Barton C. Hacker, Margaret Vining-A Companion To Women's Military History-Brill Academic Publishers (2012)

A Companion to Women’s Military History
History of Warfare
Editors
Kelly DeVries
Loyola University Maryland
John France
University of Wales, Swansea
Michael S. Neiberg
United States Army War College, Pennsylvania
Frederick Schneid
High Point University, North Carolina
VOLUME 74
The titles published in this series are listed at www.brill.nl/hw

A Companion to
Women’s Military History
Edited by
Barton C. Hacker
Margaret Vining
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2012
Cover illustration: An 1863 photo shows a laundress and her family with the 31st Pennsylvania,
American Civil War (1861–1865).
Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to women's military history / edited by Barton C. Hacker, Margaret Vining.

p. cm. — (History of warfare ; v. 74)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-90-04-21217-6 (hbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-20682-3 (e-book)
1. Women and war—History. 2. Women and the military—History. 3. Military history, Modern.
I. Hacker, Barton C., 1935- II. Vining, Margaret.
U21.75.C66 2012
355.0082—dc23
2012015726
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contents v
Contents
List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Introduction
Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
PART I
WOMEN AND MILITARY INSTITUTIONS FROM ANTIQUITY
TO THE PRESENT: SURVEY ARTICLES
1. “Keep the Women out of the Camp!”: Women and Military Insti
tutions in the Classical World
Jorit Wintjes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2. Camp Followers, Sutlers, and Soldiers’ Wives: Women in Early

Modern Armies (c. 1450–c. 1650)
Mary Elizabeth Ailes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3. Essential Women, Necessary Wives, and Exemplary Soldiers:

The Military Reality and Cultural Representation of Women’s
Military Participation (1600–1815)
John A. Lynn II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4. Reformers, Nurses, and Ladies in Uniform: The Changing Status

of Military Women (c. 1815–c. 1914)
Barton C. Hacker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
5. Volunteers, Auxiliaries, and Women’s Mobilization: The First

World War and Beyond (1914–1939)
Kimberly Jensen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
6. Women Join the Armed Forces: The Transformation of Women’s

Military Work in World War II and After (1939–1947)
Margaret Vining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
vi contents
7. Almost Integrated? American Servicewomen and Their Inter
national Sisters Since World War II
D’Ann Campbell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
8. Revolutionaries, Regulars, and Rebels: Women and Non-Western

Armies since World War II
Barton C. Hacker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
PART II
PICTURES OF WOMEN’S MILITARY WORK
SINCE THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Introduction to Part II
Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Illustrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Following page 384
PART III
RESEARCH ESSAYS IN WOMEN’S MILITARY HISTORY
9. Women and War in Early Modern Russia (Seventeenth to

Eighteenth Centuries)
Carol B. Stevens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
10. Sisters in Arms: Quebec Convents at the Crossroads of Empire

Jan Noel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
11. U.S. Military Wives in the Philippines, from the Philippine War
to World War II
Donna Alvah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
12. “The Spirit of Woman-Power”: Representation of Women in

World War I Posters
Elizabeth Prelinger with Barton C. Hacker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
13. “German Women Help to Win!” Women and the German Mili
tary in the Age of World Wars
Karen Hagemann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
contents vii
14. “Not Even For Three Lines in History”: Jewish Women Under
ground Members and Partisans during the Holocaust
Yehudit Kol-Inbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
15. Sniper Girls and Fearless Heroines: Wartime Representations of

Foreign Women in English-Canadian Press, 1941–1943
Dorotea Gucciardo and Megan Howatt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
16. Enlisted Women in the U.S. Army 1948–2008: A View from the
Market Place
Judith Hicks Stiehm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
viii contents
LIST OF illustrations ix
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Sketch of camp life by Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, 1520–22.

2. Etching of a soldier and a woman by Daniel Hopfer, c. 1530.
3. Woodcut by unidentified artist of Swiss pikemen on the march from
the Schweizerchronik, by Johannes Stumpf, 1548.
4. Anonymous woodcut depicting a camp scene, published in Rafael
Holinshead’s Chronicles (of England, Scotland and Ireland) (London,
1577).
5. Engraving of camp being pitched, from Kriegskunst zu Fuss by Johann
Jacobi von Wallhausen, 1615.
6. Etching of Bohemian mercenaries in camp, by Jacques Callot, c. 1621.
7. Oil painting of a baggage train under attack, by Jan Breughel the Elder
and Sebastian Vrancx, undated.
8. Oil painting of army column on the march, by Sebastian Vrancx,
undated.
9. Etching of soldiers on the march, by Johann Hulsmann, 1630.
10. Oil painting of soldiers and a serving woman at a sutler’s tent, by
Philips Wouwerman, 1655.
11. Oil painting of vivandières in camp, by Jean-Baptiste Pater, c. 1720.
12. Etching of British light dragoons in barracks, by Thomas Rowlandson,
1788.
13. Watercolor of a French soldier and a camp follower, by Jan Anthonie
Langendijk, 1795.
14. Aquatint of British camp scene, engraved by Carl Schütz after a draw-
ing by Thomas Rowlandson, 1798.
15. Lithograph of a sutler and her customers in the peninsula, 1803.
16. Sketches of women’s duties in camp, by William Henry Pyne, 1803.
17. Engraving of ladies nursing the wounded in the town of Waterloo
after the battle, by Thomas Sutherland, 1816.
18. Watercolor of marching infantry and camp followers, by Cornelius
Henderson, 1835.
19. Colored lithograph of Florence Nightingale in the military hospital at
Scutari, 1855.
20. Colored lithograph of Sisters of Charity nursing wounded soldiers
during the Crimean War, 1855.
x LIST OF illustrations
21. Photograph of a soldier’s wife serving French zouaves visiting the
camp of the 4th Dragoon Guards, by Roger Fenton, 1855.
22. Photograph of a French cantinière in the uniform of a zouave regi-
ment, by Roger Fenton, 1855.
23. Photograph of a laundress and her family with the 31st Pennsylvania,
1863.
24. Watercolor of camp followers in Florida during the Spanish-American
War, by Charles Johnson Post, 1898.
25. Photograph of FANYs on horseback, 1909.
26. Illustration of women workers in a British munitions factory, by For-
tunino Mantania in The Sphere, 24 June 1916.
27. Photograph of a “wig wag girl” in the U.S. Women’s Defense League,
1916.
28. Two female streetcar conductors stand alongside a trolley heading to
Montparnasse from Paris, undated.
29. Photograph of German tram workers in World War I, undated.
30. Photo of a German female street cleaner on duty in Berlin during
World War I, undated.
31. Color lithograph poster by Paul Honoré, The spirit of woman power,
1917.
32. Color lithograph poster by James Montgomery Flagg, Wake up, Amer-
ica, 1917.
33. Color lithograph poster by Schneck, It’s up to you, c. 1917.
34. Color lithograph poster by Julius Diez, Gold zerschlägt Eisen, 1916.
35. Color lithograph poster by Ellsworth Young, Remember Belgium,
c. 1918.
36. Color rotogravure poster by Fred Spear, Enlist, 1915 or 1916.
37. Color lithograph poster by E.V. Kealey, Women of Britain say-“Go!”,
1915.
38. Color lithograph poster by Howard Chandler Christy, “Gee, I wish I
were a MAN,” 1917.
39. Color lithograph poster by Ernest Hamlin Baker, For every fighter a
woman worker, 1918.
40. Color lithograph poster by Alonzo Earl Foringer, The greatest mother
in the world, 1917 and 1918.
41. Photograph of the Yeoman (F) contingent at the Industrial Depot,
New Orleans Naval Station, c. 1918.
42. Photograph of a Red Cross nurse assisting a young soldier with artifi-
cial arms, by Lewis Wickes Hine, 1918.
LIST OF illustrations xi
43. Photograph of German switchboard operators working for the Amer-
ican Expeditionary Force, by a U.S. Signal Corps photographer, 17
January 1919.
44. Photograph of uniformed members of the Society of Friends War Vic-
tims Relief Committee on duty in Poland after the end of hostilities,
undated.
45. Photograph of four women officers in the Chinese Red Army, c. 1937.
46. Photograph of female British factory workers assembling rifles, 1939.
47. Photograph of a Finnish Lotta taking weather measurement, 1939.
48. Photograph of three Soviet female guerrilla fighters in the Great Patri-
otic War, undated.
49. Photograph of two WACs servicing a truck, Fort Huachuca, Arizona,
8 December 1942.
50. Photograph of women workers finishing the transparent nose cones
of A-20 attack bombers at the Douglas Aircraft’s plant in Long Beach,
California, by Alfred Palmer, October 1942.
51. Photograph of a Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service
work party unpacking stores in Normandy, July 1944.
52. Photograph of a member of a German antiaircraft artillery auxiliary
unit operating a sound locator, undated.
53. Photograph of a Soviet woman operating a drill press during World
War II, undated.
54. Photograph of the Women of World War II Memorial in London
sculpted by John W. Mills and dedicated 9 July 2005.
55. Photograph of Grace Hopper, naval officer and computer pioneer,
undated.
56. Photograph of French army nurse giving a child an anti-cholera injec-
tion, 1953.
57. Photograph of Brig. Gen. Anna Mae Hays, chief of the Army Nurse
Corps, on an inspection tour in Vietnam, c. 1965.
58. Photograph of Sgt. Patricia Seawalt, a member of the U.S. Army’s 101st
Airborne Division during the Persian Gulf War, 1991.
59. Photograph of Carme Chacón, Spain’s first female Minister of Defense,
April 2008.
60. Photograph of British sailor Faye Turney, 2007.
61. Photograph of two female members of India’s Border Security Force
at a village crossing near Amritsar, 11 September 2009.
62. Photograph of female officers and soldiers of the three services of the
Chinese People’s Liberation Army marching in Beijing, 1 October
2009.
xii LIST OF illustrations
list of contributors xiii
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Mary Elizabeth Ailes, Ph.D. (University of Minnesota, 1997) is professor of

history at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. She specializes in early
modern European military, diplomatic, and social history. Her recent
publications include “Wars, widows, and state formation in seventeenth-
century Sweden,” Scandinavian Journal of History 31 no. 1 (March 2006);
and Military migration and state formation: The British military commu-
nity in seventeenth-century Sweden (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
2002). Her current research focuses on women’s involvement in the
Swedish war effort during the Thirty Years’ War.
Donna Alvah is associate professor and Margaret Vilas Chair of U.S.

History at St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY. Her publications include
Unofficial ambassadors: American military families overseas and the Cold
War (New York: New York University Press, 2007). She is writing a book
on children in the Cold War.
D’Ann Campbell, Ph.D. (University of North Carolina, 1979), is vice presi-

dent for academic affairs, dean of the college, and professor of history at
Culver-Stockton College in Canton, MO. Her specialties include U.S.
women’s and social history, especially the twentieth century. Her publi-
cations include Women at war with America: Private lives in a patriotic era
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985) and “Women in combat in
United States, Great Britain, Germany and Soviet Union,” Journal of
Military History 57 (April 1993): 301–23. Her current work focuses on
American servicewomen.
Dorotea Gucciardo, doctoral candidate (The University of Western

Ontario, London), is completing her thesis on the social history of electri-
fication in Canada. A specialist in technology, her recent publications
include editing a special issue on military technology (with Jonathan
Vance), Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, 30 no. 3 (June 2010)
and “Another of those mad, wild schemes: Canadian inventions to win
the Second World War,” in ICON: Journal of the International Committee
for the History of Technology (Summer 2009): 167–76.
xiv list of contributors
Barton C. Hacker, Ph.D. (University of Chicago, 1968), is curator of armed
forces history at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of
American History, Washington, DC. In addition to women’s military his-
tory, he specializes in the social history of military technology and the
history of nonwestern military institutions. His most recent publications
include “Cutting a new pattern: Uniforms and women’s mobilization for
war, 1854–1919,” Textile History 41 (2010): 108–43 (with Margaret Vining);
and “Firearms, horses, and slave soldiers: The military history of African
slavery,” ICON: Journal of the International Committee for the History of
Technology 14 (2008): 60–81.
Karen Hagemann, Dr. phil. habil. (University of Hamburg, 1990, and

Technical University Berlin, 2000) is James G. Kenan Distinguished Pro
fessor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She
has published widely on the history of welfare states, labor culture and
women’s movements, as well as the history of the nation, the military,
war, and gender. Her most recent books include: (edited with Stefanie
Schüler-Springorum) Home/Front. Military and gender in twentieth-cen-
tury Germany (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2002); (edited with Stefan
Dudink and John Tosh) Masculinities in politics and war: Gendering mod-
ern history (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
Megan Howatt (MA, University of Ottawa; LL.B./B.C.L. McGill University)

is a member of the Quebec Bar and the former law clerk of Justice Anne
Mactavish of the Federal Court of Canada. Her areas of interest include
constitutional law, human rights, and critical theory.
Kimberly Jensen, Ph.D. (University of Iowa, 1992) is professor of history

and gender studies at Western Oregon University, Monmouth. A special-
ist in U.S. women’s history, gender and war and the social and cultural
history of medicine, her recent publications include Mobilizing Minerva:
American women in the First World War (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2008) and, with Erika Kuhlman, the anthology Women and transna-
tional activism in historical perspective (Dordrecht: Republic of Letters,
2010). Her current project is a biography of suffragist, public health activ-
ist and leader in twentieth-century transnational medical relief, Esther
Clayson Pohl Lovejoy (1869–1967).
list of contributors xv
Yehudit Kol-Inbar, MA (The Hebrew University, 1990), is director of the
museums division at Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’
Remembrance Authority Jerusalem, and was the curator-in-charge of the
permanent exhibition in the new Holocaust History Museum. Previously
she was the director of the museum department in the Ministry of
Culture, and initiated Israel’s Museums Law and the Diploma Studies in
Museology. Among her publications is “Spots of light: To be a woman in
the Holocaust”, Yad Vashem (2007). In 2009/10 she curated the exhibition
“Architecture of murder—The blueprints of Auschwitz-Birkenau.” She is
currently the curator of the new exhibition at the Jewish Pavilion at
Auschwitz.
John A. Lynn II, Ph.D. (UCLA, 1973), is Distinguished Professor of Military

History at Northwestern University. His primary specialty is French and
general European military history 1610–1815, although his latest work
ranges more widely. His most recent books are Battle: A history of combat
and culture (Boulder: Westview Press, 2003 and 2004); Women, armies,
and warfare in early modern Europe (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2008); and Les guerres de Louis XIV (Paris: Perrin, 2010).
At present he is working on the history of surrender with an emphasis on
American experience.
Jan Noel, Ph.D. (University of Toronto 1987), is an associate professor of

history at the University of Toronto. She specializes in colonial North
American history. Her numerous publications deal with aboriginal and
colonial women and other topics relating to early Canada. Her Canada
dry: Temperance crusades before Confederation (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1995) won the Sir John A. Macdonald prize. Her latest book
is Along a river: The first French-Canadian women (University of Toronto
Press 2012).
Elizabeth Prelinger, Ph.D. (Harvard University, 1987), is the Keyser Family

Professor of Art History at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
She specializes in the graphic arts of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century. Her most recent work includes an exhibition and ac
companying book on the prints of the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch
(Washington: National Gallery of Art; Munich and New York: Prestel
Verlag, 2010). Her essay, on the representation of women in World War I
posters, co-written with Barton C. Hacker and with the participation of
Margaret Vining, represents her first foray into the field of military art.
xvi list of contributors
Carol B. Stevens, Ph.D. (University of Michigan, 1985), is professor in the
history department at Colgate University, Hamilton, NY. A specialist in
Muscovite history with a focus on the military, her recent work includes:
“Notes on the officer corps of Peter I’s army,” Russian History/Histoire
Russe 35 nos. 1–2 (Spring–Summer, 2008): 85–97 and Russia‘s wars of
emergence, 1460–1730 (Harlow and New York: Longman/Pearson: 2007).
She is currently working on soldiers’ wives in early modern Russia.
Judith Hicks Stiehm, Ph.D. (Columbia University, 1969), is professor of

political science at Florida International University, where she has also
served as provost and academic vice president. Her books include Bring
me men and women: Mandated change at the U.S. Air Force Academy
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Arms and the enlisted
woman (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); It’s our military too:
Women and the U.S. military (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1996); and Champions for peace: Women winners of the Nobel Prize for
Peace (Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)
Margaret Vining, MA (The George Washington University, 1983), is cura-

tor of armed forces history at the Smithsonian Institution’s National
Museum of American History. In addition to women’s military history,
she specializes in the material culture of the U.S. armed forces. Her most
recent publications include “Cutting a new pattern: Uniforms and wom-
en’s mobilization for war, 1854–1919,” Textile History 41 (2010): 108–43
(with Barton C. Hacker); and “War and peace 101: The University of
Chicago, applied sociology and the Great War,” ICON: Journal of the
International Committee for the History of Technology 14 (2008): 106–22.
Jorit Wintjes, Dr. phil. (University of Würzburg, 2003), is senior lecturer for
ancient history at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg. In addi-
tion to women’s military history in antiquity, his main research interests
are ancient naval history and Greek rhetoric in the Roman Empire. His
most recent publications include “Ein haariges Problem—Zu Caes. civ.
3,9 und D.S. 42,10,” Würzburger Jahrbücher für Altertumswissenschaften 34
(2010): 87–96; and “Defending the realm: Roman naval capabilities in
waters beyond the Mediterranean”, in M.M. Yu (ed.), New interpretations
in naval history, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2009): 1–13.
introduction 1
Introduction
Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining
Military institutions have everywhere and always strongly influenced the

course of history. The fact that women have universally participated in
these institutions had largely gone unnoticed before twentieth-century
armed forces began actively seeking female recruits. In armies, as in society
at large, women’s work was necessary, thankless, and so taken for granted
as to be all but ignored. Women rarely fought, which may account for the
common silence of military historians on the subject, quite apart from any
likely but hard-to-define male bias. Most military history remains enthu-
siastically a history of war and combat, preoccupied with “the exploits of
men on the field of battle while condemning to limbo by the process of
neglect the more prosaic activities of contractors, commissaries, quarter-
master, sutlers, and administrators generally” (Bowler 1975, 3. Cf. Keegan
1976; Paret 1972; Showalter 1975). Such support services belonged not to
the battlefield but to the world of camp and train, where the women were.
The varied real-life military roles of women in Classical Antiquity (chapter
1, this volume) and early modern Europe (chapters 2 and 3, this volume)
are the subject of this volume’s first three chapters.
When women did fight, their exploits were not overlooked. With few
exceptions, the early history of military women largely focused on women
warriors or war leaders, as demonstrated quite elegantly in Mary Beard’s
chapter (1946/1962, 287–95, 368–69) on women and war and the works she
cited in her groundbreaking 1946 study of Woman as force in history.
Although it no longer commands the field so much as it once did, this
fascination with women’s martial exploits remains strong and active among
both popular writers and scholars, as witness more recent books like those
by John Laffin (1968), David Truby (1977), Tim Newark (1989), Antonia
Fraser (1988), Jessica Salmonson (1991), George and Ann Forty (1997), David
Jones (1997), Reina Pennington (2003), and Rosalind Miles and Robin Cross
(2008, 2011), to say nothing of a more recent issue of the IIAS Newsletter
(2008) devoted to women warriors in Asia. Although the likes of Boudicca,
Joan of Arc, Molly Pitcher, or the Maid of Saragossa might enter legend or
history, their thousands of nameless sisters were consigned to that limbo
reserved for those who performed “the more prosaic activities.”
2 barton c. hacker & margaret vining
Women’s military work became more visible as literate middle- and
upper-class women increasingly displaced lower-class camp followers in
the great wars of the last half of the nineteenth century. Memoirs and
biographies, official and semi-official histories of military nurses, and pop-
ular accounts of women’s wartime activities, particularly in the Crimean
War, the American Civil War, and the Franco-Prussian War, made it harder
to overlook women’s military significance (see chapter 4, this volume).
Only in the First World War, however, did women other than nurses
become uniformed members of the armed forces (see chapter 5, this vol-
ume). For many historians, exemplified by Patricia Thomas (1978), the
formal entrance of women into military service marked the beginning of
women’s military history. This judgment seems to be sustained by the surge
of new material that had become familiar since the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury: memoirs (Marlow 1998; Lengel 2004; Klein 1997, 17–124), official and
semi-official histories of female members of the armed forces, especially
nurses and other medical personnel (Bowser 1917; Clappison 1918; NCSRN
1918; WRNS 1919; Davison 1919; Murray 1920; Dock et al. 1922; Stimson 1927;
Hoppin 1933), and a flood of popular accounts of women’s voluntary war
work (Billington 1915; Stone 1917; Blatch 1918; Clark 1918; Daggett 1918; Fraser
1918; McLaren 1918; Booth and Hill 1919; Smith 1919; James 1920). Marion
Nims’s 1918 annotated bibliography on women in the war is international
in scope; though particularly strong on official reports, it also lists numer-
ous more popular accounts published during the war. World War II brought
women back into the armed forces in even greater numbers (see chapter
6, this volume), although the experience likely lacked the impact of the
Great War; as Loyd Lee (1997, 99) has observed, memoirs apparently did
not follow the Second World War in such large numbers as the First
(Stoddard 1997a, 1997b; Litoff and Smith 1996; Bellafaire 2011, chapter 7).
The flow of histories, both official (Treadwell 1954; Boom 1958) and popu-
lar (Bigland 1946; Chessman 1946; Mead 1946; Ward 1955; Dessez 1955), in
contrast, seemed as numerous as those spawned by the Great War.
Memoirs, official histories, and popular accounts of women’s wartime
service, however numerous, could not in themselves make a field of wom-
en’s military history, nor could the history of military nursing outside the
world wars. As the first military field colonized by middle-class women,
nursing consistently attracted attention, sometimes in the form of broad
surveys (Hay 1953; Piggott 1975; Bingham 1979), but more usually focused
on a specific war (Bolster 1964; Curtiss 1966; Smaridge 1900; Simkins and
Patton 1935; Wood 1972; Kalisch 1975). Other works, whatever their merits,
introduction 3
remained isolated; they could only point the way, not define a new field of
study. Into this category fell Magnus Hirschfeld’s 1934 sexual history of the
Great War and Victor Robinson’s edited 1943 collection of essays on morals
in wartime, which primarily addressed military prostitution, also the sub-
ject of a chapter in the 1962 history of prostitution and society by Fernando
Henriques. Walter Blumenthal’s 1952 study of camp followers in the
American Revolution broke new ground, as did Collett Wadge’s 1946 com-
pendium of uniforms worn by women in both world wars. The contrast
between Wadge’s catalog and Elizabeth Ewing’s far more readable and
well-contextualized 1975 survey of uniformed women over several centuries
underlines the transformation of understanding that marked the third
quarter of the twentieth century. Military historians also began to recognize
the existence of women. Several popular histories of the British soldier
noticed his wife as well (Shepard 1952; Watteville 1955; Turner 1956); in the
1960s and 1970s, British military wives and families, especially those serving
abroad, themselves became the subject (Stanford 1962; Whitfield 1973;
Bamfield 1974). Historians also discovered the wives of soldiers serving on
America’s western frontiers during the nineteenth century (Brown 1974;
Ingalls 1978; Knight 1978; Stallard 1978; Stewart 1980).
The path toward a genuine field of women’s military history opened
with the rise of what came to be called “the new social history” in the 1960s
and the coeval revival of women’s history. Before then social history was a
kind of grab-bag term for what was left over after important matters—
politics, war, diplomacy—were attended to. The new social history that
emerged in the 1960s was in part another episode in the long-running
tension between history as humanistic or literary pursuit and history as
social science that had led to the late nineteenth-century divorce from
history of sociology, political science, and political economy. In fact, a
major aspect of the new social history was its kinship to the newly revived
field of historical sociology; both sought to apply rigorous measuring tech-
niques to a wide range of historical phenomena (Abrams 1980; Skocpol
1987; Abbott 1991; McDonald 1996b). By importing models and theories
from the social sciences, history itself could solidify its foundations and
expand its reach (Marczewski 1968; Swierenga 1970; Furet 1972; Erickson
1975); at the same time, the social sciences might benefit from restoring
the historical dimension that scientism had eliminated (Skocpol 1984, 1987;
Sztompka 1986; Banks 1989; Griffin 1995; McDonald 1996a).
But quantification was not the whole story. The new social history also
challenged Marxist historiography, posing a non-Marxist or even an anti-
Marxist alternative to dealing with the history of “the masses,” of ordinary
people rather than elites, of history “from the bottom up” (Hobsbawm 1972;
Veysey 1979, 1–5; Fox-Genovese and Genovese 1976; Tilly 1983; Eley 1996).
The early marginality of social history had provided room for any number
of pioneering women social historians (Smith 1984, 718–21), but this strand
of the new social history intertwined closely with the rise of a revitalized
field of women’s history (Smith-Rosenberg 1975; Offen, Pierson, and Rendall
1991; Gordon 1997) and, somewhat later, the newer field of gender history
(Scott 1986; Bock 1989; Downs 2010). Practitioners of both the new social
history and women’s history tended to disdain military history (along with
political and diplomatic history) as part of the conventional history they
saw themselves as challenging (Eley and Nield 1980; Zunz 1985; Lipsitz 1994;
Kessler-Harris 1997). Students of women’s history have tended to be more
interested in certain topics related to but distinct from women’s military
history, notably war’s female victims (Demers 2006; Brownmiller 1975;
Stiehm 1982; Elshtain 1987) or peace advocates and war resisters (Alonso
and Gustafson 1984; Steinson 1982; Elshtain and Tobias 1990; Alonso 1993).
The new social history also provided the indispensable prelude to the
emergence of the social history of armed forces, the so-called new military
history. The potential for novel approaches to old subjects drew growing
numbers of military historians into the fold. In place of the traditional
emphasis on great captains, strategy, and combat, the new military histo-
rians stressed the activities of common soldiers, the structure of military
institutions, and the interactions of armed forces and their societies (Kohn
1981; Coffman 1984; Karsten 1984; Knutsen 1987; Paret 1991; Higginbotham
1992; Citino 2007). It also for the first time opened a window into the expe-
rience of the women who regularly accompanied armies. In contrast to
earlier military history, which rarely mentioned women, works as varied
as Donald Engels (1978) on the logistics of the Macedonian army; G.R.
Watson (1969) on Roman soldiers; Michael Mallet (1974) on mercenaries
in Renaissance Italy; Geoffrey Parker (1972) on the logistics of the Spanish
army in the Netherlands during the Dutch Revolt; and Fritz Redlich (1964–
65) on German mercenary officers and their troops in the Thirty Years War;
and George and Anne Forty’s (1979) illustrated survey of the history of camp
followers, all made soldiers’ wives and camp followers an integral part of
the story.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the confluence of women’s history and the
new military history resulted in a growing number of works that in the
following decades ultimately contributed to the emergence of something
introduction 5
that might be termed women’s military history, as yet vaguely defined but
clearly encompassing more than tales of women warriors and personal
adventure. Traditional approaches hardly vanished; indeed they flourished,
but a new sensibility was also emerging. The centennial of the American
Civil War in the 1960s prompted a spate of books featuring women (Young
1959; Dannett and Jones 1963; Wiley 1965; Sterkx 1970; Baker 1977), among
which Mary Elizabeth Massey’s 1967 Bonnet brigades stands out as the first
comprehensive account of the full range of women’s wartime activities.
The bicentennial of the American Revolution in the 1970s proved no less
fruitful (De Pauw 1972, 1975, 1980; De Pauw and Hunt 1976; Engle 1976;
Norton 1976). General histories of women in the First World War mean-
while continued to appear (Mitchell 1965; Lemons 1973; Malan 1973; Cohen
1977; Marwick 1977; Johnson 1980), as did unit histories (Elkin 1967; Hewitt
1974; Sillia 1978; Keil 1979; Macdonald 1980; Martelet 1980), but much new
work addressed issues of gendered class (Davis 1967; Breen 1978b; Durham
1978; Bucki 1980; Conner 1980; Greenwald 1980) and race (Szajkowski 1970;
Barbeau 1978; Breen 1978a) during the war. A similar pattern marked stud-
ies of women in the Second World War: General (Trey 1972; Havens 1975;
Cassin-Scott 1980) and unit histories (Johnson 1970; Strother 1974; Kalisch
and Kalisch 1976; Beauman 1977; Cottam 1980a, 1980b) augmented by work
concerned with class and race (Pierson 1976; Summerfield 1977; Rupp 1978;
Miller 1980). The breadth of coverage also expanded to include women’s
roles in other wars (Compton 1970; Hill 1978; Spies 1980), histories of wom-
en’s military organization not limited to wartime (Kuhnke 1974; Bidwell
1977; Mason 1977; Rulon 1979), and a study of black women in the American
armed forces (Johnson 1974).
The first call for an integrated field of women’s military history came in
Barton Hacker’s 1981 article on “Women and military institutions in early
modern Europe.” Hacker sought to expose the myth of the all-male army
and to join women’s history with military history, an intent underlined by
the publication of a rigorously military historical article in a leading wom-
en’s studies journal. Women performed vital military work, toiling for the
system and benefiting from their efforts, though rarely as much as men.
Pejoratively termed camp followers, they were nonetheless an integral part
of the infrastructure of army supply and maintenance, the world of camp
and train. Reassessing the role of camp follower allows us to see that
women for centuries (and perhaps always) have formed a normal and
essential, if not usually respected or even acknowledged, component of
army infrastructure as integral elements in the organization of supply and
maintenance.
The volume that this essay introduces is, in part, the fruit of that long-
ago call to arms, reflecting even as it helps more fully to define, the field of
women’s military history that emerged in the 1980s. How the field emerged
and the nature of its intellectual underpinnings clearly shaped its subse-
quent development, as the preceding discussion has outlined. The essays
gathered here amply document the proliferation of popular and scholarly
published works since 1981 that might reasonably be termed women’s
military history. Yet despite the great and growing number of relevant
works, the field remains amorphous, as evidenced by the absence of “wom-
en’s military history” from the subject categories of the U.S. Library of
Congress. Rather than forming a cohesive and identifiable field in its own
right, the various contributions tend to be assimilated into the eras or
events they touch. With this “Companion to Women’s Military History,”
we intend to provide a focal point for the new field and a resource for its
further development, so beginning the process of institutionalizing wom-
en’s military history as a distinct historical field of study. The wide and
expanding range of relevant work cited in this volume suggests that the
time is ripe for such an endeavor.
This volume addresses the changing relationships between women and
armed forces from Classical Antiquity to the present. Each of the eight basic
chapters in Part I offers a broad, scholarly review of the existing literature
to provide a clear understanding of where we stand. The intended audience
is primarily academic, professionally interested in military history and/or
women’s history, but we fully intend to make our work accessible to inter-
ested laypersons and to undergraduate and graduate students as well as
the experts. We have also included an extended picture essay on women’s
military work since the sixteenth century, especially important because so
much of the pre-twentieth-century history of women’s military activities
was more often ignored by writers than artists.
We had originally hoped to include survey chapters on women’s military
history in the medieval and the non-Western world. Although the chapter
on women and medieval military institutions that we commissioned never
materialized, it would have shown women’s active military roles during
the Middle Ages, as suggested by the numerous titles listed in Kelly
DeVries’s bibliography of medieval military history (2002, 545–46). The
hoped-for non-Western chapters succumbed to the realities of an as yet
nonexistent research base. After discussing the possibilities with scholars
of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian history, we reluctantly
concluded that too little of the necessary spadework has yet been done to
introduction 7
provide the basis for an adequate survey. For this reason (among others),
we added a second part to our book comprising eight exemplary articles,
more narrowly focused than the survey articles but illustrating some of
their major themes.
Any edited work that brings together the efforts of sixteen diverse schol-
ars can advance only the broadest of theses. We insist on the vital impor-
tance of women’s military roles throughout history. Military historians
benefit from expanding their vision to include soldier life, military institu-
tions, and the relationships between armed forces and their societies,
which among other things requires them to acknowledge the significance
of women’s military participation. At the same time, historians of women
and gender can learn much from paying attention to what women do in
war as well as peace. Military institutions are a central feature of all civilized
societies and they have never been exclusively male in reality, though they
often appear so in the historical record. Any military history that omits
women tells only half the story, and any women’s history that omits military
institutions omits a major factor in shaping women’s lives.
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“KEEP THE WOMEN OUT OF THE CAMP!” 15
PART I
WOMEN AND MILITARY INSTITUTIONS FROM ANTIQUITY
TO THE PRESENT: SURVEY ARTICLES
16 Jorit Wintjes
CHAPTER ONE
“KEEP THE WOMEN OUT OF THE CAMP!”: WOMEN AND MILITARY

