on women serving in war, this week we have a competition to win a copy of My Ancestor was a Woman at War by Emma Jolly Women's war service has been thrust into the media spotlight recently with BBC 1's Sunday night drama series, The Crimson Field . Described by the BBC as one of "the Great War’s untold stories", the drama is centred around a tented field hospital on the coast of France, where a team of doctors, nurses and women volunteers work together to heal the bodies and souls of men wounded in the trenches.One of the issues raised by the story is the harsh reality of war. As with their male counterparts, women working close to the frontline could not be prepared for the sheer number of sick and injured men that would emerge from battle. My Ancestor was a Woman at War (Society of Genealogists, 2013) looks at how to research military nurses of the Victorian era and both world wars, while outlining resource

Remembering Women at War

This week I look at the contribution women made to Britain's wars and the memorials that exist for those who died serving their country     Last week, the Royal Mail launched a special collection of stamps , entitled "Remarkable Lives". The stamps feature ten notable individuals who each made a major contribution to British society and whose centenaries of birth fall in 2014. One of these is Noor Inayat Khan , whose life was cut short when she was executed by the Gestapo at Dachau Concentration Camp on 13 September 1944. An agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan originally joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) on 19 November 1940. Educated in Paris, she was fluent in English and French and was soon seconded to the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). In June 1943 she was sent to work as a wireless operator with the French Resistance. She was captured in October of that year. After her death, Noor Inayat Khan was awarde