Talk - Band of Sisters
July 2024
Unheralded women whose courage played crucial roles in the Second World War were brought to life in a talk at the Museum Friends’ shop.
Pete Batty’s fascinating insight into the women he dubbed Band of Sisters attracted an appreciative audience of Maidstone Museums’ Foundation (MMF) members and guests on July 6.
He was inspired to research the women by a memorial in Whitehall, opened in 2005 by the late former House of Commons Speaker Betty Boothroyd, to honour the huge contribution to the war effort by millions of women, including his mother.
He singled out CorrieTen Boom, the first female clockmaker in the Netherlands, who was incarcerated in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp but lived to write a bestselling story “The Hiding Place” about her harrowing experience. Nurse Mary Lindell organised an escape line; Elise Rivet, a nun, sacrificed her life by taking the place of a mother and daughter in the gas chamber; Irena Sendler, a social worker, smuggled children out of the ghetto; and Virginia Hall, who defied the pain of a wooden leg to help others and was dubbed The Limping Lady. Mathematician Hazel Hill worked out how to add firepower to the Spitfire.
Closer to home, Cpl Daphne Pearson rescued the surviving crew of an Avro Anson that crashed close to Detling Airfield. near Maidstone, and became the first women to receive the George Cross for her bravery. Artist Evelyn Dunbar from Rochester recorded women doing practical work in the war. Pete Batty concluded his talk by reeling off statistics that showed 3,200 women worked in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), one million in the Women’s Voluntary Service, 80,000 in the Land Army, 180,000 in the Armed Forces, 1.9 million in the metal and chemical industries, and 74,000 in the Women’s Royal Naval Service. We all owe them a huge debt of gratitude. The talk, interspersed with quiz questions and photos of famous women who lived during the war, ended with the audience joining in the song made famous by Dame Vera Lynn – We’ll Meet Again. We hope to meet you at a future MMF event.
Cpl Daphne Pearson
