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Evelyn Dunbar Convalescent Nurses making Camouflage Nets Evelyn Dunbar's Convalescent nurses making camouflage nets © IWM was in the Persephone Quarterly, as it then was, in the winter of 2003. It was taken from War through Artists' Eyes by Eric Newton 1944. It was also in War pictures by British artists: Women 1943. Here Laura Knight observed that the grim necessities of war had further enlarged the opportunities for women's work 'in spheres formerly considered foreign to their sex' and concluded, 'After what she has done in this titanic struggle, will she not guard what she has gained, and to Man's efforts add her own? If she can do what she has done in the war, what may she not do in peace?' (Although a 1940s reader might have slightly resented the implication that in the 1930s women sat around doing nothing. But we know what she meant.) Even the convalescent nurses were expected to work, which in this case meant threading coloured strips of fabric into nets designed to conceal military equipment and buildings from aerial bombardment. It was tedious, awkward, dusty yet important work. (All this from p 105 of Gill Clarke's book).

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