INSTITUTIONS IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD1
Jorit Wintjes
For the Romans, Britain was, if not the end of the world, then very close to
it. As an island in the Oceanus, Britain effectively sat right on the edge of
the habitable world and about as far away from Rome as one could get.
Ample evidence in the surviving texts point towards a widespread under-
standing of Britain as some kind of an alter orbis, a different world; Horace,
for example (Carmina 1.35.29–30 [Rudd 2004]), described Britain as the
end of the world, while for Velleius (2.46.1 [Shipley 1924]) it was a world of
its own, and Florus (1.45.16 [Forster 1929]) argued that Caesar’s expeditions
to the island were driven by the desire to conquer a new world (Braund
1996, 10–23; Daumer 2005, 61–63). Despite this remoteness―both real and
perceived―however, Roman officers serving on the northern frontier in
Britain kept up the same lifestyle they would have enjoyed elsewhere
throughout the empire. Unit commanders met regularly for religious or
personal festivities which apparently were as lavish as they might have
been in other provinces. The so-called Vindolanda tablets, surviving docu-
mentary material from the frontier fort of Vindolanda, allow a rare glimpse
of these activities, giving, to take just one example, valuable information
on what Romans of a higher social status consumed at festivities like a
ceremonial discharge (Vindolanda tablets 581, 60 [Birley 2002, 128; Bowman
and Thomas 2003, 32]), the visit of a governor (Vindolanda tablets 581, 96
[Bowman and Thomas 2003, 33]) or a religious festivity (Vindolanda tablets
581, 71 [Bowman and Thomas 2003, 32–33]). The officers’ children learned
the Latin language probably in much the same way their parents had―by
memorizing the works of authors like Virgil. In fact, on one of the
Vindolanda tablets (Vindolanda tablet 118 [Bowman and Thomas 1994, 65]),
a line of Virgil’s Aeneid (9.473 [Fairclough and Goold 1916]) and a remark
from another hand can be found; this is usually interpreted as a pupil’s not
1 The author is indebted to the editors of this volume for their endless patience which
went well beyond what a contributor could conceivably expect.
18 Jorit Wintjes
particularly successful attempt at writing down a memorized line together
with his or her teacher’s rather unkind comment (Bowman and Thomas
1994, 65–67). And just like their husbands, the officers’ wives kept contact
with each other by writing letters and met regularly (Bowman and Thomas
1994, 29–30).
On one autumn day around 100 ad, Claudia Severa, the wife of Aelius
Brocchus, one of these unit commanders, had an invitation to her birthday
party, scheduled for the 11th of September, sent to her close friend Sulpicia
Lepidina, herself married to Flavius Cerialis, prefect of the Ninth Cohort
of Batavians occupying the Roman fort at Vindolanda (Bowman and
Thomas 1994, 25–26, 28, 29, 256). While the invitation itself was written
perhaps by someone from the Brocchus household or a unit scribe, Claudia
Severa personally added a greeting: “I shall expect you, sister. Farewell,
sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail” (Vindolanda tablets
291, 12–14 [Bowman and Thomas 1994, 257]). In doing so, Claudia Severa,
a woman who was very firmly located within a military context, left what
is the first identifiable piece of female handwriting in Latin (Bowman and
Thomas 1994, 256).
Why begin a survey of the role women played in military contexts with
a birthday invitation instead of some female warrior? There is ample reason
for granting Claudia Severa precedence over Penthesilea, the fabled queen
of the Amazons. Undeniably, Penthesilea is much more a military charac-
ter―as a warrior queen, ancient tradition had it that she led her army from
the front into battle (see also Blok 1994, 195–288; the ample literary evi-
dence has been collected by Friedrich Schwenn [1940]). She personally
fought with equally great courage, skill, and success, and only Achilles,
arguably one of the greatest heroes known to antiquity, was finally able to
kill her in hand-to-hand combat (Quintus Smyrnaeus 1.807–857 [Way 1913],
see also Schmiel 1986). Yet Penthesilea and her Amazons are not so much
a direct reflection of the functions women might have had in military
contexts in ancient societies, but rather of the role they could play in
mythology. Ken Dowden (1995, 56) has pointedly noted that “the subject
of women in mythology offers better value to the student of mythology
than to the student of women,” and indeed for the reality of women’s
military participation anywhere in the ancient world, Amazons have little
if any relevance.
Women and War in the Context of Classical Society: The Evidence
Even if there were no real Amazons in the ancient world, women were
involved in military affairs to a degree that seems surprising, given their
role in Greek and Roman societies. Their participation can be observed
mainly in two different areas. On the one hand, women could support
military activities in a multitude of ways, as sutlers selling food and other
items to the troops; as camp followers who foraged, cooked, sewed, wove,
and nursed for the men; and as soldiers’ wives, who provided their hus-
bands with the same family services as any other Greek or Roman wife. On
the other hand, although actual combat was mostly a male domain, women
could and did under certain circumstances take a very active part in the
fighting. Amazons may have been a myth; fighting women, however, were
not.
The role of women in ancient societies can hardly be called a poorly
researched subject. Indeed, ever since the publication more than three
decades ago of the first groundbreaking studies by Sarah Pomeroy (1975)
and Mary Fant and Maureen Lefkowitz (1977), the literature has grown
enormously, covering many different aspects of women’s life in antiquity
in considerable detail. Only 15 years later, the literature had already grown
to a staggering 3300 titles (listed by Anne-Marie Vérilhac and Claude Vial
[1990]) and has continued to grow ever since (for the most recent attempt
at a general overview see the immensely useful study by Tanja Scheer
[2000]). Scholars have, in general, shown a distinct tendency to focus on
Greek and Roman women’s private lives (Scheer 2000, 166–68); prominent
and powerful women, however, have always attracted considerable atten-
tion as well, be they Hellenistic queens (see for example Sarah Pomeroy
[1990], 3–40) or Roman empresses, who in particular enjoy an undimin-
ished popularity (see, for example, the studies by Hildegard Temporini
[1978], Kenneth Holum [1982], Ramsay McMullen [1986], Mary Boatwright
[1991], Nikos Kokkinos [1992], Ulrike Hahn [1994], Claudia-Martina
Perkounig [1995], Anthony Barrett [1996], or Barbara Levick [2007]). Yet
somehow the relationship of women to the military in classical society has
not attracted similar interest. Although some areas have already seen con-
siderable attention, general overviews are largely absent; brief but valuable
introductions have been provided by David Schaps (1982), Margarethe
Debrunner-Hall (1994) and Pasi Loman (2004).
One major obstacle for any research into women and the military in the
ancient world is the nature of the available evidence. For much of the Greek
20 Jorit Wintjes
world, as well as for the Roman Republic, it is essentially confined to liter-
ary texts, which only rarely give the role of women more than a passing
mention; everyday activities in particular often fail to gain the attention of
ancient writers. For Greek history, the majority of the surviving evidence
comes from the Hellenistic period; only a few scraps of information remain
from the fifth and earlier centuries bc. The situation only improves with
the advent of the Roman Empire, as the establishment of a standing army―
and particularly the introduction of a system that allowed soldiers to gain
Roman citizenship through military service―greatly expands the sources
available, especially for the status of the wives of Roman soldiers.
Documentary evidence now supports the literary evidence in ways seldom
true earlier. For the Roman Empire, accordingly, the relationship of women
and the army in general, and the role and legal status of soldiers’ women
in particular, is a fairly well-explored subject (Scheidel 2007). Documentary
evidence, as the example of Claudia Severa and Sulpicia Lepidina shows,
can be very illuminating with regard to the general circumstances under
which the wives of Roman soldiers lived.
Archeological evidence from the sites of Roman forts and the settle-
ments developing outside the gates of the military bases can provide
additional information as well. Some evidence also survives―both of a
documentary and an archeological nature―for prostitution associated
with the army, though it is not particularly well understood. Even less
tangible is the evidence available for other female camp followers offering
a range of different services to soldiers. Overall, while it is possible to get
a general idea of the role women played in ancient military contexts, gaps
remain that cannot easily be filled. For the Greek world, the picture is
clearest for the Hellenistic period, where some documentary evidence
exists, while for the Romans, it is the Roman Empire and its army about
which most is known. There is much less that can be said with any certainty
about most of the Archaic and Classical periods as well as the time of the
Roman Republic.
A brief survey like this chapter cannot, of course, even remotely do
justice to so vast a field; it must be highly selective. Necessary omissions
include three major areas. First is the role women played in mythological
contexts, which seems more a question of the general perception of wom-
en’s role in society than it is an actual reflection on their relationship to
the military in the real world. Also omitted are the military interactions of
politically prominent women. Although often fascinating, they are also
exceptional. Totally dependent on the individuals in question, they offer
little insight into the general relationship of women with military affairs
(Loman 2004, 45–48). Finally, civilizations beyond the Greeks and Romans
present problems quite different from those in the classical world; in addi-
tion, any analysis of societies outside Greece or Rome faces the major
challenge that the available evidence nearly always is Greek or Roman in
origin and thus only a foreign perception.
The main aim of this chapter is therefore to survey the realities of wom-
en’s participation in military affairs and to discuss the available evidence
for the roles women could play in military contexts within the framework
of Greek and Roman societies. Its focus will be on the two areas of women’s
participation in military affairs outlined above―their support in noncom-
bat roles and their taking part in actual fighting. A distinct imbalance must
be accepted because, in these two areas at least, there is much more rele-
vant material extant in Greek than in Roman military history. Although
the overall approach is therefore to a certain extent rather narrow, it is
nevertheless hoped that it will show that women’s involvement in war in
antiquity is a field worthy of further research.
Women, War, and Greek Society in the Archaic and Classical Periods
If one goes by the literary record, then for the Greeks women were funda-
mentally unfit for war. In the dialogue Œconomicus written probably in
the late 360s, Xenophon presents the views of a certain Ischomachus,
according to whom women were created by god for what he calls “indoor
tasks.” Men were different, “for god made the man’s body and mind more
capable of enduring cold and heat, and journeys and campaigns; and there-
fore imposed on him the outdoor tasks” (7.22 [Marchant and Todd 1923]).
While the overall intention of the dialogue is in dispute (Pomeroy 1994,
9–20), the general notion that war was not a matter for women should not
come as a great surprise. The fundamental distinction between private and
public life―or in Xenophon’s terms, “indoor” and “outdoor” matters―
formed the main framework for Greek societies from very early onwards.
In a world where the public life of a citizen was a male domain, waging war
was a fundamental expression of active political citizenship and therefore
something from which women were excluded; consequently war could not
have been a matter for women.
Yet it was in the course of war that the dividing walls, so to speak,
between private and public life, were repeatedly pulled down and women
22 Jorit Wintjes
could indeed interact with men in quite dramatic fashion. Although
Penthesilea ultimately proved no match for Achilles, Plutarch informs us
that Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus, who tried to emulate his ancestor Alexander
the Great by following in Achilles’ footsteps, in 272 bc fell victim to the
unlikeliest follower of the fabled Amazon queen―an old Argive woman
throwing a roof tile (Plutarch Pyrrhus 34.2 [Perrin 1920]). War might have
been “imposed on men,” as Xenophon might have put it, but this did not
cause women to have any reservations about getting actively involved in
it. In fact, they could go even so far as to instigate violence and then take
part in it.
Thus during a conflict between the city of Chios and the Erythraeans
over Leukonia, a smaller town located on the island of Chios (Bürchner
1899, 2293; Bürchner 1924), the Chian soldiers are said to have made a truce
with the enemy (Polyaenus 8.66 [Krentz and Wheeler 1994]; Plutarch
Moralia 244e–245 [Babbitt 1931]). According to its terms each of the Chian
men was to retain only his himation and a cloak. On the news of the truce,
however, the Chian women looked down on their men with disdain, as
they wanted the hostilities to continue. When the men argued that they
were bound by oath not to bear arms against the Erythraeans again, the
women suggested a clever ploy―the Chians should tell the Erythraeans
that, according to their local dialect, “cloak” meant spear, while “chiton”
meant shield. Apparently, women’s desire for war could overcome even
an oath, although it has to be admitted that the historicity of this episode,
which cannot be dated with any precision, is not beyond doubt (Schaps
1982, 198). Women could also show very little restraint in using force them-
selves. In 479 bc the Persian general Mardonios tried to persuade Athens
to defect from the Greeks and ally itself with Persia by offering land, auton-
omy, and money to repair the destroyed temples. Lykidas, a member of the
Athenian council, favored accepting the offer, according to Herodotus
(9.5.1–2 [Godley 1921–22]), only to be stoned to death by his fellow council-
lors and other bystanders. On hearing of this event, the Athenian women
set out on their own for Lykidas’ house and killed his wife and his children;
clearly they were even more enraged than their men at what they saw as
an act of treason.
In both cases, the major driving force behind the action was care for the
fate of the home community, something that in general can be regarded
as the main rationale for women’s actions in war. The case of the Greek
city of Gela on Sicily is another typical example. When the town was
besieged by the Carthaginians in 405 bc, the Geloans planned to evacuate
the women and the children of the town to Syracuse. But the Geloan
women refused to go, preferring instead to share the fate of their men. Only
when the city was finally given up did they go together with their men to
Syracuse. Diodorus (13.108.2–111 [Oldfather 1933–54]), who relates this epi-
sode, also stresses that during the siege, in which the Geloans had to ward
off superior Carthaginian forces, women and children actively helped the
defenders, particularly by taking part in restoring damaged sections of the
town walls.
Supporting the military efforts of their home communities is the area
where the largest number of Greek women came into contact with military
affairs, engaging in a wide range of noncombat activities. These activities
included, on the one hand, those everyday peacetime tasks that could find
use in war as well, like cooking, weaving, or otherwise providing for the
soldiers’ basic needs. On the other hand, women could also be involved in
tasks of a specifically military character, like rebuilding town walls or
manufacturing ammunition, activities that under normal circumstances
they would not have undertaken. Women’s active support of military
activities had its roots in the individual support a family’s wife or mother
would have given to the single warrior who was her husband or son,
although little tangible evidence for such behavior exists for the centuries
preceding the Persian wars.
As the scale of warfare increased around the turn of the sixth to the fifth
century bc, Greek city-states greatly improved their military organization.
By the second half of the fifth century bc, the employment of women to
support military units appears to have become established practice, as an
incident from the Peloponnesian War illustrates. When in 429 bc the
Spartans and their allies besieged Plataiai, the citizens eventually decided
to evacuate their city. Most of the noncombatants went to Athens, leaving
only a garrison of 400 Plataians reinforced by 80 Athenians. Together with
these soldiers, Thucydides (2.78 [Smith 1919]; Gomme 1956, 211–12) noted,
110 women were left behind “to bake their bread.” This is one of the few
occasions that Thucydides actually mentions women at all in his narrative,
yet nothing in his description suggests that having women prepare food
for soldiers in an apparently organized fashion, in a situation where all
other noncombatants had left, was in any way unusual at the time of the
Peloponnesian War. The numerical relation between the soldiers and their
supportive “tail,” so to speak, is quite remarkable―roughly one woman
was assigned to prepare food (and presumably to take care of other non-
combatant tasks) for every four men, accounting for nearly a fifth of the
24 Jorit Wintjes
total strength of a purely military garrison. The social status of these women
is unknown; they may have been slaves, or, as Gomme (1956, 357) cautiously
suggested, “It is possible that some were free and some slaves.” However
when after two years the Plataiains finally surrendered, Thucydides (3.68
[Smith 1919]) noted that while the men were executed after a trial, the
women were only then enslaved, which makes it more plausible for them
to have been either Plataian citizens or Athenian camp followers.
Scanty though Thucydides’ information is, the episode looms large
indeed in women’s military history. It is one of the earliest examples in
Greek history of women being involved in logistical support for the military
on a large scale. Perhaps of even greater significance is the fact that it
depicts what apparently was already a well-established practice at the time.
While no similar reports survive for the period preceding the Peloponnesian
War, it is safe to assume that already during the Athenian war against Persia
during the first half of the fifth century bc, which saw Athens sending ships
and troops into action as far away as Egypt, similar arrangements were in
place. Indeed, there is some evidence for camp followers already for the
period immediately preceding the Peloponnesian War. According to the
historian Alexis of Samos (Athenaeus 13.572f [Yonge 1854]; Jacoby 1929, 539
F 1), the prostitutes who accompanied the Athenians during the nine-
month siege of Samos in 441–440 bc dedicated a temple to Aphrodite there
(Thucydides 1.115–117 [Smith 1919]; Gomme 1945, 349–59). For earlier cen-
turies, sufficient evidence for a clear picture of the role women played in
supporting military efforts does not survive. The apparent ease, however,
with which during the latter half of the fifth century bc women could be
included in a war effort suggests that there was a gradual development
from the early archaic period onwards. While many Greeks may have fol-
lowed Xenophon in believing that women were made for “indoor tasks,”
many must also have realized by the time of the Peloponnesian War that
women’s military work might assume considerable importance.
Whereas the women accompanying the garrison of Plataiai seem to have
been tasked mainly with preparing food, something that could well be
described as an “indoor task,” Greek women’s support for a military effort
could also include activities in which they usually did not engage. When
during the latter half of the Peloponnesian War the oligarchic regime in
Argos was ousted in the summer of 417 bc, the Argives followed Athenian
advice and started building long walls to the sea in expectation of a Spartan
assault. In order to build these walls as quickly as possible, everybody was
mobilized for the construction project, including women and slaves
(Thucydides 5.82.5–6, 5.83 [Smith 1919]; Gomme, Andrewes, and Dover
1970, 151–52). In contrast to the long-lasting employment of women in
Plataiai, the Argive long walls represented a short-term construction proj-
ect begun at the end of the campaigning season of 417 bc. When the
Spartans marched against Argos the following year, they destroyed the
still-incomplete walls. The episode is nevertheless quite instructive in
showing how, in a critical situation, the military effort of a Greek commu-
nity could encompass everyone, without regard to social or legal status.
Argive attempts to put everyone who was able to carry a stone to work on
the walls exemplify a total mobilization of the population, which must
have been a rare occurrence and confined to such emergency situations
as the Argives found themselves in. This differs considerably from the way
the Plataians and Athenians employed women, effectively giving an orga-
nizational framework to camp followers.
By the end of the classical period at the turn of the fifth to the fourth
century bc, the role of women in supporting the military thus seems to
have branched out in two quite different directions. On the one hand were
the camp followers. These had probably already existed in sizeable num-
bers at the time of the Persian wars at the beginning of the fifth century
bc, although for that period evidence is almost completely absent. While
camp followers were essentially private enterprises, city-states like Athens
also made conscious and organized use of them in their military efforts,
something that can be observed clearly during the Peloponnesian War. On
the other hand, women’s support could also be part of an all-out effort by
a whole community. In that case, women were not singled out for any
relevant abilities (like being able to bake bread) usually not found among
men, but instead simply to boost the available manpower. This is a first
indicator that in the world of the Greek city-state any war effort was fun-
damentally one of the community as a whole, particularly if things did not
turn out as planned.
The Hellenistic Period―Continuity and Change
Looking beyond the fifth and fourth centuries bc into the Hellenistic
period, the overall picture does not change dramatically. Admittedly, in
some ways warfare only came of age after the death of Alexander the Great.
Whereas Greek armies in the archaic and classical periods had been by and
large citizen militias, professional soldiers from the end of the fourth cen-
26 Jorit Wintjes
tury bc onwards rapidly gained importance. The larger Hellenistic states,
in particular, increasingly relied on mercenary armies for their war efforts
(Chaniotis 2005, 78–101). For smaller communities, however, the citizen
militia continued to be the primary instrument of warfare. In fact, it has
been pointed out that the emergence of the professional soldier notwith-
standing, the military experience of many Greek men remained primarily
set within the context of citizen militias (Vidal-Naquet 1981, 126–27; Ma
2000; Chaniotis 2005, 20–22, 79; Hornblower 2007, 34).
Likewise, women’s experience of war and how it could affect their home
community in the Hellenistic period did not fundamentally differ from
earlier centuries. They could still be found engaged in activities supporting
the military affairs of their hometowns as a result of a total mobilization
of the citizenry. Perhaps the most famous example is King Pyrrhus’ ulti-
mately unsuccessful attempt at seizing Sparta in 272 bc (Franke 1989,
483–84). When his army approached Sparta, the Spartans had originally
planned to evacuate all the women and children. In what must have been
quite a dramatic scene, according to Polyaenus (8.49 [Krentz and Wheeler
1994]; see also Plutarch Pyrrhus 27.3 [Perrin 1920]), Archidameia, a daugh-
ter of the royal house (Niese 1895), then entered the gerousia, sword in
hand, valiantly refuting the idea of separating the women from their hus-
bands―”it was noble for Lacaenian women to die with their husbands or
to live with them” (Plutarch Pyrrhus 27.3 [Perrin 1920]). The Spartan women
were then assigned to such supportive tasks as digging ditches―Plutarch
(Pyrrhus 27.4–6 [Perrin 1920]) mentioned the construction of an “anti-
elephant-ditch”―sharpening spears, or caring for the wounded and dead
(Plutarch Pyrrhus 29.3 [Perrin 1920]). Although this incident may at first
sound like a typical example of the wondrous tales surrounding Sparta and
its women, which held a certain fascination for all other Greeks (Pomeroy
2002, 141–42), it is in fact not fundamentally different from the earlier
example of the Geloans mentioned above. Again a community can be
observed that in the hours of greatest need decides to mobilize everyone
who could possibly be of any use in the defense effort. But as Plutarch
(Pyrrhus 29.6 [Perrin 1920]) stressed, once the crisis passed, the Spartan
women returned to their homes, and to activities more suited to women
than war.
Other examples show that the Spartan case was not an isolated one.
When Philip V besieged the city of Chios (Errington 1989, 252–53) in 201
bc, the town’s women not only gave moral support but also brought up
ammunition to those manning the city defenses. In fact, it is even attested
that their exhortations were instrumental in keeping up the defense and
ultimately repelling Philip (Plutarch Moralia 245b–c [Babbitt 1931]). In a
similar way, the women of the North African city of Cyrene actively aided
their men defending the city against a Ptolemaic army, perhaps that of
Ptolemy VIII before 163 bc (Niebuhr 1828, 231–32 n. 41), by helping to erect
fortifications, manufacturing ammunition, caring for the wounded, and
preparing food (Polyaenus 8.70 [Krentz and Wheeler 1994]). When the
army of the Persian satrap Datames—about whom more is known than
any other fourth-century bc Persian, thanks to a surviving biography by
Cornelius Nepos (On great generals 14 [Rolfe 1929]; Sekunda 1988)―arrived
outside the walls of Sinope, the townswomen clad themselves in dummy
armor and joined their men on the walls, making the defenders look more
numerous than they actually were (Aeneas Tacticus 40.4–5 [Oldfather et
al. 1928]). Unfortunately, little else is known about this incident, which is
also difficult to date with any precision; Köchly and Rüstow (1853, 182–83)
tentatively suggested 379/78 bc, a date that since has come under criticism
(Oldfather et al. 1928, 197 n. 2).
Most of the activities mentioned above―apart from preparing food or
caring for the wounded―would normally have fallen squarely into the
male domain. Having women sharpen spears, dig ditches, or make ammu-
nition usually meant that no men could be spared for these tasks. But at
least some evidence suggests that women may actually have played a minor
role in these activities in times of peace as well. Thus in a few cases, women
are described as being involved in preparing helmets or other pieces of
body armor during a crisis; Plutarch (Philopoemen 9.5 [Perrin 1921]), for
instance, referred to women involved in making helmets. At first this may
sound not very different from reports about women manufacturing ammu-
nition, but one would assume that the range of skills required for making
a missile and a suit of armor differed considerably. Whether this could be
interpreted as evidence for women being involved in the manufacturing
of armor even in times of peace is impossible to decide on the basis of the
available literary sources alone.
A tiny piece of epigraphical evidence, however, may support this inter-
pretation. An inscription (Inscriptiones Graecae 3 69 [Wuensch 1897]) from
Athens mentions a certain Artemis, who was involved in her husband
Dionysios’ business. He happened to be a helmet maker, and it has been
suggested that Artemis might have been responsible for making helm crests
and other ornamental fittings (Fant and Lefkowitz 1977, 224; Loman 2004,
52). One might therefore assume that if a crisis made her city call up the
services of the town’s women, the wife of a helmet maker would probably
28 Jorit Wintjes
have been well-suited to prepare helmets. Some caution is advisable, how-
ever, as Artemis’ main responsibility may well have been bookkeeping or
selling the helmets, allowing her husband to concentrate on the actual
manufacturing (Herfst 1922, 40–48; Cohen 1997, 78–79).
Most women will in any case have lacked any special skills particularly
suitable for supporting military efforts. Short of getting involved in the
actual defense of their home community by carrying weapons, cooking
meals, or caring for the wounded, donations were probably the easiest way
to add to the overall war effort. While again little evidence survives from
earlier centuries, several Hellenistic accounts describe how women gave
money and jewelry to support the production of arms and the outfitting
of ships or soldiers. According to Diodorus (32.9 [Walton 1957]), the women
of Carthage did so when, in the Third Punic War, their city faced extinction.
The last Carthaginian gold coins, usually dated to around 149–146 bc, are
believed to have been made from golden jewelry (Baldus 1988, 8–9).
Unfortunately, most of the context of this episode is lost; it is clear from
the surviving text, however, that turning in their jewelry was an extraordi-
nary measure born of desperation, a measure that ultimately proved unsuc-
cessful. Interestingly, Carthaginian history provides another example for
this kind of support in the aftermath of the First Punic War. During the
so-called Libyan War (Huß 1985, 252–68), large numbers of those mercenar-
ies, many of Libyan origin, on whom the Carthaginians had relied during
the war against the Romans, turned against their former employers, as they
were unable to pay them. Then other Libyans rose as well, seeking revenge
for years of harsh treatment, causing what may have been the gravest
military crisis in Carthaginian history to date; at one point in 239 bc,
Carthage itself was under siege. Polybius (1.72.5 [Paton 1922]) reported that
Libyan women had not only freely given their jewelry in order to finance
their army, but actually had bound themselves by an oath to do so (Huß
1985, 256). Despite the quite different plights of the Carthaginian and
Libyan women, their common willingness to sacrifice personal wealth to
support military action is quite striking.
Roughly a century later in 146 bc, women in the towns of the Achaean
League in found themselves in a situation rather similar to that of the
Carthaginians and Libyans. With defeat by Rome looming (Derow 1989,
321–23), the military commander Diaios resorted to such emergency mea-
sures as freeing and arming slaves to increase the available manpower
(Polybius 38.15 [Paton 1922]; Walbank 1979, 710–11). The women of the
various towns swore to hand over all their jewelry to finance the league’s
military effort. Unlike the Carthaginian and Libyan women, who donated
their valuables voluntarily and whose actions may actually have strength-
ened the defender’s resolve to keep up the military effort as long as pos-
sible, the measure imposed on the Achaean women seems to have
backfired. Polybius (38.16 [Paton 1922]) reported that chaos and despera-
tion was caused by Diaios’ orders. Actually, whether or not the Achaean
women volunteered to give their valuables is unclear; as Walbank (1979,
712) remarks, it “sounds voluntary, though Polybius mentions it in a context
suggesting official pressure or compulsion.” Perhaps the most famous dona-
tion story involves the Thasian women and their hair reported by Polyaenus
(8.67 [Krentz and Wheeler 1994]). The besieged Thasians tried to erect
certain mechanemata, machines to use against the besiegers. Although the
precise nature and function of these machines remains uncertain, they are
generally assumed to have been torsion catapults, for which hair could
furnish the power skeins (Marsden 1969, 17, 31; Landels 2000, 110–11). The
Thasian women shaved their heads and donated their hair to make suitable
ropes for the construction of these machines. Unfortunately, neither the
outcome of the siege nor a date for this interesting episode survives, though
the mere existence of these mechanemata points to the Hellenistic period.
The general idea of women giving their hair for the construction of weap-
ons apparently enjoyed considerable popularity among ancient authors;
numerous cases are attested in the literary evidence, for example at Rome
(Historia Augusta, volume II. The two Maximini 33 [Magie 1921–24]; Lactan
tius 1.20.27 [McDonald 1964]; see also Wissowa 1897), at Salona (Caesar
Civil Wars 3.9.3 [Peskett 1914], see also Wintjes 2010) or at Carthage, Massilia,
and Rhodos (Frontinus Strategems 1.7.3 [Bennett and McElwain 1925]); in
many cases, however, the historicity of these episodes is suspect.
Apart from giving support in the ways discussed above, women could
be found among the camp followers of Hellenistic armies, much as they
had been in the classical period. Unfortunately, evidence for the organized
employment of women in the context of Hellenistic armies similar to the
passage in Thucydides concerning the Athenians in the Peloponnesian
War is absent, but there are various accounts of women accompanying
Hellenistic armies. To begin with a very early, actually pre-Hellenistic
example, the famous march of ten thousand Greek mercenaries that had
been hired by the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger for his ultimately
unsuccessful bid for the Persian throne in 401 bc included women. Having
reached the Black Sea on their way back from the Battle of Cunaxa, the
Greeks put everyone above forty years of age, all sick and wounded, all the
30 Jorit Wintjes
women and children, as well as much of the baggage aboard ships while
the rest of the army carried on along the coast (Xenophon Anabasis 5.3.3
[Brownson and Dillery 1922]; Lendle 1995, 312). Even then, some women
seem to have remained with the army; an Arcadian is mentioned as having
a dancer, apparently a slave, with him when the army reached Paphlagonia,
and she did not seem to be the only women present with the Greeks at the
time (Xenophon Anabasis 6.1.13 [Brownson and Dillery 1922]; Lendle 1995,
363–64). Women accompanied Alexander’s army as well, some apparently
having come with the army all the way from Macedonia. Many others were
captured in the course of campaigning. Women accompanied Alexander
himself, as noted, for example, by Athenaeus (12.539a [Yonge 1854]; Jacoby
1929, 539 F 1, and 668–69). One particularly famous example is Thais, who
is said to have instigated the destruction of the palace at Persepolis and
who would later go on to become the wife of Ptolemaios I Soter, thus gain-
ing considerable political importance (Athenaeus 13. 576d–e [Yonge 1854]);
Plutarch Alexander. 38 [Perrin 1919a]); Curtius Rufus 5.7.2-4 [Rolfe 1946];
Diodorus 17.72 [Welles 1963]; Bosworth 1980, 330–32).
Taken together, the examples discussed above show that, in general,
little had changed with regard to the relationship of women towards the
military. As any military effort was essentially a joint undertaking by the
community of citizens, so the women of the community had their share in
it, if only in a supporting role. And should the conflict result in a critical
situation, women were regularly seen actually taking part in the action, as
has been discussed earlier. The fairly close relationship between Greek
women and the military affairs of their hometowns is first and foremost a
result of the communal structure of these cities. In citizen militias, every-
body had taken part in the military effort―“the military” had been the
whole community of able-bodied citizens. Consequently, women had to
be involved in the military affairs of the community, if for no other reason
than their being the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of those actually
carrying arms.
Mercenaries and Their Women
The emergence of the professional soldier in the Hellenistic period brought

not so much a dramatic change but a significantly new element to the
relationship of women towards the military―indeed, it is only with the
introduction of professional soldiers that “the military” becomes an estab-
lished factor of considerable significance within Greek societies (Barry
1996, 70–71). Women in a Hellenistic town garrisoned by a mercenary force
did not have the same sort of relationship with the soldiers as the women
of a traditional Greek city-state did with the fathers, husbands, and sons
who served in the militia. Instead, they could be divided into two distinctly
different groups: the women of the town related to the citizens and the
dependents of the soldiers. Although dependents only rarely engaged in
military activities in the same way that women related to citizen militiamen
did, they could have a profound influence on soldiers’ morale. In many
cases the employers of professional soldiers found it necessary not only to
care for the soldiers themselves, but also for their women. While little is
known about the activities of these women, it is safe to assume that they
supported their soldiers in much the same way Greek women in city-states
did their male family members.
Regarding the relationship of mercenaries’ women towards the com-
munities where their husbands served, one general problem that gained
prominence in the Hellenistic world and would eventually resurface in the
Roman period was that of legitimacy. In order to establish a family properly
one had to enter a legitimate marriage, which in many Hellenistic cities
was coupled to citizenship. Finding ways for the soldiers to marry, set up
families, and produce legitimate heirs now became an important issue for
anyone employing larger numbers of professional soldiers. Perhaps the
best example for integrating mercenaries and their families into a city as
citizens proper was provided by a series of inscriptions from the Delphinion
in Miletus (Inscriptions of Miletus 3.1.33–38 and 6.3.1055 [Kawerau and
Rehm 1914, 125–61, 173–203]). During the latter part of the third century bc,
the Milesians apparently had made use of a substantial number of merce-
naries from Crete; Kawerau and Rehm (1914, 201) estimate the overall num-
ber to have been around 1000. Around 228–227 bc, and again five years
later, many of these mercenaries were endowed with full citizenship rights
(Kawerau and Rehm 1914, 199). Unfortunately, little is known about the
political background of this measure, nor is the eventual fate of the Cretans
known; it appears that most were ordinary soldiers and that a number of
them tried to get back to Crete at the end of the century (Kawerau and
Rehm 1914, 176). Slightly clearer is the case of a certain Kroton, who appears
on another Milesian inscription (3.1.39 [Kawerau and Rehm 1914, 203–205])
around 200 bc; here it was explicitly stated that he received citizenship in
return for his service for the city, and one would assume that this included
his family, although only Kroton himself was mentioned.
32 Jorit Wintjes
Apart from practical considerations of citizenship, the general well-
being of their families had a major impact on the fighting spirit of Hellenistic
mercenaries and indeed soldiers in general, as several surviving accounts
testify (Chaniotis 2005 82–88). One of the most dramatic episodes involved
the fate of Eumenes, erstwhile chancellor of Alexander the Great. During
the wars following the death of Alexander, Eumenes found himself fighting
Antigonos Monopthalmos (Will 1984, 40–46; Braund 2003, 24–25). Before
the final battle in the region of Gabiene, Antigonos dispatched a cavalry
force to capture Eumenes’ baggage train, which included the wives and
families of the soldiers. Even though Eumenes’ army was victorious, killing,
according to Polyaenus (4.6.13 [Krentz and Wheeler 1994]), 5000 of their
opponents while losing only 300 of their own, the soldiers nevertheless
immediately changed sides after realizing that their families had been
captured and handed their commander over to Antigonos, who had
Eumenes promptly executed (Diodorus 18.62f.; 73; 19.12–44 [Geer 1947–54];
Plutarch Eumenes 16–19 [Perrin 1919b]; Will 1984, 45). Antigonos deliber-
ately struck at the baggage train not simply to gain booty, but to break the
fighting spirit of his opponents, as the surviving accounts make clear. The
battle of Gabiene shows that Hellenistic commanders were not only aware
of the importance of women and families to their soldiers, but would
actively exploit that feeling if the opportunity arose.
Fighting Women in the Greek World
Beyond noncombatant support there is enough evidence for women taking

