An Article by Joyce Miller
The history of World War II is often told through the lens of battlefields, but there is another area where heroism was on full display, though it is far less celebrated. It occurred within the quiet walls of the domestic sphere. For women like Nellie Collins, the war affected them every day. It was a constant barrage of grueling battles to maintain a household under the crushing weight of poverty, loss, and constant fear.
This is not just about the widows, though, but also about the children that those widows raise among all this conflict.
Widowed while still young after her husband, Walter Miller, died of cancer, Nellie was left to raise two small daughters while caring for her own father, whose severe asthma frequently confined him to bed. It was an era where there was no space to fall apart, and Nellie’s life became one where endurance was a requirement. As a mother, she had to make sure she was well enough to care for her children.
We praise single parents today, especially single mothers, for doing the incredible job of working, taking care of children and hopefully living their own life. Of course, that is an incredible feat to achieve, yet we need to understand just how tough it was for the widows in times of World War II. They did not have any modern convenience.
Laundry didn’t have machines as we do today. Cooking was done in oil stoves or holes in the wall that often left burns on the food no matter how well you cooked, and the idea of wasting anything was a farfetched one. If you spilled something in your food, even something inedible, the only option was often to consume it anyway. Food, like everything else, was scarce.
In 1939, as the threat of war intensified, Nellie made the difficult decision to move her family to the Norfolk countryside for safety. Though they escaped the direct bombing of London, the hardship followed them. Nellie had to find creative ways to supplement their income.
She took on work cleaning the local church for ‘half a crown’ a month and went ‘sticking’—walking through fields to gather fallen wood in old sacks to use for fuel. These long walks, with sacks tied at the corners and carried on their backs, were a necessary part of survival, providing the means for widows like her to light their fires.
Nellie Collins represents a generation of wartime widows who carried the weight of the household quietly. They did not seek recognition for their labor, nor did they have the language to process their grief. Their heroism was found in the honesty and perseverance of an ordinary life lived under extraordinary circumstances.
It’s women and widows like her that made it possible that the soldiers had a home to return to. Even though widows like Nellie weren’t expecting any, war time required home, society, and community to exist, and those like Nelly survived in spite of that.
These widows suffered quietly. Even now, remembrance is enough, and to carry on through the difficult times. These widows sacrificed a lot. Let’s not have it be in vain.