First published in 1948, this is a memoir of a woman’s role in World War II. Anita Leslie came from a privileged, and well connected, background. Winston Churchill’s mother was her ‘Great Aunt Jennie,’ and the Prime Minister invited her for lunch, both at Chequers and in France, during this book. Having grown up wearing his cast off baby clothes, she thought him a ‘mixture of a cherub and a bulldog,’ and mused on how little Hitler and Mussolini understood, ‘the mettle of England,’ as she enjoyed his company.

The book begins in August 1940, when Anita came across a newspaper advertisement for women drivers to go to Africa. She immediately volunteered; taking part in desultory training, which included putting up tents while bombers roared overhead and attending a lecture on ‘Virtue in Tropical Lands,’ before being blessed by the Bishop of St Alban’s and finally, after some more training (which took place in London, during the blitz) boarding a ship for South Africa. Warned not to get unbecomingly sunburnt, Anita Leslie is a young woman full of life. She takes her work seriously, but – all the way through this book – there is room for music, parties and dancing, throughout the war.

We follow her through Middle East with the Mechanised Transport Corps. She found that women were not welcomed in war zones, but the women’s ambulances were needed and the men happy to receive their aid. She works in Cairo, Damascus and Beirut, before heading for Europe. As she reaches Italy, the war feels much closer. Through France and Germany, Anita Leslie seems involved in so many major events. She is there during the Liberation of Paris, she sits in Hitler’s abandoned office and writes movingly of visiting an extermination camp. At no point is the horror of war forgotten and the author of this memoir certainly saw terrible things, but she writes with both humour and humanity.

This was a great success when it was first published and sadly went out of print. I feel really honoured to have read this memoir. It is touching, deeply moving and yet also uplifting. If you would like to read a memoir of the war from a different perspective – that of a woman who was alongside the troops, rather than on the Home Front (although I do enjoy such memoirs too), then this really does offer a unique point of view and an author with a wonderful ‘voice.’ I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review and recommend it highly.

Always having been interested in history, Train to Nowhere caught my eye. It is not only rich in details, it truly captures the emotions and appreciation by the characters for the situations they were in. Read it in one sitting which is a feat in itself with a small farm, 2 kids, a husband and a part time job! Loved it.

I received a free copy via Netgalley in exchange for a honest review.

A brilliant read showing the bravery and friendships of women during WWII on the front line.
It also shows the horrific side of war.

Train to Nowhere is a WWII memoir by Anita Leslie, a first cousin once removed of Winston Churchill.

Anita joined the Mechanized Transport Corps, an organization favored by upper class women, as a fully trained mechanic and ambulance driver, and sailed for Pretoria. Working their way northward, they tended wounded in stifling heat and hot winds in Cairo when the MTC was incorporated into the Auxiliary Territorial Service. Not wanting to be stuck in Egypt when the war moved elsewhere, she got the job of editing the Eastern Times.
After three years in the Middle East, she requested a transfer to Italy to be in the fight for Europe. While her work in Naples was rewarding, she wanted to be on the front line. The British didn’t allow women at the front, so she joined the French Forces to be a front-line ambulance driver. She took part in the liberation of France, and moved across Germany to Austria, then spent time in Berlin.
I know little of what transpired in the Middle East during World War II. Anita doesn’t make it sound appealing. She described it as boisterous gaiety, unlike the depressing circumstances she later in France. She worked in Beirut for the English Times with a staff of eight quarrelsome Syrians; a proprietor/lawyer with a queue of legal clients crowding his office; pages hand-set by fifteen Arab boys who didn’t read English—if a line got dropped, they reset it by guesswork; proofs corrected by an 82-year-old American missionary who came down from the mountains to apply for war work.
Bemoaning that the British keep “first-rate women subordinate to second-rate men,” she joined the French army and almost immediately hears of the mistaken messages on the BBC for the French underground, which was wiped out by the Gestapo. Throughout the rest of the war, she is in danger driving her ambulance so close to the enemy line, sometimes driving ahead of the French tanks. Other women among her colleagues were wounded and killed.
Her upper crust haughtiness comes out in her descriptions of others: the lazy Indo-Chinese soldiers; the dirty, thieving, undisciplined Arab element of their medical company; the bovine German fraus and their little tow-headed brats; the Moroccans’ limited intelligence and unlimited dishonesty.
Her description of Berlin is interesting—the devastation was revolting and so was the smell. Desolate streets with hordes of shabby Russians, well-dressed Americans swapping cigarettes at the black markets, British Desert Rats in search of a cup of tea and a bun, bleak-faced German women in the Russian zone doing forced labor of clearing away rubble in buckets.
The section in the Middle East got tiresome; her story picked up, for me, when she arrived in France. She is to be commended for voluntarily putting herself in what were frequently very disagreeable circumstances. I received a free copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