an active role in combat to assume that for the Greeks it was nothing ter-
ribly unusual. While little evidence exists for the sixth and fifth centuries
bc, several examples from the classical period survive. When Thucydides
(3.72–74 [Smith 1919]) describes how during the civil war in Corcyra in the
summer of 427 bc the ruling oligarchs were defeated by their opponents,
it is only the degree of fortitude displayed by the women taking part in the
conflict that he finds noteworthy and indeed “beyond their sex” (Thucydides
3.74.1 [Smith 1919]), not the mere fact that they gave active support by
throwing tiles from the rooftops. Earlier in the Peloponnesian War in 431
bc, the Thebans had tried to seize Plataiai. Although they initially managed
to get into the town unnoticed, the Plataians counterattacked at night,
while women and slaves occupied the rooftops and hurled tiles at the
Thebans who eventually were routed. This incident is well-attested, with
Thucydides (2, 4 [Smith 1919]) as well as Aeneas Tacticus (2.6 [Oldfather
et al. 1928]) and Diodorus (12.41 [Oldfather 1933–54]) giving basically the
same account of the action with only minor differences regarding the
importance of the tile-throwing action for the overall outcome; while
Thucydides and Aeneas Tacticus describe the tile barrage as one element
of the Plataean counterattack, Diodorus has the Plataians launching their
attack first and the Thebans successfully resisting until the women started
bombarding them with tiles; in his account, it is thus the military action
of the women that tips the scales in favour of the Plataeans.
Although it is impossible now to decide whether the Plataean women
did really make the Thebans break (Barry 1996, 64), Diodorus’ account is
nevertheless highly illuminating in that he evidently considers such a
course of action to be perfectly possible. Nowhere in his own description
of the events―nor indeed in that of Thucydides or Aeneas Tacticus―is
there any indication that even decisive military action by women should
be seen as something extraordinary. Instead, any attacker managing to
break into an enemy city would have to expect the women of the town
taking to the rooftops of their houses and throwing tiles at him. Once war
had invaded, so to speak, the private life of the citizens, they all became
involved. An incident related by Pausanias (4.21.6 [Jones 1918]) shows how
deep-rooted this understanding of war must have been. He informs us that
during the Second Messenian War at the beginning of the seventh century
bc (Hammond 1982, 323–24, 326–30), when the Spartans attacked the town
of Eira, a severe storm prevented the Messenian women from climbing to
the roofs and throwing tiles at the Spartans. While a good argument has
been made for this story to be anachronistic―roof tiles were not in wide-
spread use in Greece until after the middle of the seventh century bc (Barry
1996, 66)―it nevertheless shows what Pausanias, who wrote in the second
century ad, considered to be a standard procedure when it came to storm-
ing a city not only in his own time, but right from archaic times onwards.
One has to assume then that even though there are not many cases directly
attested in the available evidence, the active participation of women was
in fact a commonplace occurrence.
Of course, tile barrages by women standing on rooftops were no guar-
antee of military success; in perhaps as many cases as they were successful
in repelling an invader, they failed to do so, as an example from a conflict
between Arcananians and Aitolians shows, which unfortunately is difficult
to date with any precision. While the women of an unnamed Acarnanian
town took to the roofs of their houses in order to throw tiles and stones at
34 Jorit Wintjes
the invaders and to encourage their husbands, they were unable to change
the outcome of the battle; finally the city fell and both men and women
were killed (Polyaenus 8.69 [Krentz and Wheeler 1994]). Interestingly, in
this episode it is stressed that the fighting was over once the men were
dead or captured. Thus, although the women were successful in keeping
up the defense effort for a longer period than their husbands would have
managed by themselves, they were unable―or unwilling―to continue
the fighting on their own.
While on the whole there is much less evidence for unsuccessful military
action in which women were involved, Diodorus (13.55–57 [Oldfather
1933–54]) relates another incident that probably was not an isolated case
and warrants closer attention as it is quite revealing about the role Greek
women could play in wartime. In 409/408 bc a sizeable force of perhaps
up to 100.000 men under the Carthaginian general Hannibal attacked the
Sicilian town of Selinus, a former ally of Carthage (Huß 1985, 108–11). Facing
such a large army particularly well-equipped with siege engines, the whole
population of the city was, after an initial moment of shock, mobilized.
Elderly men mounted the town wall alongside younger and middle-aged
citizens, while women and children supplied the soldiers with food and
produced missiles (Diodorus 13.55.4 [Oldfather 1933–54]). Yet, despite this
collective effort the town wall was soon breached. It seems that this hap-
pened on the first day of the actual attack on the town (Diodorus 13.55.5–8
[Oldfather 1933–54]); although this does not necessarily mean there was
no period of siege before that. Initially, the Selinuntians managed to push
back the Carthaginians in bitter hand-to-hand fighting; Diodorus’ account
strongly suggested that not only Selinuntian soldiers were involved in this,
but also many of those who would normally be considered noncombatants.
Although he did not yet explicitly include women and children, Diodorus
(13.55.8 [Oldfather 1933–54]) stated that “many gathered to the aid of the
defenders,” clearly separating the soldiers defending the town from those
assisting them. At the end of the day, the Carthaginians broke off the
engagement, and during the night the Selinuntians sent messengers to the
cities of Acragas, Gela, and Syracuse asking for a relief force to be dis-
patched (Diodorus 13.56.1–2 [Oldfather 1933–54]).
On the following day, however, the Carthaginians breached another
section of the town wall, forcing the defenders of Selinus to pull back into
the city, where they erected street barricades (Diodorus 13.56.6 [Oldfather
1933–54]). In the street fighting that followed, women and children threw
stones and tiles at the invaders; and indeed, for some time the citizens of
Selinus managed to keep the Carthaginians at bay (Diodorus 13.56.8
[Oldfather 1933–54]). Hannibal’s forces suffered heavy losses in the process,
but unlike the Selinuntians he was able to bring forward fresh reserves.
Ultimately, the citizens of Selinus, who, if Diodorus (13.56.8 [Oldfather
1933–54]) is to be believed, quite literally fought to the last roof tile, suc-
cumbing only to the greater numbers of the attackers when they had run
out of ammunition. As a consequence, Selinus was thoroughly sacked and
burned. According to Diodorus (13.57.6 [Oldfather 1933–54]), 16,000 citizens
were killed in the fighting and more than 5,000 captured: only 2,600 man-
aged to escape. Even though Hannibal allowed them to resettle in Selinus,
the city would never again recover the position it had before the war.
The war of Carthage against its former ally is arguably only a minor event
in the overall history of the struggle between the Carthaginians and the
Greeks on Sicily spanning nearly three centuries from the turn of the sixth
to the fifth century bc down to the end of the Second Punic War. Yet for
the question of the role of women in war, the episode Diodorus related is
highly valuable, even though it has by and large escaped scholarly atten-
tion. He not only provides a good example of women supporting a military
effort and even participating in the fighting, but also puts it into a broader
and more general perspective of the role of women in society. The siege of
Selinus is―outside philosophical or theoretical treatises―one of the very
few accounts where an ancient author actually reflected on the role of
women in wartime in relation to their position with society in times of
peace; it must therefore be regarded as one key text for the understanding
of this problem. Although the text does not convey the impression that the
actions of the women of Selinus were in any way extraordinary, Diodorus
(13.55.4 [Oldfather 1933–54]) comments that in times of peace women
behaved differently, when it was “modesty and … [a] sense of shame …
they cherished.” War, however, demanded another kind of behavior.
Women’s aid became an essential part of the overall military effort, not
merely a welcome addition. Diodorus goes so far as to state that the needs
of the Selinuntians made women’s active support not merely welcome but
outright necessary: “Such consternation prevailed that the magnitude of
the emergency called for even the aid of their women” (13.55.5 [Oldfather
1933–54]). The women of Selinus may have normally been assigned what
Xenophon dubbed “indoor tasks,” but in a military emergency like the one
Selinus faced in 409/408 bc, they were as much part of the last line of
defense as their husbands, fathers, or sons on the town walls.
36 Jorit Wintjes
Evidence of the involvement of women in desperate defense efforts is
not exactly plentiful, but Plutarch (Moralia 231e [Babbitt 1931]) provides
two further scraps of evidence pointing in the same direction as the inci-
dent related by Diodorus. Both involved Spartans and Argives. During the
first half of the seventh century bc the Spartan king Polydoros, having
defeated the Argives in battle, was urged to capture the city of Argos, now
devoid of its soldiers with only the women left. While it is not explicitly
mentioned that the Argive women actually planned to defend their city
against a Spartan attack, the phrasing may suggest that the Spartans did
not expect to take the city without any resistance. Two centuries later in
494 bc, after the disastrous battle at the river Sepeia in which nearly all the
Argive army perished (Tomlinson 1972, 76–77), Spartan king Cleomenes I
appeared before the walls of Argos. He found them, according to Plutarch's
Apophthegmata Laconica (Moralia 231e [Babbitt 1931]), defended by
women. Cleomenes refrained from attacking the city and returned to
Sparta, only to be vilified for having failed to conquer Argos (Herodotus
3.82 [Godley 1921–22]). The same incident is also related in Plutarch’s
Mulierum Virtutes (Moralia 245c–f [Babbitt 1931]), although this account
differs slightly in detail. According to Plutarch, it was the Argive poetess
Telesilla (see Maas 1934) who inspired the Argive women to arm them-
selves. Under her command, the women not only repulsed an attack by
Cleomenes on the town, inflicting heavy casualties to the Spartans, but
also drove out the second Spartan king, Demaratus, who had managed to
get into the town. Plutarch’s version of the incident can also be found in
Pausanias (2.20.8–10 [Jones 1918]), Polyaenus (8.33 [Krentz and Wheeler
1994]), and Maximus of Tyre (37.5 [Trapp 1997]).
In both cases, the historicity of the accounts is highly questionable (Maas
1934, 385). It is unclear whether Polydoros fought a war early in the seventh
century bc against the Argives in the first place, while the story about the
poetess-turned-warrior Telesilla has been plausibly interpreted as an etio-
logical invention to explain the origin of the statue of a particular god of
war and of a certain ritual (Graf 1984, 246–49). Though Telesilla’s exploits
most probably have simply been made up, they are nevertheless of some
relevance as they fit well into what seems to be the standard pattern of
women’s active participation in war and the examples discussed―the
enemy has broken through the town wall and is in the streets, while women
and children have taken to the roofs and are throwing everything they can
lay their hands on at the invaders. In this respect, the Argive women do
not differ from those from Plataiai or Selinus. The account of Telesilla and
the Argive women has evidently not been invented as one of a miracle, but
rather as a plausible story―certainly arming women in defense of a city
might not have been an everyday measure, but it was apparently a perfectly
sound thing to do in a desperate situation.
The examples discussed so far have mostly been taken from ancient
historiography and indeed are all accounts of events that were either his-
torical or perceived to be so. Women’s participation in combat, however,
was not only reported as something not too unusual that could happen in
war, it also became an object of reflection both by military theorists and
philosophers. Indeed, in the fourth century bc Plato regarded the role of
women in wartime and their relationship towards the army as one of the
more important issues in laying out an ideal state. In ancient military
theory, on the other hand, women are not as readily discernible, which is
mainly due to the fragmented nature of the surviving texts. Of what was
once a sizeable literature on military theory, only a small and probably not
very representative selection of mostly Hellenistic material is left. Thus
while several accounts on training and battlefield tactics are still extant,
only very few texts on siege warfare survive (Chaniotis 2005, 98–99). It is
in one of these that the role of women in times of war surfaces.
In the third century bc, Philon of Byzantium (Poliorcetics C 31 [Garlan
1974, 311, 384]), nowadays better known for his work on artillery (Marsden
1971, 106–84), suggested that in the final defense of a city, everybody had
to play an active role, including “children, female slaves, women and vir-
gins.” Together with his general advice of preparing for a possible breach
in the town walls by erecting barricades in the streets, this passage displays
obvious similarities to the accounts of the Theban’s failed attempt at seiz-
ing Plataiai discussed above. The exploits of the Plataian women had with
Aeneas Tacticus found their way into ancient military theory in the fourth
century bc; in Aeneas Tacticus, however, the women of Plataiai still simply
served as one example of courageous behavior. By the time of Philon this
action and similar ones like the participation of the Selinuntian women in
the defense of their city had helped to establish a general pattern of wom-
en’s behavior in war that was deemed not merely acceptable, but desirable.
In normal life the seclusion of women may have gone so far as to have
husband and wife inhabiting separate rooms, or even separate floors of the
family house (Pomeroy 1975, 80), but while military emergencies did not
automatically turn women into Amazons, they could at times produce
female combatants that participated in the fighting to the best of their
abilities.
38 Jorit Wintjes
For the simple reason that being a soldier was a political activity reserved
for male citizens, no Greek city-state had female soldiers. This fact did not
prevent theoretical reflection on possible military roles for women that
went well beyond throwing stones or tiles from the rooftops at an invader.
Plato provides what is both the best and also one of the most far-reaching
examples of such reflection. Among the issues discussed in the Republic is
whether or not men and women should have different functions by nature
within the ideal state, much as Xenophon describes the role of men
and women in society (Erler 2007, 441–49). Although Plato (Republic
5.454d–456a [Shorey 1930]) has Socrates qualify his answer with the remark
that women are generally weaker than men, Plato’s statement (Republic
455d [Shorey 1930]) is nevertheless as sweeping as it is unequivocal:
There is no pursuit of the administrators of a state that belongs to a woman
because she is a woman or to a man because he is a man. But the natural
capacities are distributed alike among both creatures, and women naturally
share in all pursuits and men in all.
Consequently, women or, to be more precise, the wives of those men
assigned to be soldiers in the ideal state, had to have a place in military
affairs as well; Plato (Republic 456d–e [Shorey 1930]; Levin 2000, 84–87)
suggests only one difference between them and their husbands―as women
in general are described as weaker than men, it was only plausible to have
those tasks assigned to them in war that are less physically demanding.
Plato’s Republic describes a utopia rather distant from the political affairs
of his own time. Yet his thoughts on the relationship of women to the
military are not as revolutionary as they may seem at first. On the contrary,
if read in context with both the historiographical record and the evidence
that can be gained from ancient military theory, it becomes clear that
Plato’s thinking is in fact the result of an evolutionary process based on
what in his time was already widely accepted as the role of women in war.
This is most obvious in the expression he uses for the wartime service of
women (and men). According to Plato (Republic 456a [Shorey 1930], war-
like activities were among the “duties of civic guardianship.” In fact, Plato
(Republic 466e, 467a–b [Shorey 1930]) even speaks of women being able
to take part in campaigning, though their main function was not directly
military: they were to care for soldiers’ children, accompanying their par-
ents on campaign thus allowing them to learn the art of war. Letting women
serve in the army and thereby participate in one of the most important
civic activities of any Greek city may well have been unheard of before
Plato and might seem quite revolutionary to the casual observer. It was not
for Plato, who effectively described women’s participation in war as an
extension of what they were expected to do anyway once their own city
was in danger. Women could take part in large-scale warfare away from
home, but the main aim of the Republic was not to promote female warrior
citizens; rather, women were seen as a weaker but nonetheless integral
part of the defense forces of the ideal state.
The direct connection between Plato’s apparently radical position in
the Republic, on the one hand, and the concept of having women taking
part in last-ditch defense efforts, on the other, becomes even clearer in the
Laws, where the role of women in war is discussed as well. Here, Plato (Laws
813e–814a [Bury 1926]) has Socrates advocate the athletic and military
training of women. Women were to receive regular military training and
to take part “in evolutions and rank-forming and the piling and shoulder-
ing of arms.” If the need arose, as it might if the army was away on cam-
paign, women should be able to defend the rest of the population against
an invader. While a convincing case can be made that, in contrast to the
Republic, women were not considered members of the army proper in the
Laws (Levin 2000, 90; on this problem see also Stalley 1983, 105 and Cohen
1987, 37), they nevertheless had a place in the organized military effort of
Plato’s ideal community, even if they were confined to purely defensive
activities. Women essentially served as a reserve pool of manpower for the
city defense.
Although Plato predates Philon of Byzantium almost by a century,
women’s participation in military activities in the Laws can be interpreted
as the institutionalization of Philon’s advice about women and their
employment in the defense of a beleaguered town. By suggesting that
women should have a place in the army’s regular training activities Plato
went even well beyond Philon. While women’s participation in athletic
activities was merely rare in the Greek world―the most prominent exam-
ple is the physical education of young women in Sparta (Pomeroy 2002,
12–16), but there were others as well (Arrigoni 1985, 61–64, 95–120)―taking
part in military maneuvers, particularly if it included training in the pha-
lanx, was totally unknown. This only made sense if the women donned at
least part of the hoplite’s equipment, which to the average male Greek
must have been one important testimony to his citizenship. Yet even
though Plato thus developed the concept of women taking part in the
defense of a city to a point that blurred the difference between male and
female citizens, looking back to the historiographical record and the avail-
able evidence from military theorists shows that his thinking was not
40 Jorit Wintjes
radically different from what was seen as either acceptable, or at least as
plausible, among his contemporaries.
Women continued to play active roles in war when it came to last-ditch
defense efforts in the Hellenistic world, just as they had in Greek societies
throughout the late archaic and classical periods. In fact, the thought of
women actually participating in the fighting―under the proper circum-
stances―was just as acceptable to Hellenistic military theorists as it had
been earlier to Plato, as exemplified by Philon of Byzantium. Following his
advice and the example set by the Plataians or the Selinuntians, women
continued to take to the roofs of their houses in order to defend their cities.
What is probably one of the best-known examples has already been briefly
mentioned above: the Epeirotan king Pyrrhos was killed in 272 bc during
street fighting in the city of Argos (Plutarch Pyrrhus 34.1–3 [Perrin 1920]);
Polyaenus 8.68 [Krentz and Wheeler 1994] and Pausanias 1.13.8 [Jones
1918]), when an old woman, who had observed the fighting from a rooftop,
saw the king engaging in hand-to-hand combat with her son; she grabbed
what William Barry (1996, 55) has fittingly called “the most historically
significant roof tile,” and threw it at the king:
It fell upon his head below his helmet and crushed the vertebrae at the base
of his neck, so that his sight was blurred and his hands dropped the reins.
Then he sank down from his horse and fell near the tomb of Licymnius,
unrecognised by most who saw him. (Plutarch Pyrrhus 34.2 [Perrin 1920])
Although he was the most prominent, Pyrrhos must have been far from
the only victim to a roof tile thrown by a woman. During the street-fighting
at Argos, other women participated in what amounted to a barrage of tiles
aimed at Pyrrhos’ troops. When Aetolian troops invaded Acarnania in the
middle of the third century bc, Acarnanian women showered them with
tiles and stones thrown from the rooftops (Polyaenus 8.68–69 [Krentz and
Wheeler 1994]). Messenian women likewise succeeded in repelling
Macedonian troops in 214 bc with a barrage of tiles (Pausanias 4.29.5 [Jones
1918]). In the first half of the second century bc, a great monument was
erected to commemorate those who had fallen in defense of Messene,
recording the names of six fallen men and four women buried beneath the
monument (see Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum XLV 320, XLVI 428,
Themelis 2001 and the excellent picture of the inscription in Hornblower
2007, 45); it may either belong in the context of Demetrius’ attack in 214
bc (Green 1990, 297–98) or that of King Nabis of Sparta in 201 bc, when he
managed to seize all of Messene apart from the acropolis; again the women
of the town may well have participated in the defense effort (Polybius
16.13.3, 16.16.1–16.17.7 [Paton 1922], Livy 34.32.16 [Sage 1935–38], Pausanias
8.50.5 [Jones 1918]; see also Gruen 1986, 441).
While the roof tile seems to have been widely seen as the weapon of
choice for women in the Hellenistic world, during the Galatian invasion in
278 bc Aitolian women took on an active role in the fighting against an
invading army numbering more than 40,000 men (Heinen 1984, 415–16,
422–25). According to Pausanias (10.22.5–7; quote at 10.22.6 [Jones 1918];
Antonetti 1990 126–31), who related these events, they fought alongside the
men, “drawn up all along the road, ... shooting at the barbarians, and few
shots failed to find a mark among enemies.” At first this action seems
unusual, not only in that women apparently used actual weapons, but also
in that it was not confined to one city. Instead, men and women came
together from several Aitolian cities to fight against the Galatians. Even
though Pausanias actually stressed that the Aitolian women displayed
greater courage than the men, he also made it very clear that their par-
ticipation in war was an exceptional case caused by the extreme brutality
the Galatians had displayed when they captured the Aitolian city of Callion
and annihilated its population; according to Pausanias, “the fate of the
Callians ... is the most wicked ever heard of, and is without a parallel in the
crimes of men” (Pausanias 10.22.3 [Jones 1918]). Facing the prospect of suf-
fering a similar fate the Aitolian women were both willing to do their
utmost to prevent this and eager to avenge the Callians. In doing so, they
acted as if they belonged to one community, and indeed, had the Galatians
won, they all would likely have shared the same fate. The military effort of
the Aitolians is thus simply an up-scaled version of that of a single city
defending itself against an enemy.
In all, the picture of Greek women’s active participation in war is fairly
clear. Although fighting was still a fundamentally male activity, the course
of the war could reach a point when―usually out of sheer desperation―
an effort by the whole community was necessary. In all known cases such
an effort then was purely defensive; once an invader was repelled, Greek
women resumed their civil roles. Active participation never extended to
following up a successful defense, and women were apparently never
involved in mopping-up operations. Yet it is the readiness with which Greek
women took on an active role in street fighting that is quite remarkable.
Although they thought war to be no matter for women under normal cir-
cumstances, the Greeks had little if any reservations about mobilizing
anybody capable of inflicting harm on the enemy once war invaded their
private lives. The examples of Plato and Philon show that an active par-
42 Jorit Wintjes
ticipation of women in war was a behavior that was not only perfectly
acceptable under the right circumstances, but indeed desirable. In defense,
the organized war effort of Greek city-states gained a surprising totality
that is not known to the same extent in later periods.
Women and the Military in the Roman World
In Roman society, women occupied roles quite similar to those of the Greek
world. Although they are generally thought to have enjoyed more freedom
than their Greek counterparts, they still were excluded from the public
sphere and its various ways of offering political participation, even if the
wives or mothers of influential politicians or emperors might have been
able to exert considerable influence. Given the similarities between Greek
and Roman women’s roles in society, it is therefore tempting to assume
that both Greeks and Romans shared similar views on women and the
military. That, however, was not the case. It is rather surprising to see that
the Roman attitude towards the participation of women in war not only
differed from that of the Greeks, but was also much more restrictive.
Thus during the time of the Roman Republic, it is generally thought that
women were forbidden to enter military camps at all (Jung 1982, 334; Rüpke
1990, 66). Unfortunately, the available evidence for this ban is rather scanty;
what is available has been collected and discussed by Sara Phang (2001,
124–29). Servius (3.519 [Hagen and Thilo 1881–1902]) famously stated in his
commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid that “never was a woman present in the
camp,” playing on the similarity of the Latin term for camp, castra, and
casta, meaning chaste. He also noted that camp followers were generally
held in low regard during the time of the Republic (8.688 [Hagen and Thilo
1881–1902]). While he wrote more than four centuries after the end of the
Republic, the historiographical evidence seems to support him. Although
women do appear every now and then in military contexts during the
Republican period―as captives, camp followers, or prostitutes―their
presence is almost always described as something negative that could
potentially harm the overall military effort. Thus when Scipio Aemilianus
arrived at Numantia in 134 bc in order to reorganize the demoralized
Roman army besieging the town (Simon 1962, 30–72), his first action was
to throw out prostitutes from the camp. According to Frontinus (Stratagems
4.1.1 [Bennett and McElwain 1925]), Scipio removed a large number of
women, and even if the exact number is unknown—Frontinus simply
speaks of a huge number, though Livy (Periochae 57 [Chaplin 2007]) gives
the number as 2000—it is obvious that to Frontinus clearing a military
camp of women was a plausible way for a Roman commander to restore
morale, discipline, and fighting spirit in a Roman army. All of Frontinus’
examples (Stratagems 4.1–46 [Bennett and McElwain 1925]) appear under
the heading de disciplina (on discipline). Outside historiography, other
pieces of evidence point in the same direction. Thus the anonymous author
of the “miles Marianus,” a famous rhetorical exercise dating perhaps from
the second century ad (Langlands 2006, 265–75), states that military dis-
cipline demanded women be kept out of the camp (Pseudo-Quintilian
3.12.3–4 [Schneider 2004]). During the last decades of the Republic,
Propertius (4.3.45 [Goold 1990]); cf. Vendrand-Voyer 1983, 117) in one of his
elegies let a soldier’s wife decry the fact that military camps were closed to
women. While the evidence may not be sufficient to postulate a strict taboo
on women entering Roman army camps for the time of the Roman Republic,
it seems obvious that women inside a camp were seen as indicating a
distinct lack of morals and general military standards. The impression
conveyed by the surviving sources certainly is very different from what can
be read in Thucydides about the defenders of Plataiai and the women
attached to them.
Despite the evidence for the ban, women were of course never really
absent from Roman military camps during the Republic. Quite the contrary,
taking the events during the siege of Numantia into account, Roman armies
dragged a trail of sutlers and camp followers after them in much the same
way as Hellenistic armies did. What is striking, however, is the difference
in attitude—whereas the Greeks were at least indifferent to the matter,
the evidence from the surviving Latin sources is nearly unambiguously
negative. Women may have been present with Roman armies, but in the
eyes of the overwhelming majority of Roman writers, they shouldn’t have.
At the end of the Republic, however, there is a significant change in
Roman military affairs that eventually leads to the whole question of
women and their relationship to the military presenting itself in a rather
different way. Beginning under Augustus after his final victory in the civil
wars in 31 bc, the Roman army transformed during the early years of the
Principate into a standing army in which the soldiers served for long peri-
ods in units commanded by members of the Roman aristocracy (for a
general overview see Gilliver 2007). One would imagine that at least their
wives had access to the garrison commanded by their husbands in some
way or another. And indeed the literary evidence for a ban on women
44 Jorit Wintjes
entering military camps during imperial times is less clear than it is for the
Republic. Tacitus (Histories 1.48.2 [Moore 1925]); Heubner 1963, 104) tells
a famous story about the military service of Titus Vinius, one of the influ-
ential men behind Emperor Galba (Pflaum 1978, 7–13; Wiedemann 1996,
256–67), which is also attested by Dio Cassius (59.14.4 [Cary and Foster
1924]). According to Tacitus, the wife of one of Titus Vinius’ commanders
early during his military career had donned the dress of a soldier, entered
the camp at night and committed adultery with Titus Vinius in the unit’s
headquarters building. While this at first seems to support the existence
of a taboo on entering a military camp, the overall purpose of the passage
points in a different direction. Sara Phang (2001, 126) very plausibly observed
that Tacitus in this example merely uses the concept of an old, republican
taboo in order to illustrate the lack of morals on the part of Titus Vinius,
who generally does not fare well in Tacitus’s account of the year ad 69,
being called the “most worthless of mankind” elsewhere (Histories 1.6.1
[Moore 1925]).
In fact, while soldiers’ women may have been banned from living inside
military camps, high-ranking officers certainly could have their wives with
them, something that is amply supported by the archeological and epi-
graphical evidence from places like Vindolanda. The Vindolanda tablets
provide a unique insight into the family life of the commanding officer, his
wife, and his family, who all lived inside the camp (Raepsaet-Charlier 1982;
Bowman and Thomas 1987; 1994, 29; Allason-Jones 1989, 53–56). While
individual aspects of their lives are difficult to interpret, it is beyond doubt
that wives of unit commanders actually lived inside military camps. What
exactly the household of an officer like Flavius Cerialis looked like is
unclear, but we may assume that his wife was not the only woman in it,
particularly if he had children. The emperor Caligula is famously described
by Tacitus (Annals 1.41 [Jackson 1937]) as born inside the camp, and for the
year 21 ad Tacitus (Annals 3.33–34 [Jackson 1937]) records a discussion in
the Senate on a proposed ban on governors taking their wives with them,
during which the presence of women at legionary maneuvers was men-
tioned (Martin and Woodman 1996, 289–99; Phang 2001, 366–67). This did
not go down well with Tacitus, however, for whom women were a grave
danger to disciplina, the ancient Roman virtue which was at the core of the
effectiveness of any Roman army (Rutland 1979, 15–16; Kaplan 1979). In
general it is indiscipline that was usually associated with the influence of
women on military affairs (Phang 2001 366–72), and Roman literary tradi-
tion knows a number of military disasters supposedly caused by the par-
ticipation of women, mainly through distracting men to the point of
neglecting their duty, with Marc Antony and his relationship to Cleopatra
being the most prominent example; for others see Phang (2001, 363–65).
Archeological evidence has been repeatedly used in suggesting the pres-
ence of women. Items like small shoes, brooches, combs, or hairpins have
been routinely interpreted as typically female, despite the problems of
identifying archeological finds as female in character (Allason-Jones 1995;
Allison 2005, 2006). In many cases, the nature of the evidence appears
rather ambiguous, as items often could just as well be interpreted as used
by the soldiers. Perhaps the most famous examples are mirrors, which
already in antiquity were regarded as objects typically used by women;
indeed, Juvenal (2.99–101 [Braund 2004]) deemed mirrors a typical sign of
effeminacy. However, Seneca (Natural questions 1.19 [Corcoran 1971a])
decried the implication of weakness and effeminacy in soldiers’ use of
mirrors, thereby testifying the use of them by male soldiers. Mirrors found
in army barracks, in short, might thus not necessarily have belonged to
women but could just as well have been in the possession of those soldiers
Seneca called effeminate. In general, the archeological study of women’s
presence in Roman military camps suffers considerably from the lack of
comparative surveys putting together material from a statistically signifi-
cant number of places. Although in some individual cases the archeologi-
cal evidence has been analysed in considerable detail―the best example
is the in-depth study of the Roman fort Sablotenum (modern Ellingen)
close to the Raetian limes by Penelope Allison (2007; on the fort itself, see
Dietz [1981] and Zanier [1992])―these results still lack a wider context into
which they can be put. The detailed analysis of some individual cases has
in fact raised new issues. Where, for example, could women have stayed
inside a fort? Could the standard barrack block accommodate women at
all? Whether or not the Roman army provided married quarters for its
soldiers is difficult to decide; for a cautious assessment of the evidence, see
Anthony Birley (1977, 48), while James Crow (1995, 73) is sceptical.
Perhaps the greatest problem posed by the available archeological evi-
dence is that it tends to give very little information about the occupation
or the social status of the women present in military camps. While it can
be made plausible that the presence of children is an indicator for women
giving birth in camps―Tacitus’ account of Caligula’s birth in camp could
be construed as additional evidence―which would then in the case of
higher ranking officials make it plausible as well to have nurses in the
household, this is unfortunately all hypothetical. The available material
46 Jorit Wintjes
currently does not allow any firm conclusions on the occupation of these
women, a problem that to some extent affects not only the study of wom-
en’s relationship to the Roman military; reconstructing the number and
function of female slaves and freedwomen in a Roman upper class house-
hold has in general proven to be fraught with considerable difficulties
(Treggiari 1976, 76–77).
Rome, Republic and Empire
The literary sources almost universally stress the detrimental influence of

