Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

8 Beatrice was not the only young woman to see the women’s armed services as both a chance to ‘do her bit’ and escape the enclosed, stifling domestic space most women occupied. Before the war, the armed services viewed women as more of a hindrance to their boys than any meaningful help, threatening the health of soldiers with venereal disease and distractions. It was not until an acute shortage of military manpower in the second half of 1916 forced their hand that women’s volunteer bodies were reformed and amalgamated as auxiliary services. In February 1917 the Women Army Auxiliary Corp (WAAC) was established, followed closely by the Wrens in November 1917 and the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) in April 1918. In total, an estimated 80,000-90,000 served in these bodies in the last two years of the war. Most of these volunteers were, like Beatrice, set to tasks that freed healthy young men to continue fighting on the front. They worked as clerks, linguists, cooks, store-women, dispensers, telephonists, signallers, typists, motor-vehicle drivers and in other non-combative roles. Working hours could be long and tiring, but for Beatrice and many other women, any opportunity for physical recreation and leisure was quickly taken. 4 When women did find the time and resources to play cricket, it was often makeshift, spontaneous and purely recreational. With little equipment and certainly no appropriate clothing, volunteers in the Wrens played in military uniforms of black leather brogues, thick stockings and long, cumbersome dresses. Nonetheless, such trivialities were not going to stop Introduction ‘It gradually got that you were free’ Members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service play cricket in Crystal Palace Park near their training depot in 1918. (© Imperial War Museum (IWM) Q 18916)