What WOMEN were inspiring during WWII

[Spidermama]

For her homework DD has to pick a person from the second world war and write about them and present their story to the class.

She wants to write about a woman. Can you think of any? (Eva Braun has already been taken).

Gosh, Bonjour and Ivresse, thank you so much for pointing out to me how much comfort the proles gained from knowing the dear old Queen Mum was necking Dubonnet in the palace while the great unwashed were blown to bits.

I think you too have been reading too many mawkish Daily Mail supplements.

Could not you DD take a differnt view of it and not concentate on one women , but women in general were inspiring . They kept the home togther whilst husbands went off to war and many were not heard of again , they kept the factories going, they kept the country going, comforting young children as the bombs dropped etc etc , not knowing wehther you house would still be there whne you came out of the shelter, trying to make little food go a long way as possible etc etc

I once went on one of those boat trips down the Thames and the man told me that Waterloo Bridge was built by women during WW2. He said (and I cannot tell you if it's true) that the reason it is still so clean and white looking is because they used a special stone that sort of self cleans itself. Which seemd to me to be rather a fabulous story if it is indeed true.

Oooh look, wiki says it is true:

'It is frequently asserted that the work force was largely female and it is sometimes referred to as "the ladies' bridge".[4] The arches are clad in Portland stone from the South West of England; the stone cleans itself whenever it rains.'

The Queen (as she then was) suffered personal loss in both wars. Her brother was killed in the first war, her brother in law in the second (albeit in an accident not enemy action). Said Palace was bombed and half full of foreign royal refugees fleeing the Nazis, her husband was working (and smoking) himself to death and Eleanor Roosevelt was horrified to find when she visited that they were living on rations and all the baths had a line round them showing how much water you could have in it. Common ground with the proles there to some extent I think.

She did the best she could in the role she found herself in. It's not overly sentimental or mawkish to point out this persepective.

'Common ground with the proles there to some extent I think.'

What utter tripe.
Who are you? Ingrid Seward?

moondog, calm down. That stuff really mattered to people at the time (& still does to some).

No guarantees that the palace wouldn't have been bombed but they stayed put and, to be fair, they could have all buggered off to Canada for the duration (& had that option). Credit where it's due.

In fact BP was hit at one point & the QM was quoted as saying now she could look the East End in the eye.

Ponders, you have made it even worse with appalling refernce to looking East End in the eye. Who exactly did it matter to? Noone I knows gives (or gave two hoots)
Less of the brown nosing.I'm embarrassed for you.

Ad I said, it mattered then, & then is what the OP is about. Where were you & the people you know during the war?

My parents & their families & friends were around in the war & I know it mattered to them. What you think now is irrelevant. Get over yourself.

Ah, and what you think does?
As I said, remove your nose from the orifice.
Not an attractive look.

What I think does what?

Betty Jeffrey who partly inspired the film Paradise Road
Mrs J. G. Geysel-Vonck who partly inspired Neville Shute to write A Town Like Alice

Spidermama - who did your DD write about in the end?

Moondog you are displaying a distressing lack of historical perspective. It is possible to evaluate and report on the actions of individuals without embracing every value that individual represents. Ponders is absolutely right that value was placed on the actions of the royal family by many. I'm sure there were some who didn't care less but that point of view is not as well demonstrated by the sources now available to us. If you have any such sources displaying contempt - and I mean historical evidence NOT your 21st century prejudice, then by all means share them with us. Otherwise you'll understand that as you seemed a little confused between your war heroines anyway I will feel free not to place too much stress on your opinions.

Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg

Moondog you and your friends may not have valued what the QM did but those were different times. My grandmothers, my husband's grandmothers, my great aunts certainly thought a lot of the Queen Mum and what she did in the war was always given as one of the reasons. None of them were rich people. It is not "mawkish", it is simply that attitudes have changed. I can't speak for men because a lot of the male members of my family were dead, some of them in the world wars or from injuries afterwards.

The Royal Family could have fled London - they didn't. They did what they could and however much you dislike it that was a comfort to a lot of women at the time and even years later.

I can not even understand the raison d'etre of monarchy in these faithless and democratic times, so I'm afraid that I'm very much with Moondog.

Yes but its not about these times its about 70 years ago, when the monarchy WERE influential.

I'm sure most of the world couldn't understand it either more than 200 years ago...

not sure if she's already been mentioned but I always found en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noor_Inayat_Khan a very interesting and inspiring woman