women on soldiers, warning that women in close contact with the military
will ultimately cause a loss of soldierly effectiveness or complaining that
it simply does not befit a woman to enter a camp, follow an army, or have
an interest in military matters. Yet the presence of women in various func-
tions nevertheless was a reality of military life. Even so, participation in
actual combat, a recurring feature of Greek military history, was largely
unknown during the Roman Republic. Only a very small number of cases
are attested, the reason obviously being the simple fact that since the Gallic
invasion of 387 bc neither the city of Rome itself nor other Roman cities
ever faced a besieging army (Barry 1996, 67). Roman soldiers could at times
face women throwing tiles from the rooftops, as is attested both for the
early and the late Republic. Thus, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
the Roman attack on Corioli met fierce―though ultimately futile―resis-
tance by “everyone according to his strength and power” including women
(Roman Antiquities 6.92.6 [Cary 1933–50]), a detail left out by Livy in his
description of the Roman siege and sack of Corioli (2.33.6–8 [Foster 1919–
29]; see also Cornell 1989, 287–88). Similarly, when the Romans attacked
Veii in 396 bc, Roman soldiers who had undermined the town walls and
entered the city through a tunnel faced determined opposition by women
and slaves hurling tiles from rooftops (Livy 5.21.10 [Foster 1919–29]; on the
Roman conflict with Veii see Cornell 1989, 294–302 and Cornell 1995, 309–
12); in a strange twist of tradition Dionysius of Halicarnassus omits this
detail, speaking only of “some of the inhabitants” and making it clear they
are meant to be men. Another prominent example is given by Sallust
(Jugurthine War 67.1 [Rolfe 1921]), who describes how a Roman garrison
was annihilated by the combined efforts of both the armed men and the
women and children of the town of Vacca in North Africa. During the civil
wars of the Late Republic, widespread street fighting is attested in Rome
several times, though whether women were involved is unclear. Thus it is
impossible to say whether, for example, those who resisted Sulla’s first
attack on Rome by throwing tiles, mostly civilians according to Plutarch
(Sulla 9 [Perrin 1916]; Barry 1996, 69), actually included women.
In all these cases, no fundamental differences to the Greek experience
in the Hellenistic period are discernible. Considering the fact that the
Roman military for much of the Middle and Late Republic was heavily
influenced by Hellenistic military trends, this should come as no surprise.
One would expect a similar result for women giving noncombatant support,
and indeed camp followers appear in much the same fashion in the context
of Roman armies as they did with Greek ones. The most famous example
is the already mentioned incident at Numantia, which survives in a fairly
large number of accounts. The baggage train of the Roman army suppos-
edly included prostitutes, merchants, and other camp followers; most or
even all of them were evicted from the camp by Scipio (Appian Iberica
14.85 [White 1912]); Livy Periochae 57 [Chaplin 2007]); Frontinus Stratagems
4.1.1 [Bennett and McElwain 1925]; Valerius Maximus 2.7.1 [Shackleton-
Bailey 2000]; Plutarch Moralia 201b [Babbitt 1931]). While the surviving
texts single out prostitutes, women following a Roman army probably
offered a wide range of services, including those that added to the soldiers’
equipment or supplies. Unfortunately, these activities of camp followers
lie almost completely in the dark.
The changes the Roman army underwent during the Late Republic,
which are outside the scope of this chapter (for a general overview see De
Blois 2007), resulted not only in a force mostly composed of professional
soldiers, but also in one that did away with the need for a large baggage
train by burdening the soldiers themselves with a large amount of kit by
ancient standards. Together with an organized army train this gave the
Roman army a fairly large degree of mobility and flexibility (Roth 1998,
68–91). At the same time, it restricted the requirements camp followers
could be called up to fill when the army was on the move. Thus private
merchants apparently had only a minor role at most in supplying Roman
armies (Krohmeyer and Veith 1928, 528; Labisch 1975, 42; Erdkamp 1995,
180–83; Roth 1998, 100). With the Early Empire and the advent of permanent
garrisons, civil settlements, the so-called vici, sprang up outside the camps
and turned into the new centers for everyone who wanted to make a living
off the army. As important places of interaction between army and society
they have seen considerable attention; the most recent general introduc-
tion is provided by Norbert Hanel 2007, for overviews see also the studies
48 Jorit Wintjes
by Brian Campbell (2002, 96–100) and Pat Southern (2006, 76–82). The
camp followers of former times had settled down.
Despite obvious similarities to Hellenistic military affairs, however, there
is a marked difference in attitude discernible among the Romans. While
camp followers do exist, they are nearly always seen as lowering the qual-
ity of the army considerably. Although similar reasoning does surface in
Greek sources as well, it is not nearly as consistent as in the Roman literary
tradition, where the mere existence of female camp followers can be used
to deride an enemy; thus Catilina’s followers were described by Cicero (In
Catilinam 2.23 [Macdonald 1976]) as effeminates, who even considered
taking their women with them on campaign. At best, women in the train
of an army were a tolerable evil, but in most of the cases they simply indi-
cate a lack of discipline. It seems inconceivable that a Roman commander
would have put together a garrison in the same way the Athenians and
Plataians had done, knowingly and willingly adding a considerable number
of women to support the soldiers.
Whereas for research into women’s relationship towards the military
during the Roman Republic the observer has to rely mainly on literary
evidence, the Roman Empire presents a broader picture due to the surviv-
ing documentary evidence. Accordingly, various aspects of the relationship
of women to the imperial Roman army have been in the past the subject
of major studies by Sara Phang (2001) and Oliver Stoll (2006). As profes-
sionalism, and with it a rather strict separation from the rest of the society,
was one of the main characteristics of the Roman army during the Empire,
one would expect cases of Roman women directly involved in military
action to be nonexistent. Yet civil wars could still provide opportunities
for such behavior.
When in 190 riots broke out in the city ultimately leading to the fall of
the praetorian prefect Cleander, the inhabitants of Rome are said to have
thrown tiles, though whether this included the participation of women is
unclear (Herodian 1.12.8 [Whittaker 1969]); Barry 1996, 70). Less than fifty
years later, during the civil war of 238, another case of tile-throwers is
attested, again without further qualification regarding women (Herodian
1.12.1–5 [Whittaker 1969]); Barry 1996, 70). Perhaps the most famous exam-
ple is Verulana Gratilla, a Roman noblewoman who according to Tacitus
(Histories 3.69 [Moore 1925]; Hunink 2005, 178–79) took part in the Flavian
defense of the Capitoline Hill against Vitellian soldiers in 69. Although
Tacitus usually has little positive to say about women engaged in military
affairs, Verulana is presented as a positive figure, even though she had,
according to his description, given up her family in order to concentrate
on the war instead. On the whole, however, women largely disappear from
the description of urban warfare. William Barry (1996, 70–71) has observed
that by the time of the early Empire, it had become impossible to tell the
gender of those noncombatants involved in street fighting, which may well
reflect the fact that women by and large had no part in it any more. During
the street fighting in 69, most of the civilians were spectators (Tacitus
Histories 3.83.1 [Moore 1925]).
Outside direct participation in military action, the relationship between
women and the military experienced a certain degree of official regulation.
Perhaps the most famous and best understood element is the ban on legit-
imate marriages for Roman soldiers, which is not only attested in the liter-
ary sources but has left a trail of documentary evidence as well, thoroughly
reviewed by Sara Phang (2001, 22–85). One reason for this measure seems
to have been the desire to separate the military further from civilian soci-
ety. Peter Garnsey (1970, 46), Brian Campbell (1984, 302), and Suzanne
Dixon (1992, 55) have all suggested that preserving military efficiency was
one of the motives for the ban, as married soldiers would be difficult to
transfer throughout the empire. As Sara Phang (2001, 372–77) points out,
however, this reasoning fails to explain why the marriage ban was still in
place after most of the Roman military units were stationed at one and the
same garrison for the greater part of their time in service.
That Roman soldiers did form permanent relationships with women, as
shown by diplomas mentioning wives and children of soldiers, was not a
violation of the ban. Roman marriage in general was an informal affair,
outside the control of the Roman army (Phang 2001, 197–213) and, one could
add, outside its interests. In reality the ban mainly prevented the children
becoming legitimate heirs of their fathers. Outside marriage, Roman sol-
diers could enter unions with slave women, something that appears to have
happened rather frequently (Phang 2001, 231–40). Often these women were
freed after the death of their owner through his will and appear as such on
a sizeable number of soldiers’ epitaphs. Despite the fairly large amount of
information on the status of women present in the household of a Roman
soldier, little is known about their actual activities. Apparently they were
willing to follow their husbands or masters even to temporary and uncom-
fortable postings (Stoll 2006, 281, 327), and one would assume that under
normal circumstances they were confined to a typical family life; it would
be equally possible, though, to speculate on their participation in economic
activities on a small scale, for which evidence is unfortunately almost
totally absent.
50 Jorit Wintjes
Besides these personal relationships there is also some evidence for a
different kind of involvement with the Roman army. In a house in the gar-
rison city of Dura Europos in Syria, a group of inscriptions lists the names
of a sizeable number of male and female entertainers, some of whom had
come from Zeugma (Rostovtzeff 1944, 203–65). Apparently, the military
had a hand in the organization of their journey, as the inscription also listed
two army officials, one of whom may have been responsible for billeting
the entertainers (Phang 2001, 249). Roy Davies (1989, 67) has suggested,
mainly due to the questionable reputation of female entertainers in antiq-
uity, that the house was in fact a military brothel, but as the inscriptions
do not directly mention prostitution, the first editors advised great caution
in this matter (Rostovtzeff 1944, 261). What the legal status or the precise
function of these entertainers might have been is impossible to know with
any certainty. Entertainers, like tavern hostesses or waitresses, did indeed
have a poor reputation in antiquity and were thought to have been of
questionable morals (Kampen 1981, 110–12), but that seems a long way from
officially established brothels, for which there is in fact no other evidence.
High-ranking army officials would in any case have been loath to jeopardize
their reputation, making them unlikely participants in such a scheme. Sara
Phang (2001, 250–51) plausibly suggests that if there was organized prosti-
tution around the Roman army, it would probably have been run by junior
officers or NCOs on the side. This may well be echoed in Tacitus, where
the Syrian legionaries are described as eager to make money wherever
possible (Annals 13.35 [Jackson 1937]).
Whether women played an important role outside the soldiers’ families
in supporting Roman military efforts is hard to say. The Roman army must
have consumed raw wool and textiles on a vast scale, as comparisons with
early modern armies show; at the end of the seventeenth century, an army
of 100,000 men required 20,000 pieces of cloth every two years (Wolf 1951,
180). Livy (44.16.4 [Schlesinger 1938–59]) provides a rare glimpse, reporting
that in 169 bc the praetor C. Sulpicius acquired 6000 togas and 30,000 tunics
in Macedonia. In the production of these materials, women may well have
had an important part. While weaving seems to have been largely done by
men, women specialized in mending or spinning (Kampen 1981, 121–24;
Gardner 1987, 238), activities the Romans considered typically feminine in
character (Lovén 1998). Unfortunately, there is generally little information
on the organization of the Roman textile industry, with most of the avail-
able evidence coming from Egypt; the statement by Arnold Jones (1974,
350), that there is “lamentably little information about the weaving and
clothing industry of the Roman empire,” still stands. Even less is known
about the way the Roman army procured textiles, which leaves the ques-
tion of whether or not it had any direct organizational function in the
production of wool and garments impossible to answer.
On the whole, the evidence for the relationship between women and
the Roman army during the empire is thus fragmented in a rather peculiar
way. Women are present in a sizeable number of surviving inscriptions
and other documentary evidence, in some cases to such an extent that
insights into their private lives are possible. Women also appear in literary
and legal texts, allowing a fairly clear picture on the legal aspects of their
relationship towards soldiers. Yet while the surviving evidence makes it
possible to observe the presence of these women, they shed little if any
light on their activities. Although it may be possible to attest the presence
of women even inside military camps, it is currently impossible to say with
any certainty what they actually did there. In other words, the interactions
between women and the Roman army are largely unknown.
In that respect there is a considerable and perhaps surprising difference
between Greek and Roman military history. Despite the much larger
amount of documentary evidence from the Roman Empire, more is actually
known about the way women interacted with Greek armies. At least in the
case of the Roman Empire, one reason may well lie with the fact that the
Roman army was a professional one. As this professional army was, for
much of its existence, concentrated in the frontier provinces, many regions
lost any direct relationship with the military. Consequently, women’s inter-
actions with the army took place in and around garrisons, not in the large
urban centers of the Empire; the latter, however, usually produce the major
part of the documentary evidence.
Comparing women’s relationship to the military in the Greek and
Roman world produces another interesting difference. While allowing
women a role in military efforts could be seen as the hallmark of a poor
general in the Greek world as well, the idea that women in a military con-
text denoted low quality, cowardice, and similar vices was by no means as
deeply rooted as it apparently was in Rome. Even if there are a few exam-
ples of bravery by individual women, the literary tradition in general dis-
plays a picture of remarkable consistency, in which the participation of
women in military matters is an important indicator for the breakdown of
discipline, a core value for the Romans. It has to be admitted, though, that
the literary record may represent an upper-class ideology with little rele-
vance to what actually happened in frontier garrisons like Vindolanda. It
52 Jorit Wintjes
is probably safe to assume that officers’ wives living inside military camps
were not regarded as detrimental to the fighting spirit of the whole unit; it
may not have been very different with the soldiers, even if their wives had
to live outside the camps.
Conclusion―Women, War, and Armies in the Classical World
War has been described as “one of the most rigidly ‘gendered’ activities
known to humankind” (Ehrenreich 1997, 125), and this certainly applied to
antiquity. Throughout Greek history, citizenship in a Greek city-state was
coupled to bearing arms and putting one’s life on the line for the commu-
nity. War was thus not only a political activity in that it affected the rela-
tionship between different communities, but on a personal level military
service also served as one important way each individual citizen interacted
with his community. In all this, Greek women had no place, as any political
activity was in almost all cases a purely male domain.
How surprising then that, under certain circumstances, it was not only
permissible for Greek women to take part in a military effort, but their
services were indeed sought after. Moreover, this could not only include
women offering support to a military effort by preparing food, manufactur-
ing ammunition, taking part in the construction of defenses, or offering
other auxiliary services; women also actively took part in combat right
down to actually engaging the enemy. It is clear from the historical record
that once a Greek community faced an existential threat, the distinction
between private and public affairs was―while not abolished entirely―
blurred to a great extent. In such a situation, the military effort of a Greek
community would encompass everybody beyond even the proverbial last
man. Only when the danger had passed did women revert to their “normal”
roles within society.
The introduction of professional armies changed the nature of women’s
participation in military affairs considerably; the Roman Empire presents
a very different picture than any Greek state. The professionalism of the
Roman army was instrumental in demilitarizing large parts of Roman
society, a development that was aided by the fact that the army was con-
centrated in the border provinces away from many of the Empire’s large
urban centers. Thus, whereas in Greek city-states pretty much every woman
had some connection or another to the military, in the Roman Empire
women related in some way or another to the army formed only a small
social group, subject to a number of official regulations. Demilitarizing
Roman society eventually also did away with the need for women to play
an active role in combat, and as a result, fighting women by and large
disappeared in Roman times.
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60 Jorit Wintjes
Camp Followers, Sutlers, and Soldiers’ Wives 61
chapter two
Camp Followers, Sutlers, and Soldiers’ Wives:

Women in Early Modern Armies (c. 1450–c. 1650)
Mary Elizabeth Ailes
Between 1450 and 1650 the nature of warfare dramatically changed in

Europe. At the beginning of this era, the use of gunpowder weapons became
widespread throughout the continent. In response, commanders revamped
their military tactics and reconstructed urban fortifications. The new weap-
onry also caused the size of armies to grow considerably as leaders sought
to capitalize upon and defend their forces against the new weapons
(Roberts 1995, 13–21; Parker 1988, 1–5). These changes caused a significant
shift in the structure of European armies. During the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, small military forces that leaders raised occasionally from their
own supporters gave way to larger armies consisting of native forces and
mercenary units. Warfare during this period became entrepreneurial in
nature as individual commanders constructed their own units and then
sold them to the highest bidder. As a result, the loyalty of such troops to a
particular cause, and the control that individual monarchs exerted over
the forces fighting for them, often only extended as far as the leader’s
pocketbook (Lynn 1996, 516–17). The entrepreneurial nature of warfare first
took root in the wealthier regions of Europe, such as France and Spain,
where rulers possessed the significant financial resources needed to main-
tain mercenary forces. This change spread more slowly to the European
peripheries. Rulers in other regions, Scandinavia, for example, did not
possess the financial resources or the political means to extract such
resources from their subjects until the late sixteenth century or early sev-
enteenth century (Lynn 1996, 508–17; Glete 2002, 177).
These military innovations, described by many historians as the military
revolution, not only influenced military structures, but also caused dra-
matic political, social, and economic changes throughout Europe (Rogers
1995, 3–8). As the size of armies grew and the cost of hiring such forces ever
increased, rulers sought to gain control over the situation. During the sev-
enteenth century, monarchs throughout Europe engaged in a process of
62 Mary Elizabeth Ailes
state centralization that sought to bring all aspects of governing under
monarchical control. One of their primary concerns was to centralize their
states to better marshal their resources for warfare (Glete 2002, 1–9). As
part of this process, armies increasingly took on a permanent nature with
centralized administrations, standardized methods of training, and means
to supply, pay, and house soldiers on a consistent basis.
Throughout this period, women played active and crucial roles in sup-
porting the military efforts of kingdoms throughout Europe. Women from
all walks of life experienced warfare, their lives shaped and changed by
military affairs. Female rulers led their realms in war, noblewomen
defended their holdings, civilian women endured the hardships of sieges
and quartering, and officers’ wives and camp followers accompanied mil-
itary forces on campaign. The contributions of these women to their coun-
tries’ war efforts were crucial because of the entrepreneurial nature of
warfare during this era. Because states did not possess the administrative
structures to maintain, train, house, and supply military forces on a per-
manent basis, troops depended upon women to provide for their domestic
needs, just as they did in civil life. Women accompanied men on the march
to perform a large share of the cooking, cleaning, laundering, and nursing
that the troops needed. In civilian settings, women provided housing, food,
and supplies to troops who were quartered among them. Around 1650,
however, women’s access to military communities would begin to undergo
significant changes. As rulers centralized their states and began to develop
the means to supply and care for their soldiers, commanders’ needs to have
women fulfill these duties disappeared (Lynn 2008, 8; Hacker 1981, 654–55,
665). Although this process would not be fully completed until the nine-
teenth century, growing concerns to limit and regulate women who accom-
panied armies during the seventeenth century represented the beginning
of a process that would eventually eliminate women from the battlefield
and the campaign community. The purpose of this chapter is to provide
an introduction to women’s military experiences during the fifteenth, six-
teenth, and seventeenth centuries. It will give an overview of women’s
military activities, the restrictions that shaped their involvement in various
states’ war efforts, and the impact of warfare upon their lives.
Queens, Regents, and Consorts: Women as Military Leaders
Throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, female

