Tereska Torrès was a member of the Corps des Volontaires françaises within Free French Forces, and worked as a secretary in Charles de Gaulle's London headquarters.

[4] Torrès wrote the book as "a serious-minded account of wartime situations" and an exploration of "the way in which conventional mores break down during conflict".

[5][6] For a half century, Torrès refused to allow Women's Barracks to be published in France because she felt readers might come away thinking the Free French Forces had behaved irresponsibly in London.

In 2007, The Independent called them "frank, moving and funny diaries of life in wartime London" and "among the finest first-hand accounts of Britain during The Blitz".

In the evenings, people of all ages shelter in underground stations, and young men and women pack into crowded pubs, clubs, and restaurants, while high explosives fall nearby.

Since there are no men featured on the cover, and the women are exchanging romantic glances between each other, the cover art was a sign that this book contained lesbian characters and possibly a homosexual romantic story line.A fictionalized account of Torrès's wartime experiences, the book "quickly became the first paperback original bestseller," selling over two million copies in its first five years.

[2][4][12] Literary historian Kaye Mitchell dates the subgenre of lesbian pulp fiction as starting with the book's publication.

[2][7][1][10] A letter from "a literary expert" read into the minutes by Fawcett president Ralph Foster Daigh compared "Women's Barracks with Plato, Homer, Sappho, Shakespeare, and Marlowe", scandalizing the members of the committee.

[1]: 267 The book was not banned nationwide in the US because Fawcett agreed to add a narrator who commented disapprovingly on the characters' behavior so as to "teach moral lessons" about the "problem" of lesbianism.