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Essay

War and service

In two world wars Guides grew food, raised money, carried messages and, after 1945, worked in relief camps across Europe and beyond. How much did girls actually do, and how do we know?

The First World War

Girlguiding’s own history says that during the First World War Guides were “growing food, acting as messengers for government organisations and working in hospitals, factories and soup kitchens”.[1] It also says Guides carried confidential messages for the Marconi company. We have not yet found an independent source for the Marconi claim, so it is in some doubt.

The best-documented case is MI5. When MI5 and Girlguiding researched their histories for their centenaries, MI5 found an internal document, Duties of H Branch, describing its Guide messengers. As quoted, it asks for girls aged 14 to 16, “quick, cheerful and willing”, paid ten shillings a week. They worked in patrols under a patrol leader, dusting rooms, filling ink pots and rolling waste paper for burning as well as carrying messages. About 90 Guides are said to have worked there.[2] We know the document only through these quotations, and accounts disagree on whether the Guides started in 1914 or in September 1915, when they replaced Boy Scouts.[3]

Service, fundraising and training

National summaries mix three different things, and it helps to separate them:

  • Service: girls doing work in a named place, for a named organisation, like the MI5 messengers.
  • Fundraising: Guides are said to have raised money in 1916 for recreation huts and an ambulance for troops in France. That comes from a volunteer-run timeline and is not yet confirmed.[4]
  • Training: badges in first aid, signalling and home nursing. The Norfolk archive holds two War Service badges. Its own caption asks which one is the original and which a replica, and we cannot yet say.[5]

Interpretation National histories naturally collect the most striking examples. That does not mean every company did such work. Most probably did far less dramatic things, and we need local records to find out.

The Second World War

Girlguiding records that in 1940 its members raised more than £50,000 for the war effort.[1] Again, the local picture is what we most need. The Norfolk archive holds a typed “Record of War Work, 1939–45” from the 2nd Hunstanton Girl Guide Company.[6] It lists a ton of waste paper and half a hundredweight of rose hips collected, 30 garments knitted, parcels for an adopted merchant seaman, evacuees housed, a churchyard cleared “after Blitz”, and money for the GIS and local war charities. It is a summary, and we have not yet checked its figures against the logbook itself. Another logbook, from the 1st Sandringham Guides, records the company’s greetings for Princess Elizabeth’s 18th birthday in April 1944, with the Palace’s telegram of thanks pasted in.[7]

After the war: the Guide International Service

The most striking story is what happened when the fighting stopped. In April 1942 a committee was set up to organise the Guide International Service, which trained older Rangers and Guide leaders aged 21 and over for relief work abroad.[8] Volunteers trained in camp skills; a folding water bucket from that training survives in the Norfolk archive.[11]

The first team reached Greece in January 1945. Over about seven years, thirteen teams worked in Greece, the Netherlands, Germany, Egypt and Malaya; nearly 200 young women served, with about 60 Scout leaders.[8] One of the first stops in Germany was Bergen-Belsen.

Museums Victoria’s account of GIS Team 107 shows what the work involved. Led by Stella Cunliffe, about fourteen people were responsible for nine displaced persons’ camps near Salzgitter, a children’s home and hospitals. Most of the people in the camps were Polish, and had been forced to work in the steelworks at Watenstedt. The team registered arrivals and departures, distributed food and supplies, repaired buildings and saw people onto repatriation trains.[9] The museum’s account draws on the GIS’s own history, All Things Uncertain (1966), which we have not yet read.[10]

Interpretation The GIS turned the ethic of service that Guiding had taught since 1910 into skilled relief work, carried out under great strain. Its volunteers were adults, not girls. But many of them had learned in Guiding the skills they now used.

Questions still to answer

  • How old were the girls who did war work, and what risks did they face?
  • How did wartime service differ between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
  • What do the people GIS teams worked with say about them?
  • Who was photographed in relief work, and did they agree to it?

Read more

Sources

  1. Girlguiding, “Our history”. Accessed 25 September 2026. Institutional self-description. Authoritative for what Girlguiding says about itself; not an independent evaluation.
  2. Scotland's War, “Guides and MI5”. Accessed 25 September 2026. Community history site (now offline; archived copy). Quotes an MI5 document, "Duties of H Branch", found during the MI5 and Girlguiding centenary research.
  3. Leslie's Guide War History, “World War 1”. Accessed 25 September 2026. Enthusiast history; a lead.
  4. Little Gem Museum (West Lancashire Scouts), “Story of Guiding – 1908 to 1929”, 2022-03-15. Accessed 25 September 2026. A volunteer-run heritage timeline; a useful lead, to be checked against primary sources.
  5. Girlguiding Norfolk Archive Resource Centre (via MyLearning), “Girl Guide War Service Badge 1914”, MyLearning. Accessed 25 September 2026. Image © Girlguiding Norfolk County Archive Resource Centre, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
  6. Girlguiding Norfolk Archive Resource Centre (via MyLearning), “Record of War Work: Hunstanton Guide Company Log Book”, MyLearning. Accessed 25 September 2026. Image © Girlguiding Norfolk County Archive Resource Centre, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
  7. Girlguiding Norfolk Archive Resource Centre (via MyLearning), “1st Sandringham Guides Log Book 1944”, MyLearning. Accessed 25 September 2026. Image © Girlguiding Norfolk County Archive Resource Centre, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
  8. Girlguiding, “Remembering the Guide International Service on VE Day 2025”, 2025-05. Accessed 25 September 2026.
  9. M. McFadzean (Museums Victoria Collections), “Guide International Service, Displaced Persons Repatriation, 1945–1951”, Museums Victoria, 2012. Read via the Internet Archive copy of September 2025.
  10. Phyllis Stewart Brown, “All Things Uncertain: the Story of the G.I.S.”, Girl Guides Association, 1966. details to check The Guide International Service's own published history; not yet consulted.
  11. Girlguiding Norfolk Archive Resource Centre (via MyLearning), “Girl Guide Camping Water Bucket”, MyLearning. Accessed 25 September 2026. Image © Girlguiding Norfolk County Archive Resource Centre, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.