political leaders led their kingdoms in war. All women in this position,
however, experienced significant problems in fulfilling their duties to
defend their territories because of the societal attitudes that barred women
from engaging in combat. Europeans during the early modern era generally
regarded women as subservient to men. As a result of these sentiments
most Europeans expected that women should be submissive, caring, and
meek. Women who exhibited traits such as aggression and ambition would
have been seen as too masculine and thus would have been guilty of dis-
rupting the social order (Goldstein 2001, 9; Fraser 1990, 326–27). Because
women were regarded as irrational, many people believed that women’s
involvement in violent acts occurred as an outgrowth of their uncontrol-
lable emotional state and thus could promote social chaos. As a result of
such attitudes, women’s involvement in military activities was seen as
unnatural and potentially socially destructive (Elshtain 1987, 164–70). These
sentiments meant that women who served as military leaders had to per-
form a balancing act between fulfilling the military duties expected of them
as political leaders and not upsetting their subjects by acting in a manner
that would have been seen as unwomanly and thus unnatural. Queens and
other female rulers employed many different tactics to fulfill their military
responsibilities.
The husbands of married queens often actually led the troops in battle
while the queens oversaw military administration and acted as inspira-
tional figureheads. The military career of Isabella of Castile illustrates such
a model. In 1474, Isabella’s half-brother Henry IV, who had been king of
Castile, died. While Isabella was his acknowledged heir, Henry’s illegitimate
daughter also had claims to the throne. As a result of these competing
claims, civil war erupted. While Isabella’s husband Ferdinand led the mil-
itary forces supporting her position, Isabella negotiated support from the
Castilian nobility and oversaw the collection of supplies, the hiring of
mercenaries, and the establishment of field hospitals. Isabella also on occa-
sion made appearances on the battlefield when her husband could not be
present, as when she commanded troops at Toledo in 1475. Riding among
her troops in full armor, her presence was said to have been very inspira-
tional to her forces.
After Isabella’s control over Castile had been secured in 1476, she and
Ferdinand turned their attention to conquering the remaining Moorish
kingdoms in the Spanish peninsula. During the Reconquista, Isabella con-
tinued her earlier practice of overseeing military administration and mak-
ing appearances on the battlefield to rally her troops. She made a
particular point of appearing at sieges when the Spanish were on the verge
of victory. These appearances at the crucial moment seemed to inspire the
troops and terrify the Moors, thus insuring their defeat. At the siege of Baza
in 1488, for instance, she reviewed the army from horseback in full armor,
evoking from her soldiers the cry “Castile, Castile, for our King Isabella”
(Fraser 1990, 189–91, 194–95). Isabella maintained legitimacy as a military
leader through working behind the scenes and putting in appearances at
the crucial moment of victory, while her husband did most of the actual
commanding in the field.
Queens who did not have husbands faced more problematic circum-
stances, as they had to rely on male commanders to lead their troops in
battle while at the same time maintaining their right to superior political
and military authority. In these cases queens had to engage in a careful
balancing act to maintain royal authority while relinquishing military
authority to their commanders in the field. Queen Elizabeth I of England
is one of the prime examples of a woman who successfully managed such
a difficult situation. Throughout Elizabeth’s reign, which stretched from
1558 until 1603, England was involved in military engagements in Ireland
and the Netherlands, as well as fighting a war against Spain from 1585 until
1603 (Hammer 2003, 2–5). Although she left the actual command of troops
in the field to her male military commanders, she effectively used propa-
ganda and administrative control to direct military operations from a dis-
tance.
With regard to propaganda, Elizabeth throughout her reign bolstered
her political position and justified her right to rule by portraying herself as
a powerful prince, a mother to her nation, and a virtuous goddess who
needed the protection of her supporters. To gain support for her political
position, Elizabeth frequently made references to her descent from her
father, Henry VIII, and described herself as an equal to other contemporary
princes. By connecting herself to these strong male leaders, both past and
present, Elizabeth was showing that even though she was a woman, she
possessed the same qualities of kingship as her male counterparts (Fraser
1990, 212–13). Additionally, Elizabeth’s councilors used the theory of the
king’s two bodies to justify her right to rule. First developed in the Middle
Ages, the idea of the king’s two bodies viewed the ruler as possessing two
entities, the body politic and the ruler’s physical body. This idea was devel-
oped to separate the actual person of the monarch from the office of king-
ship, so that while the person of the king might die, the office of the king
remained. In Elizabeth’s case, this theory proved particularly useful because
she could biologically be a woman and thus be subject to all of the con-
temporarily perceived weaknesses of womanhood, and at the same time
possess the masculine attributes of the office of kingship (Levin 1994, 122–
23).
Even while describing herself as a mighty king, Elizabeth also empha-
sized her feminine nature, portraying herself as a virgin goddess by making
references to such ancient mythological figures as Diana and Venus, and
by having herself portrayed as the mother of the nation. These tactics were
designed to create support and loyalty among her subjects and, at the same
time, to instill a sense of wonder that she, in the role of a strong and bril-
liant king, could overcome the inherent weaknesses of her sex (Fraser 1990,
213). The most famous example of this tactic is Elizabeth’s speech at Tilbury
in 1588, where she had gone to review the troops gathered to defend
England against the Spanish Armada’s forthcoming attack. In a brilliant
display, Elizabeth appeared before her troops on horseback and in stylized
armor, and gave a rousing speech where she stated, “I know I have the body
of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King,
and a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain or any
Prince of Europe should invade the borders of my realm.” Although she
acknowledged at the end of her speech that because she could not take up
arms she had turned command over to her officers, who acted in her stead,
the speech had the desired effect of creating the image of Elizabeth as a
mighty leader of her nation’s defense (Levin 1994, 143–44; Fraser 1990, 224).
Elizabeth I did not, however, use propaganda only to create the illusion
that she exercised military control. Although she did not lead troops on
the battlefield, she did, with the aid of her Privy Council, make decisions
about where war would be waged and how campaigns would be conducted.
For example, in 1577 war between Spain and the United Provinces had
again erupted as part of the ongoing revolt of the Netherlands against
Spanish control. Elizabeth and the Privy Council debated whether to send
aid to the Protestants in the Netherlands and thus risk open warfare with
Spain. Ultimately, Elizabeth decided to hire 10,000 mercenaries from John
Casimir, the son of the elector of the Rhineland Palatinate, who would be
sent to the Netherlands to aid the Dutch in their fight against the Spanish.
By pursuing this option, Elizabeth gave aid to fellow Protestants in their
military struggle against one of the strongest Catholic powers in Europe,
while at the same time maintaining the option of being able to deny
involvement in the conflict (Hammer 2003, 105).
Queens not only fulfilled military responsibilities in their own rights,
but as consorts they used their wealth and extensive social and political
connections to forward their husbands’ military agendas. Queen Henrietta
Maria offers an interesting example of such activities. She bought and
organized the transportation of weapons for her husband, Charles I of
England. In 1642, Charles and his supporters gathered a military force in
northern England to defend the king against what he perceived to be the
growing encroachment of Parliament upon the king’s prerogative. Open
warfare between the king and Parliament began later in the year, the first
formal battle being fought at Edgehill in October 1642. Henrietta Maria’s
attempts to aid her husband’s military efforts began months earlier, in
February 1642, when she and her ten-year-old daughter, Princess Mary,
boarded a ship bound for the Netherlands. The queen had two officially
stated reasons for the voyage. The first was to take Mary to the Netherlands
where she would join Prince William of Orange, whom she had married
the previous year. The second was to allow the queen the opportunity to
visit the spas so that she could recover her health, as she had been feeling
unwell (Plowden 2000, 1–6). Once she had seen her daughter safely settled
in with her new family, Henrietta Maria began to work on her true purpose
for traveling to the Netherlands, which was to secure weapons for her
husband’s army. Throughout the spring of 1642, Henrietta Maria, with the
aid of the Prince of Orange, used the jewels she had smuggled out of
England to secure loans to buy weapons and ammunition for Charles.
During the summer, the queen began to have transported to England these
military supplies plus money she had raised to support her husband’s war
effort. Unfortunately for Henrietta Maria, not all of these supplies reached
Charles. While some of the ships successfully completed the voyage, others
were driven back to the Netherlands by bad weather or were captured by
Parliamentary forces that guarded the coast. Exactly how much in the way
of military supplies and money the queen sent to England remains
unknown, but the effort caused enough concern in Parliament to induce
the politicians to send a representative to the Netherlands to protest the
aid being given to the king (Plowden 2000, 12–17).
Female rulers also fulfilled formalized military command roles as
regents, acting for their husbands when they were ill, absent on campaign,
or deceased. It was a common practice since the Middle Ages. As regents,
women organized, oversaw, and in some cases directly led the defense of
their territories. Because of their relationship to the ruler, these women
were often seen as the best candidates to protect both the interests of the
ruling family and of the ruler’s territory. In times of war, female consorts
frequently oversaw the defense of their homelands while their husbands
were away leading military campaigns. During the 1520s, Francesco Maria,
the Duke of Urbino, made his wife Leonora regent while he was on cam-
paign. In his absence, Leonora oversaw the administration of Urbino’s
military forces during their campaign against an invading Imperial army.
In this capacity, Leonora hired captains, organized pay and supplies for
Urbino’s army, bought weapons and artillery, and made decisions about
where to station particular regiments. Often these decisions were made in
consultation with her husband and, in speaking to Urbino’s military com-
manders, she frequently invoked her husband’s wishes in order to
strengthen her position. While she carried out her husband’s wishes and
sought his advice, however, she had to make the ultimate decisions about
military administration (Mattozzi 2004, 142, 145–47).
More problematic was the position of women who acted as regents in
a time of war when their husbands were no longer living. In such cases
women had to use a variety of tactics to gain and maintain the support of
their military commanders and subjects. A very successful woman in one
such venture was Amalia Elisabeth, who became the regent in 1637 after
the death of her husband William V, landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. During the
Thirty Years’ War, William had been an active supporter of the Protestant
cause. Because he refused to agree to the Peace of Prague in 1635, however,
his territories were overrun by Imperial forces and he was forced into exile
(Parker 1987, 143). After William’s death, his wife Amalia Elisabeth took
personal command of the Hessian army. Although she delegated daily
military operations to her late husband’s commander, Lt.-Gen. Peter
Holzapple, she oversaw the military administration and tactical decisions
(Hefferich 2003, 72).
In order to keep the support of her people and her military forces after
her husband’s death, she distributed a letter stating that she was in control,
that she would maintain her husband’s policies, and that she needed her
subjects’ loyalty and support in the present emergency. Throughout her
reign, she regularly bolstered her position by referring to her husband,
whose will she insisted she fulfilling, and by emphasizing the state’s con-
tinuing war emergency (Hefferich 2003, 80). Unlike other widows who were
forced to drop out of the war or become the dependents of one of the Great
Powers, Amalia Elisabeth was able to keep an army of more than 10,000
soldiers in the field until the war ended in 1648. Her success has been
attributed to her stubbornness, her belief that she was fulfilling God’s will,
and her ability to manipulate other people to serve her interests (Hefferich
2003, 21; Parker 1987, 223).
Noblewomen and the Defense of Property
Just as queens fulfilled military leadership roles for their kingdoms, noble-
women could be called upon to organize and lead military forces to defend
their personal territories. Elite women’s military activities usually were an
extension of duties they already fulfilled as property owners, as managers
of estates, and as social networkers who sought to enhance their families’
social and political status. Because of their position as property owners and
managers, women could be thrust into the role of leading the defense of
their territories. When men marched off to war, many women were left
behind at home. Sometimes the course of the fighting would engulf these
women, forcing them to lead the defense of their property. For example,
in 1645 the Countess of Derby led a successful defense of her home, Lathom
House, when Parliamentary forces besieged it during the English Civil War.
Throughout the siege, she refused to give in to offers of safe conduct for
herself and her children and encouraged her soldiers to stand fast in their
defense of the fortress (Fraser 1985, 165–68). A woman who took a more
active role in the fight to defend her home was Lady Bankes who defended
Corfe Castle against Parliamentary forces, in 1643. During the final attack
on the castle, Lady Bankes along with her daughters, her female servants
and ladies-in-waiting, and five soldiers threw stones and burning logs over
the walls to successfully prevent enemy soldiers from erecting scaling lad-
ders (Fraser 1985, 171–74).
Women could also be thrust into roles of political leadership during
sieges due to the death or imprisonment of local male leaders, as happened
to Françoise de Cezelly, who was acting as governor of the town of Leucate
when it was besieged during the French Wars of Religion. Cezelly was mar-
ried to Jean Boursier de Barry, who had been governor until he was cap-
tured by enemy forces in July 1589. During his imprisonment, Cezelly took
over and led the town’s forces during a siege later that year. The leader of
the attacking forces, the Duke of Joyeuse, promised to spare Jean Boursier
de Barry if the town surrendered. When Cezelly rejected the offer, holding
her responsibility for the town’s defense higher than her husband’s life,
Joyeuse had Barry executed. Despite these actions, Cezelly refused to allow
the attackers to break the town’s defenses. Cezelly prevailed, and after the
war Henry IV rewarded her bravery with a pension and the permanent
governorship of Leucate (Lalaguë-Guilhemsans 2003).
Elite women not only defended property through their participation in
sieges, but through their activities to drive away enemy forces which threat-
ened rural communities. In the absence of a husband or other male relative,
women could be compelled to organize and lead local defense forces, as
illustrated by the experiences of Alberte-Barbe d’Ernecourt, Madame de
Saint-Baslemont. While her husband campaigned with the Duke of Lorraine
during the Thirty Years’ War, Madame de Saint-Baslemont organized a
small fighting force of vassals and peasants to defend the family property
from marauding soldiers. But she did more than organize. She also fought.
Mounting her horse, she led her forces in the field, often riding into the
midst of the fighting to engage in hand-to-hand combat with her enemy.
Her military reputation persuaded many refugees to settle in her lands
(Lynn 2003, 381–82).
Elite women also attended to logistics. In managing their estates’ work-
force and maintaining supplies for their families and supporters, elite
women inevitably took part in acquiring and maintaining military supplies.
Many noble estates supported small military forces to protect the family
property and to promote regional stability. Women, as the household man-
agers, would have participated in buying and maintaining supplies for these
troops (Neuschel 1997, 132–34). As property owners and managers, noble-
women would also be responsible for gathering together military supplies
requisitioned by the state. In Sweden during the early modern period, for
instance, the crown’s cavalry comprised horsemen provided by the nobil-
ity through an institution called rusttjänst (knight service). This practice
was formalized in 1622 when the crown required all nobles to provide one
cavalry man and all of his equipment for every 500 marks of income
(Roberts 1958, 211). Female landowners or women who oversaw the man-
agement of family property were subject to the requirements of rusttjänst,
just as were their male counterparts.
Elite women also participated in military affairs in other ways, perhaps
most notably by wielding indirect political power through persuading their
male relatives and friends to particular courses of action. Although legally
barred from holding political office or exercising real political power, noble-
women throughout Europe were accustomed to helping shape political
events or political opinion through their ties of kinship and marriage to
politically powerful men (Payne 2004, 169–70). The actions of an unidenti-
fied noblewoman named Catherine during the French Wars of Religion is
particularly illustrative. She wrote to the Duke of Nevers, asking him to
bring a force to lift the siege of a fortress that her husband was command-
ing. In her letter, Catherine detailed her servants’ numerous efforts to
deliver letters to the duke. She also described her meeting with the com-
mander of the besieging forces, warning him that the duke would come to
her family’s aid. Additionally, she provided an assessment of the enemy
forces and their possibility of success if the duke did not help her husband.
In order to emphasize her husband’s need for military aid and to evoke in
the duke a sense of responsibility for her husband’s well-being, she
reminded him of her husband’s twenty years of service and asked that he
show compassion to her as a wife and mother who did not want to see her
husband harmed (Neuschel 1997, 132–34).
Another way women might influence military affairs was by pleading
for the release of prisoners. Andrew Monro, a mercenary from Scotland
who served in the Swedish army during the Thirty Years’ War, attracted
such an intervention. During the early stages of Sweden’s involvement in
the war, its forces were quartered in the northern German city of Stettin.
Monro was convicted of beating a man at night within his own home and
sentenced to death. Although we do not know their motivation, the
Duchess of Pomerania and other noble ladies begged the Swedish com-
manders to spare Monro’s life, alas to no avail. Despite the women’s pro-
testations, the local Swedish governor executed him (Monro 1637/1999,
174).
Women also influenced military affairs more directly by acting as spies
and informants. Because they were classified as noncombatants, women
were sometimes able to slip across enemy lines or visit enemy camps more
easily than men to provide commanders with useful information. During
the Irish rebellion in the 1640s, a noblewoman named Lady Alice Moore
attempted to help Scottish forces from Ulster seize control of Drogheda by
giving them keys to the town gates. An Irish woman, the widow of the
Englishman Edward May, engaged in more covert activities when she set
up a system to pass information on a regular basis to the leaders of the Irish
forces (O’Dowd 1991, 94). Across the sea in England, there are many exam-
ples of women engaging in covert activities to sway the outcome of the
English Civil War. Among the most famous was Jane Whorwood, who
worked for the release and escape of Charles I from prison. In 1647,
Whorwood visited Charles when he was being held at Holdenby in
Northamptonshire. She secretly gave Charles money, probably collected
by her step-father James Maxwell, who had served as a Groom of the
Bedchamber to Charles I; she left behind in the king’s room a letter written
in cipher. After the king was transferred to Hampton Court, Whorwood
secretly gave him more money. Later, the king escaped to the Isle of Wight
where he had the further misfortune of being imprisoned by the island’s
pro-Parliamentary governor; Whorwood worked unsuccessfully to arrange
the king’s escape. She attempted to provide Charles with a file and nitric
acid to break the bars on his windows and she also kept him in touch with
his supporters by conveying their messages to him (Fraser 1985, 186–7).
Women in Civilian Populations
Elite women were not the only ones to have military roles thrust upon
them. The most widespread source of friction between armed forces and
the civilian population was the quartering of troops in private homes,
particularly in occupied areas. This could be a special problem for women.
Having armed men forced upon a family could bring great difficulties and
disruptions within a household. Sometimes problems could occur when
soldiers demanded sexual favors from the household’s female members.
In 1644, following the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Marston Moor, Scottish
allies of the English Parliamentary troops were quartered among the civil-
ian population of Yorkshire. Alice Wandesford, who lived with her mother
in Hipswell, suffered the unwanted attentions of an officer who was quar-
tered in her community. A Captain Innis was infatuated with Alice and
demanded that her mother let him stay in their house. When her mother
refused, Innis approached Alice’s aunt and told her that he would pay her
if she could arrange for Alice to be his wife. After her aunt refused this offer,
Innis continued his pursuit of Alice causing her to flee her home and hide
in the countryside with one of her mother’s tenants. When Alice’s mother
refused to reveal her hiding place, Innis drove away the family’s cattle.
Later Alice was warned that Innis was trying to arrange to have her kid-
napped. As a result, she remained in hiding until the troops departed
(Plowden 2000, 112).
Commoners might find themselves more directly involved in military
activity when war spread into new territory and swept them into the fight-
ing. The most disruptive were sieges. When sieges began most citizens of
the town or city would be rallied to help defend against the attack. During
the fighting, women performed many necessary tasks such as bringing food
to the defenders and helping to build and repair fortifications. Beyond
enhancing the community’s manpower and thus allowing for the work to
be completed more quickly, female labor during sieges was particularly
important because it freed men to engage in the work of guarding and
defending the walls (Sandberg 2004, 668–72). Women would also take part
directly in the fighting associated with defending a town or fortress. One
of the most famous examples was the woman who helped defend
Brauschweig in 1615 from an attack by the Duke of Brauschweig-Lüneburg.
After enduring three months of constant attacks, the city’s defenders drove
back the duke’s troops. In the midst of the fighting, an unmarried woman
known as Gesche Meiburg stood on the city walls “armed with a sword/
mace and musket.” She attacked the enemy with great courage, wounding
and killing many of them. Throughout the seventeenth century, many
German broadsheets portrayed images of Gesche Meiburg as she came to
represent the willingness of women to aid in their cities’ defense. Such
images served the purpose of justifying women’s involvement in siege
activities (Rublack and Selwyn 1997, 7).
Individual heroism was only part of the story. Groups of women worked
side by side with male defenders to repulse their enemies. The siege of
Castle Eger in 1552 offers an example of the importance of collective female
military action to a fortress’s successful defense. In 1552 as part of their
attempted expansion into Eastern Europe, Ottoman forces attacked the
Castle of Eger in Transylvania. The castle’s defenders comprised 1900 men
and 90 women. During the siege, the women refused to escape to safety
and stayed with the men to defend the fortress. The women engaged in
hand-to-hand combat with the enemy as attempts were made to breach
the castle walls. Additionally, the women defended the walls by pouring
boiling water onto their enemies and by throwing burning logs soaked in
tar at the enemy forces. The collective efforts of the castle’s entire com-
munity led to the siege being lifted and the enemy leaving (Leisen 2003,
137).
For women who engaged either voluntarily or involuntarily in sieges,
the consequences could be severe. Women who participated in sieges were
subject to death and execution if the besieging forces prevailed. According
to the accepted ideas of siege warfare, if the inhabitants of a town refused
to stop their defense once the besieging forces had demanded their sur-
render, all the inhabitants could be subject to punishment if their defenses
were successfully broken (Sandberg 2004, 663). The punishment inflicted
upon the women of a captured town varied depending on the circum-
stances of the siege and the attitudes of the victorious commanders. A
common practice once a town had been captured was to allow soldiers to
plunder the community, both as a means to reward the victors and to pun-
ish the defeated. As part of this process, women were often captured, raped,
or taken as prizes of war (Lynn, 2008, 150–55). Such was the case for the
women of Pamiers, who were attacked after Protestant forces had success-
fully captured the town during the French Wars of Religion. When victori-
ous Protestant troops streamed into the town, they raped the daughters of
known Catholic families and they chased Catholic women and their chil-
dren, throwing rocks at them (Sandberg 2004, 664). An even more brutal
example of soldiers’ actions during the plundering at the end of a siege
comes from Peter Hagendorf’s account of his experiences during the Thirty
Years’ War. In 1634, when Hagendorf was serving with the Bavarian army,
he took a young girl as part of his plunder from the town of Pforzheim, only
to discard her when the army moved on. Later he regretted sending her
away because he was without a wife (Hagendorf 1993, 147).
Women also could be killed or wounded while trying to defend them-
selves, their families, and their property from plundering. During the New
Model Army’s successful attack on Basing House in Hampshire in 1645,
such actions were engaged in by the soldiers against the women of the
fortress. In his report to the Speaker of the Commons, Oliver Cromwell
commented on the actions of his soldiers and reported that some women
had been wounded after the fortress’s capture as they tried to prevent the
soldiers from killing their friends. In particular, the daughter of a Dr.
Griffiths tried to protect her father from being beaten by the soldiers. In
her anger, she yelled at the soldiers and called them “Roundheads and
rebels to the King.” In retaliation, one soldier grabbed her and “beat her
brains out” (Plowden 2000, 132).
Besides engaging in plunder at the end of sieges, soldiers sometimes
slaughtered a besieged town’s citizens, particularly if the siege had been a
drawn-out and hard-fought affair. In such cases women would be caught
up in the general slaughter. During the Thirty Years’ War, the citizens of
many cities and towns suffered horrible fates when their communities were
captured at the end of sieges. One of the most infamous destructions of a
city during this war was that of Magdeburg in May 1631. The citizens of
Magdeburg were Protestants whose ruler had allied them to the Swedish
army. In response to the city’s support of the Protestant cause, an Imperial
army under General Pappenheim mounted a successful siege. When the
city was captured the Imperial troops were allowed to plunder the city and
slaughter its inhabitants. The Burgomeister of Magdeburg recorded the
city’s destruction and stated that:
thousands of innocent men, women, and children, in the midst of a hor-
rible din of heartrending shrieks and cries, were tortured and put to death
in so cruel and shameful a manner that no words would suffice to describe,
nor no tears to bewail it. (Guericke 1631/1906, 211–12)
Sieges not only brought death, injury, and imprisonment to the citizens of
captured cities, but sometimes the civilian population could be driven from
their homes. In such cases, women and children were often the most
affected. Sometimes they were allowed to leave when a siege commenced
to spare them from the fate of a captured city. Alternatively, they might be
allowed to leave as part of negotiations to end a siege. Sir James Turner
(1829, 10) in writing of his experiences of fighting for the Swedish army
during the Thirty Years’ War described the fate of the citizens of the town
of Vitsenhausen, which had been captured by Imperial forces. After the
town’s capture, Vitsenhausen’s citizens followed the Swedish army for
protection. He saw parents carrying small children and blind and lame
elderly men and women being led away by their sons, daughters, and grand-
children. The people looked desperate, having left all their possessions
behind as the fled for their lives. Turner described this sight as “a ruthless
object of pitie to any tender hearted Christian, and did show us with what
dreadfull countenance that bloodie monster of warre can appear in the
world.”
Sieges were not the only military action that might involve women.
Female civilians in rural communities sometimes banded together to attack
enemy forces which threatened their homes. During the Thirty Year’s War,
the women in the forest of Bregenz were living in villages left undefended
after their male relatives went to fight elsewhere. When Swedish troops
arrived in the region, the women organized themselves to defend their
homes. Using sickles and pitchforks, they successfully drove the Swedes
away (Rublack and Selwyn 1997, 7). Most problems women faced when
their menfolk marched off to war were less dramatic but perhaps more
pervasive, the hardships associated with trying to maintain family farms
or businesses without male partners. It was always difficult and sometimes
impossible.
Irish women suffered this fate to a notable degree during the seven-
teenth century. After Cromwell’s victorious invasion, in the 1640s, many
Irish men chose to seek their fortunes as mercenaries on the European
continent. Supporters of the royalist cause particularly went into exile after
Charles I’s execution in 1649. While some men may have used the turmoil
as an excuse to escape their responsibilities at home, many planned to
reunite with their families at a later time. Regardless of their circumstances,
women widowed or left on their own found it very difficult to support their
families. They petitioned the government to receive their husband’s unpaid
salaries or land grants. Widows whom the government considered too old
to farm received cash payments, while younger widows were given land
grants, but only if they enjoyed the help of male supporters to represent
their interests. “Access to influential male circles was essential for success,
regardless of the women’s theoretical right to land grants or debentures,”
according to historian Mary O’Dowd (1991, 102–103).
While many women experienced great difficulties when left on their
own, others found new opportunities available to them that would not
exist during more settled times. For example, the societal upheaval associ-
ated with warfare created circumstances that allowed ordinary women to
exert influence within contemporary political systems and have their con-
cerns addressed by political leaders. Women in England and Sweden
enjoyed greater success than Irish women in winning government com-
pensation. English and Swedish policy makers assumed the obligation to
pay war widows pensions, their husbands’ unpaid salaries, and to reimburse
them for unpaid expenses associated with their husbands’ military service.
Widows’ persistent demands induced state officials in both England and
Sweden to reevaluate their attitudes and assumptions about who could
rightfully claim a share of money to be used to compensate soldiers for
their military service. Both countries came to recognize the widows’ claims
and accept the state’s responsibility to aid not only its soldiers, but also
members of military families (Hudson 1994, 146–50, 160–62; Ailes 2006, 18).
Some women found new opportunities available to them in the form of
migration. During the early modern period, states throughout Europe
supplemented their military forces with mercenaries. These soldiers often
made arrangements to bring their families with them. Sometimes these
women and children accompanied their male relatives throughout their
period of military service. Such was the case of the families of Irish soldiers
who enlisted in the Spanish army, which was campaigning in Flanders in
the late sixteenth century. Many of these individuals were refugees dis-
placed by the fighting in Ireland between Irish rebels and English forces.
As English forces quelled rebellions in Ireland, the crown allowed defeated
rebels to enlist in foreign armies as a means to prevent them from causing
further trouble. Because it was unlikely that they would return to Ireland,
these men brought their families with them (Henry 1992, 23–27, 74–75).
The English crown carried out a similar policy in Scotland. Throughout the
early decades of the seventeenth century, the English crown allowed the
Swedish kingdom to recruit thousands of Scots as a means to alleviate
problems associated with population surplus, unemployment, and unruly
subjects. Many soldiers’ families accompanied them overseas (Ailes 2002,
10–11). In both cases, these families often settled in the territories that
employed them and formed permanent immigrant communities in these
kingdoms (Henry 1992, 74–97; Ailes 2002, 58–105).
Women on Campaign
Throughout the early modern period, a tail of women, children, and ser-
vants followed every European army on campaign. In accounts of military
actions during this period, observers frequently commented on the size of
the baggage train that often dwarfed the actual army. For example, some
observers of the Spanish army at Bergen-op-Zoom in 1622 stated “such a
long tail on such a small body never was seen …. Such a small army with
so many carts, baggage horses, nags, sutlers, lackeys, women, children and
a rabble which numbered far more than the Army itself” (quoted in Parker
1972, 176). Although the baggage train did not consist exclusively of women,
women formed a significant part of this group and performed duties that
made them one of the most important groups to the army’s welfare.
The duties of women who followed any army on campaign were very
similar to the activities they would have performed at home. Women
catered for many of the domestic needs of soldiers, such as cooking, clean-
ing, foraging for food, and sewing. They also were important because they
provided emotional support to the soldiers. Although many officers feared
that the presence of women on campaign could lead to discipline problems
among the troops, many of them also realized the importance of women
to the soldiers’ physical and emotional well-being. As Sir James Turner
(1683/1968, 277), a Scottish soldier who fought in the Swedish army during
the Thirty Years’ War, commented:
As woman was created to be a helper to man, so women are greater helpers
in Armies to their husbands, especially those of the lower condition, neither
should they be rashly banisht out of Armies, sent away they may be some-
times for weighty considerations; they provide, buy and dress their husbands
meat when their husbands are on duty, or newly come from it, they bring
in fewel for fire, and wash their linens, and in such manner of employments
a Souldiers wife may be helpful to others, and gain money to her husband
and her self; especially they are useful in Camps and Leaguers, being permit-
ted (which should not be refused them) to go some miles from Camp to
buy Victuals and other Necessaries.
In an era before the existence of specialized supply units to care for the
soldiers’ domestic needs, men on campaign needed their wives, women
with whom they had informal relationships, or servants to fulfill these
responsibilities.
Beyond caring for the soldiers’ domestic needs, women also carried out
important functions in maintaining and enhancing the armies’ supplies
through their work as sutlers. As John Lynn discusses in his article in this
volume, often women who were the wives or widows of soldiers worked
as sutlers selling food and supplies to soldiers in order to either supplement
their husbands’ income or support themselves financially after their hus-
bands’ deaths. Sutlers provided a crucial service to armies on campaign
because every European army during this period habitually suffered from
difficulties with having regular access to supplies to feed and clothe the
soldiers. Sir James Turner (1829, 6) commented about his suffering while
on campaign with the Swedish army:
I was at the sieges of severall towns and castles, and at many brushes, encoun-
ters and … all the time sufferd exceeding great want of both meate and
clothes, being necessitated to by constantly in the fields with little or no
shelter, to march always a foot, and drinke water.
His recollections would have seemed familiar to many soldiers of this era.
Such problems occurred because armies depended upon the local com-
munities in which they were campaigning to provide them with housing
and supplies. Understandably civilians wanted to save their food stores
and clothing for their own use, particularly because warfare made access
to such items uncertain. Compounding the problem was the difficulty of
transporting supplies over long distance, even in the best of times, and
crop failures and food shortages due to the effects of campaigning upon
local agricultural communities (Kroener 1998–99, 288).
Sutlers helped to alleviate these problems. As noncombatants they could
more freely move into the countryside or towns to acquire supplies to sell
to the soldiers. Although many women bought food or other necessary
items from the locals, it was not uncommon for them to also steal such
products to supplement their supplies. Pillaging was a very common activ-
ity among all members of a military community. Because soldiers were
infrequently paid, commanders often allowed soldiers to pillage a town or
region that was uncooperative or a town at the end of a long-fought siege.
Women usually took part in the pillaging as a means to acquire the
resources they wanted or needed (Lynn 2008, 147–50). Peter Hagendorf, a
soldier who fought for both the Imperial and the Swedish army during the
Thirty Years’ War, acknowledged that his wife frequently took part in army’s
pillaging. In Magdeburg, for instance, his wife stole “bedclothing … and a
large pitcher holding four quarts of wine, as well as finding dresses and two
silver belts” (as quoted in Mortimer 2004, 30). A Catholic priest, Thomas
Mallinger, noted such activities in his account of the Swedish occupation
of Freiburg in the early 1630s. He complained that soldiers’ wives constantly
stole produce from the gardens and fields that belonged to the town’s
citizens. While they used some of the food to feed their families, they sold
any extra food back to the people of Freiburg in the town’s market (quoted
in Mortimer 2004, 36). Sutlers also acquired goods through buying items
that soldiers had pillaged but could either not carry or no longer wanted,
or that had belonged to soldiers and officers who died on campaign (Parker
1972, 177).
Regardless of whether they acquired their resources through purchase
or plunder, sutlers were considered part of an army’s baggage train and
subject to the military codes that governed an army and were under the
supervision of the officers that oversaw the baggage. Often their numbers
were regulated to keep them within a reasonable limit and to prevent them
from slowing down the baggage train (Lynn 2008). According to Sir James
Turner (1683/1968, 275) the Swedish army during the Thirty Years’ War
allowed one sutler per company. Sutlers’ economic activities were also
subject to military oversight as officers sought to prevent sutlers from
charging unreasonable prices for their products and from cheating the
soldiers (Mortimer 2004, 37).
Another woman’s responsibility was nursing the sick and the wounded.
During this period, various European governments began to make provi-
sions to care for sick and wounded soldiers in their armies. For example,
as part of its military campaigns in Ireland during the Nine Year War (1593–
1602), the English Privy Council ordered that each company in the army
employ a surgeon (McGurk 1990, 31). In comparison, Richelieu in 1629
ordered the French army to employ one surgeon per regiment (Jones 1980,
194–96). Governments created such regulations because they thought sol-
diers would fight more effectively if they would be cared for when they
were sick or injured, because veteran soldiers who had recovered from
injuries or illnesses were more competent than raw recruits, and because
it helped to relieve the burden upon social welfare institutions at home
(McGurk 1990, 31, 33; Jones 1980, 193–94). Despite official orders to provide
for soldiers’ physical care, the medical attention they received often fell far
short of official expectations. Because there was little enforcement of reg-
ulations and often a lack of qualified candidates, many officers chose not
to employ surgeons. Additionally, because regiments were usually raised
at the expense of the commanding officer, many commanders chose not
to hire surgeons as a means to lessen their expenses (McGurk 1990, 31–32;
Jones 1980, 194–95).
As a result of these problems, female camp followers quite often stepped
into the gap and provided medical assistance to soldiers. They tended the
sick, treated wounds, and gave emotional support to ailing soldiers. Often
they provided the first medical attention that soldiers received on the
battlefield until the wounded could be moved to a safer location (White
2002, 27; Jones 1980, 195–96). Wounded soldiers could also come under the
care of local women who took it upon themselves to help them. Such was
the case of Hester Whyte, who treated wounded Parliamentary soldiers
after the Battle of Edgehill. She later petitioned the English Parliament for
reimbursement, claiming that she had cared for the soldiers for three
months at her own expense (Fraser 1985, 202).
Beyond the informal nursing care that camp followers and local women
provided to soldiers on campaign, opportunities were developing for
women to serve as nurses in a more professional capacity in military hos-
pitals. Just as rulers began to create regulations to promote the hiring of
medical personnel to accompany regiments in the field, at the same time
they also began to establish military hospitals to house and care for sick
and wounded soldiers. Often women would be employed as nurses to
provide care for the soldiers being treated at these institutions. During the
first decade of the seventeenth century, the English Privy Council estab-
lished three military hospitals in Ireland―at Dublin, Derry, and Cork―to
serve the needs of injured English soldiers taking part in the campaigns in
Ireland (McGurk 1990, 34). This practice took root in England during the
civil wars of the 1640s when parliament established military hospitals
in London to care for its soldiers. Each of the parliamentary hospitals
employed female nurses. The nurses were usually soldiers’ widows who
were chosen because they were used to military life, were familiar with
military discipline, and were resourceful individuals. They lived at the
hospital under the direction of a matron who oversaw their work and
maintained discipline among them. Their duties would have appeared
familiar to modern nurses including activities such as feeding patients,
changing bed linens, administering prescribed medicines, and observing
patients (Gruber von Arni 2001, 144–60).
Women who accompanied armies on campaign were also seen as car-
rying out important roles because of the sexual favors they provided to
soldiers. Many commanders allowed or encouraged prostitutes to accom-
pany the army on campaign. Although the officers usually were concerned
about discipline problems that might arise from having these women asso-
ciate with the soldiers, they allowed the prostitutes to follow the army as
a means of preventing soldiers from attacking or molesting women in
civilian populations. They believed that if soldiers had regular access to
prostitutes they would be less likely to bother women in the local com-
munities upon which the army depended for supplies, housing, and infor-
mation. Despite the recognition on the part of many officers that prostitutes
provided a useful service to the soldiers, there were attempts to limit their
activities and make them subject to military discipline. During the mid-
sixteenth century, the Spanish army campaigning in the Netherlands was
allowed between five and eight prostitutes per company of two hundred
men (Hale 1985, 162). A similar number of prostitutes, anywhere from three
to eight per company, were allowed to men in the Spanish army campaign-
ing in the Spanish peninsula during this period (White 2002, 29).
Finally, women also occasionally donned male clothes, disguising their
female identity to fight in a formal capacity as soldiers. It is impossible to
know the number of women who chose this option because such activities
were always undertaken in secrecy. To have their true identity discovered
would bring humiliation and discharge from military service. Women chose
largely to fight as soldiers to maintain a close relationship with their hus-
bands or companions who had enlisted in an army, to provide a means of
support for themselves, or because they strongly believed in the cause for
which they were fighting (Fraser 1985, 196–200).
Although most of the women who accompanied the army were com-
moners, elite women who were officers’ wives also could be found in an
army’s baggage train. Because of their higher social status and greater
wealth, the roles that these women played differed from those of women
associated with ordinary soldiers. Like the camp followers and prostitutes
who followed the armies, however, these women took on responsibilities
that were similar to those they fulfilled at home. Officers’ wives played key
roles in maintaining good relations among members of the military com-
munity. They frequently were called upon to act as intermediaries between
their husbands and other members of the military. It was not unusual for
soldiers and their wives to seek the help of their commanders’ wives in
order to receive financial compensation, aid in a dispute, or help with
regard to an illness or death. For example, Elisabeth Juliana von Löwenstein,
the wife of the Swedish field marshal Johan Baner, was the frequent recip-
ient of petitions from soldiers asking for help with their problems. When
she died in 1640, many soldiers and officers mourned her death because
she was known to watch out for the soldiers’ welfare and to help the unfor-
tunate and the weak (Steckzén 1939, 353–54). In petitioning their com-
mander’s wife, many soldiers and women hoped that their plight would
reach a sympathetic ear and that their cause would be more likely to be
considered if represented by an officer’s wife than if a petition went directly
to the officer. Acting as intermediaries for their husbands and representing
the less fortunate would have been activities that these women had already
performed at home as they oversaw the management of households and
property under their families’ control (Hufton 1996, 150).
Besides providing aid to members of the military community, officers’
wives also strengthened the military community by promoting their hus-
bands’ reputations. Johan Baner’s first wife, Katarina Elisabeth von Pfuel,
fulfilled this role when she followed the Swedish army in its campaigns in
the Holy Roman Empire during the early 1630s. While her husband was
leading campaigns, she remained in the town of Egeln, where she lived in
the local castle and maintained the lifestyle of a wealthy noblewoman.
When her husband returned home during breaks in the campaigns, Pfuel
would entertain other elites from the surrounding community as well as
officers under her husband’s command (Steckzén 1939, 235). These parties
proved important for both her husband’s career and for the success of the
Swedish military in general, serving as an opportunity for Baner to build
ties to local leaders upon whom the Swedes depended for supplies and
information and because they helped to strengthen ties of loyalty among
the Swedish military commanders.
Officers’ wives also helped to mediate relations between the local com-
munities and the army during periods of military occupation. In particular,
officers’ wives helped to maintain good relations between the local popu-
lace and the army by protecting defenseless people and building ties of
friendship with citizens of an occupied area. For example, Maria Anna
Junius, a nun in the Convent of the Holy Sepulchre, wrote an account of
her convent’s experiences during the Swedish occupation of Bamberg in
the 1630s. In her work, Junius discussed how soldiers’ wives would visit the
convent and share news with the nuns to keep them informed of the course
of the fighting and to keep them updated on the daily events of the local
community. Officers’ wives also frequently visited the convent. Often they
accompanied their husbands on social calls. Junius remarked that she
found the Swedes’ treatment of her convent remarkable. When the couples
came for social calls, they acted in a very polite manner and engaged the
nuns in lengthy conversations (quoted in Mortimer 2004, 99, 103).
Officers’ wives also participated in organizing and overseeing the care
of the sick and the wounded. After a battle ended and the wounded had
been moved away from the scene of the fighting, officers’ wives and other
noblewomen associated with an army would sometimes improvise medi-
cal stations to supply the soldiers’ medical needs. Anne Murray, who had
served as a maid for Queen Henrietta Maria before the English Civil War,
set up a center for treating wounded soldiers from the Scottish army after
its defeat at the hands of Cromwell’s forces at Dunbar in 1650. While trav-
eling to Fyvie Castle, Murray saw a number of wounded soldiers walking
on the road. When her party stopped at Kinross, Murray set up a station
to treat the soldiers. With the help of her maid and a man she had hired,
Murray treated many wounded soldiers, including a man who suffered
from a head injury and a teenager who had been stabbed through his body
with a rapier. Word of her work spread to the future Charles II, who sent
her his thanks for her help and gave her a gift of fifty gold pieces (Plowden
2000, 160–61).
Commanders’ wives might also organize the care of the wounded after
sieges. Lucy Hutchinson, wife of the governor of Nottingham Castle, over-
saw the medical needs of both the castle’s defenders and prisoners captured
from the enemy forces after royalist forces unsuccessfully besieged the
castle in 1643 during the English Civil War. After the attack ended she
personally dressed the wounds of her husband’s soldiers. She also pre-
vented some wounded prisoners from being placed in the castle’s dungeon.
Instead she brought them into her chamber and treated their wounds.
When one of her husband’s officers chastised her for helping the enemy,
she replied “she had done nothing but what she thought was her duty in
humanity to them, as creatures, not as enemies” (Plowden 2000, 89).
Despite the many important roles that women played in supporting the
military efforts of states throughout Europe, many military commanders
were nonetheless skeptical of their value to the military and often sought
to limit their association with the armies. These commanders particularly
worried about women as part of the baggage train because they were seen
as a source of discipline problems, a potential drain on supplies, and a
distraction to the soldiers. As a result, officers often attempted to limit or
bar women from associating with their troops. The ambiguity of command-
ers’ need for women to fulfill many of the army’s domestic needs, while at
the same time viewing them as a potential problem, shaped women’s
experiences of warfare throughout this era. The experiences of women who
followed European armies during the early modern period were regulated
by various military codes that governed the activities of all members of a
military community. Most armies on campaign possessed a list of regula-
tions, often times referred to as articles of war, which listed illegal activities
and the punishments to be suffered if an infraction of the military code
occurred. These law codes usually attempted to bar women completely
from accompanying the army or regulated the types and numbers of
women who would be allowed in the baggage train (Hale 1985, 161).
The distinction between unmarried women and married women who
associated with soldiers was of particular concern to military commanders.
A common sentiment among military men throughout Europe during this
period was that unmarried women who followed armies were whores who
distracted the men from their military duties. The military codes that reg-
ulated the activities of armies expressed a common sentiment that unmar-
ried women who accompanied armies suffered from a lack of moral
character and that these women needed to be removed from the soldiers’
presence to prevent compromising the army’s discipline or safety (Wilson
1996, 128–31; Hacker 1981, 651). In 1514, for example, the city of Venice tried
to prevent unmarried women from associating with its troops by announc-
ing that “all whores approaching the army will have their noses slit,” while
the Dutch articles of war of 1590 proclaimed that “all common whores shall
for the first offence be shamefully driven from the camp, and for the second
offence, being found in the camp, shall be heavily flogged and banished”
(quoted in Hale 1985, 161–62). Regulations like these reflected more general
societal attitudes that regarded unmarried women with suspicion. Because
of the widespread belief in women’s inferiority to men, the concept of
women living independently outside of marriage or the convent was unac-
ceptable to most Europeans of the early modern era. Particularly after the
Protestant Reformation brought the closure of nunneries and monasteries,
the only acceptable status for adult women in Protestant countries was
marriage (Hufton 1996, 62–63). Thus unmarried women were not fulfilling
societal expectations of being dutiful wives and mothers under their hus-
bands’ authority. It was feared that women who lived outside the norms
of acceptable behavior might act in more unruly and socially unacceptable
manners that could lead men astray (Hufton 1996, 370; Wiesner 1993, 21–23).
Military commanders sought to limit contact between unmarried women
and their soldiers not necessarily out of a sense of morality, but rather from
a concern about social propriety and military discipline.
Despite the fears and attempts on the part of military officers to limit
contact between single women and soldiers, unmarried women were a
common feature of all early modern armies’ baggage trains. Often they
were soldiers’ widows or women who had formed informal relationships
with soldiers. Lacking a male protector, their lives were precarious: they
could be turned out of military camps without warning and left to fend for
themselves and their children. Making this situation worse was the cavalier
attitude that some soldiers displayed toward the women they encountered
while on campaign. Soldiers had many opportunities to meet women. Often
relationships would form between women and soldiers when an army was
quartered in a town or city. As the soldiers and officers lived amongst the
local community for extended periods of time, they naturally formed rela-
tionships within the households where they were living (Rublack and
Selwyn 1997, 11). Not all these relationships were amicable, as evidenced in
the case of the Scottish soldier Mac-Myer, who fought for the Danish army
during the Thirty Years’ War. While his regiment was quartered in the
Danish countryside awaiting reinforcements, Mac-Myer quartered with a
peasant family. When he raped a daughter of the family, the Danish com-
manders ordered Mac-Myer’s execution, not always the outcome of such
an incident (Monro 1637/1999, 53).
In contrast to their attitudes about unmarried women, military com-
manders often tolerated and even at times encouraged married men to
bring their wives on campaign. Officers saw these women as less problem-
atic because, as married women, they were fulfilling societal expectations
that adult women were under their husbands’ control. With a legally sanc-
tioned guardian, such women could be controlled and would not be as
likely to cause disciplinary problems within the ranks. Although officers
believed that married women provided useful services to their husbands
and the army in general, they also thought that women should be confined
and controlled to prevent them from becoming a nuisance to or a burden
on the troops. One of their primary concerns was limiting women’s expo-
sure to the dangers of campaigns. Women who followed their husbands
on campaign were exposed to all the dangers that the army encountered.
One area of danger for armies was traveling to and from the war zone.
At the best of times, travel was extremely difficult during this era. Poor
road conditions, changeable weather, and unpredictable access to supplies
and housing were common phenomena for any traveler. The large sizes of
armies and the inability of rulers to provide adequate supplies and pay
compounded these problems. Robert Monro, a Scottish colonel who fought
for the Swedish army during the Thirty Years’ War, commented on the
difficulty of travel conditions particularly for women. According to Monro,
when his regiment was on its way to join the Swedish army in the
Germanies, his ship foundered on the German coast during a storm. While
the storm was raging and the ship was breaking up, his sergeant’s wife gave
birth to a baby boy. Monro (1637/1999,131) remarked in amazement that:
in the very moment when our ship did breake on ground, there was a Ser-
geants Wife a shipboard, who without the helpe of any women was delivered
of a Boy, which all the time of the tempest she carefully did preserve, and
being come ashore, the next day, she marched neere foure English mile,
with that in her Armes, which was in her belly the night before.
Once ashore, more dangers awaited.
One notorious problem that all armies encountered was disease. Because
armies often suffered from inadequate housing, unsanitary living condi-
tions, and insufficient supplies, disease ran rampant through the ranks.
Plague, typhoid, and dysentery were the soldiers’ constant companions.
Disease also readily spread to their family members and servants as well
as the communities through which they passed. One of the most notorious
cases involved the Marquis of Hamilton’s Scottish regiment, which entered
Swedish service in 1631. Within six weeks of reaching the war zone, the
2000-man regiment lost a third of its number to disease (Berg and
Lagercrantz 1962, 36). Robert Monro (1637/1999, 180) saw disease not only
costing Hamilton 200 men a week, but also spreading to members of the
Marquis’s family and servants.
Beyond suffering from difficulties associated with travel and disease,
women often suffered the consequences of being indirectly involved in
military action. When battle loomed, nonmilitary personnel were ordered
to the baggage, partly to safeguard them from becoming involved in the
actual fighting and partly to keep them out of the way of the troops. Despite
the commanders best efforts, however, sometimes the tide of battle over-
ran the baggage train, threatening camp followers with death, injury, or
imprisonment. Such was the experience for the women, children, and
servants in the Swedish baggage during the Battle of Nördlingen in 1634.
On one side of the conflict was the Swedish army led by Gustav Horn and
Bernard of Saxe-Weimar. Opposing them were Imperial forces under the
leadership of Ferdinand of Hungary and the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand.
At the end of the fighting, the Imperial forces had achieved a great victory.
Of the 25,000 soldiers the Protestants had at the battle, 12,000 were killed
and a further 4000 were captured including the Swedish commander,
Gustav Horn (Parker, 1987, 140–41). Included among the prizes the Imperial
forces captured that day was the Swedish baggage. Sydnam Poyntz (quoted
in Mortimer 2004, 34), a mercenary on the Imperial side, wrote:
There wee got all their Canons and other field-pieces which were above
fiftie in number and all their Amunition Wagons and Baggage-Wagons above
fower thousand with all their Colours: and withal wee found such a number
of Ladies and Commaunders Wives that I can not count them, and all of
them taken Prisoners.
Beyond concerns about the women’s safety, commanders also wanted to
limit women’s engagement with the army to insure that they did not
become a distraction to the soldiers or a burden on the military’s supplies
and personnel. While commanders realized the benefits of having married
women accompany the army, they also feared that the women could dis-
tract their husbands from their military duties and that in the heat of
battle soldiers might be more concerned to protect their families than to
fight their enemies. Robert Monro (1637/1999, 151) had discussed such a
sentiment when describing his own situation. To avoid the problem of
worrying about his family’s safety while on campaign, Monro settled his
wife and children in Stettin where they stayed for three years while he
fought with the Swedish army in other parts of the Holy Roman Empire.
Monro believed that wives who accompanied their husbands on campaign
would become too much of a distraction and that the soldiers would
neglect their military duties in order to protect their families.
Besides having concerns about women becoming distractions to their
husbands, officers also feared that military supplies and personnel would
have to be used to rescue women and children who were caught up in the
fighting or who were captured by the enemy. For example, during the Battle
of Jankow on 6 March 1645 between Swedish and Imperial forces, the
Imperial army overran and scattered the Swedish right flank. As the
Imperialists began to chase the Swedish forces they ran into the Swedish
baggage train. These troops stopped their chase to loot the baggage and
take the women left with the Swedes’ supplies as prisoners. In response,
the Swedish right flank regrouped and counterattacked while the looting
was proceeding. The Swedes succeeded in freeing the women and stopping
the looting (Guthrie 2003, 140).
Despite commanders’ fears about women accompanying armies on
campaign, women throughout this period continued to follow armies
because of the many necessary roles that they played. For many of the
women, living out their lives as part of the baggage train became so famil-
iar that they could not imagine another way of life. Women who were born
and raised in military camps saw the military as a way of life and in some
instances this became virtually a hereditary position. Just as sons often
followed in their fathers’ footsteps by pursuing a military career, many girls
followed in their mothers’ footsteps by becoming military wives. Although
arranged marriages were becoming less common in the seventeenth cen-
tury, women’s opportunities to meet men of whom their parents did not
approve were limited. Because every European state possessed laws that
limited women’s ability to own property or to support themselves inde-
pendently, women needed husbands or male guardians to provide for their
financial support. As a result, parents were concerned to help their daugh-
ters meet men who would provide them with a safe and stable home.
Within the military community it was not unusual for officers to introduce
their daughters to their colleagues and subordinate officers under their
command in order to help their daughters find suitable spouses. Such was
the case for the children of Frans Sinclair, a Scot who enlisted in the
Swedish army in 1628. At the time of his enlistment, Sinclair was married
to a Scottish woman named Joanna Sutherland. They had a son named
Jakob who was born in Scotland and accompanied his parents to Sweden.
As an adult, Jakob pursued a career in the Swedish military and married
Elisabet Clerck, the daughter of Johan Clerck, a Scot serving as an officer
in the Swedish navy. Sometime after his enlistment in the Swedish army,
Frans Sinclair’s wife died and he married another woman named Regina
Hendersen. Together they had two daughters, Christina and Regina.
Christina married two times, in both instances her husbands were Swedish
officers of German background. Regina married Johan Burdon, who was a
Scottish nobleman serving as a colonel in the Swedish army (Ailes 2002,
64–65). It was not only the daughters of military officers who found hus-
bands among their fathers’ comrades, but also the daughters of foot sol-
diers. Women born on campaign who spent their childhoods following an
army knew no other life than the military, nor were they likely to meet men
not associated with the military. In this manner, armies became almost
self reproducing as children born and raised in military camps found part-
ners from within this community and started families of their own (Hacker
1981, 652; Kroener 1998–99, 289).
Conclusion
During the early modern period, women played important roles in sup-
porting and participating in the military activities of kingdoms throughout
Europe. Their experiences ranged from camp followers who accompanied
armies on campaign to women who took an active part in sieges to elite
women who helped provision troops in the field. Despite their active and
valuable contributions to many kingdoms’ military efforts, the history of
these women has been largely ignored. Traditionally, military historians
have been concerned with battles, campaigns, and strategy. Studies of
women associated with armies tended to focus on the few women who
donned men’s clothes and fought as soldiers on the battlefront. Often these
works portrayed female soldiers as an interesting oddity that was excep-
tional in nature. The multitude of women who followed armies and pro-
vided for the forces’ material and emotional support appeared to be either
uninteresting or unimportant (Hacker 1981, 644; Lynn 2008, 2).
In recent decades, however, military historians have begun to shift their
studies’ emphasis away from battles and campaigns to broader analyses of
warfare’s impact upon society. This new outlook has begun to yield some
studies of women’s connections to early modern warfare. In particular,
scholars such as Ulinka Rublack and Pamela Selwyn (1997) and Simon
Barker (2003) have used cultural analyses to discuss how women’s involve-
ment in warfare shaped early modern attitudes about gender. Geoffrey L.
Hudson (1994) and Mary Elizabeth Ailes (2006) have investigated the con-
nections between warfare, widowhood, and politics. The issue of women’s
involvement in siege warfare has been addressed in articles by Brian
Sandberg (2004) and S. Annette Finley-Croswhite (1997). Works that deal
more broadly with the issue of women’s involvement in warfare include
Bernadette Whelan (2001), Alison Plowden (2000), Brian Crim (2000), Peter
H. Wilson (1996), and Barton C. Hacker (1981). Special mention should be
made of John A. Lynn’s book, Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern
Europe (2008), which provides the first comprehensive analysis of the lives
of female camp followers, the connections that they had to European
armies, and the changing nature of their roles during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Together these works have laid the groundwork for
analyzing women’s involvement in warfare during the early modern period.
Much more work needs to be done, however, to create a broader and more
comprehensive analysis of women’s military experiences during this
period. Particularly, more regional and campaign specific studies are
needed, as well as studies of elite women’s military experiences to reveal
the variety of women’s military roles.
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Essential Women, Necessary Wives 93
chapter three
Essential Women, Necessary Wives, and Exemplary

