The film isn't lost or unavailable; I own a VHS copy. Very timely in its day, it begins with the British defeat of the Graf Spee at the River Plate in Dec. 1939, mere months before its 1940 release. The titular women are a group of nurses sent to the front in France pre-Dunkirk. Prominent among them is Pamela (Wendy Barrie), a feckless party girl who beats a manslaughter rap by enlisting in the Women's Auxiliary. (Don't ask.) Serving under the command of a tart but kindly major (legendary theatre veteran Elsie Janis, very watchable and believable) who is in reality--gasp!--the mother Pamela has never met, the pert miss learns leadership and character by the end, of course, and gets the guy as well. Every bit as stiff-upper-lip as Mrs. Miniver but with duller characters, the movie is notable for its exceptional Oscar-nominated visual effects, principally in the 20-minute assault on a French village by British artillery unaware that trapped in the village are, you guessed it, the women in war.
Review of Women in War
