It is March and it is Women's History Month

This month is an opportunity to bring right to the very front the history of women in all areas of our national, regional and global past.

Pictured are girls working on shell caps in a munitions factory, somewhere in England on 25th of May 1940.  It should be noted that the photographer, Paul Popper covered the Dunkirk evacuation in May/June 1940, so this could well be somewhere in Southern England.

One and a half million women toiled in dirty and dangerous factories to provide troops on the frontline with vital ammunition.

Acid burns were part and parcel of the work and many received much more serious injuries while the plants they worked in were key targets for Hitler’s Luftwaffe bombers.

War ­historian Simon Fowler says: “Britain could not have emerged victorious in 1945 without the help of the many who selflessly worked all the hours they could to provide the materials the British Army and Allied troops used to defeat the Germans.

“Workers could often be identified by the yellow skin they had because of the dangerous chemical compounds they came into contact with and were known to many as ‘canaries’.

"People were injured or killed while making munitions every day."

(Source - Gettys Images - Photographer, Paul Popper)

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