A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Ingenious Young Women Whose Secret Board Game Helped Win World War II

by Simon Parkin

For all of war’s great horrors, service in the Wrens offered these women an unexpected freedom from the strictures of their previous lives, where they were subject to the rules of their Victorian fathers. For many young men the Second World War wiped out a multitude of possibilities. For many young women, however, war obliterated previously impenetrable barriers. In assuming an active role in the war effort, Wrens slipped the expectation to marry early, remain at home and bear children at the earliest opportunity. Joining the Wrens was something akin to setting off for university, a profound loosening of the centuries-old constriction of female prospects. For these girls–and many were still girls–war’s secondary effects had to do with liberation, excitement and possibility.