Discover Extraordinary Stories at IWM London

In the lead-up to the Second World War, fears of gas attacks like those of the First World War led the British government to issue over 44 million gas masks.


Originally provided in rather unflattering cardboard cases, a more discerning woman might buy herself a fashionable leather Waldybag like me, with a gas mask compartment built into the base. 

While the gas attacks thankfully never came, I was carried by Lady Stella Reading as she went about her work as Chairman of the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS), which she founded in 1938.


Over the course of the war, over a million women joined the WVS, providing much-needed assistance on the home front. During the Blitz, the WVS distributed many more gas masks and provided food, shelter, clothing and aid to the victims of the German bombing campaign.   

I’m a beef and vegetable stew shipped in the thousands to British Army soldiers in the trenches of the Western Front during the First World War. Daily rations were meant to include fresh or frozen meat, but many meals would have consisted of tinned food, like me, a Maconochie Army ration.

As part of a soldier’s daily wartime diet, I was only considered edible if mixed with something else. According to soldiers in the trenches, I was “edible” when warm, but “a man-killer" when eaten cold. Maybe it was the congealed layer of fat which formed on top of me, the gristly pieces of beef, or the thin, watery gravy that put the soldiers off.

Another part of a soldier’s diet were Army biscuits - very hard, thick slabs which notoriously could break a soldier’s teeth unless soaked in tea or water. A typical way of making them more edible was to grind or crumble them and add water to make a paste which could be added to stew like me.

In May 1915, I was being worn by Margaret Gwyer aboard the RMS Lusitania on the final stretch of its journey to Liverpool from New York.

At 2.10pm, a single torpedo, fired by a German U-Boat, hit the ship on its starboard bow. The explosion tore a hole in the hull, and as the ship began to sink it listed heavily to starboard, making it almost impossible to launch its lifeboats. Margaret was ushered onto one of the only lifeboats to be launched successfully but lost her footing and fell into the water.

The Lusitania was sinking beneath the waves, her funnels creating suction that pulled us under water. However, an explosion inside the wreck miraculously pushed us back to the surface, saving us from an almost certain death.

1,193 other passengers and crew were sadly killed. 128 of the dead were American, starting an irreversible shift in US opinion against Germany.

You probably know that food was rationed in the Second World War, but did you know that clothes were rationed too? From 1941 to 1949, the number of new garments people could buy was limited due to shortages in material and labour. Sometimes this meant that looking fashionable became difficult.

As availability went down, prices went up, so in 1941 the government put in place the Utility Clothing Scheme, designed to offer consumers a range of well-designed quality and price-controlled clothes that were affordable.

The only problem was, to begin with some utility clothes were rather drab.

Thankfully, the Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers stepped in, and top designers were soon submitting their designs for utility clothes. Suddenly dresses like me became things to be seen in, even appearing in British Vogue.

Clothes like me inspired fashion long after the war ended, and our hallmarks of minimalism, sustainability and value for money are still must-haves on the high street today.