conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled Women in the Great War about I've, Western, Front with the genre: History, Military.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: "I've read stories in magazines and novels about how men returning from action on the Western Front and elsewhere during WW1 returned home to find their jobs taken by women. Stephen and Tanya the author take us back four years to the time when the decisions were taken that the women left behind were given the task of keeping vital industries running, particularly agriculture but also in arms and equipment manufacture for the BEF. Superlative social history from Pen and Sword." ( Books Monthly )
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Women in the Great War
  Although she had qualified to study Science at Oxford University, with the war less than a year old and having just turned 18 years of age, she passed her nursing exams and managed to persuade her parents to allow her to enlist in the Voluntary Aid Detachment. She joined Oxford 2 VAD as Naomi Haldane and became a nursing member. In 1916 she married a barrister, Gilbert Mitchison.
  She went on to become a probationary nurse at St Thomas's Hospital in London in 1917. She worked part time at the Out Patients Ward at Radcliffe Infirmary in the centre of Oxford, which catered for sixty-four patients, and for six months she worked mornings at the Wingfield Convalescent Home, which was connected to the Infirmary. It only had a total of twenty beds to start with, but by 1916 wooden huts were built in the grounds which provided an additional seventy-five beds. Both of these medical facilities were part of the Third Southern General Hospital.
  One of the children of wartime Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Olwen Carey Evans (née Lloyd George), was born in 1892. Her VAD service card showed that she enlisted in 1914 and continued her service until 1919, but above each entry there is a pencil correction which shows her date of VAD engagement was October 1915 and the date of termination of her service was in June 1916. From June to Oct 1915 she worked at the Red Cross Rest Station at Boulogne and for the last month in Hesdigneul, then at Devonshire House until June 1916.
  The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, or WAACs, which was a voluntary organisation, came into being in January 1917, after Lieutenant General Sir Henry Lawson, suggested to the Director of the War Office, that too many soldiers were engaged in non-military type work, mainly jobs of a clerical nature that could just as easily be undertaken by women, which in turn would release more men for front line service. The WAAC was formed to have women join their ranks to carry out these very roles, both at home in Britain and overseas in France.
  Despite the organisation's title, the rank structure, although equivalent to those for men in the army, was named differently. This was mainly to distinguish the fact that the women did not have full military status. Those in charge were referred to as controllers and administrators. Below this were officials, forewomen, assistant forewomen and workers. As with similar organisations of the time, and despite its being a voluntary role, the women who chose to enrol in the ranks of the WAAC had to adhere to some very strict regulations, with certain breaches of discipline having the potential to be dealt with in a civil court of law. But despite all this, in the twenty-three months between January 1917 and November 1918, some 57,000 women served in the WAAC.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I found life here was a complete change in every way. I was able to refresh my memory in medicine and surgery. We bathed in the sea whenever we wanted to.
  She is buried in the Boulogne Eastern Cemetery in France. Boulogne was one of the main ports used by the British throughout the First World War and as such had a large number of medical units stationed throughout the area.
  Staff Nurse Alice Mary Turton was 36 years old and part of the QAIMNS Special Reserve. At the time of her death on 7 May 1915, she was attached to the 26th Stationary Hospital staff at Ismalia in Egypt. She is buried in the Ismalia War Memorial Cemetery.
  Staff Nurse M.H. Johnston was part of 'R' section when she died on 5 September 1915. She is buried in the Cairo War Memorial Cemetery in Egypt.
  Probationary Nurse (83/P/481) Edith Dorothy Pepper was 25 when she died on 7 April 1918. She is buried in the Cairo War Memorial Cemetery in Egypt.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.. End with the sentence '
  As well as the almost 750,000 men who died in the war, we also owe a great debt to this past generation of fantastic women, who should also be remembered each year on Remembrance Day Sunday.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: As can be seen from the evidence, women played an extremely important role during the First World War, both on the home front and in different theatres of war across the world, and that their efforts continued throughout the conflict.
  Other posters were used to encourage women to try and persuade their men folk to enlist in the armed forces, and to challenge them as to why they hadn't done so. Some were aimed directly at women in an attempt to persuade getting them to join one of the many voluntary organisations which had sprung up following the outbreak of the war, of which there were many.
  Women carried this country in so many different ways during the war, especially on the home front with the work they did in covering the roles that men had previously filled. Add to this the voluntary work which they so willingly undertook, many whilst having to work, look after and care for their children and their home, whilst spending lonely nights wondering if they would ever again see their loved ones who had gone off to war.
  For those in the nursing and support services, it can only be guessed how many lives they were responsible for helping to save, how many times they made a dying man's final moments less lonely or how they risked and often lost their own lives in the service of others. Thankfully women didn't have to fight in the war and die in the trenches, but the supportive work which they continually undertook throughout the war, was definitely a game changer.
  As well as the almost 750,000 men who died in the war, we also owe a great debt to this past generation of fantastic women, who should also be remembered each year on Remembrance Day Sunday.