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Overseas crews...

Guildford (Region 12, Fire Force 32) was one of the very few places in the country with an NFS Sub

Station crewed almost entirely by female refugees from Central Europe.

Coming to England from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazi terror, the majority of

the refugees found agricultural employment in the district. When the NFS came into being, their request

to join on a part-time basis was granted, and a sub station was allocated to them in the town at Warren

Road Hospital. In the early stages, because of language difficulties, the women were not given telephone

duties, but were placed on an operational footing.

They learnt how to handle a trailer pump and lay delivery hose - in fact they were to all intents and

purposes female firefighters. Because of the strenuous nature of the work, however, they were not

ordered to fires as a complete women's crew. Each pump crew, therefore, was a mixed one, the women

usually operated the pumps while the men fought the fires.

ROLES

When the war started "part-timers" took over full-time duties in stations all

over the country. The AFS enrolled women between the ages of 20 and 50,

their roles extended and developed as their abilities and

the wider needs of the service were recognised. Between 1939 and 1940

there were over 1000 members of the Women's Auxiliary Fire Service in

the London County Area alone, where there were three at every station.

Only a small percentage of the 1,400 brigades in England and Wales

employed women, but where they did exist their work was reported to be

thorough and efficient. Their use was invaluable and replaced men,

releasing them for active fire-fighting duties. In London, these women and

girls were dismissed or 'persuaded' to resign by the hundreds from March

1940 and onwards. In March 1941 the London Fire Brigade advertised for

over 1000 new women recruits! In August 1941, the AFS and the regular

fire brigades were combined into a single National Fire Service or NFS.

By 1943 over 70,000 women had enrolled in the NFS.

Some firewomen were trained in the use of pumps and a few did fight fires

but for the most part their role was supportive. Nevertheless, they were

exposed to danger because observation posts and fire stations with their

watch or control rooms were bombed. In addition, mobile kitchen staff,

canteen van, lorry and staff car drivers, motorbike despatch riders (many

of the women who trained for the AFS and NFS had to be taught to drive)

and field telephone units were exposed to air raids, aircraft machine

gunning and accidents in the streets with the result that over 20 were killed

in action.

The recruitment of women for the AFS and NFS was the first time in history that several thousand were

permitted to join the fire service and they acquitted themselves well, by March 1943 there were up to

80,000 women serving with the National Fire Service. In 1945, they were demobilised.

There involvement had been as vital to the fire service as others had been within the factories & offices

of wartime Britain.

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=51688