Soldiers: The Military Reality and Cultural
Representation of Women’s Military Participation
(1600–1815)
John A. Lynn II
Women’s participation with armies in the field changed dramatically in

the second half of the seventeenth century. Before then, women in great
numbers accompanied troops on campaign. In 1615, the military commen-
tator Johann Jacob von Wallhausen (1615/1971, 7) cautioned: “When you
recruit a regiment of German soldiers today, you do not only acquire 3,000
soldiers; along with these you will certainly find 4,000 women and chil-
dren.” Yet during the eighteenth century a smaller proportion of women
marched in the train of a company of troops. A Prussian circular of 23
August 1733, for example, commanded that the number of women with
troops in the field could not exceed ten per hundred men (Haberling 1943,
53). Other armies allowed even fewer; the British often cut the number to
six per hundred. To understand this decline in the numbers of women is
not only to register change in the roles played by camp women; it is to
comprehend the nature of major reforms in European military institutions
and the conduct of war―the fundamental substance of military history.
Before 1650, camp women were essential to the character of armies and
to the logistic system that kept them in the field; after that date, soldiers’
wives in the train of armies were not quite as fundamental to the conduct
of war, but they were still integral to the health and well-being of their
husbands’ units (Lynn 2008). They continued to perform the necessary,
gender-defined tasks they had before, notably washing, sewing, and nurs-
ing, as well as serving as sutlers. Tracing this transformation requires that
we return briefly to the era described by Mary Elizabeth Ailes in the previ-
ous chapter. While she covers a broad range of women and their contribu-
tions, however, this chapter emphasizes those plebeian women who lived
a hard life alongside common soldiers in garrison and, particularly, on
campaign.
94 John A. Lynn
Camp women, an ever-present reality with early modern armies, were
little discussed at the time, but a great deal of public attention was, and is,
lavished on the phenomenon of women who assumed male dress and
identities to serve in the ranks as soldiers. Although the actual numbers of
such female soldiers was very small in reality, they figured large in the
European imagination. Today’s readers familiar with the existing literature
on military women of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth
centuries will be aware of the emphasis placed on these few extraordinary
women. This chapter diverges from the usual treatment awarded them and
instead stresses their importance as cultural rather than as military phe-
nomena. Tales of their exploits attracted eager consumers who found them
entertaining, but these stories also challenged their audiences, particularly
men. The cultural representation of warrior women-in-arms certainly cap-
tured the public imagination, but the most important form of women’s
military participation was more prosaic; not the polished steel of sword
and bayonet but the dull iron of pot and shovel. Stalwart and formidable
camp women deserve first place here, because any attempt to describe
early modern warfare without reference to them is doomed to be at least
incomplete and, most probably, distorted.
Essential Women with Aggregate Contract Armies before 1650
A woodcut from Johannes Stumpf, Schwytzer Chronica, published in 1554

portrays the pillage of a village by soldiers and women on campaign (Bory
1978, 143; Lynn 2008, 148). In the foreground, four men and five women
carry bundles and baskets of household goods, fowls, and other foodstuffs
to an overburdened cart. The women team with their male companions to
loot the village of all they can carry. In the background, the body of what
appears to be a villager lies in the dirt, grim testimony to the violence of
pillage. These camp women are not only participating in pillage; they are
essential partners in this enterprise.
Considering the early modern period as a whole, camp women made
their most central contributions before 1650, in the era typified by what I
have termed the aggregate contract army (Lynn 1996). Reforms after that
date would create a new style of force, the state commission army, which
limited the numbers and roles of women on campaign, although they
would remain integral to the existence and well-being of forces in the field.
As the previous chapter demonstrates, early modern armies were not com-
posed exclusively of combatants nor were they all male. We need to rede-
fine an early modern force in the field as a campaign community; although
soldiers constituted its teeth and claws, a considerable number of noncom-
batants accompanied the troops into the field. These civilians were often
referred to as “belonging to” or “serving with” the army, although they were
not formally enrolled in any fighting unit. Noncombatants who marched
with the troops fell into three categories: soldiers’ women, servants or
“boys,” and service personnel. Soldiers’ women are the major focus of this
chapter, but we should not forget about the other members of the campaign
community who did not bear arms. Troops brought servants with them.
Those who attended common soldiers are referred to as “boys” in accord
with the fact that they were usually youths. Boys were of low status in the
camp and had limited resources. Their numbers would also decline sharply
with time, but they did not entirely disappear.
Civilian service personnel also attended armies. Contractors who pro-
vided troops with bread and other food stuffs sent thousands of bakers,
teamsters, and other staff to the field. Throughout the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, civilians drove the teams that pulled baggage wagons
and artillery pieces. The French army, for example, did not replace civilian
teamsters with uniformed military drivers in the artillery until the
Revolution (Lynn 1984, 209). Maintaining a force in the field required a
variety of civilian craftsmen, including carpenters, blacksmiths, and wheel-
wrights. Beyond this, merchants and peddlers, known as sutlers in English
and vivandiers or vivandières in French, accompanied the troops to sell
them liquor, food, and other goods. Service personnel included women as
well as men, particularly among the sutlers. The term “camp women” refer-
ences both soldiers’ women and female service personnel.
Distinct from the campaign communities, regiments that garrisoned
towns and fortresses formed garrison communities. Particularly with the
creation of large standing armies after 1650, major garrisons that existed
in peacetime as well as war became permanent features of military life.
Sedentary, town-based troops drew support from the civilian communities
in which they lived, so they did not need the same degree of dedicated
service personnel as did field forces. Yet garrison communities could
include large numbers of soldiers’ wives―far more than were permitted
to accompany troops in the field. The form of garrison communities prob-
ably varied more from one European state to another than did campaign
communities, although these too differed. Changes in the participation of
plebeian women with campaign and garrison communities both reflected
96 John A. Lynn
and influenced the evolution of early modern military institutions in
Europe. This evolution, in turn, derived from the character of government
and society. Consequently, a discussion of the numbers and roles of camp
women must be considered in broader contexts, or it simply floats on the
surface.
After the Thirty Years’ War, fundamental military reforms increased the
level of support given by the states to their armed forces and the level of
control that those states exerted over their troops. One byproduct of
increasing government efficiency and power was a relative decrease in the
number of women who accompanied armies on campaign. At the same
time, armies increased in size and established an unprecedented continu-
ity, including the maintenance of formidable standing armies during peace-
time. During the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth,
the abundant presence of women in the campaign community derived
from two characteristics of contemporary armies: the libertine lifestyle
typical of mercenary bands and the dependence on pillage to supply and
compensate troops.
During wartime, small princely forces were supplemented by hired
bands of soldiers, combining in the aggregate contract army. The most
famous of these mercenaries were Swiss Riesläufers and German
Landsknechts, but other areas of Europe also supplied men to the military
labor market. Such units generally arrived armed, trained, and organized
under their own commanders. Mary Elizabeth Ailes has already described
these armies as entrepreneurial in character. Conditions varied according
to place and time, but mercenaries exerted a leverage that later state
recruits and conscripts could not. Troops who bargained for their condi-
tions of service, expected to be accompanied by women and so they were.
A libertine lifestyle that flamboyantly overturned proper civilian conven-
tions was one of the attractions of military life, and along with drinking
and gambling, the lure of sexual opportunity brought men into service.
The historian J.R. Hale justly sees considerable significance in the soldiers’
“sexually aggressive strut, the bulging codpiece, the suggestive sword hilt,
the mixture of tousled peasant hairstyle with flamboyant costume that
marked them as defying civilian morals and the everyman-in-his-place
social restrictions of the sumptuary laws” (Hale 1985, 127).
The women who enhanced sexual opportunity in the camps were those
who formed less than permanent unions with soldiers. Of course, some
women sold sex to multiple partners. Prostitutes were a fixture of camp
life, particularly before 1650. Some provided sexual service as their primary
way of making a living, but in addition to full-time prostitutes, part-time
prostitutes also vied for customers. In civil life women from the lowest
paying jobs, such as seamstresses and laundresses, were known to turn to
part-time prostitution in hard times; it is, therefore, reasonable to expect
the same in camp life. Soldiers also formed more stable, although not
permanent, relationships with women. Free unions outside the sanctity of
marriage were common. In Germany these could be Mainehen, “May mar-
riages,” which were pragmatic arrangements between men and woman
meant to last for the campaign. Because aggregate contract armies were
often dismissed as rapidly as they were formed, a campaign-long agreement
would likely be all a soldier needed. Such women were “possessed” or
“belonged to” one man at a time, but they also changed partners. In camp
language they were often referred to as “whores,” although they were not
prostitutes.
If the lure of sexual opportunity drew men, did it attract women to the
campaign community as well? For some, the answers may well have been
yes, but for more, sexual activity may well have constituted part of a strat-
egy designed to survive the hard and violent life of the camp. Economic
hard times and other unacceptable personal conditions, plus the hope of
gain, drove women, just as it did men, to opt for a life on campaign. A poem
that appeared as part of a woodcut portrayed a soldier as setting aside his
peacetime profession of cobbler to win riches at war and his female com-
panion as abandoning spinning in the hope of “winning” booty:
Perhaps so much may be my winning
Much more than ever I could whilst spinning.
With yarn and twine I’ll spin no more
To become thereafter a Cobbler’s whore. (Strauss 1984, 401)
Once committed to the campaign community, pairing with a man may
have been necessary for a woman, both to get and keep the necessities of
life and to protect her from abuse. In her hard-edged analysis of marriage,
Susan Brownmiller argues that it derived from a survival strategy by which
a woman gave herself to one man, allowing him to have her so that he
would protect her from being raped by other men as well (Brownmiller
1975). This grim interpretation may well apply in the tough world of the
early modern camp. A woman may have turned to one paramour in order
to be protected from other men. We will see this again in the chapter by
Yehudit Kol-Inbar. Thus a life style that was alluring to men, at least in
fantasy, may have simply been stark reality to women.
98 John A. Lynn
The campaign community that typified aggregate contract armies did
not simply differ from civilian society; a deep hostility separated them.
Poorly supplied and often unpaid, soldiers and their companions preyed
upon urban and rural populations unlucky enough to be within their reach.
Political masters were notoriously irregular in paying their troops at a time
when troops were supposed to rely on their wages to buy essential supplies.
Speaking of the Thirty Years’ War, Sir James Turner (1683/1968, 198–99)
commented that although men were supposed to be mercenaries fighting
for pay, “if you will consider how their wages are paid, I suppose, you will
rather think them Voluntaries, at least very generous, for doing the greatest
part of their service for nothing.” Of course, soldiers did not fight for free,
rather they turned to pillage and plunder for subsistence and reward. Pierre
de Brantôme (as quoted in Hale 1985, 189), writing from his experience of
late sixteenth-century warfare, lamented, “It is deplorable that our soldiers
dedicate themselves to pillage rather than to honourable feats, but it is all
due to their not being paid.” Allowing troops to take what they wanted was
accepted as a distasteful but practical necessity. As the Mercure françois
put it in 1622 (as quoted in Tilly 1986, 123), “One finds enough soldiers when
one gives them the freedom to live off the land, and allowing them to pil-
lage supports them without pay.”
Violence by troops before 1650 sometimes elevated from pillage alone
to mutiny, which demonstrated the entrepreneurial nature of military
bands. One alternative for impoverished soldiers was to refuse to obey their
commanders until they were paid. The Spanish Army of Flanders suffered
45 mutinies or more from 1572 through 1607, including the horrendous sack
of Antwerp in 1574 (Parker 1972, 185). Mutinies often resembled labor
strikes; soldiers chose their own leaders, made demands for pay and better
working conditions, and bargained with their employers until a settlement
was reached. European rulers failed to pay and support their troops not as
a matter of choice but because of the limitations and shortcomings of their
governments. States lacked the adequate authority and mechanisms to
mobilize the resources necessary to maintain their military forces ade-
quately. Circumstances varied across Europe, but one of the factors that
often frustrated princes was a powerful and independent aristocracy that
competed with central government for local authority. In France, for exam-
ple, the competition between the king and his aristocracy was exacerbated
by religious and civil wars, which only subsided after 1650. After then,
military reform would march together with government innovation and
more effective princely authority, gained through coercion and concilia-
tion.
Before these reforms took effect, women played a major part in the pil-
lage economies that supported armies. The presence of large numbers of
women greatly increased the mouths that had to be fed, thus multiplying
the demand for pillage. Also, women were hardly passive but took an active
role in plundering civilian communities, meeting their own and their men’s
needs. Thus they figured on the supply as well as on the demand side of
pillage. In addition, there is also good reason to believe that they managed
the take for their male partners. One facet of the civilian economy that I
believe translated into the campaign community was the role of women
as business and financial managers. In the world of shop and guild, women
demonstrated commercial ability. Even if guilds restricted women in craft
production, masters’ wives played a very active role behind the counter or
in the market stall. Women regularly made sales, tended the till, and did
the bookkeeping, and they often knew enough of the trade to assist jour-
neymen and judge their work (Hufton 1998, 140, 152–53, 164–67, 223, 242;
Farr 1988, 8–9). Artists’ portrayals of shops give graphic evidence of wom-
en’s active participation in managing the business. If the business main-
tained a market stall, this was the wife’s preserve, for the husband was
needed back at the shop. In fact, it was difficult for a master to run his
business without a wife; therefore a widowed master really had to find a
new wife. Women were regarded as competent enough in business affairs
that guilds allowed master’s widows to continue running the family shop
until they remarried.
The fact that women were often the custodians of the books and the
money in small businesses is of particular interest. In his journal, French
eighteenth-century glazier Jacques-Louis Ménétra (1998, 244, 250, 258)
complimented his wife on her business head and her ability to get a good
price, though he also criticized her for squirreling away money without
telling him, implying she had control of accounts. To his surprise and
consternation, she was able to produce a tidy sum as a dowry for their
daughter from her clandestine savings. An intriguing study by Jacob Melish
(2006) draws its evidence from records of legal actions in Paris during the
1670s and early 1680s. He demonstrates how the sexual division of labor
“led husbands to become dependent on wives for a number of tasks, one
of which was the daily management of accounts and earnings.” In one
extreme case he found, a frustrated artisan complained to the police com-
100 John A. Lynn
missioner in 1683 that his wife held all the money and refused to give him
any!
Because women of the campaign community were not subject to the
full range of military duties and were less exposed to the dangers of combat,
women were best placed to guard the plunder for their male partners. Also,
just as artisans’ wives did in civilian society, soldier wives quite probably
managed the sale of goods and held the proceeds. In a sense, they minded
the till. It may be a small thing, but in woodcuts showing partnered teams
of Landsknechts and women, the men carry their weapons, as if ready for
battle, but they have no visible purse; women are often shown with fat
purses. We know women carried their men’s clothing and other personal
items, including their “valuables,” according to the description of May
marriages (Haberling 1943, 32). It would seem reasonable that this would
include a purse full of the couple’s stash of money.
Another poem attached to a sixteenth-century woodcut of a Landsknecht
and his woman refers to the sexual attraction, domestic service, and pillage
management associated with camp women prior to 1650:
Do well with me, my pretty lass
And stay with me in the Landsknechts
You’ll wash my shirts
Carry my sacks and flasks
And if some booty should be mine
You shall keep it safe and fine
So when we put paid of this crew
We’ll sell the booty when we are through. (Rublack 1997, 17)
Commanders took what advantage they could from the presence of the
large numbers of camp women by assigning them a number of duties,
including heavy labor. In his Kriegsbuch of 1515, Leonhard Fronsperger (as
quoted in Haberling 1943, 32) has “whores” describe their varied and
demanding tasks:
We, whores and rogues in the wars
Care for and wait on our masters
With the best of our skills.
We are whores direct from Flanders;
And while we change one foot-soldier for another
We are useful in the army nevertheless.
We cook, we sweep, and him who is ill
We nurse until he is well again.
We whores and rogues, we are a pack;
And even if we are often badly beaten;
We do it all for the soldier’s sake;
It is pleasant for him to be lifted up by us.
When cleaning or digging is to be done,
Is wood to be carried we are the ones,
And if we don’t do it, beatings are ours.
Women performed even more strenuous work when needed. Wilwort of
Schaumburg reports that Charles the Bold of Burgundy detailed the 4000
“common women” accompanying his army to cart earth for entrenchments
at the siege of Neuss (1474–75). Wallhausen (as quoted in Haberling 1943,
27, 36) provides another reference to particularly hard physical siege work:
“The prostitutes and the boys [of the camp] also helped in binding fascines,
filling ditches, digging pits and mounting cannon in difficult places.”
Present in such large numbers before 1650, women provided a sizeable
workforce available to army commanders. Later, as their numbers declined,
these tasks could be assigned to the troops or imposed on conscripted
peasant labor, especially during sieges. But certain necessary gender-
defined labor would continue to be the province of camp women.
Necessary Wives with State Commission Armies after 1650
Writing during the mid-eighteenth century, Bennet Cuthbertson in A sys-

