This was the title of a talk given by Grant Cullen, a local military historian, on 31 March 2026 at West Bridgford library. Starting with an intriguing story of the visit by the Archduke Ferdinand to Nottinghamshire’s Welbeck Abbey not long before his assassination, Grant went on to describe the many new roles taken on by women in WWI, from his great aunt Mary, a nurse, and the inspiration for his research, to Marie Curie, who took mobile X-ray machines onto the battlefields, the suffragettes, and the shell packers at Chilwell ordnance depot, many of whom lost their lives in an explosion at the factory in 1918.
Several of the West Bridgford group attended and were impressed by a heartfelt but not sentimental account by a very fluent speaker.