Remarkable Women of the Second World War

They were told to hold the fort. They did far more than that. When the Second World War broke out, the task of keeping society afloat fell on the shoulders of the women left behind. Women the world over stepped into boots they'd never worn before - becoming engineers, labourers and intelligence experts. Their houses were razed to the ground, they fled their enemy-occupied countries and they picked up guns to defend their homes, but their stories are rarely told. Remarkable Women of the Second World War is a collection of twelve of these stories, all carefully gathered and retold by Victoria Panton Bacon. These are the stories of Galina Russian navigator who flew on the front line for the Red Army alongside the feared Night Witches; Ena, an ATA engineer who didn't think much of the Spitfires and Hurricanes she worked on; and Lee, a Jewish girl who fled Frankfurt and arrived in Coventry on a Kindertransport train. These women weren't remarkable because of high rank or status, but because of their grit, resilience and determination. These are the tales of ordinary women who did extraordinary things.

VICTORIA PANTON BACON is a Second World War historian who uses her writing to portray the human cost of war. Her writing career began when she discovered her grandfather's war memoir in his garage; this would later be published as Six Weeks of Blenheim Summer (Penguin, 2018). Her second book, Remarkable Journeys of the Second World War (The History Press, 2020), was described as 'fascinating and touching' by Joanna Lumley. In 2011 Victoria co-founded Elizabeth's Legacy of Hope, a charity that provides amputee children in Africa and India with prosthetic limbs and education. She lives in Suffolk with her family.