ARMY GIRLS HEARTBREAK AND HOPE BY FENELLA J. MILLER IS OUT TODAY!
Grace Sinclair entered the ATS with low expectations. She had been used to a privileged life with servants to wait on her and arriving for basic training would have been a horrible shock.
In the first four weeks she would have been inoculated several times, had FII (free from infestation) and nit (headlice) inspections. Grace would have been obliged to strip down to her knickers to be passed medically fit by a male doctor.
Sleeping in a dormitory of twenty other girls would have been no problem as she had attended boarding school – however, having to stack the bedding in a particular way every morning and put out her full kit be inspected at least once a week wasn’t something she was used to.
Her platoon had to sit through lectures, do endless drill and PE. Then they took an aptitude test and were allocated to their next round of training or were sent directly to their permanent posting.
Grace, having had an excellent education, was able to go for kine theodolite training. She enjoyed this and was soon an expert at handling the complicated equipment. At the end of the course she was ready to start her career in the ATS. She was promoted to lance corporal – this was common after successfully completing this sort of training.
After a few months working on a practice site in Clacton she was ready to move on and was now a Corporal. The ATS officer in charge suggested she went for officer training as there was a desperate shortage of trained officers in the ATS.
Grace accepted the new challenge but having just married Squadron Leader Chris Holloway I imagine that her interest in the ATS had waned somewhat.
I’m sure she would have completed the training easily and returned to Clacton to become an efficient and essential part of the officer corps. Being an officer in the ATS wasn’t the same as being an officer in the actual army. The girls, although treated with equal respect by the rank-and-file, had a somewhat mundane life.
Officers in the ATS were there solely to provide welfare, discipline and moral support to the girls under their command. They were not expected to do anything interesting – not to lead from the front – and were often commanding girls that had skills they couldn’t replicate themselves.
It’s a well-known fact that senior NCOs was the backbone of the army and I’m sure that it was the same in the ATS.