MANY CIVILIAN ORGANISATIONS sprang up to encourage young people assist on the home front during the Second World War of 1939-45 but the majority were male orientated, a bias the government tried to correct with the formation of an official unit designed to appeal to teenage girls. 

The National Association of Girls' Training Corps was set up by the Board of Education (forerunner of the Ministry of Education) with units in most towns and cities dedicated to the wider aims of citizenship for young ladies with instruction in home making, craftsmanship and public affairs.  

No 816 (Bourne) Company was formed on 7th March 1943 and was an instant success, organised on military lines with a local family doctor as commandant. She was Dr Ruth Finn who had returned to Bourne from her home in London to help her brother, Dr John Galletly (1899-1993), in his practice at No 40 North Road, now headquarters of the Galletly Medical Practice, at a time when the number of doctors in the town had been reduced because of the war. 

Other officers were appointed as adjutant and quartermaster and the uniforms issued to the girls consisted of black shoes, navy skirts, white blouses, navy ties and navy forage caps. There were ranks and promotions for leadership and good conduct and by the end of the year more than 50 girls had joined the unit which was busy with a full programme of training and parades, usually beginning in Harrington Street which became their regular parade ground (pictured above).. 

There was a strong community element in the objectives of the corps and in a message to her new recruits, Dr Finn said: "It is hoped to train each cadet for service to the community, both as a woman and a citizen, and show her opportunities for immediate service, the motive of which shall be to provide out of her own leisure, leisure for others. Will you all remember this as you get older? Help young people wherever you find them. Our GTC will then be fruitful indeed." 

Typical training sessions were lectures on home nursing given by officials from the Red Cross, practical work on bed making at the mental hospital in St Peter's Road, drilling, talks on leadership, organisation and etiquette, ambulance work and stretcher bearing, sanitation, local government, map reading and the Morse code.  

The girls also had an active social life holding dances at the Corn Exchange when boys from the Army Cadet and Air Training Corps were invited. There were also garden fetes, summer games evenings at the Abbey Lawn, and other events but most had a fund raising element for good causes, usually the war effort. These activities included knitting blankets and garments for refugees in occupied Europe, picking rose hips for turning into syrup, farm work and raising money to help the forces. 

Highpoint of the winter activities was an annual pantomime and most of the girls gave up their free evenings to rehearse for the show, one of the most successful being a production of Cinderella that was presented at the Corn Exchange for two nights in January 1945. Ceremonial occasions were also popular and the company turned out in strength in May 1944 to mark Youth Sunday, marching behind the army cadet band for a service at the Baptist Church in West Street.  

A second parade was held that year for Salute the Soldier Week, a national patriotic celebration of the army's role in the war and several of the girls went on to regular military service with the ATS and the WRENS. There were other parades for the presentation of long service stripes and proficiency badges. 

Training courses were also held at Stamford, Lincoln and other venues, where the girls, many of them away from home for the first time, were treated to a taste of communal living, sleeping on straw mattresses on the floors of drill halls, doing their ablutions in washrooms and eating cookhouse meals. 

The girls also adopted their own warship, the 225-ton HMS Walwyns Castle, a small craft with a crew whose ages ranged from 20 to 50. The girls were soon sending them parcels, including a gramophone and a collection of records. Books, stationery and other comforts followed on a regular basis, paid for with money raised from whist drives and dances. Crew members responded with letters of thanks and accounts of their doings and a beautifully-crafted model of the ship which was put on display at a garden fete held in the grounds of Dr Galletly's home the following summer. In November 1944, the girls decided on a special present and despite wartime food rationing, they banded together to provide sufficient ingredients for a massive cake that arrived at the ship in time for Christmas.  

HMS Walwyns Castle, a former fishing trawler, survived the war and was returned to the owners in March 1946 when it resumed its original role. 

The Bourne company was presented with its own flag on Sunday 10th September 1944 by Miss Kathleen Curlett OBE, Director of the Girls' Training Corps, showing the blue, wine and black colours of the movement, and the handing over ceremony was followed by a parade to the Abbey Church where the flag was dedicated and blessed.  

Later that day, cadets from Bourne went by coach to a rally at Grantham where they were addressed by Miss Curlett and afterwards there was a discussion on the future of the corps. All agreed that the GTC should continue after the war but with modifications in the uniform and the basic training but this optimism failed to materialise. 

Dr Finn resigned in April 1945 when she returned to her home in London to work and she was succeeded as commandant by Joan M Crofts who remained in office until the Bourne company disbanded soon after the war ended in 1945. 

Dr Finn, who had taken an active role in many local organisations, died in 1992, aged 89, and her work for the community was recognised by Bourne Town Council in the spring of 2004 when a street on the new housing estate being built on the site of the former Bourne Hospital in South Road was named Finn Close.