Menus, Munitions and Keeping the Peace: The Home Front Diaries of Gabrielle West 1914-1917 contains the journals of Vicar’s daughter Gabrielle, better known as Bobby. She kept the diaries of her life in Britain during WWI to send to her brother in India. Bobby first did volunteer work as a cook in a hospital for convalescing soldiers, then, was able to attain paid work as a cook at an airplane factory. Eventually, she became one of the first women enrolled in the police services although, as she points out, she received less pay and security and fewer opportunities than the men. She spent the remainder of the war protecting (reading her descriptions, it was more like herding) the women in several of the munitions factories. Throughout, she talks about and draws illustrations of the zeppelin raids over London and the dangers of both the materials used in the munitions as well as the difficulties of convincing the workers of these dangers – one of her jobs is to keep the workers from smoking.

Bobby was a young girl at the time and had little or no interest in politics or world events and, because of this, many interested in the history of WWI, may find the diaries of little interest. However, anyone who would like to understand what day-to-day life was like for most people living through war, this book is a treasure trove of history of common life. This is, of course, life as Bobby lived it but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great resource for anyone interested in the period eg. the depictions of the factories, how the women were affected by the chemicals they worked with, the many rules, the attempts to circumvent them, and the consequences of doing so in a couple of cases, luckily resulting in only limited destruction. But what I found most compelling was the way people seemed to treat the nightly zeppelin raids – they, or at least she and the people where she worked would step outside to watch or later, as a member of the police, she would try to get the women to a safer place but, as soon as the raids were over, everything seemed to return to normal as if the raids were just one more part of everyday life, more spectacle than danger but also perhaps a break in the monotony of the work.

Menus, Munitions, and Keeping the Peace is edited by Avalon Weston with a Foreword by Anthony Richards of the Imperial War Museum. It gives a fascinating look at one woman’s life during WWI but it is much more than that. Through photographs as well as Bobby’s own illustrations, the reader is able to get an upclose look at work in the munitions factories including drawings of the munitions themselves. We also get a glimpse of the life of a middle class woman whom the war has given freedoms never before offered to women, a woman who is able to attain work only previously allowed to men but who is fully aware of the unequal position it offers. A definite high recommendation to anyone who would like a glimpse of everyday life during the war.

Thanks to Netgalley and Pen and Sword History for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

I recently read Menus, Munitions and Keeping the Peace--The Home Front Diaries of Gabrielle West 1914-1917*. Gabrielle wrote her diaries to send to her brother in India. She worked as a volunteer cook in army hospitals, had a few paid positions in canteens, and worked as a policewoman protecting the female workers at munition factories. These are the simple diaries of a young woman writing about what directly affected her. She does not write about politics or world events in any detail but they do give an interesting picture of how the war impacted her life and what it involved for many women. I have read a lot of wartime diaries, though most of them are set during WWII, and I found these to be interesting but not enthralling. Possibly because Gabrielle did not write a lot about the bigger picture it was hard to get fully invested in her life. The way they were put together and the commentary that was occasionally interspersed gave them very much a family feel, almost like you were reading a collection put together by and for a family. That being said, they gave an interesting picture of a life and time that is past.