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.