tem for the compleat interior management and oeconomy of a battalion of
infantry (1768, 192–93) cautioned military officers against allowing a soldier
to marry without first making a thorough inquiry into the suitability of the
potential bride. But if the woman in question lived up to such scrutiny, he
concluded, “it will be right to give him leave” to marry, because “honest,
laborious Women are rather useful in a Company.” New wives would
quickly be put to “useful” tasks required to maintain the health and well-
being of the troops.
After 1650, a wave of military reforms linked to governments more able
to support their military forces created the state commission army. States
grew in power and efficiency, yielding new patterns of government often
termed Absolutism when associated with the great princes, such as Louis
XIV of France. It would be too extreme to say that European states crossed
some threshold to modernity, but they were better able to mobilize
resources through taxation and credit and to marshal these resources to
support larger and better-maintained armed forces. States paid, supplied,
and controlled their forces more directly. Individual soldiers might still
grab what plunder they could, but armies were no longer dependent upon
102 John A. Lynn
pillage for sustenance and compensation. Women were no longer as cen-
tral to the economy of the army, but they still were necessary to perform
the “useful” tasks of washing, sewing, and nursing.
At the same time, the old mercenary bands gave way to regiments cre-
ated and regulated by the rulers they served. A king such as Louis XIV might
still recruit some regiments from foreigners, but they accepted the same
subordination as national troops. There remained a market for hiring exist-
ing military units from outside the state, but these were now the regular
troops of territorial princes who let them out to other governments, as did
the rulers of Hesse-Kassel, who often supplied the British with troops for
military ventures (Atwood 1980; Wilson 1995). Men in the ranks lost the
leverage and independence once enjoyed by earlier mercenaries, so they
were unable to insist on so many female companions in the field. The
libertine lifestyle, once so key in attracting and keeping men in the ranks,
receded.
Once women ceased to be so fundamental to the very existence of the
campaign community, military authorities could cut their numbers on
campaign in the name of efficiency. Long before 1650, military authorities
and commentators had decried the logistic and disciplinary problems
caused by crowds of women on campaign. Typically, Mathieu de la Simonne
(as quoted in Babeau 1890, 203–204), writing in the 1620s, complained “of
the great impediments that [women] bring both on campaign and in gar-
rison.” Yet even so formidable a monarch as Louis XIV could not have
winnowed women from the baggage train of his armies simply by drafting
an edict. Before the legions of women could be reduced, the compelling
and brutal logic of the aggregate contract army that made them so valuable
had to be reformed. Only the innovations that created the state commission
army and the absolutist state could diminish the presence of women.
Another defining characteristic of state commission armies was the
unprecedented multiplication of troop strength. The French monarchy,
for example, commonly raised total forces 60,000–80,000 for major wars
from the late Middle Ages through the Thirty Years’ War. In contrast, the
army of Louis XIV peaked at 447,000 troops on paper in 1693, a figure that
can be reasonably discounted to about 360,000 actual serving troops (Lynn
2006). Similar army growth can be seen across Europe in such varied states
as Savoy, Hesse-Kassel, and Prussia. To a degree, this expansion was an
unintended consequence of the radical decline in the numbers of camp
women. Had the proportion of women in the campaign community
remained high, it is incomprehensible that European armies would have
become so large; the burden of so many unpaid women would have made
them impossibly cumbrous. Yet states did not cut the number of women
in order that they could commit more troops to campaigns; instead, the
decline in the number of camp women allowed larger armies to take the
field effectively.
If the proportion of women in military camps declined, military expan-
sion created impressive garrison forces, where military wives could figure
large. Before 1650, when the army was not mobilized, princes kept some
troops to man critical fortresses, guard the court and person of the prince,
and provide some internal security. But these forces were quite small; in
the French case they usually stood at 10,000. Yet by the 1680s, Louis main-
tained a standing army of about 150,000 men during peacetime, a figure
that would remain fairly constant until the French Revolution. In percent-
age terms, this increase was more impressive than the growth of wartime
forces. The retention of so many troops during peacetime meant that long
years in garrison became a far more important aspect of European military
life. Even as armies took fewer women into the field, the number of soldiers’
women who populated garrisons could be large, although this varied. These
changes were part of a period of military change and reform most promi-
nently discussed by historians Michael Roberts (1956) and Geoffrey Parker
(1988)―the Military Revolution (Rogers 1995). The dating and definition
of the Military Revolution have inspired a productive debate. Roberts dated
it to 1560–1660 and Parker 1500–1800, but Jeremy Black has argued that if
a change worthy of the title “revolution” occurred, it came after 1660 (Black
1991). The change in the participation and contribution of women described
in these pages buttresses Black’s argument.
One reform that affected women with state commission armies was the
favoring of wives over other women with the troops. Military authorities
became officially intolerant of prostitution and denied soldiers the kinds
of unofficial free unions that had been so common in the past. Just as the
state commission army regulated tactics, training, discipline, and logistics
as never before, it also recognized and regulated soldier marriage. While
acceptance and timing varied, in general the percentage of married soldiers
became substantial and European governments made provisions for wives.
In a sense, the military wife, who will figure large in this volume, was a
product of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. If the number
of official wives increased in accord with cultural standards, however, this
was not allowed to hamper military efficiency in the field. Soldiers may
have been permitted to marry, but when they marched on campaign only
104 John A. Lynn
a modest number of their wives were allowed to go into the field with them.
Garrison and camp life, then, diverged. Because my primary focus in this
chapter is the reality and the perception of women who went into the field
with armies, it is less the garrison and more the camp that concerns me.
Moral principles promoted by the Protestant Reformation and Catholic
Counter-Reformation privileged marriage over casual sexual partnerships.
Soldier wives had long enjoyed higher status than did prostitutes or women
who informally partnered with men, but authorities now prescribed that
women allowed to live with soldiers must be their legal wives. The preva-
lent temporary free unions of soldiers and their “whores” were no longer
allowed. This moral revolution also brought with it a cultural tendency to
sentimentalize marriage and the family in the eighteenth century, no mat-
ter how hard the reality might actually be.
Periodic attacks on prostitution never abolished, though they did ham-
per, the sex trade. During the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth,
many commanders readily accepted the presence of prostitutes, usually
called “public women,” “women in common,” or “common women.”
Depending on time and place, Spanish authorities permitted different
numbers of prostitutes per company of troops, ranging from three to eight
per company. The Duke of Alba, who commanded in the Spanish
Netherlands, 1567–1573, established price controls of five solds a session
for such women (Parker 1972, 175–76; Haberling 1943, 37). But practices
varied. Dutch articles of war dated 1580 criminalized prostitution: “all com-
mon whores shall for the first offense be shamefully driven from camp, and
for the second offense, being found in the camp, shall be heavily flogged
and banished” (Hale 1985, 162).
Armies of the new state commission style assaulted prostitution with
greater vehemence. Louis XIV, despite his own lust for women when he
was young, adopted a moralistic attitude toward prostitution in the army
that suited his times. Older regulations had sporadically prohibited pros-
titution in Paris or the army, but in 1684 Louis took up the crusade in
earnest. He banned prostitutes from within two leagues of Versailles where
large numbers of troops were encamped because soldiers were fighting
over the women and some men had been killed (Riley 2001, 55). Prostitutes
caught within the restricted area were to be disfigured by having their ears
and noses cut. In 1687, Louis extended these provisions to the army as a
whole. Women without gainful employment found in the company of
soldiers within two leagues of a camp or garrison were to be whipped and
disfigured. Fear of spreading venereal disease among the troops led to
further French laws against prostitution in 1713, 1724, 1734, 1776, and 1777
(Hufton 1998, 310; Evans 1979, 98).
Official attempts to ban prostitution apparently met with incomplete
success. André Corvisier, the noted French military historian, comments
that when war broke out again, the restrictions imposed by Louis and his
war minister, the marquis de Louvois, relaxed: “There was no longer a
question of depriving Mars of Venus” (Contamine 1992, 403). Towns could
supply ready women even if they were banned from camps. The major
garrison town of Berlin was said to be notoriously thick with prostitutes
(Duffy 1974, 45). Across the Channel, William Hogarth’s well-known paint-
ing, “March of the Guards to Finchley,” shows troops assembling to fight
against the Jacobite rising of 1745. Soldiers pile out of a brothel as others
in the streets are surrounded by women of apparently differing standards
of virtue. Yet it would be inaccurate to say that military officials simply
reverted to a permissive policy. Prostitutes could be punished with perma-
nent or temporary disfigurement, or worse. They were still punished
harshly or formally driven out of camp if discovered; they might even be
drummed, or “beaten” in the terms of the day, through town to a “whores’
march” (Forty and Forty 1979, 214). During the 1790s, French revolutionaries
would incongruously charge that prostitution was a monarchist plot:
“Remember that despots favor debauchery and corrupt men in order to
debase them and bring them into the most sordid servitude.” Prostitutes
“not only enervate the courage of the warriors but also corrupt the most
pure source of French blood” (Bertaud 1979, 198).
All but legal wives were to be prohibited from military camps. Such
regulations appeared sporadically before 1650. Gustavus Adolphus promul-
gated stringent regulations in 1621: “No Whore shall be suffered in the
Leaguer [camp]: but if any will have his own wife with him, he may. If any
unmaried woman be found, he that keepes her may have leave lawfully to
marry her; or else be forced to put her away” (Sweden 1621). Such insistence
on married companions were only generalized in the later seventeenth
century. Interestingly, Gustavus’s earlier regulation linked marriage with
permission for women to stay with the army in the field: only wives, but
all wives, could stay. State commission armies would not equate marriage
with the right to march with the troops; wives might be plentiful in garrison
but only a few were allowed to campaign with the troops.
Marriage policy varied markedly from army to army, and the French
marriage regulations were quite restrictive. The reformed army of Louis
XIV limited the ability of soldiers to marry; the fact that wives were con-
106 John A. Lynn
sidered as preferable to prostitutes and female companions did not mean
that marriage was actively encouraged. In addition to demanding that
private soldiers gain officers’ permission to wed, ordinances of 1685, 1686,
and 1691 imposed penalties. Even with permission, a soldier lost all his
seniority, which would begin to accrue again only from the moment of the
marriage (Babeau 1890, 205; Contamine 1992, 403). The 1686 ordinance
condemned marriage because “the needs of their wives and of their chil-
dren inhibit” soldiers, and it particularly railed against those who married
young (Delmas 1992, 757). Vauban actually favored allowing soldiers to
marry if they were stable men with a profession to help augment their
military pay, but his opinion did not become policy (Rochas d’Aiglun 1910,
1:340–41). Also, authorities did not want troops to become too attached to
the local population, either because troops might be required to repress
civil disorder or because local contacts made desertion easier; therefore,
regulations forbade soldiers to marry women from the towns in which the
troops were garrisoned. This restriction applied to officers as well.
Statistics show the decline of marriage in the French army from the
mid-seventeenth century through the early eighteenth. According to
research by Robert Chaboche (1973, 18), among invalides who had served
in the Thirty Years’ War and who listed their family condition, 45.9 percent
had been or were married. But of the men admitted to the Hôtel des
Invalides between 1674 and 1691, only 21 percent were married, and of those
admitted in 1715, 16 percent had wives. These figures probably overstate
the average, since veterans with many years of service and sergeants, the
very men most likely to marry, were also more likely to gain the highly
valued places at the Invalides. The same statistical sample reveals that
those who married were most likely to choose women from their own
regions―that is, a girl from home rather than someone they met while in
the army (Contamine 1992, 1:446). The royal government continued to
restrict soldier marriages until the French Revolution overturned that
policy. The French Revolution brought dramatic change in marriage policy.
Seeing regulations restricting soldier marriage as vestiges of oppression,
the revolutionary government lifted them. When war broke out in 1792,
soldiers believed that they had the right to keep their new wives with them
in the field, but this soon created serious logistic problems. Shocked by
reports arriving from the front, in April 1793 the National Convention
ordered that all but a few wives necessary as laundresses and sutlers be
sent home. Marriage had won out, but not the right for wives to encumber
armies in the field.
Compared to French practice under the monarchy, Prussian policy was
eventually far more permissive, as detailed by Beate Engelen, who provides
the most extensive study of early modern soldier marriage in her
Soldatenfrauen in Preußen (2004, 42–65). Articles of war declared in 1656
by Frederick William, the Great Elector of Brandenburg allowed soldiers
to marry and bring wives into the field and reside with them in garrison,
but he formally excluded prostitutes and unmarried female companions.
Later, in 1669, he instituted support payments to wives left behind when
their husbands went on campaign. In 1673 he simply declared that soldiers’
women who were not yet married to their partners were now their official
wives. Yet in the early 1680s he began to restrict soldier marriage, limiting
the number of soldiers per company who could marry to thirty or forty―
still a sizeable number―and giving captains authority over who could
marry in their companies. His son, King Frederick I of Prussia, increased
the difficulty of soldier marriage by allowing only a few married men per
company unless a soldier paid his captain the equivalent of three months
pay to gain permission to marry. But Frederick William I moderated the
marriage policies of his father, guided by Pietist beliefs in the importance
of the family and by the realization that soldiers’ offspring could become
a source of recruitment for the army.
Frederick II, the Great, further reduced restrictions on soldier marriage
and praised it “so as to populate the country, and to preserve the stock,
which is admirable” (Duffy 1974, 60). Frederick’s army thus multiplied the
population of the state while preparing to defend it. This fit particularly
well with the Prussian canton system, established in 1733, which created a
native reserve force that could be mobilized in wartime. During peacetime,
these troops stayed at home to work the land except for two months when
they drilled with their regiments. Thus, such men were encouraged to raise
families. Prussian policies under Frederick the Great multiplied the num-
ber of soldiers’ wives (Engelen 2004). The Knobloch regiment had 1077
women and 1925 children in 1751, meaning that 61.5 percent of its soldiers
were married. Roughly a third of the soldiers in the Berlin garrison were
married during peacetime from the 1770s into the early 1800s, with about
7000 to 9000 children. Considering the entire electorate of Brandenberg,
this proportion stood higher, at 38.8 percent of 34,861 troops in 1790 and
43 percent of 28,163 in 1800. The pattern of marriage in the Prince Heinrich
Regiment indicates that soldiers married less during wartime years and
rushed to the altar immediately when peace returned, as they did in 1748
when 148 soldiers married, 1764 when 188 soldiers married, and 1780 when
123 soldiers married (Engelen 2004, 566–67).
108 John A. Lynn
Several lesser German states mirrored evolving Brandenburg-Prussian
policies. In 1682 Hesse-Kassel stipulated that common soldiers must get
the permission of their officers to marry, and by 1700 most German states
had adopted similar restrictions (Wilson 1996, 136). Soldiers who married
without permission could suffer severe penalties. By the mid-eighteenth
century, the majority of German armies subjected such culprits to run a
gauntlet of 200 soldiers from 12 to 24 times, as the troops forming the
gauntlet beat the man passing between them. The unfortunate bride was
to serve a minimum sentence of one year in a workhouse (Wilson 1996,
136). Yet as the eighteenth century progressed, German states tended to
liberalize marriage policy as they adopted versions of the canton system.
The percentage of married troops in Württemburg notably increased after
the War of the Austrian Succession, and in Frankfurt the portion of married
troops doubled from a third in 1733 to two-thirds in 1753. Interestingly,
German states were likely to oppose the marriage of officers, because the
cost of pensions to widows would have been prohibitive (Wilson 1996,
137–38, 145). It is often stated, as Ulinka Rublack (1997, 12) comments,
“soldiers were almost never permitted to marry,” but the percentages of
German married troops does not bear out such a conclusion across the
board. Of course, the above figures on the prevalence of soldier marriage
impacted garrison and rural life, not the campaign community, which
restricted the number of accompanying women.
Although often restrictive through the eighteenth century, British regu-
lations became more generous toward soldier marriage during the
Napoleonic wars. From the mid-1600s, English regulations required that
soldiers gain permission to marry from their officers, who were to inquire
into the suitability of the women in question. Many a commander echoed
the sentiments of James Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, who cautioned his
regiment garrisoned in Scotland, “The Officers are desired to discourage
Matrimony amongst the men as much as possible.” But his rationale, that
“the Service suffers by the multitude of Women already in the Regiment,”
admits that marriage was still common (Williams 1988, 12). As late as 1795,
British cavalry regulations still insisted “Marriage is to be discouraged as
much as possible. Officers must explain to the men of the many miseries
that women are exposed to, and by every sort of persuasion they must
prevent their marrying if possible” (Whitfield 1973, 65).
The reform era associated with the Duke of York, who became com-
mander-in-chief of the British Army in 1798, brought a change in attitude
within British regiments. The 1801 article regulating marriage and wives
with the Corps of Riflemen at Shorncliffe began by affirming: “The Marriage
of soldiers being a matter of benefit to a regiment” (Hacker 1981, 660).
However, a more open policy toward allowing soldiers to marry did not
increase the number of wives allowed to accompany the troops. Because
the British fought overseas, wives who shipped out with troops were carried
on the books at state expense; they were “wives on the strength” and British
practice was to limit this number. This was an old policy. In 1703, the Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland explained that he had to dispatch four women per
company with troops sailing for Portugal, “which is the least that has been
permitted and cannot be avoided” (Williams 1988, 11). Numbers could be
more, or less, restrictive depending on circumstances. In his 1764 American
campaign, Henry Bouquet cut the number of women who could march
with his column to one woman for each unit and two nurses for the col-
umn’s hospital (Hendrix 2000, 33). Although the number permitted to go
with their men on campaign varied, six wives per hundred men was a
common standard (Hagist 1993–95). This was, in fact, the number set for
all British troops by the Duke of York in his order of 29 October 1800;
women not permitted to sail with their regiment were to be given funds
to return home (Williams 1988, 17). This led to the painful matter of choos-
ing which wives could accompany their husbands. Selection could be made
by lot, throwing dice on a drumhead. Once a woman shipped over, she was
likely to remain in the married state one way or another as long as she
survived—in other words, widows did not stay widows for long. Lt. William
Gratton reported, “When a man was shot, and his wife was a capable and
desirable person, she would receive half a dozen proposals before her
husband was 48 hours in the grave” (Cordingly 2002, 105). Women were
wise to remarry in order to retain their regimental rations and support.
In all armies, the necessity of choosing only a restricted number of reg-
imental wives to accompany the troops on campaign was the natural prod-
uct of a moral policy that privileged, and of an insistence on military
efficiency that limited, the number of women with a state commission
army in the field. Vauban wrote of marriage as a way of limiting desertion,
because soldiers would want to return to their wives in winter quarters,
but he argued that the wives would not be a hindrance in war, since “one
took along on campaign only three or four women per company,” which
in a standard fifty-man company meant six to eight wives per hundred men
(Rochas d’Aiglun 1910, vol. 1, 340–41). Frederick the Great only permitted
five to twelve wives per company to accompany the troops in the field,
even though the number of married Prussian troops was very high (Duffy
110 John A. Lynn
1974, 59). During the mid-eighteenth century, the Austrians allowed three
to five wives per company, but later they would adopt the most restrictive
policy of all, when a 1775 regulation banned all soldiers’ wives from accom-
panying the army in the field (Duffy 1979, 57). Such a restriction could not
have eliminated women who performed functional duties, such as sutlers.
A painful irony arose as armies banned prostitutes and privileged
wives―these same wives could slip into prostitution. Because soldiers
earned such meager salaries, wives in garrison had to supplement family
income through their own labor, usually in low-paying jobs. Hard times
compelled some to turn to prostitution, as was the case among some
Prussian soldiers’ wives (Engelen 2004, 156–58). This phenomenon occurred
elsewhere, as with the Piedmontese army in garrison (Loriga 2007, 46).
Wives left behind when the troops went on campaign could be particularly
vulnerable. In 1714, the last year of the War of the Spanish Succession,
complaints were lodged against nine soldiers’ wives who were brazening
soliciting by a Paris city gate. Authorities did not arrest them, however, out
of consideration for their circumstances, because their husbands were away
on campaign (Riley 2001, 66). Unfortunately, daughters of soldiers also were
all too likely to turn to prostitution, at least in Prussia. A 1717 inspection of
the Berlin prostitution section and brothels revealed that the largest per-
centage of girls working the trade were actually the daughters of soldiers
in this garrison town (Haberling 1943, 53; Duffy 1974, 60). On campaign,
desperation and starvation could drive army wives and widows to offer sex
for food. After the battle of Talavera in 1809 the British forces were in bad
straits to provision themselves. A commissary officer reported that soldiers’
wives in rags were offering themselves to any man who would give them
half a loaf of bread (Williams 1988, 52). Women who lost their soldier hus-
bands on campaign were particularly vulnerable, which explains their
willingness to marry again soon after their husband’s death.
Soldier wives were praised for their contributions to their husbands. In
his Pallas Armata of 1683, Sir James Turner (1683/1968, 277) pointed out
the practical value of these hearty women on campaign: “As woman was
created to be a helper to man, so women are great helpers in Armies to
their husbands, especially those of the lower condition.” Women with
armies were expected to perform a variety of work that conformed to
societal gender norms. They increased the well-being of the men by wash-
ing and repairing clothes, nursing the sick, and cooking meals. In perform-
ing such gender-defined tasks they also relieved soldiers of work thought
demeaning to men. Washing and repairing clothing remained a basic
woman’s responsibility throughout the early modern era. Written sources
also make clear the gendered nature of this service, which directives often
tied to other women’s work. During the mid-eighteenth century, a French
military authority advised that in each company there should be one man
married to a “woman who washed and mended the linens of the soldiers
and sold them eau de vie and vegetables” (Seriu 2005, 104). This would have
amounted to six to eight women per battalion who served as washerwomen
and vivandières. Incidentally, laundresses enjoyed a reputation for strength
developed in handling baskets of wet clothes and great dripping sheets, as
well as plying heavy irons (Hufton 1998, 85).
Needlework was also regarded as suitable for women. They repaired
clothing and turned their skills to making shirts and personal linens. They
could be barred from making men’s outer garments, because this was
reserved for male tailors (Crowston 2001). Eighteenth-century commenta-
tors listed tailors as tradesmen who should be within the ranks of regiments
(Seriu 2005, 104). An unusually revealing statement concerning washing
and needlework comes from rules set out for the British Corps of Riflemen,
soon to be the 95th Regiment of Foot, in 1801. It provided for “employment
and comfortable livelihood” for women permitted to travel with the regi-
ment. “The Colonel requests that the officers will never give their linen to
wash out of the regiment, and also that they will distribute it nearly equally
among the sergeants’ wives.” Soldiers’ laundry was “to be distributed in
equal proportions among the other women of the companies.” Interestingly,
it sets the amount of wash to be paid for by the “pay sergeant,” making the
laundresses army employees. Moreover, “The Quartermaster will never
give any needlework out of the regiment which can be done in it, and
officers are requested to do the same” (Shepard 1952, 48–49; Hacker 1981,
660–61). Needlework was also to be apportioned out to soldiers’ wives in
the eighteenth-century Piedmontese army in order to give these women a
livelihood (Loriga 2007, 48–49).
The idea that needlework was particularly suited to women was
enshrined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Book V of Emile (1762/1979, 368,
199), where he argued that young girls took naturally to sewing, “holding a
needle, that they always learn gladly.” He also insisted that needlework,
while natural to women, was not suited to men, who should be invested
in more manly, and martial, skills: “The needle and the sword cannot be
wielded by the same hands. If I were sovereign, I would permit sewing and
the needle trades only to women.” Not surprisingly, the levée en masse
decreed by the French National Convention in 1793 called young men to
112 John A. Lynn
arms, but summoned women to needles and nursing: “The young men shall
go to battle; … the women shall make tents and clothing and shall serve in
the hospitals” (Lynn 1984, 56).
Nursing, as the levée en masse signaled, was another task traditionally
considered particularly suited to women. General Robert Venables, when
censured for having brought his wife and some other women on an expe-
dition to the West Indies, 1654–55, replied that experience in the Irish wars
had demonstrated “the necessity of having that sex with an army to attend
upon and help the sick and wounded, which men are unfit for” (Firth
1902/1962, 262). On campaign, camp women were close at hand and could
give immediate care to the sick and wounded at the front. Women were
also generally considered most apt at providing nursing care in military
hospitals, where they might be aided by men but still provided the primary
nursing. The nineteenth-century historian Victor Belhomme (1895, 154–57)
states that circa 1690, French army hospitals maintained one nurse for every
five wounded or ten sick. Sir William Howe ordered that any women
accompanying his British army in October 1776 had to be willing to under-
take nursing chores: “The Commander in Chief is Determin’d not to Allow
any woman to Remain with the Army That Refused to take a Share of this
Necessary Duty” (Mayer 1996, 13).
Cooking was not so clearly a gender-defined task at any point, and in
most, if not all, armies it eventually became more a man’s than a woman’s
job. Characteristically, a late sixteenth-century German set of articles reg-
ulating the artillery denied that any soldier could bring with him a “whore”
unless permission was granted by the colonel “and that the women are
formed into platoons in the regiments and shall be assigned to nursing and
cooking” (Haberling 1943, 40). But even in the sixteenth century, men are
shown cooking as well, and baking was a man’s job with the armies as it
was in civilian society throughout the early modern era (Hirth 1972, 2:875;
Strauss 1975, 1071). During the second half of the seventeenth century, as
authorities decreased the number of women in camp and subjected camp
life to much more detailed regulations, cooking duties were explicitly
assigned to the men themselves. For example, as defined by field regula-
tions from 1758, the ordinaire or mess group included fourteen to sixteen
men who prepared their food in a marmite, or large kettle, and ate in com-
mon (Lynn 1984, chapter 7). Some illustrations still show women at the
cooking fires, and this may be particularly true of British troops, who were
officially permitted a larger number of accompanying women. On cam-
paign, women sutlers continued to prepare food for their improvised field
taverns, but troops were generally expected to prepare their own daily
rations.
Beyond their roles as laundresses, seamstresses, and nurses, soldier
wives helped to supplement the incomes of their male partners through a
variety of small commercial ventures on campaign. Women commonly
took part in the campaign economy, sometimes on their own and some-
times as partners of their husbands. The seventeenth-century mercenary
captain James Turner defended the presence of women with armies
because a woman was able to “gain money to her husband and herself”
(Turner 1683/1968, 277). Although written about civilian economies, the
assessment of Olwen Hufton (1998, 500) applies to life with the army as
well: “Indeed, we might offer as a working generalization that the more
modest the family, the more essential both the labour and the ingenuity
of the womenfolk. They are at the centre of the economy of makeshifts.”
If campaign communities were marching cities, they were also mobile
marketplaces (Sandberg 2007). We know that women were central to civil-
ian markets and retail trade (Hufton 1998; Wiesner 2000). We also know
that in garrison, Prussian soldier wives hawked goods and sold cooked food
(Engelen 2004, 149–70). It should come as no surprise that they created
small commercial ventures in military camps. Women in civil communities
legally dominated many areas of commerce, such as the sale of agricultural
produce in open markets. Christian Davies (1740, 153), the eighteenth-
century woman soldier turned soldier wife, was energetic in scheming to
make money, even turning to smuggling goods into Ghent at one point.
French soldiers, too, were notorious for smuggling, although salt was their
specialty (McCullough 2007; Ruff 2001, 11–13). An order directed to British
troops in Rhode Island in 1776 commanded, “No soldier’s wife is upon any
account to keep a shop, without permission in writing signed by the
Commandant,” which is good indication that women were indeed setting
up their own shops (Hagist 1993–95). In one of the most original gambits,
women from the Bevern Regiment of the Prussian army, then engaged at
the battle of Kolin, on a hot June day in 1757 broke into an ice house and
sold chunks of ice to the soldiers (Duffy 1974, 59–60).
One common business in the campaign community was that of sutler,
selling food items, alcohol, tobacco, and small luxuries to troops. Sutlers
could be male or female; women sutlers were also known as vivandières.
Sutlers set up markets or mobile canteens under the supervision of the
local military authorities, usually the provost marshal of an army and the
regimental marshals who worked under his supervision. Formal disputes
114 John A. Lynn
were handled by the judge marshal (Turner 1683/1968, 207–208). Sutlers
filled part of the gap between what the state supplied and what the men
in the ranks needed or wanted. Christopher Duffy (1974, 138), a military
historian of unusual breadth, has argued that modern beliefs that earlier
armies were nearly all “teeth” with only minimal “tail” are “very deceptive”
because such assumptions tend to forget the civilian logistic support that
traveled with military forces. Troops of state commission armies were
generally expected to purchase their own food only during winter quarters
and in garrison; they received their basic rations directly from army sup-
pliers on campaign. Still, they could and did buy luxuries, such as extra
food, alcohol, and tobacco from sutlers, and the sutlers’ tents became cen-
ters of camaraderie and carousing on campaign.
Sutlers bought their supplies or accumulated them through foraging
and pillaging as circumstances allowed. We gain our best insights on this
and other details concerning the lives and work of female sutlers from
fictional or fictionalized accounts of life on campaign. Most relevant for
the period after 1650 is The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies,
commonly called Mother Ross, which deals with the eponymous protago-
nist’s exploits during the War of the Spanish Succession. She was a real
person, but her story is almost certainly heavily embellished. The life of
Christian Davies was written by an anonymous author who knew contem-
porary military practice. The tale, when compared with that of Grimmels
hausen’s The Life of Courage (1670/2001) written seventy years earlier,
indicates that the daily existence of sutlers and vivandières did not alter
that much from the early seventeenth century to the first decades of the
eighteenth, even if sutlers were more essential for the supply of basic food-
stuffs before 1650 than they became after that date. Both Grimmelshausen’s
antiheroine, Courage, and Christian Davies relied on forage and pillage as
much as they could to secure their stocks; after all they turned a much
greater profit by stealing their inventory. Christian Davies (1740, 69) boasted
that “I never lost an Opportunity of Maroding.” She foraged for pigs, sheep,
cocks and hens (“in the camp language, corporals and their wives”), fruits,
vegetables, and grain (Davies 1740, 139, 169–70, 174–75, 201). As The Life and
Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies reports (Davies 1740, 176), the profession
of vivandière was not an easy life. Once found, animals had to be butchered
and cooked:
Having made these Prizes, I cut up my Mutton, laid by a Shoulder to roast,
the Neck and Breast to make Broth; dug a Hole with a Hatchet to boil my
Pot in, which, the Fire being made, I set on with the Mutton and Sweet-
herbs. … They [officers] called for a Gallon of Beer … ordered the Shoulder
of Mutton to be roasted, which I did by pitching two forked Sticks in the
Ground, putting it on a jointed Spit, and setting a Soldier’s Wife to turn it.
I made four Crowns a-piece of my Sheep, besides the Fat which I sold to a
Woman, who made mold Candles for the Men, and made a good Penny of
my Fowls and Pigeons.
Strong drink―brandy or eau de vie―was also central to the vivandière’s
trade. In fact, dealing in beer, wine, and strong drink was a traditional
occupation for women in civil society (Wiesner 2000, 117–18). One uncom-
plimentary remark from a British soldier (as quoted in De Pauw 1998, 122)
with Wolfe in Canada pointed to the value of alcohol during the campaign
of 1759:
The swarming flies, short rations, dysentery and scurvy were as plaguing as
the painted Red Indians, prowling around the old posts with tomahawks
and scalping knives. The only relief was in the almost lethal spirits provided
by the women sutlers.
In representations of vivandières, alcohol is a constant prop. Depending
on the army and the situation, she also sold tobacco. During the reign of
Louis XIV, smoking came to be regarded as a necessity of life by French
soldiers (Babeau 1890, 253).
Men and women served as sutlers, but available sources indicate that
the job over time went from male to female. Courage says that she had to
have a male front man to run her business as a sutler during the Thirty
Years’ War, and so she had her stooge, Tearaway: “It would be good bye to
the business the moment I lacked such a figurehead” (Grimmelshausen
1667/2001, 136). Christian Davies ran her own business openly with gusto
two generations later, in the era of the state commission army. Eighteenth-
century comments on sutlers seem to refer primarily or exclusively to
women, particularly when it came to distributing strong drink to the troops.
As the Duke of Cumberland’s standing orders of 1755 allowed, “Soldier’s
wives may suttle” (Williams 1988, 238). These were formidable women. It
is said that once Frederick the Great rode up a hill to observe his troops
during training maneuvers, but was shooed away from this vantage point
by two women sutlers who had already set up shop there (Duffy 1974, 137).
Sutlers and vivandières lived under military regulation and supervision.
Sir James Turner (1683/1968, 274–75) stated that the Swedish army allowed
one sutler to each infantry company and one or two to each company of
cavalry. So many accompanied the French army during the war with Spain,
1635–59, that a law of 1653 cut down their numbers to four per regiment
116 John A. Lynn
(Babeau 1890, 200). Austrian field regulations of 1749 and 1759 provided for
vivandières to march with the troops, not back in the baggage train: “No
woman in the infantry may, in future, march side by side with the regiment
except those having no children and those serving soldiers with brandy”
(Haberling 1943, 52; Duffy 1979, 57). During the same era, the provost in
French field armies assigned numbers to the vivandières’ wagons and super-
vised them in the baggage train. If they encumbered the march, the pro-
vost’s men cut their horses’ traces and left them stranded (Kennett 1967,
123). Sutlers might wear some version of military dress and/or a badge, as
did Prussian male and female sutlers, who sported blue cockades in their
hats (Duffy 1974, 137).
Women who sold drink to French troops were allowed to remain with
the regiments during the Revolution according to the law of April 1793, and
shortly thereafter they were better known as cantinières, instead of
vivandières. During the Napoleonic era, the French attached cantinières to
particular regiments. A regulation stipulated that: “No women shall accom-
pany the corps except those employed as washerwomen, vendors of vict-
uals and drink” (Haberling 1943, 57–58). These women, often the wives of
sergeants, would be appointed by the regimental conseil d’administration,
a committee of officers headed by the colonel (Rothenberg 1981, 88). A very
notable pair of this sort was the future Napoleonic marshal Pierre François
Joseph Lefebvre, a sergeant in the French Guards before the Revolution,
and the woman he married in 1783, Catherine Hübscher, who worked as a
vivandière/cantinière and washerwoman. She would later become the sub-
ject of the play, Madame Sans-Gêne and movies by that name starring
Gloria Swanson in 1923 and Sophia Loren in 1962.
Cantinières were well known in their own day; the cantinière of the 26th
regiment crossed to enemy lines to take care of a wounded French noncom-
missioned officer saying, “we shall see if the English will kill a woman,” and
another, Catherine Baland of the 95th Infantry Regiment, was said to have
distributed goods for free during combat. She also was supposed to have
received the Legion of Honor in 1813, although, in fact, Napoleon did not
distribute this award to women (Rothenberg 1981, 88). Her role in the
battle of Chiclana (1811) is memorialized in a grand painting by Louis-
François Lejeune. The institution of cantinières survived into the Third
Republic (Cardoza 2002; Mihaely 2005).
Early modern sutlers and vivandières set up their tents or huts in desig-
nated areas set off from the more regular encampment of the troops.
Christian Davies (1740, 107) held herself fortunate that when she opted to
be a sutler, she was given special treatment, apparently in recognition of
her previous service as a soldier; she “was permitted to pitch my Tent in
the Front, while others were driven to the Rear of the Army.” Sutlers’ and
vivandières’ tents were a favorite subject for artists, and we possess many
engravings and paintings illustrating the life that went on around them. In
established camps, for example, at sieges, sutlers might erect rough wooden
huts. On the march, their tents often seemed improvised, a sheet of canvas
thrown over a rough frame of branches or wooden poles. They usually were
marked by some sign; as early as the mid-sixteenth century one such
emblem appeared for sutler taverns―a tankard hung above the front of
the establishment, often from the ridge pole of a tent. A wreath seems to
have been an even more common emblem, and it could be combined with
the tankard and/or a flag. But other emblems might be employed, includ-
ing placards of one kind or another.
In prints and drawings, simple tables, stools, and/or benches sit in front
of the tent, and the eating and drinking take place outside. Inevitably
women are part of the scene, either as servers for male sutlers or as the
sutlers themselves. Scenes also often portray men sitting with, holding, or
jostling the women, demonstrating that the vivandière’s tent was a venue
for contact between the sexes. Along with drinking, flirting, and fondling,
came the occasional quarrels between soldiers warm with wine and, per-
haps, contending over the attentions of the women present. One unusually
explicit drawing of a sutler’s tent in Flanders during the War of the Spanish
Succession must be taken seriously, since it was sketched by Marcellus
Laroon, who served in Marlborough’s army at the time (Barnett 1974, 145).
In the left foreground sits a large barrel of wine or beer. In the background,
a few men play musical instruments as a couple dance in the right fore-
ground. The attractive, lively-stepping young woman has unbuttoned and
opened her blouse down to the waist, revealing her breasts, as her partner,
in spurs and sword, clutches a bottle while kicking up his heels. At the table,
two men drink, while another cavalryman embraces a second woman. It
all comes off as a camp bacchanalia. Whether or not the owner was a
woman, the lure of female presence was an effective way to bring in clients.
Artists were very much taken with the theme of dalliance between soldiers
and women around the sutler’s tent. In fact, the pretty vivandière became
something of a fixture in artists’ renditions of camp life.
A vivandière on campaign could morph into a tavern-keeper during
winter quarters or in garrison. Keeping a small tavern or drink shop was a
good venture for women in civilian society, so it fit camp women as well
118 John A. Lynn
(Hufton 1998, 170–71; Wiesner 2000, 117–18; Engelen 2004, 149–70). A series
of letters from 1710 in the French military archives illuminates a few details
of the life of one such enterprising woman. Castres, her husband, a non-
commissioned officer in the cavalry Regiment du Roi, petitioned authori-
ties that since he was a soldier, his wife should not have to quarter soldiers
at her home and business establishment in Guise (Service historique, AG,
A12266, no. 87–90). The official inquiry reports: “This woman is a kind of
vivandière who works at that profession during the campaign season, and
in the winter she returns to Guise, in a house … [where] she now runs a
cabaret.” Mme. Castres obviously augmented the family income, perhaps
pulling in more money than her husband. He appealed both to the law and
to his thirty years of service and his wounds to get a break, but to no avail.
The authorities decided that there were so many troops in Guise that Mme.
Castres would have to quarter soldiers anyway. Christian Davies (1740, 237)
reports that she also ran a tavern, but after she left the army: “As I had
before kept a Publick-House, and was used to Subleing in the Army, I could
think on nothing better than that of my former, and accordingly, I took a
House, put in a Stock of Beer, and by this and making Pies, I got a comfort-
able Support.” She later returned to the army and set up as a sutler in Hyde
Park, where troops camped.
While sutlers and vivandières provided valuable services and a site for
entertainment and carousing, they were not always beloved. Sutlers
snagged the soldiers’ money, for their alcohol provided one of the few
comforts of camp. Authorities in camp were supposed to protect soldiers
from price-gouging by setting prices. However, sutlers could conspire with
provosts and auditors to cheat the troops: “But the truth is, the Buyers are
too often abused, and the Prices set too high by collusion of the Provost-
Marshal with the Sutlers, and the Sutlers bribing the Judg Marshal (Turner
1683/1968, 207–8).” Turner (1683/1968, 291) expressed concern over “debates
and brawls betwixt Souldiers and Sutlers.” The beloved vivandière of eigh-
teenth-century lore was probably a rarer figure in reality.
Whatever their tasks, thousands upon thousands of women accompa-
nied the troops between the end of the Thirty Years’ Wars and the end of
the Napoleonic Wars, sharing with them many of the dangers of the com-
bat zone. What differentiates this zone from the “rear” or the “home front”?
In fact, the combat zone is best defined by the intensity and immediacy of
danger and by the ability to do direct harm to the enemy. It is where adver-
saries collide, where the enemy is in striking distance. The full reality of
war lives here, including fear and the sights, sounds, and smells of death,
as does the opportunity for victory or the possibility of defeat. It would be
ridiculous to claim that only those who bear weapons endure the rigors of
war. For women who lived within the sound of the cannon, it was not
simply a question of supporting the fighting individuals but of sharing
danger, injury, and death, of experiencing much of what the men on the
firing line experienced. Women bivouacked in the open air, slept in tents
with the men of their company, or shared improvised huts with their hus-
bands. In addition to discomfort, fatigue, and suffering, disease plagued
early modern armies. As members of the campaign community, women
endured all this, while they performed strenuous jobs.
As a particular burden of their sex, the hardships endured by wives of
the campaign community included pregnancy and childbirth. Rifleman
Harris (1970, 84) tells a story of childbirth and remarkable endurance on
the grueling retreat to Coruna in 1808–09:
One of the men’s wives … being very large in the family-way, towards eve-
ning stepped from amongst the crowed, and lay herself down amidst the
snow, a little out of the main road. Her husband remained with her; and I
heard one or two hasty observations amongst our men that they had taken
possession of their last resting-place. … To remain behind the column of
march in such weather was to perish, and we accordingly soon forgot all
about them. To my surprise, however, I, some little time afterwards (being
myself then in the rear of our party), again saw the woman. She was hurry-
ing, with her husband, after us, and in her arms she carried the babe she
had just given birth to.
Such fortitude gives the lie to the statement that women by nature lack
carrying power and stamina.
Beyond the trials of the march and of camp life, women braved the
dangers of war. Although women typically inhabited the baggage train,
they could attend their men on the battle line. On 4 June 1759, Mary May
petitioned Colonel Henry Bouquet (1951, 30) to pardon her for her breach
of military discipline. When she saw her husband seized for an infraction,
she had flown into a rage that caused her own arrest. In her appeal we see
her affection, her history, and her toughness:
I have been a Wife 22 years and have Traveld with my Husband every Place
or Country the Company Marcht too and have workt very hard ever since
I was in the Army I hope yr honour will be so Good as to pardon me this
time that I may go with my Poor Husband one time more to carry him and
my good officers water in hottest Battles as I have done before.
120 John A. Lynn
The formidable wife of Sergeant Stone, as described in The Royal Gazette
of 25 September 1779, matched Mary May. Here we see her praised for her
conduct at the siege of Louisbourg in 1758 (as quoted in Mayer 1996, 9):
She accompanied him, though she was rather of a small and handsome
make, through most of the hardships of our armies underwent in America
during the last war; no consideration of fear could make her leave her hus-
band’s side, thro’ nine engagements in which he was concerned; in the
course of which she twice helped to carry him off wounded from the field
of battle; and it is a fact … that at the siege of Louisburg, at a time when
many of our troops were killed, she supplied the living with the powder
cartridges of the dead, and animated the men in the ranks next to her by
her words and actions. Though a woman of the most surprising intrepidity,
she was never known to be guilty of any thing that could impeach her
delicacy, or violate the modest demeanour of her sex.
The story makes her conventional femininity clear: her “small and hand-
some make,” her “delicacy,” and “modest demeanour.” But she also bore
“most of the hardships of our armies,” even helping to carry off her wounded
husband twice. Through it all she was not simply hardworking but coura-
geous in the face of enemy fire.
Women also risked capture and the hardship and humiliation of impris-
onment. A poignant description from the late eighteenth century describes
a Boston woman’s reaction (as quoted in De Pauw 1998, 120) to seeing
British prisoners taken at Saratoga:
I never had the least Idea that the Creation produced such a sordid set of
creatures in human Figure―poor, dirty, emaciated men, great numbers of
women, who seemed to be the beasts of burden, having a bushel basket on
their back, by which they were bent double, the contents deemed to be Pots
and Kettles, various sorts of Furniture, children peeping thro’ gridirons and
other utensils, some very young infants who were born on the road, the
women bare feet, cloathed in dirty rags, such effluvia filld the air while they
were passing, had they not been smoaking all the time, I should have been
apprehensive of being contaminated by them
The wives of soldiers often constituted a significant segment of the popu-
lation of garrison towns, and in smaller numbers played an important role
in military camps. In garrison or campaign communities their presence
was so common as to become mundane. We lack detailed individual
accounts of these necessary wives, not because they were rare, but because
their presence was such an expected and normal aspect of military life.
Interestingly, our most complete account of the life of a camp wife is that
of Christian Davies, but we have her story because her primary renown
was not as a camp woman but as female soldier. She is a bridge to the other
pole of women’s military life 1650–1815, the cross-dressing woman in arms.
Exemplary Female Soldiers
The preface to Davies’s biography notes that she displayed an “uncommon

