Honouring the women volunteers behind the Grear War effort

The role of the Women's Auxiliary in the YMCA during the First World War has long been overlooked. But it deserves greater recognition, an historian tells Chris Bond.
Bravery: Betty Stevenson was just  19 when she worked as a volunteer  YMCA driver during the war. (Supplied by Hew Stevenson).Bravery: Betty Stevenson was just  19 when she worked as a volunteer  YMCA driver during the war. (Supplied by Hew Stevenson).
Bravery: Betty Stevenson was just 19 when she worked as a volunteer YMCA driver during the war. (Supplied by Hew Stevenson).

The story of the YMCA and its female volunteers during the Great War has become little more than a footnote in the retelling of that terrible conflict.

But it is a story that deserves a closer look and is one that features in a programme of talks – entitled ‘Lest we forget’ – which examine the impact of the Great War on communities in Yorkshire, hosted by the National Coal Mining Museum for England, near Wakefield, next week.

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Among the speakers is Sue McGeever, a social historian who has spent time researching the role of the Women’s Auxiliary in the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) during the war.

Within days of the start of the conflict, the YMCA had established 250 recreation centres across the country. Many were set up close to railway stations where men would be passing through, providing cups of tea, sandwiches and a welcome respite from their journey to France and beyond.

With men of military age called into active service it was down to women to step up to the plate, which they did – in their thousands. By the end of 1914 the Women’s Auxiliary of the YMCA had been established with 40,000 people answering the call for civilian volunteers to come forward.

YMCA “huts”, as they were known, were also set up across the Channel in France, chiefly at ports such as Le Havre and Calais but also close to certain points near the Western Front as the war dragged on.

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McGeever points out that the volunteers didn’t have qualifications enabling them to work as nurses and says this was a way for them to support the troops.

“When the men were away from the front, which they often were, they could go to these huts where could get a drink, write letters and unwind. It was like a home from home for the men,” she says.

“They were all volunteers so they didn’t get paid. They had to have independent means and they’re what you might call ‘ladies that lunch’ today, though they came from all walks of life.”

Among them were inspirational figures like Jessie Millar Wilson, from Otley. “She was a suffragette who felt she was doing her bit for the war effort.”

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Jessie, who was 44 at the time, travelled to France early in 1915. “She thought she might be away for six months but in the end she stayed six years because there was still a lot of work that needed doing after the war ended.”

Another Yorkshirewoman who worked for the YMCA in France was Bertha ‘Betty’ Stevenson. She was born in York and came from a well-off family – her grandfather was an MP – and she was desperate to help.

“She was just 19 years and begged to go to France and her parents eventually let her,” says McGeever.

She was posted to Etaples as a YMCA driver, responsible for transporting relatives from England visiting the wounded in hospital. However, in May 1918 she was killed during an air raid while helping French refugees.

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Betty, who was just 21 when she died, was given a military funeral and posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre avec Palme by General Petain, for courage and devotion to duty.

McGeever believes that the role of women like Betty and Jessie has been unjustly overlooked until now. “Because they were volunteers they have disappeared from history and I think they deserve to be remembered, because every fighting man in the war would have come across the YMCA at some point and been extremely grateful to those women.”

‘Lest we forget’ takes place at the National Coal Mining Museum on February 11 starting at 10am. It is a free event and to book a place email [email protected]

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