Menus, Munitions & Keeping the Peace: The Home Front Diaries of Gabrielle West 1914-1917
The humorous—and historically important—home front adventures of a young British woman finding her place during the First World War.
 
When Gabrielle West wrote diaries about her war to send to her much-missed favorite brother in India, she had no idea that a hundred years later they would be of interest to anyone.
 
Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Vicar’s daughter Gabrielle joined the Red Cross and worked as a volunteer cook in two army convalescent hospitals. She then secured paid positions in the canteens of the Farnborough Royal Aircraft Factory and then the Woolwich Arsenal, where she watched Zeppelin raids over London during her night shifts. Having failed a mental arithmetic test to drive a horse-drawn bread van for J. Lyons, she was among the first women enrolled in the police and spent the rest of the war looking after the girls in various munitions factories.
 
Gabrielle wrote about and drew what she saw. She had no interest in opinion or politics. She took her bicycle and her dog Rip everywhere and they appear in many of her stories. She had a sharp eye and sometimes a sharp pen.
 
At the end of the war she was simply sent home. She spent the rest of her life caring for relatives. She lived to 100 and never married. The First World War was her big adventure.
 
These days, the reader might feel MI5 should worry about those detailed line drawings of the processes in the factories being sent by Royal Mail across the world . . . but a hundred years ago?
1124484822
Menus, Munitions & Keeping the Peace: The Home Front Diaries of Gabrielle West 1914-1917
The humorous—and historically important—home front adventures of a young British woman finding her place during the First World War.
 
When Gabrielle West wrote diaries about her war to send to her much-missed favorite brother in India, she had no idea that a hundred years later they would be of interest to anyone.
 
Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Vicar’s daughter Gabrielle joined the Red Cross and worked as a volunteer cook in two army convalescent hospitals. She then secured paid positions in the canteens of the Farnborough Royal Aircraft Factory and then the Woolwich Arsenal, where she watched Zeppelin raids over London during her night shifts. Having failed a mental arithmetic test to drive a horse-drawn bread van for J. Lyons, she was among the first women enrolled in the police and spent the rest of the war looking after the girls in various munitions factories.
 
Gabrielle wrote about and drew what she saw. She had no interest in opinion or politics. She took her bicycle and her dog Rip everywhere and they appear in many of her stories. She had a sharp eye and sometimes a sharp pen.
 
At the end of the war she was simply sent home. She spent the rest of her life caring for relatives. She lived to 100 and never married. The First World War was her big adventure.
 
These days, the reader might feel MI5 should worry about those detailed line drawings of the processes in the factories being sent by Royal Mail across the world . . . but a hundred years ago?
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Menus, Munitions & Keeping the Peace: The Home Front Diaries of Gabrielle West 1914-1917

Menus, Munitions & Keeping the Peace: The Home Front Diaries of Gabrielle West 1914-1917

Menus, Munitions & Keeping the Peace: The Home Front Diaries of Gabrielle West 1914-1917

Menus, Munitions & Keeping the Peace: The Home Front Diaries of Gabrielle West 1914-1917

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Overview

The humorous—and historically important—home front adventures of a young British woman finding her place during the First World War.
 
When Gabrielle West wrote diaries about her war to send to her much-missed favorite brother in India, she had no idea that a hundred years later they would be of interest to anyone.
 
Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Vicar’s daughter Gabrielle joined the Red Cross and worked as a volunteer cook in two army convalescent hospitals. She then secured paid positions in the canteens of the Farnborough Royal Aircraft Factory and then the Woolwich Arsenal, where she watched Zeppelin raids over London during her night shifts. Having failed a mental arithmetic test to drive a horse-drawn bread van for J. Lyons, she was among the first women enrolled in the police and spent the rest of the war looking after the girls in various munitions factories.
 
Gabrielle wrote about and drew what she saw. She had no interest in opinion or politics. She took her bicycle and her dog Rip everywhere and they appear in many of her stories. She had a sharp eye and sometimes a sharp pen.
 
At the end of the war she was simply sent home. She spent the rest of her life caring for relatives. She lived to 100 and never married. The First World War was her big adventure.
 
These days, the reader might feel MI5 should worry about those detailed line drawings of the processes in the factories being sent by Royal Mail across the world . . . but a hundred years ago?

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781473870888
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Limited
Publication date: 01/31/2020
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 208
File size: 41 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Avalon trained as a nurse at Guys Hospital, London. As a mature student she gained a Social Policy degree at Bristol University and then trained as a midwife. She later worked for VSO (Volunteer Service Overseas) in Albania and Namibia, and for MSF (Médicins Sans Frontièrs) in Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Mexico and South Sudan. She gained an MSc in Maternal Health and spent seven years as a community midwife in Plymouth, writing in her spare time and studying creative writing under Fay Weldon. She has self-published three novels: A Midwife Abroad, All the Sky, and Rubics Return.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vi

The Story of the Diaries vii

Foreword Anthony Richards ix

Introduction: Where did the West family come from? xi

The Diaries 1

1914 3

1915 43

1916 85

1917 131

Afterword 159

Appendix 1 A Victorian Childhood 167

Appendix 2 Family Tree 173

Appendix 3 The Children's Games 174

Bibliography and Farther Reading 179

Index 180

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