When life seems hard, the courageous do not lie down and accept defeat; instead, they are all the more determined to struggle for a better future.
The impact of the war on the nation’s women was widespread and immediate. Career girls lost their work as unnecessary businesses shut down, housewives coped with austerity measures, mothers sent their children away to safety in the countryside and thousands signed up to fill auxiliary military roles as well as essential civil jobs, from driving buses to milking cows, that were left vacant as men went into combat.
Princess Elizabeth’s mother, Queen Elizabeth said that when Buckingham Palace was bombed she felt she could look the East Enders in the eye. Yhey were all in it together now.
At Buckingham Palace, the older Queen Elizabeth officially became the commandant-in-chief of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service. Their uniforms, the magazine declared, were “the first warlike garments to be worn by an English Queen since the days of Boadicea.” And her daughters Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret were, like so many young Britons, sent away from London for protection from the Blitz.
And, when Princess Elizabeth turned 18 in 1944, LIFE Magazine would report, she advocated for herself to serve the way other young Brits would have to.
“[The] King ruled after long deliberations with his councilors that her training as a princess outweighed the nation’s increasing manpower problems and that ‘Betts’ should not join any of the women’s auxiliaries, nor work in a factory,” the magazine related. “But Betts had other ideas. It was not surprising that not long afterward the Palace made a straight-face announcement that the King ‘had been pleased to grant an honorary commission as second subaltern in the ATS to Her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth.‘”
Princess Elizabeth, heiress presumptive to the throne, was commissioned as an honorary second subaltern in the ATS — basically the equivalent of a second lieutenant — and began training in March of 1945. Per royal decree from her father the King, she was given no special rank or privilege. (She did later earn a promotion to junior commander.) At the time, the Associated Press reported that she was the first woman in the royal family to be “a full-time active member in the women’s service.”
Though not a combat role, serving in the ATS was not without its risks. The service saw its first death in 1942, when a woman serving at an anti-aircraft station was killed by a bomb. Nor was it something those with privilege sought to avoid; Winston Churchill’s daughter also Mary served in the ATS.
Once she joined up, the Princess passed a military driving test, learned to read maps and worked repairing engines. (She did sleep at Windsor Castle, though, rather than in the camp with her fellow ATS members.) She was quickly dubbed by the press as ‘Princess Auto Mechanic’.
In addition to serving the country, she took her time with the ATS as a valuable lesson in what life was like for non-royals — including just what went into the scene shown seen in the photograph above. “I never knew there was quite so much advance preparation [for a royal visit],” LIFE quoted the Princess as saying. “I’ll know another time.”
Elizabeth was still in the ATS when Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, and she and Margaret famously slipped out of Buckingham Palace to join revelers celebrating in London. Her military service ended with Japan’s surrender later that year. The war was over, but it had taken its toll on the royal family. George VI had helped lead his country in its darkest hour, but his health (thanks in part to a lifelong smoking habit) would never be the same.
And while the Queen was best known as a keen and passionate rider and breeder of horses, her teenage years in the ATS left their mark. She taught her children how to drive, and well into her 90s was frequently be seen behind the wheel of one of the many cars in the royal collection — and she was known to jump at the chance to diagnose and repair faulty engines and machinery, just as she was trained to do more than 70 years ago.
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