****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
First published in 1948, this is a memoir of a woman’s role in World War II. Anita Leslie came from a privileged, and well connected, background. Winston Churchill’s mother was her ‘Great Aunt Jennie,’ and the Prime Minister invited her for lunch, both at Chequers and in France, during this book. Having grown up wearing his cast off baby clothes, she thought him a ‘mixture of a cherub and a bulldog,’ and mused on how little Hitler and Mussolini understood, ‘the mettle of England,’ as she enjoyed his company.The book begins in August 1940, when Anita came across a newspaper advertisement for women drivers to go to Africa. She immediately volunteered; taking part in desultory training, which included putting up tents while bombers roared overhead and attending a lecture on ‘Virtue in Tropical Lands,’ before being blessed by the Bishop of St Alban’s and finally, after some more training (which took place in London, during the blitz) boarding a ship for South Africa. Warned not to get unbecomingly sunburnt, Anita Leslie is a young woman full of life. She takes her work seriously, but – all the way through this book – there is room for music, parties and dancing, throughout the war.We follow her through Middle East with the Mechanised Transport Corps. She found that women were not welcomed in war zones, but the women’s ambulances were needed and the men happy to receive their aid. She works in Cairo, Damascus and Beirut, before heading for Europe. As she reaches Italy, the war feels much closer. Through France and Germany, Anita Leslie seems involved in so many major events. She is there during the Liberation of Paris, she sits in Hitler’s abandoned office and writes movingly of visiting an extermination camp. At no point is the horror of war forgotten and the author of this memoir certainly saw terrible things, but she writes with both humour and humanity.This was a great success when it was first published and sadly went out of print. I feel really honoured to have read this memoir. It is touching, deeply moving and yet also uplifting. If you would like to read a memoir of the war from a different perspective – that of a woman who was alongside the troops, rather than on the Home Front (although I do enjoy such memoirs too), then this really does offer a unique point of view and an author with a wonderful ‘voice.’ I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review and recommend it highly.
