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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator,

and this week I'm very pleased to be joined by the historian Tessa Dunlop, whose new book is Army Girls,

The Secrets and Stories of Military Service from the final few women who fought in World War II.

Tessa, welcome. You've snagged 17 of these army girls who fought. Well, I mean, your subtitle says fought in World War II.

But for most people, think, women didn't do all that much fighting in World War II. Did they feel at Zabo perhaps accepted?

Vela Zabo, indeed, was an exception. She was a very rare exception insofar as she was a combatant. She was given a stengon. And women could not be combatants. That was the one thing that

War Office was absolutely adamant about. Even those big static anti-aircraft guns, if women fired them,

it ceased to be a manly thing to do. We'll come to that in a bit if we may sound. But back to your point,

if we talk about a soldier in the British Army, we talk about him fighting,

if he goes off to serve in the Gulf

or if he serves in Afghanistan,

he's out there fighting.

Harry, for instance, he fought in Afghanistan.

And women were in operational areas,

but you're right, they were non-competence.

But I think for large numbers of people,

and I know that former Colonel Ali Brown is very big on this,

the vast majority of people serving in the British Army, while perceived to be fighting, actually,

are not in front-line roles. Now, women, who we think of having been fighting and serving in the

British Army for decades now, in fact, only in 2018 were allowed in all areas of the British Army. So I felt

that I was going to allow myself the word fight. We talk about fighting coronavirus. We use it

...