Amazon Defence Corps

In 1940, the threat of Nazi invasion prompted women to take up arms - and stockpile poison for themselves and their children.

Defending their realm | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

One strategy that a few plumped for was to set up Women's Home Defence groups. These were uniformed, private armies whose members trained in unarmed combat and learned how to fire a tommy gun, while using opera glasses to scan the skies for German paratroopers. Technically, these groups were illegal but there seems to have been no attempt to disband them. One of the earliest, established in London that summer, was called the Amazon Defence Corps. Its members included Marjorie Foster who a decade earlier had become the first woman to win the coveted King's prize for shooting.

And while, for some women, the focus was on defending the country at large, for others there were more selfish motives at work. Lady Helena Gleichen, a grand-niece of Queen Victoria, set up her own private army to protect her stately home near Much Marcle in Herefordshire. Gleichen, who was in her late 60s in 1940, liked to walk around her estate wearing a pork pie hat and riding habit, puffing on a cigarette, with a dog snapping at her heels. She had seen fighting at close quarters when she worked for the Red Cross in Italy and France during the first world war.

Gleichen's army of 80 of her staff and tenants wore neatly trimmed calico armbands with the words, "Much Marcle Watcher" written in ink. In the evenings she lectured them on military tactics and tried to pass on some of her own skill at shooting - she had once stopped a charging bull with one carefully placed bullet. She demanded that the Shropshire Light Infantry give her 80 rifles with ammunition, adding, "I could do with some machine guns, too, if you have any to spare." When her request was denied she resorted to her own collection of antique weapons.

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