Author(s): Jim Sullivan (ed.)

New Zealand | World War II

For this book, esteemed historian Jim Sullivan, of National Radio's Sounds Historical and the highly popular Women at War, has interviewed fifty New Zealand women about their service in World War Two. These include the obvious - from the nursing sisters and VADs who braved battlefield conditions in Egypt, Italy, and the Pacific Islands, to the Waacs, Waafs and Wrens who took over administrative roles to release men for active duty, to the less obvious - the radar operators, balloon command technicians; and the unexpected - the Wren who trained navy gunners in a forerunner of a flight simulator, the woman who delivered Spitfires from the factory to combat airfields around Britain, and the women who ran a secret listening post in an isolated Marlborough farmhouse, tapping into Japanese submarine communications. The stories are funny, tragic, compassionate and above all honest - showing the courage and fortitude of a generation of Kiwi women who were also wives, sisters, daughters and fiancées of men on active service, dealing with the emotional toll of warfare as well as its practicalities.