Women in the military? To many, never was too soon. But by 1940, British women were out "doing their bit" for the war effort, and Canadians battled for that same right. Young Canadian women wanted to serve their country, "to free a man to fight," as the recruiting posters urged. By the war's end almost 50,000 of them were in the forces.

Carolyn Gossage has compiled a fascinating collage of anecdotal and documentary material. The colourful story of Canada's "forgotten women" - those who volunteered for service during World War II in the RCAF Women's division, the Canadian Women's Army Corps (CWAC) and the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service (Wrens) - entertains and enlightens.

A first-hand account of the experiences of a young Canadian airwoman who served both in Canada and on overseas duty, this series of 150 letters brings home the day-to-day immediacy of life in uniform during the Second World War. Moments of hilarity interspersed with impatience and frustration are recorded verbatim, along with an underlying sense of urgency about winning a war that hung in the balance for too long.

Written to the Dead of Women at Macdonald College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Mary Buch's letters lay untouched for over fifty years after her return to Canada from England in 1945. Today they serve as a looking-glass into the War Years that is tinged with the freshness of youthful spontaneity and the promise of a brighter tomorrow.

Carolyn Gossage has interwoven colourful contextual sidebars that provide today's reader with an overview of times and circumstances that have become increasingly elusive in the intervening years.