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1940s Girl Guides

Karen Wiles SpeakerNet Sponsor


Regions:
England, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire
Notice Period:
Emergency (maybe less than one week's notice)
Type:
Hobby
Fee:
Paid: £75 for the talk, plus 50ppm travel expenses
Category:
History
Updated:
12th November 2026
Tagged:
Home Front | Ww2

Why was Guiding so popular in the WW2? What was the Tenderfoot Test and how did it start to prepare girls for war work? Learn about the Second Class test, badges and uniform. We look at special training the Guides had and the part they played in evacuation, emergency cooking, hospital work, and undercover work for MI9, the secret government department responsible for helping British POWs, French resistance and uncovering German spies.

You will be amazed at the responsibility and resourcefulness of wartime Guides.

The talk includes hundreds of rare original photos, Wartime Girl Guides are know remembered as the forgotten Army, 750,000 were volunteered for war work, the second largest female voluntary force ever.

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About Karen Wiles

We are Karen and Bret Wiles, we live on our Dutch Barge on the river Thames in Oxfordshire. Throughout the summer we frequently move, but in the winter we have a permanent mooring in Goring on Thames.

We are WW2 Home Front historians and re-enactors, we specialise in what women and children did to help the war effort in WW2, We started our interest over 10 years ago with a visit to a WW2 event at Stoke Bruern that manifested into a talk for schools, as we thought there was a gap in children's knowledge about what it was like to be a child in the 1940s. We found adults were also interested so we now have 11 talks for adults and 4 talks for schools and children's groups.

Research is ever ongoing and our talks are updated frequently updated.

We do talks for U3A groups, Probus, Historical Societies and are accredited speakers for Oxfordshire and Berkshire WIs. We are very happy to do talks for other groups, small and large.

Our talks are PowerPoint presentations and include hundreds of original photos, music, and film clips, there is always something going on the screen while we narrate through the talk. We usually take along a small display of related memorabilia. All talks are 1 hour long.

Our website www.doingtheirbit.co.uk includes all details of our talks, what we bring with us, our fees, etc. as well as details of individual talks.

We can be contacted by email contact@doingtheirbit.co.uk


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