How the Girl Guides Won the War
A completely original history of one of the most extraordinary movements in the world – the Girl Guides – and how they helped win the war.The Girl Guides is one of the world's most extraordinary movements: millions of women have been members. But what have the Guides actually achieved, since they began 100 years ago? Do they do more than sell biscuits, sing around campfires, and tie knots? In this constantly surprising book, Janie Hampton shows that Girl Guides have been at the heart of women's equality since the early twentieth century - when they were garnering badges like Electrician and Telegraphist.Exploring modern-day girlhood through this very British institution's effect on global warfare, ‘How the Girl Guides Won the War’ reveals, for the first time, the dramatic impact that the Guides had on the Second World War. When the Blitz broke out, they dug bomb shelters, grew vegetables and helped millions of evacuated children adjust to new lives in the country. Many were taken as prisoners of war and survived concentration camps.Told by the Guides themselves ‘How the Girl Guides Won the War’ is packed with rich social history, fond and funny anecdotes, surprising archives, and the lingering taste of smoky tea in a tin mug. Providing a new slant on both the Guide movement, and World War II, Janie Hampton's remarkable book finally gives the Girl Guides the historical attention they deserve.
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JANIE HAMPTON
How the Girl Guides Won the War
To my mother, who throughout her long life as both
a Guide and a Brown Owl, has demonstrated that keeping to the rules is not nearly as important as Robert Baden-Powell’s maxim:
‘I wouldn’t give tuppence for you if you are not jolly and laughing.’
Contents
18 Giant Pandas and Frozen Alligators
19 The City of Polish Children
Robert Baden-Powell talking to the first Girl Guides in Brighton, 1910. (© Girlguiding UK)
Guide messengers at the Peace Conference, Versailles, 1919. (© Daily Mail)
Olave Baden-Powell, with Brownies at the Essex County Rally in 1921. (© Girlguiding UK)
Guides enjoying an excursion on the Danube during the Pax Ting International Camp in Hungary, August 1939. (© Girlguiding UK)
Guides helping at a club for evacuees in the Corn Exchange at Bishop’s Stortford in autumn 1939. (© Getty Images)
The 1st Eynsham Brownie Pack on holiday in Swanage in the last week of August 1939. (Private collection)
Guides learning how to use a stirrup pump in 1940. (© Girlguiding UK)
Guides help to run an infant school in Ilford. (© Getty Images)
Guides bathing an evacuee child. (© Girlguiding UK)
The vicar of Claybury Park, Ilford, Essex asked Guides to run a nursery in his church hall, 1940. (© Girlguiding UK)
Olga Malkowska being presented with the Bronze Cross by Queen Elizabeth in December 1939. (© Getty Images)
Brownies of the 21st Glasgow Brownie Pack, at the Glasgow School for the Deaf, meet a real Brown Owl. (© Girlguiding UK)
Cockley Cley Kindertransport Guides in Norfolk, 1940. (© Sir Samuel Roberts)
An Extension Guide taking her fire-lighting test in hospital in 1943. (© Girlguiding UK)
The 1st Littleport Company collecting waste paper in Cambridgeshire in 1940. (© Girlguiding UK)
Maps hidden inside the cotton reels collected by Brownies for MI9. (© Trustees of the Royal Air Force Museum, X003-6003/017)
Guides and Rangers roll up their bedding at the end of camp. (© Girlguiding UK)
Guides cleaning their teeth beside the latrine at Luccombe Camp, Isle of Wight, 1944. (© Girlguiding UK)
Guides of the 1st Disley Company near Manchester welcome refugee children from Guernsey on their arrival in June 1940. (© Allied Newspapers Manchester)
A Guide carrying messages gets directions from a policeman. (© Fox/Getty)
Guides salvaging a wheelchair during the London Blitz. (© Wimbledon Borough News)
The 5th Canterbury Company running a soup kitchen after the bombing of Canterbury, 1 June 1942. (© Getty Images)
The 2nd Gloucester Guide Company cooking sausages after an air raid in 1942. (© Girlguiding UK)
The 1st Cockington Company collecting jam pots around Torquay in 1942. (© Girlguiding UK)
Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret sending a message by carrier pigeon on Thinking Day 1943. (© Girlguiding UK)
The Princess Royal, President of Girl Guides, sending a message by pigeon to the World Chief Guide on Thinking Day, 1943. (© Ross Parry Syndication: Yorkshire Post)
Chefoo Brownies in Weihsien Camp, China, 1943.
The log book of the Kingfisher Patrol of the Chefoo School Guide Company, Weihsien camp, 1943–44. (Private collection)
A woman buys National Savings stamps from a Girl Guide, assisted by a Sea Ranger in 1944. (© Imperial War Museum)
The Guide International Service mobile canteen in Holland, March 1945. (© Girlguiding UK)
Alison Duke of the Guide International Service in a camp for Greek refugees in Egypt in 1944. (© Girlguiding UK)
German girls learning to be Guide leaders on camp, 1948. (© Girlguiding UK)
Guiders from Bromley, Kent, sing at the National Guide Festival in 1972. (© John Warburton)
While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any future editions.
In my mother’s attic is a green school exercise book. ‘Name: Janie Anderson. Subject: Writing. School: St Mary’s. 21.10.1960’. I turned to the first page. ‘Brownies’ was the title. Underneath I’d written:
On the 3rd of November I am going to be enrolled. Brown Owl gave me a paper cat to put a knot on the cat’s string tail when I do a good deed. I have at least sixty knots. I am a Sprite. I know the Brownie promise, law, motto and rymne, and I can plait. I am excited about wearing my Brownie tunick. I do not know wether a Commishner comes to be enrolled or just Brown Owl.
At just eight years old, I already had a sense of the structure of the Brownie movement, and knew that a Commissioner was more important than ‘just Brown Owl’. Fifty years later, I can still remember my promise — ‘I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen, to help other people every day, especially those at home’ — and the Brownie song — ‘We’re the Brownies, here’s our aim: Lend a hand and play the game.’
