Actress Ruth Sillers will be visiting Chawton House Library to talk about and perform extracts from War Girls, her own audio book that commemorates women’s unsung experiences from the First World War.
Mixing poetry and prose by ordinary women alongside well known poets and novelists, the collection depicts women’s loss of husbands, sons and brothers, the dangers of working in munitions factories, experiencing life in the services and their first glimpse of greater freedom and opportunities.
Ruth Sillers tells us more about how War Girls came about.
What was the inspiration behind War Girls?
I was visiting family in Edinburgh, who live just round the corner from what is now Edinburgh Napier University but used to be Craiglockhart Hydropathic, which was requisitioned by the military during the First World War for use as a psychiatric hospital for the treatment of shell-shocked officers. It was where Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon met in 1917 and wrote some of their greatest war poetry.
Because of the extraordinary history of the place, in 2005 the university set up a War Poets Collection, an archive of war poetry that I decided to visit because of my fascination with the First World War and the fact I studied war poetry at university. The curator there recommended I read an anthology of women’s war poetry called Scars Upon My Heart.
I became completely haunted by this collection and I wondered: why didn’t I know so many of these wonderful writers and why had stories of the First World War that I knew only been told by men? So, that’s what inspired me and with the World War One centenary this year, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to explore women’s experiences of war.
Where did you find all the material for War Girls and how much of it was unpublished before now?
Some material was taken from anthologies and I literally trawled through the archives, including hand-written letters, from the Imperial War Museum London. It’s incredibly powerful when you’re given a flimsy cardboard file with someone’s actual handwriting and stories from the period. Most of the material has been published before but almost none of it has ever been recorded.
How did you make your selection of poetry and prose for this audio book?
I tried to pick pieces that spoke to my heart and that moved, inspired or entertained me. It wasn’t about choosing poetry, prose, letters and journals by authors simply because they were well known but because they had something relevant and powerful to say. A lot of the writings are by unknown women: just ordinary women living in extraordinary times with a story to tell. I wanted to show the widest range of women’s experiences of the First World War and the social impact it had on their lives at the time, as well as the legacy it left behind.
Do you have some favourites from the collection?
I like all the pieces in different ways but some of them speak to me more than others. For the energy and excitement of women discovering newfound freedoms and possibilities, some of the poems like Munitions Wages by Madeline Ida Bedford or Work On A Farm by Dorothy Chalmers are fantastic. I also love stories about theatrical manager, Lilian Baylis, working at The Old Vic in London during the bombing, which are hugely entertaining.
Some of the pieces I found unbearably moving and powerful. For example, Nora Griffiths’ The Wykhamist, a poem about a dead soldier and former Winchester College pupil, is incredibly haunting, as is Katherine Mansfield’s writing about the death of her friend, the poet Rupert Brooke.
What do you think we learn about the part women played during the First World War?
The First World War is seen as a male preserve but of course it wasn’t at all. Although the popular myth is that women were behind the scenes, through my research I’ve realised that they were active in all sorts of fields, such as working as drivers or in factories or in intelligence, but we just see them as rather passive, either staying at home or working as nurses, perhaps. I had no idea that there were land girls in the First World War. Women were doing really active work, which is rarely mentioned at all in narratives about the war.
When we think of poets from the First World War, everyone thinks of famous male poets, such as Owen and Sassoon. Why do you think the women writers aren’t better known?
I’m don’t really understand it. When I read Scars Upon My Heart and subsequent documents that I in found in the Imperial War Museum London, I was amazed that all these writings weren’t better known. They’re as powerful and relevant as ever and I think that some of the work stands shoulder to shoulder with the poetry by Sassoon, Owen and other male poets from the time. The World War One Centenary is certainly a time for these female writers to be re-assessed, remembered and celebrated.
Copies of War Girls, published by Crimson Cats, will be on sale at the event, which runs from 2.00pm to 4.00pm on Wednesday, 11 June, at Chawton House Library. Tickets cost £11.00 (or £8.50 for students/friends) and can be bought online or call Chawton House Library on 01420 541010 for more information.