Canadian Women's Army Corps (CWAC) Lieutenant Beulah Rosen (née Jaenicke) held on to her scrapbook ‘for all those years, nearly 60 years’, before she donated it to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Rosen recalled that ‘each place I moved as a married woman with children and so on it wasn't thrown out it was kept. I didn't keep my uniform. I didn't – I kept a few badges’. Her scrapbook mattered to her. It was among her most prized wartime keepsakes, filled with clippings of the cartoons she had published in army periodicals. She donated a book entitled ‘Photographs’ for her cartoons, and a scrapbook marketed to military personnel, Snaps and Scraps: My Life in the Army, as her wartime memorabilia. Rosen was one of the approximately 45,000 women who served in the women's divisions of the Canadian army, navy and air force during the Second World War. The CWAC and the Royal Canadian Air Force (Women's Division) [RCAF (WD)] formed in 1941. Commonly called the Wrens, the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS) was organized in 1942. Like other female veterans, Rosen voiced her place in the armed services when she preserved her memories, and attempted to ensure that future generations had a record of her wartime contributions, experiences, and perceptions.

Drawing on an examination of twenty scrapbooks and photograph albums by and about army, naval, and air force servicewomen, this chapter responds to Cynthia Enloe's call for scholars to ‘pay […] close attention to women inside militaries’. These albums provide insight into how servicewomen saw and wanted others to see their military service. They give tantalizing glimpses into servicewomen's relationships, work, and social activities. Four veterans left their war record in albums designed for military personnel. Olga Munroe and Beulah Rosen documented their wartime service in Snaps and Scraps: My Life in the Army. Two others, Camilla Forbes (née Balcombe) and Rosemary Gordon Robb Pimental, used a variation on the theme, Snaps and Scraps: My Life in the Navy. The other scrapbooks are housed in a variety of albums with blank pages. Female veterans and/or their representatives narrated their own service history and, in some cases their division's history, through a unique blend of snapshots, correspondence, newspaper clippings, recruitment material such as This is a Woman's War, too, military documents such as leave passes, and other mementos, such as concert programmes.