MEMBERS of the A.T.S., the Auxiliary Territorial Service, are piped off from Glasgow by a band from the Highland Light Infantry after a successful exhibition at the city’s Lewis’s Royal Polytechnic.
This was February, 1942, not long after conscription had begun for women. As the Imperial War Museum reminds us, women were given a choice of working in industry or joining one of the auxiliary services – the A.T.S, the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (W.A.A.F.) or the Women’s Royal Naval Service (W.R.N.S.).
The exhibition was opened by Lady Ruth Balfour, chairman of Women’s Voluntary Services (W.V.S.), who said she hoped that by the end of the war, a great deal more of the defence of the country would be handled by the A.T.S. Seventy out of every hundred of the personnel in mixed anti-aircraft battery gun sites were women, she added, and she hoped that, after witnessing a thrilling mock air-raid staged by A.T.S. members of one battery, many women in the audience would be anxious to join up.
The A.T.S. detachment which was touring the exhibition was piped onto the pitch during half-time at games between Clyde and Queen’s Park, and Rangers and Hamilton. On the exhibition’s final day, a bombardier who was part of a mixed ack-ack battery praised his exceptional A.T.S colleagues were tackling their job. The exhibition attracted many thousands of visitors, far in excess of the attendance figures in London.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here