A look back to a society and a period of time that is almost forgotten. Certainly the spirit of national pride, community and sense of duty is nothing like it was during the Second World War. Anita Leslie writes with humour, almost detachment, about her years as an ambulance driver with the British Mechanised Transport Corps. Serving in the Middle East and Europe, she went everywhere and witnessed things most of us can only imagine. Thousands of young women from all walks of life volunteered for service during the war. The old fashioned notion about women being "the weaker sex" is laughable when you read about the sacrifice and heroism of women like Anita Leslie. Great read if you are a fan of non-fiction from this era.

This is an amazing book. It was written during WWII by a fearless woman who wouldn't normally have been allowed in war zones, and she goes through different countries and war zones as an ambulance driver with an adventurous attitude and a keen eye.

As she goes from North Africa to the European theater, the battles get closer and the encounters more dangerous. She's with the Free French Army as they liberate Paris, watches the Berlin liberation parade from the grandstand, visits Hitler's office, and is horrified when she sees Nordhausen concentration camp after it has been liberated. The description of the camp is chilling.

Her stories of the battle of Colmar in France are harrowing. She goes back to Ireland and England after the battle, and ends up having lunch with her cousin Winston Churchill, who is busy making "phone calls to Eden and 'Ike' and Roosevelt". She tries to tell him about France, "the hungry broken country we had left behind us".

Anita Leslie is funny and irreverent. She makes her war experience sound like a "lark" at times, which contrasts with the stark reality of the thousands of deaths she witnesses. It can make for a jarring read at times, especially when she goes from discussing death to fashion in France in the same paragraph. She meets many mothers of soldiers, both Allies and enemies, and sympathizes with them all.

I really enjoyed this book, especially the ending, and readers of historical fiction will appreciate it.

Thanks to Bloomsbury Caravel and NetGalley for the ARC of the book in exchange for an honest opinion.

Leslie, a cousin of Winston Churchill, had the dysfunctional aristocratic upbringing of a Wodehouse novel--sketchy schooling, left with grandparents on an Irish estate with its own local IRA contingent, expected to be blithe, flappery and flirtatious (and never, ever get sunburned). Instead, while her two brothers joined the British military, Leslie signed up for the womens' Motorized Transport Corps to drive ambulances, and this memoir follows her from the half-assed training camp under the Battle of Britain (girl scouts had to show them all how to pitch tents while the planes roared overhead) through Egypt, working on the Eastern Times newspaper out of Beirut, joining the Free French army to get into liberating Europe and writing accounts of Russians in Berlin while sitting in Hitler's recently vacated office. Leslie grew into the better traits of her time and class--sangfroid, dark humor and a sense of searing fair play which make her accounts of retreating Nazis murdering ambulance drivers and witnessing the effects of the CBO particularly powerful. This is a re-issue of the 1948 work, which ran counter to the way the public wanted to see women in the wake of WWII.

I had hard time getting into this book. It seemed to be a collection of names and places with little stories in between. Since I did not finish the book, I do not intend to publish a review.

A potentially interesting story but Leslie is not a natural writer: this lacks either the introspection of a diary or the narrative and descriptive skills of a memoir. Too often we're told things happen e.g. a train load of wounded soldiers arrives, and that's it, the next sentence goes on to something completely different. Interesting raw material for a more characterful writer or a historian of women in WW2.