Janie Hampton - How the Girl Guides Won the War

Their stories form an unofficial history, told by the girls themselves, first-hand as well as through letters, diaries and log books. Celebrities and ordinary women describe the fun and frustration, the characters they met, the places they went, the art of tying a reef knot behind your head during a blackout and the thrill of a midnight feast in an Anderson shelter during the Blitz.

I realise now that it was through Brownies that I learned about values, caring for other people, and trying to do a Good Deed every day. This book gives a taste of one of the most extraordinary movements of the twentieth century, and how it influenced people all over the world.

Janie Hampton

Oxford

On a hot evening in mid-August 1939, silver trumpets sounded from the battlements of an old castle in a forest in Hungary to mark the end of an extraordinary meeting. The blue and gold Guides’ World Trefoil flag which had flown from the main tower for just over two weeks was hauled down for the last time. The first world gathering of 5,800 Girl Guides from thirty-two countries, as far apart as India, Holland and Estonia, had set up camp on the royal hunting estate of Gödöllőo. In typical international style, Lord Baden-Powell had put together Latin and Norse words to name the occasion ‘Pax Ting’, or Peace Parliament.

Gödöllőo was twenty-two miles from Budapest, and was described by the Guides of Hungary as ‘in a very healthy wooded part, surrounded by vineyards on the plain of the river Rakos. Its principal curiosity is the famous royal castle, now residence of the Regent of Hungary, a one-floor building built in French rococo style, with more than a hundred chambers. 3/5 of which estate being wood and excellent hunting ground, and the station for potato researches.’

The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), founded in 1928, was already the largest organisation of its kind anywhere on earth, with a mission ‘to enable girls and young women to develop their fullest potential as responsible citizens of the world’. When WAGGGS decided to gather in Hungary, the association had ignored the signs of impending war.

There were 246,202 Guides in Great Britain, but only two hundred were invited to go on this epic trip. The lucky few who were chosen had to be physically fit for the long journey by train and the dry heat of Hungary in August, as well as keen campers and efficient Guides who would both give a good impression of British Guiding and have the wits to bring back useful observations of the gathering.

Leading the British contingent was twenty-four-year-old Alison Duke, who had recently graduated from Cambridge with a first-class degree in Classics. She was known as ‘Chick’ and had joined the 1st Cambridge Guide Company as a girl; now she was the company’s Captain. With the Nazis already in control of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Alison’s fluent German had helped to secure her selection as leader, and it was her task to escort the British Guides across Europe. As their train passed through Germany, at each station they were greeted by members of the Girls’ Hitler Youth Movement, the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM). A group of BDM girls were at Aachen station at 3 a.m. to present the British Guides with fruit and flowers. Their leader travelled to Cologne with the party to ensure that more BDM girls further down the track provided breakfast. ‘Nothing could have been more friendly or helpful,’ said the Guides later.

For two whole years, the 7,500 Guides of Hungary had been preparing for Pax Ting. They had learned new languages and garnered badges such as Health, Fire, Gymnast and Police; older Guides and Rangers (aged sixteen to twenty-one) had learned about the local history so they could lead expeditions to places of interest. ‘No time and no trouble had been spared to ensure the great gathering being well organised and the guests well cared for,’ said the official programme. However, in the summer of 1939 most adults in Europe knew that war might break out at any moment. It took much courage on the part of Guide leaders to allow the camp to go ahead. If war had begun while 5,000 girls were hundreds of miles away from their homes, what would have happened to them all? The Polish contingent understood better than anyone the threat of war, and at the last moment they altered their plans. The night before they left for Hungary, the younger Guides were replaced with First Class Rangers experienced in mountain expeditions. They were issued with special maps which they sewed into their uniforms, so that even if they lost their haversacks they could find their way home. If, as was thought likely, the German army invaded Poland during Pax Ting, these Guides were to return home on foot over the Carpathian mountains that separated Hungary and Poland, in small groups or alone. ‘Be prepared’ had always been the Guides’ motto; now these girls might have to put it to the ultimate test. Only weeks later, many of them would travel in the opposite direction, out of Poland, on even more dangerous adventures.

At Pax Ting, Guides from each country pitched their ridge tents in circles or rows in the pine woods, each encampment marked with a gateway featuring their national emblem or a peace symbol. The British camp’s gate was flanked by a lion and a unicorn made from painted cardboard; the Danes had constructed a pair of giant doves. The Hungarian Guides had never camped under canvas before, and their tents were quite a spectacle: ‘They varied enormously, from holding 16 children to two,’ wrote Christie Miller, a Guide from Oxfordshire. ‘They nearly all had their beds raised off the ground, and were covered in the most beautifully embroidered counterpanes. The tent pole was decorated with coloured ornaments. All tents were trenched but judging by the effects of the first thunderstorm, not very effectively.’

The Finnish Guides brought tepees, like those still used by the Suomi people in Lapland, and invited everyone to autograph them. These tepees fascinated the British Guides: they had their ground-sheets sewn to the tops, and were held up by bent bamboo poles threaded into the canvas — a foretaste of twenty-first-century tents.

The Guides from Poland were the ‘real heavyweight campers’, wrote Christie Miller. ‘All the beds were made of wooden planks raised off the ground on logs. They made shelves for shoes, rucksacks etc. Each Guide carved an emblem at the doorway of her tent. In their grey uniforms they were one of the smartest contingents. In the evening they all wore long cloaks.’

At all camps, including Pax Ting, the Guides wore their camp uniform. For the British this was a blue cotton tunic with a leather belt, a triangular cotton scarf and a floppy cotton hat. At a time when most girls had few clothes, wearing a uniform gave them both a smart outfit and a sense of belonging. The early uniform reflected the relaxed post-Edwardian approach to women’s wear: an A-line skirt above the ankle and a practical, comfortable shirt — often a cricket shirt borrowed from a brother and dyed blue.

Lord Baden-Powell had also designed the Guides’ equipment to be practical: the long wooden staffs they carried were marked in feet and inches so they could measure objects and the depth of streams. They could be used for rescuing struggling swimmers, scything a path through nettles or brambles, or vaulting streams. Two staffs with a coat fastened around them could form a stretcher, and several strung together made a tent frame. The scarf was used as a handkerchief, bandage, sling, pressure pad to prevent bleeding, or to tie on a splint. The whistle could be used to send Morse messages or to summon help. The hats not only kept off the sun and rain, but could also be used for carrying water or fruit, or fanning a reluctant fire.