They did! From what I remember, those books were pretty much equal-opportunity gender-wise when it came to fighting, and would have been a great read if they cut out the propaganda. (The girls fighting might have been a part of the ideological message as well, though: in post-war times, the inhabitants of the occupied territories - that is, mostly women, children and other non-combatants - were mostly depicted as collaborators, there were very real legal repercussions etc., so those childrens' books sort of provided a model for how those people should have acted: that is, die heroically rather than try to survive.)

Gerald Durrell is awesome! I still remember lengthy passages from many of his books by heart.