Intrepidity but rarely found in the fair Sex.” For this she won praise,
although the preface goes on to concede that she had developed “a mas-
culine Air and Behavior” which “would hardly be [excusable] in any other
of her Sex.” She was thus to be considered an exemplary soldier, but not a
model for other members of “the fair Sex.” In this we see a hint that the
cultural representation of the female soldier was less designed to guide
women than to challenge men to match her exploits. From the seventeenth
century into the nineteenth, the European imagination was fascinated with
female soldiers: women who donned men’s clothing, assumed a male iden-
tity, and served under arms in the ranks. This fascination reflected a reality,
for such women certainly existed; however, their likeness was exaggerated
and distorted by the parabolic mirror of contemporary perception and
purpose.
Other authors in this volume, notably Elizabeth Prelinger and Dorotea
Gucciardo and Megan Howatt, address the representation of women in
propaganda and memorials during the twentieth century. This manipula-
tion of female image and action took place during the early modern epoch
as well. In studying this period, it is the stories of female soldiers, not the
less romantic realities of their actual lives that deserve our attention. For
a variety of reasons, contemporaries found, and historians still find, female
soldiers of consummate interest. People of their time enjoyed hearing of
cross-dressing women warriors because of the unusual, entertaining, and
even titillating nature of their experiences. The fact that their stories were
embellished along the way did not hurt their popular appeal. Also, modern-
day historians interested in the condition of women and the malleability
of gender find excellent grist for their mills in the lives of women who
abandoned unacceptable living conditions and limited possibilities to take
on masculine appearance and roles.
Notable individuals, such as Catalina de Erauso, Maria van Antwerpen,
Christian Davies, Catharina Linck, Hannah Snell, Deborah Sampson, and
Rose Barreau demonstrate that such women did indeed assume male garb
and shoulder weapons. Some eager scholars conclude from such examples
122 John A. Lynn
that great numbers of women served in the ranks, yet these exaggerated
claims do not bear up to scrutiny. While we can document perhaps a few
hundred women who became soldiers and sailors from the sixteenth
through the eighteenth centuries, in relation to the many hundreds of
thousands of men who marched in European armies or sailed in merchant
and naval fleets, the presence of cross-dressing women was extremely
limited. The numbers who stood in the ranks of any particular European
army at any particular time was undoubtedly miniscule. For example, Peter
Wilson (1996, 152), in his research of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies at the Stuttgart archives, discovered only a single woman soldier,
Anna Maria Christmännin, who served 1716–18. Don Hagist (1993–95) con-
cludes that “we cannot fully document any cases of women serving as
British regulars in the American War.” Historians who argue for a sizeable
participation by women soldiers must assume that there were many thou-
sands of women who went undetected, and that is a big assumption.
Thus, it is an exaggeration to conclude, as does Alfred Young (2005, 8),
that although the American female soldier Deborah Sampson enjoyed
notoriety at home, “In the larger Atlantic world of the eighteenth century,
Sampson would not have raised many eyebrows.” It is precisely because
the existence of woman soldiers was rare, even in Europe, that it caught
the public interest. Stories of cross-dressing soldiers definitely “raised many
eyebrows” or they would not have been told. Arlette Farge (1993, 499)
likewise misleads her readers when she asserts, “To march off to war as
men did, to rebel by passing as men: cross-dressing was one of the tradi-
tional forms of popular protest.” In another excessive appraisal, Linda Grant
de Pauw (1981, 209) claims that “During the American War for Independence
tens of thousands of women were involved in active combat.” To call cross-
dressing as a male soldier a “tradition” implies that it was reasonably com-
mon, which it was not. To imply that great numbers of women were on the
firing line stretches the truth beyond recognition. Yes, some women fought,
and yes, people knew about it, but while this was a known option, there is
no real evidence that it was a road taken by more than a tiny minority.
And yet, although women warriors were few in actual numbers, the
stories about them abound. Celebration of the cross-dressing woman sol-
dier in popular culture lasted for about two centuries, picking up in the
early or mid-seventeenth century and dying out in the first half of the
nineteenth. Particularly after 1650, these women provided a staple of songs,
literature, and stage performances. Popular culture recognized and
reflected the fact that women served as soldiers, but it also filtered and
elaborated this reality to entertain the public, to highlight the issue of
gender roles, and to stimulate military values.
The image of woman soldiers promoted by popular culture related to
an enduring European fascination with the mythology of women warriors
and a reverence for Biblical heroines. Amazons captured the European
imagination, particularly, it would seem, that of notable women of power
and birth during the seventeenth century (DeJean 2003; Shepherd 1981).
Interiors of elegant homes were decorated with paintings of Amazons and
other ancient heroines. Between 1637 and 1642, the flamboyant Marie de
Cossé Brissac, maréchale de La Meilleraye, embellished her study with a
series of portraits of deadly heroines, including three Amazon queens. She
was not alone in this interest. No less a personage than the queen regent
of France, Anne of Austria, intended to create such a gallery for herself.
Literature echoed this attention to valorous women of the past. Jacques
Du Bosc’s La Femme héroique appeared in 1645, followed two years later
with the far more successful La Galerie des femmes fortes by Pierre Le Moyne
(as cited in DeJean 2003, 128).
The Old Testament provided compelling images of women who
employed deadly violence in a divine cause. Beyond ancient mythology or
literary fancy, these stories had the power of Biblical authority. The Kennite
woman Jael slew the Canaanite general, Sisera, after he had been defeated
by the Israelites. When Sisera came to her tent, she offered him milk, sug-
gested he rest, and, when he slept, hammered a tent spike through his
temple. She was then praised as a heroine by Deborah, the judge. The story
is contained in Judges 4 and 5. Her story was told and illustrated in Le
Moyne’s La Galerie des femmes fortes (as cited in DeJean 2003, 120–31).
Judith (13:2–8, as cited in Rublack 1997, 5) gave Europe a still more rel-
evant and immediate image of the sword-bearing woman. Not only was
she praised from the pulpit, but artists such as Botticelli, Donatello,
Caravaggio, and Rembrandt celebrated her beauty, resolve, and deadly
blade. In the early modern period, when wars often consisted primarily of
sieges, Judith shone like a beacon. When the Assyrians attacked her town
of Bethulia, all hope seemed lost, and the men of the town were ready to
capitulate. Not the beautiful and determined widow Judith, who entered
the Assyrian camp, where she captivated the enemy general, Holofernes.
When he was “overcome with wine” she decapitated him with his own
sword. Their leader slain, the Assyrians retired; Judith saved Bethulia and
enjoyed great renown and respect for the rest of her long life.
124 John A. Lynn
During the first half of the seventeenth century, a number of extraordi-
nary elite women turned ancient myth and Biblical example into reality
during the turmoil of the Thirty Years’ War, the Fronde, and the English
Civil Wars. For example, in Lorraine during the late 1630s and early 1640s,
the magnificent Alberte-Barbe d’Ernecourt, Comtesse de Saint-Baslement,
defended her lands against raiders while her husband was away at the wars
(Cuénin 1992). She donned appropriate men’s attire, summoned her ten-
ants, and led them in combat, although she was always the lady of her
estates. Mme. de Saint-Baslement was celebrated with two equestrian
portraits of her dressed and armed to fight and a biography, suitably enti-
tled L’Amazone chrestienne (DeJean 2003, 123, 147). The English Civil Wars
supply several examples of land-owning women who defended their homes
and estates (Plowden 1998). Lady Blanche Arundell, whose husband was
off fighting for the king, led the defense of her estate, Wardour, which held
out for six days in May 1643 before capitulating. Mary Bankes and Charlotte
Stanley, Countess of Derby, also won renown for their actions in defense
of their lands. During the French rebellion of the Fronde (1648–53), head-
strong aristocratic women took part in the drama of politics and combat.
Catherine Meurdrac de La Guette defended her lands in the absence of her
husband. The flamboyant grand noblewomen, Anne-Marie-Louise
d’Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier, played the part of a rebel against the
monarchy, even leading troops of the Paris garrison as they fought against
royal forces. The exploits of such elite women caught the public fancy, as
they were seen as grand, current-day reflections of heroines of old.
This fashion of aristocratic Amazons reflected but was quite distinct
from the more widespread cultural fascination with common women in
arms, a subject far more in keeping with the theme of this chapter. Cross-
dressing plebeian women who passed for male soldiers appeared in song,
literature, and stage performances, from plays to variety acts. Songs about
women soldiers delighted the ears of a particularly broad spectrum of lis-
teners, who did not even need to be literate. By nature, songs are easily
acquired and highly portable, but they also simplify. The appeal of songs
about women in uniform derived from the novelty of their theme and from
their way of turning a hard existence into a romantic fantasy. Dianne
Dugaw provides the best scholarly discussion to date of this phenomenon;
she centers on English-language songs, of which she has collected 120.
Dugaw’s (1996, xi) transvestite heroines abandon home, often encounter-
ing parental resistance, in a quest for love and glory. While some go to
pursue or accompany a lover or husband, others leave in search of adven-
ture, but even those who seek adventure generally discover romance as
well. Dugaw (1996, 1) terms the songs “success stories” with a predictable
plot whereby the “masquerading heroine―a model of bravery, beauty, and
pluck―proves herself deserving in romance, able in war and rewarded in
both.”
Beyond the ubiquitous songs, many pamphlets and books presented the
lives of women soldiers to the literate population. In contrast to song, lit-
erature allowed for a greater range of exposition and meaning. The author-
ity of the printed page gave these accounts more weight, although this
could mislead the naïve, because the biographies, memoirs, and correspon-
dence of women soldiers were less likely to be fact than fancy. One of the
earliest fictional tales of armed women told of the exploits of Long Meg of
Westminster, which appeared first in 1582 in the pamphlet, or chapbook
repertoire, and was reissued with embellishments repeatedly into the eigh-
teenth century. Her many sisters appeared in tales told in the British Isles,
Spain, France, the Netherlands, Russia, and America. The “true” story of a
woman soldier’s life became a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century liter-
ary genre. Sylvie Steinberg (2001, 80), a historian who has written percep-
tively on the subject, concludes, “Such adventures form a veritable motif
in the most popular of literature.” She points out how events from one
woman’s life had the disturbing habit of popping up in the tales of another.
We will soon examine two examples of this literature, the biographies of
Christian Davies and Hannah Snell, in greater detail. Women masquerad-
ing as male soldiers also appeared in many plays and other stage perfor-
mances throughout Europe. Amusing comedies delighted audiences with
their exotic themes of inverted gender, but they also demonstrate a frustra-
tion with the limited possibilities of femininity and express women’s pos-
session of masculine traits. Often the heroine is quite happy to adopt
masculine tastes for drinking and gambling, and to draw her sword in
earnest (Dugaw 1985, 125–26; Wheelwright 1994, 14).
The multiplicity of songs, stories, and performances featuring women
soldiers should not be seen as evidence of great numbers of women actually
in the ranks. In fact, the cultural attention paid to the exploits of female
soldiers derived from three other sources: their entertainment value, their
relationship to popular concern with inverted gender roles and the battle
of the sexes, and, in some cases, their political use to justify or inspire
military action. On the most superficial, yet still perhaps the most impor-
tant level, such stories appealed to audiences with a taste for extraordinary
adventures. As the title page of the biography of Catherine Vezzani, a
126 John A. Lynn
female soldier, advertised: “What odd fantastic Things, we Women do!”
(Dekker and van de Pol 1989, pl. 10). The texts of such literature involved
love, rejection, disguise, and confusion. Authors supplied inherent sexual
double entendres, occasional homosexual innuendos, and bizarre plot
twists that played on the cross-dressing disguise, such as the heroine being
accused of getting a girl pregnant. Once Europeans showed enthusiasm for
this genre, they were sure to get more from those willing to please and
eager to profit. But explaining the popularity of this genre by its entertain-
ment value is to a degree begging the question: was this capacity to amuse
tied to some other cultural concern that enjoyed widespread interest?
It was. Early modern popular culture devoted a great deal of attention
to defining gender and gender roles. One common expression of this was
a fascination with gender inversion, that is, a reversal of identity and roles
that commonly featured women acting as men (Kunzle 1978; Davis 1978).
Examples range from naïve images meant to inform and amuse children
to serious political attacks meant to discredit powerful men. Dutch catch-
penny broadsheets from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries designed
for the young displayed series of inversions, including cows butchering
butchers, mice attacking cats, and hens mounting roosters (Van Veen 1971).
Inevitably included were pictures of women armed for war as their hus-
bands sat plying the distaff or bands of women forming a besieging army
(Van Veen 1971, pl. 39; Kunzle 1978, 45–47; Lynn 2008, 98). A more elaborate
set of images from eighteenth-century Prussia displays women in uniforms
with skirts drilling as soldiers, firing muskets, and manning artillery. One
of the drawings in this series shows a uniformed woman sitting at a tavern
table drinking and smoking a pipe as her male companion tends the baby
and holds a distaff (Engelen 2004, 377). An American print entitled
Cornwallis turned nurse, and his mistress a soldier appeared in The
Continental Almanac for 1782. This plate humiliates the British general by
showing him seated with a baby on his lap and holding a distaff, while his
woman shoulders a flintlock musket (Young 2005, 89). The woman gone
off to war clearly represented an ultimate form of gender inversion.
One particularly jibing version of this concern for proper gender roles
was the battle for the pants. Prints from the sixteenth through the eigh-
teenth century show men and women disputing who will wear the pants,
often in violent confrontations. A woodcut of 1533 by Erhard Schön shows
a woman who has harnessed her husband to a cart and is whipping him
(Moxey 1989, 102; Strauss 1984, 255; Lynn 2008, 128). She holds the tradi-
tional symbols of male authority―sword, purse, and pants (underpants in
this case). An eighteenth-century plate shows a woman triumphantly hold-
ing a sword and with a crowing rooster at her feet, while her compliant
husband, attended by a slinking dog, hands her his pants (Dekker and van
de Pol 1989, pl. 23). In a world well aware of the metaphor of the battle for
the pants, the female soldier not only wore pants but bore that ultimate
symbol of virility, a sword; and she used it (Hopkin 2003b; Lynn 2008,
chapter 4).
Beyond their entertainment value which involved gender inversion,
stories of women warriors also may have carried a message meant to defend
unpopular wars and shame men into taking up arms themselves. To exam-
ine this deeper current, we need to return to the literary portrayals of two
woman soldiers in eighteenth-century Britain. The widely circulated biog-
raphies of Christian Davies and Hannah Snell, actual female soldiers, pub-
lished in 1740 and 1750 tell us much about contemporary military life, and
also may witness the publishers’ desire to push a political agenda and
inspire military values. These works have justly attracted scholarly atten-
tion (Easton 2003, Bowen 2004, Stephens 1997).
The lengthy English biography, The life and adventures of Mrs. Christian
Davies, commonly called Mother Ross presents itself as “taken from her own
mouth,” covering her military experiences in a life claimed to span the
years from 1667 to 1739. Scholars have debated if Christian Davies actually
existed, but recent scholarship establishes that she was quite real and lived
to receive a pension of “Five Pence a Day for her future Support and
Maintenance” owing to “divers Wounds she receiv’d in follg. the said Regt.”
during “the late Warr in Flanders” while “disguis’d in the habit of a man,”
according to the records of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea (Easton 2003, 14).
Davies’s biography lacks most of the typical romantic nonsense and speaks
with some authority about camp life, though it is padded with historical
reports on the War of the Spanish Succession across Europe, facts Davies
would not have known firsthand and probably not at all. Whatever its
veracity, the book became a primary staple of the literature on women
soldiers; after its first appearance in 1740, it saw another full edition in 1741
and abridged editions in 1742 and 1744. Her story would then be briefly told
in a series of later volumes.
The accounts of the service of Hannah Snell, The female soldier: Or, the
surprizing life and adventures of Hannah Snell may lie closer to reality. On
25 May 1750 she returned from her adventures at sea and in India, where
she had fought as a marine, and revealed her true identity to her comrades
right after drawing her final pay. After she appealed to the Duke of
128 John A. Lynn
Cumberland for support, a notice of her adventures and actions appeared
in The Whitehall Evening Post on 23 June. The enterprising publisher Robert
Walker, sensing the possibility of profit, signed a declaration and agreement
with her that gained him exclusive rights to her biography on 27 June. The
next day he advertised the upcoming publication of her story, and on 3 July
it appeared in a short 42-page form. He then issued a longer serialized
account beginning 14 July. Her story also appeared in the pages of the
Gentleman’s Magazine and the Scots Magazine (Bowen 2004, 43). As dem-
onstrated in a study by one of her descendants, Matthew Stephens, there
is absolutely no doubt that Hannah Snell served as a marine, and there is
evidence that she was eventually given support through the old soldiers’
home at Chelsea (Stephens 1997). Yet even here, the unvarnished truth was
not good enough for the editor, who added fanciful material at the start of
the story and shifted the dates of major events for the sake of drama.
Both Davies and Snell left home in search of lost husbands, but they did
not follow the romantic course of the songs. Davies hoped to find her
beloved husband, who was shanghaied to fight in the Netherlands during
the Nine Years War. She donned her husband’s clothes, signed up for the
army in 1693, served out the last years of that war, returned home, and then
once again enlisted at the start of the War of the Spanish Succession, dur-
ing which she was discovered to be a woman when treated for wounds in
1706. After being recognized as a woman, she stayed with the regiment as
cook and sutler. Along the way she found her husband in the embrace of
another woman; they reconciled as friends, and he died in battle.
The female soldier claims that Snell was abandoned by her good-for-
nothing spouse when she was pregnant. After the death of her baby in 1745,
she signed on as a soldier to track down the culprit and wreak her revenge
on him. Parish records show, however, that her child was born in 1746 and
died in 1747; so the first part of her story has to be a fabrication. Yet ship
records establish that in late 1747 she did indeed sign on to sail to India as
a marine. The female soldier reports that while serving she learned that her
husband had been executed for stabbing a man. After her return to England,
military records state that in recognition of her service, she was admitted
as an out pensioner at the Royal Hospital at Chelsea (Stephens 1997, 44–45).
Beyond their commercial success as entertainment, Davies’s and Snell’s
memoirs work on deeper levels. Scarlet Bowen (2004, 26) argues that the
depiction of these women in the ranks should be regarded as constituting
the kind of female masculinity proposed by Judith Halberstam (1998).
Bowen (2004, 28) asserts that:
far from reifying male masculinity or serving simply as a ‘proxy’ for the
heroism of male soldiers, the female heroine possesses her own brand of
female masculinity that she uses in order to cajole other male characters in
the memoirs into being ‘real men.’
In a similar vein, Julie Wheelwright (1987, 490) concludes that female sol-
diers during the eighteenth century “were hailed as heroines, albeit excep-
tions.”
For early modern Europe, intrepid female heroines who exemplified
masculine virtues were accepted, and they were ready and able to show
men what they ought to do to prove their manliness. Bowen (2004, 32)
argues that the memoirs of Davies and Snell were intended to inspire
patriotic fervor and argue in favor of the unpopular war of 1739–48.
Publishers were consciously pursuing political programs, and these tales
were intended to shame men into military service. The life and adventures
of Mrs. Christian Davies appeared the very year that British audiences first
heard the patriotic air “Rule Britannia!”
Bowen’s thesis receives support from stage performances that date from
the same era as the Davies and Snell biographies. As advertised on an
engaging broadside, Peg Woffington performed The female volunteer; or,
an attempt to make our men stand on the London stage during the Scottish
rebellion of 1745–46 (Daly 1891, between 112 and 113; Lynn 181). This actress
made a reputation playing men in uniform to appreciative audiences; her
first such role was The female officer in 1740 (Wheelwright 1994, 115). As the
female volunteer, she lightheartedly, but directly, shamed the men in the
audience to fight for king and country. Considered alongside Davies’s and
Snell’s memoirs, her performance provides another mid-eighteenth-cen-
tury appeal to burgeoning national feeling in Britain. Noting initial defeat
at the hands of Scottish rebels, she chidingly played the card of her own
manliness: “if ‘tis so, and that our Men can’t stand, ‘Tis Time we Women
take the Thing in Hand.” But ultimately she counseled women to put their
feminine charms to noble service, rewarding only the brave warrior. Circa
1790, Mrs. Wrighten performed another song, The female captain, written
by her husband, at Sadlers Wells. This ditty cut much in the same direction
as the Peg Woffington’s act. It reminded the men “‘Tis your king and your
country now calls for you aid,” and threatened them that should they fail
the call, she would step forward “the breaches to assume” (Dugaw 1996,
52).
Woffington and Wrighten both issued a gendered challenge to the men
of the audience to fulfill their manly duties or be shunned, or even replaced,
130 John A. Lynn
by women. Their appeals to duty also assume higher-minded rationales
for service than those that typified mercenaries in the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth centuries. Another English stage song at the end of the 1700s, also
sung by a woman in military attire and also entitled The female volunteer
(as quoted in Dugaw 1996, 52), suggested that women might actually follow
the martial careers of men:
When our gallant lads are obliged to roam
Why should women idly stay at home.
Interestingly, Hannah Snell also herself took to the footlights, performing
even before Walker published his printed accounts. On 29 June 1750 she
marched on stage at the New Wells theater for the first of sixty appearances
that stretched on until 6 September. The New Wells offered harlequinades,
variety shows appealing to a popular audience. The Whitehall and General
Evening Post reported the success of her first performance, singing two
songs attired as a marine (Stephens 1997, 41). Hannah was no singer, how-
ever, and by 19 July she had augmented the content of her show by dem-
onstrating “the manual exercises of a soldier in her new regimentals.”
Walker’s quick reaction to Snell and her ability to immediately exploit her
experience in print and on stage provides a powerful demonstration of the
fascination that greeted the phenomenon of the woman soldier.
The ultimate impact of popular culture’s fascination with woman sol-
diers can only be conjectured, given the anecdotal nature of the evidence.
Proof of their amusement value lies in the prevalence of songs, pamphlets,
and books extolling female soldiers for two hundred years. Tales praising
women warriors may also have served a purpose by suggesting more asser-
tive alternative lives for plebeian women. Yet given the small number of
women who actually assumed male identities to serve in the ranks, the
value of stories of women soldiers must have been predominantly meta-
phorical rather than actually fostering a career in uniform. Julie Wheelwright
(1994, 9, 13–14, 21–22) is pressing the case a bit hard when she argues that
the persona of woman soldier shone as a beckoning example of liberation
for plebeian women. Moreover, it is impossible to establish how the image
of the woman warrior influenced gender tensions between men and
women during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. My guess is that
tales of female soldiers drew heat from the battle for the pants rather than
stoked it. There is better chance that the image of the woman at arms was
more closely linked to and influential upon the patriotic upsurge of the
late eighteenth century.
Toward the end of the period under discussion, the French Revolution
provided a special and particularly strident case of women asserting their
right to bear arms in the name of militant patriotism. They may have been
influenced by tales of women soldiers before the Revolution, but they were
certainly driven by a severe sense of citizen rights and responsibility
expressed as demands, posed in the language of ancient myth and symbol-
ism, to defend the nation. Soon after the fall of the Bastille, a fanciful street
pamphlet declared the formation of “Bellona’s Amazons,” named after the
Roman goddess of war. This pamphlet played against Rousseau’s gender
stereotype by asserting that “we also know how to fight and win; we know
how to handle other arms than needle and thread” (Hopkin 2003b, 82).
Noteworthy revolutionary women proclaimed that women should be
formed in their armed units to insure political order and fight the enemies
of France. Olymphe de Gouges, author of the Declaration of the Rights of
Women, demanded that the government create a regiment of “Amazons,”
and Théroigne de Méricourt urged women, “Let us arm ourselves, we have
the right to do so by nature and by law. Let us show men that we are not
inferior, either in virtue or in courage” (Steinberg 2001, 249). But the gov-
ernment, while praising women for their devotion, did nothing to organize
them for war; instead it stated a wish that their example would shame men
who had not yet volunteered to repent their reluctance and join the army.
There seems to have been an enduring expectation that, as in Britain, the
idea of women in arms would inspire men to do their duty.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the adventure stories
of female soldiers commanded a large audience, expanding a lesser, though
interesting, reality into an imposing myth of women warriors in the ranks.
Early modern popular culture’s fascination with cross-dressing women
warriors as engaging individuals continues to this day in books intended
for a broad readership (Laffin, 1967; Truby 1977; Wheelwright 1994; Stark
1996; Jones 2000; Cordingly 2002). To this, scholars are adding a very mod-
ern concern with transvestism and homosexuality within the context of
gender history (Eriksson 1985; Dekker and van de Pol 1989; Steinberg 2001;
Easton 2003; Bowen 2004; Aresti 2007).
Unfortunately, the embellished myth of the exemplary female soldier
continues to eclipse the participation and contribution of camp women,
who were infinitely more important for the conduct of war and the char-
acter of military institutions. This chapter has argued that before 1650
women accompanied European armies in large numbers and were essen-
tial to the very existence of those forces. After that date the gender-defined
132 John A. Lynn
tasks performed by a smaller but still significant number of soldiers’ wives
on campaign were integral to the health and well-being of the troops;
armies needed “useful” wives. Women were thus necessary inhabitants of
the campaign community, and even more numerous in the garrison com-
munities that resulted from the maintenance of large standing armies. To
allow such plebeian women to remain in obscurity is to misrepresent the
nature of early modern armies.
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Reformers, Nurses, and Ladies in Uniform 137
chapter four
Reformers, Nurses, and Ladies in Uniform: The Changing

Status of Military Women (c. 1815–c. 1914)
Barton C. Hacker
Interactions between women and military institutions changed dramati-

cally during the course of the nineteenth century. Republicanism and mass
mobilization, which accompanied late eighteenth-century political revolu-
tions in America and France, combined with the equally revolutionary
economic consequences of industrialization to begin a transformation of
Western society that would profoundly alter relationships between states
and their armed forces, the structure of military institutions, and women’s
military roles. The lower-class women who had for centuries followed the
army and helped to support it with their labor gave way during the course
of the nineteenth century to middle- and upper-class women who, by the
first decade of the twentieth century, were becoming full-fledged members
of the armed forces.
Women and Military Institutions in the Early Nineteenth Century
Western thought borrowed from antiquity, Aristotle’s Politics in particular,

the idea that bearing arms in defense of the state defined citizenship. The
American and French Revolutions raised the prospect of full citizenship
for women (Hacker 1993; Kerber 1990; Abray 1975; Godineau 1998, 108, 173).
The French attempt to mobilize the entire nation encouraged some women
to claim the citizen’s right and obligation to wear uniforms and bear arms,
though the high hopes of the 1790s in fact remained unrealized for more
than a century (Barry 1996, 9–10; Clifford 2001, 363–64; Opitz 1989). Instead,
the revolutionary and Napoleonic era mainly witnessed women in their
traditional military role as camp follower (Cardoza 2010, chapters 1–3). By
no means were all camp followers women, but many were. The term “camp
follower” itself has acquired gendered connotations, usually pejorative and
dismissive. But the women who followed the armies were not solely whores
138 Barton C. Hacker
and troublemakers. Many were soldiers’ wives or consorts who more than
earned their keep with foraging, cooking, laundry, needlework, and nursing.
Women had always been integral and vital parts of armies, though their
work rarely required either uniforms or weapons (Forty and Forty 1979;
Hacker 1981; Lynn 2008). Before and during the wars with Britain that first
won American independence (the Revolutionary War [1775–83]), then
confirmed it (the War of 1812 [1812–15]), women normally followed the
contending armies of both sides (Hendrix 2000; Hagist 1995; Burgoyne
1996a; Burgoyne 1996b; Blumenthal 1952; Mayer 1996, 2007; Rees 1995, Rees
1996; Dunkerly 2007; Loane 2009; Graves 2007). The same pattern marked
the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (Conner 1982; Lynn 1984,
108–109; Elting 1988; Cardoza 2010; Page 1986; Hagemann 1997). Female
camp followers were commonly present in army camps and trains, and
sometimes even appeared on the battlefield, just as they had for centuries
(Hacker 1981; Hacker 1988; Hacker and Vining 2002; Vining and Hacker
2004; see also the first three chapters in this volume).
Little of the portentous change to come seemed obvious in the decades
immediately following the fall of Napoleon; indeed, quite the reverse.
Conscription and mass armies largely gave way to long-service professional
armies after 1815, most often deployed to repress liberalism at home and
expand imperial boundaries abroad. Relatively smaller armies meant fewer
places for camp followers at the same time that the new economic oppor-
tunities accompanying industrialization made following the army a less
attractive option for women than it had once seemed. Their former military
chores—cooking, laundering, nursing, and the like—increasingly fell to
the men themselves. By the mid-nineteenth century, for instance, armies
had come to rely chiefly on male orderlies for hospital duty, in place of
camp followers who only half a century earlier had made female and nurse
virtually synonymous (Kopperman 1979, 436), but whose dwindling ranks
could no longer sustain that traditional role. The loss of their formerly vital,
if homely, tasks made those women who still followed the army seem
increasingly dispensable. Laundresses in the American army (Stewart 1980;
Alt and Stone 1991), wives on the strength in the British army (Brereton
1986, 45–46; Strachan 1984, 63–64; Neuburg 1989, 94–96; Bamfield 1974;
Venning 2005), and cantinières in French and other continental armies
remained the only officially sanctioned military women, all in very limited
numbers (Cardoza 2010, chapter 6; Mihaely 2005; Best 1982, 204–206; Gooch
1980, 50–51).
Camp followers scarcely vanished overnight. Women remained com-
monplace, if not necessarily numerous, at remote army posts in the early
nineteenth century, as exemplified by America’s antebellum Western
camps and forts (Alt and Stone 1991, 19–31; Upham 1915; Coffman 1982;
Chapman 2002; Foote 1990, 29–66; Ingalls 1978), and by Britain’s overseas
forces (Williams 1988, 63–100; Whitfield 1973; Stanford 1962; MacMillan
1988). As late as midcentury, they still accompanied armies in the field,
though the practice was fading. Baggage trains on both sides of America’s
war with Mexico (1846–48) still carried their share of camp followers (Bill
1947/1969, 135, 158; Johannsen 1985, 135–41; McCaffrey 1992, 25–26, 31, 159;
Graf 2001b). Wives on the strength accompanied the British army to the
Crimea, the last instance of that centuries-old practice. France had barred
wives from serving as cantinières with the army since 1840, but only can-
tinières accompanied the French army to war as uniformed auxiliaries
(Cardoza 2010, chapter 5; Rappaport 2007; Neuburg 1989, 95–96; Mihaely
2005).
Even as regular armies became less and less likely to allow women to
accompany forces in the field, the ad hoc armed forces assembled under
the banner of liberty in revolutionary wars and insurrections have never
ceased to rely on women. Throughout the nineteenth century and into the
twentieth, women serving the armies remained much in evidence, some-
times drawn to the barricades, but always enlisted to perform their tradi-
tional supporting roles as nurses, laundresses, seamstresses, and food
providers. This was as true of the Latin American wars of independence
early in the nineteenth century (Brewster 2005; Cherpak 1978, 1993; Brown
2005) as of the Cuban and Philippine struggles for independence late in
the century and the Mexican revolution early in the twentieth century
(Prados-Torreira 1998; Prados-Torreira 2005; Andaya 2001; Macias 1980,
70–75; Salas 1990, 1995; Reséndes Fuentes 1995; Foran, Klouzal, and Rivera
1997, 15–16). The same pattern marked the European revolutions of 1830
and 1848 (Hauch 1998; Strumingher 1987; Barry 1996, 51–60, 70–72; Mario
1877, 773–75) and the Paris Commune of 1871 (Shafer 1993; Barry 1996,
123–29; Gullickson 1996, chapter 3; Tombs 1999), the revolutionary move-
ments in Russia, and partitioned Poland’s struggle for independence from
1905 to 1921 (Broido 1977; Engel and Rosenthal 1975; Ponichtera 1997).
Women figured as prominently in the Asian civil wars and insurrections
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they did their
Western counterparts, mainly in traditional care-giving roles, but also as
fighters. In the cataclysmic Chinese civil war known as the Taiping
Rebellion (1850–64), women in the Taiping Heavenly Army were organized
in military units identical to men’s. Although some women’s units took
their places on the front lines, most served in such support roles as weav-
ing; either way, their political significance flowed from their military roles
(Ono 1989, chapter 1; Michael and Chang 1966, 45–46; Liao 1990, 130–31;
Spence 1996). Women were no less evident in other Chinese civil wars over
the next half-century, most notably in the anti-imperialist Boxer Uprising
at the turn of the century (Ono 1989, chapter 3; Cohen 1997, 39–40, 270–73;
Spence 1990, 232–33) and the 1911 Chinese Revolution (Ono 1989, chapter
4; Zhou 1995; Spence 1990, 280). In the Great Mutiny that almost detached
India from the British Empire in 1857, Indian women and English women
alike supported their fighting forces (Lebra-Chapman 1986; Blunt 2000;
Robinson 1996; Tuson 1998), All across the late nineteenth-century Eastern
world from Egypt to Japan, women joined the fray (Tucker 1986; Wright
2001).
Women and the Wars of the Mid-Nineteenth Century
The third quarter of the nineteenth century was the most warlike quarter-
century Europe had seen since the end of the Napoleonic wars, provoked
chiefly by conflicts among the Great Powers over the unification of Italy
and Germany. Europe was hardly alone in this violent quarter-century that
began with the Crimean War (1854–56), which saw allied British and French
armies invading Russia in defense of the Ottoman Empire. Nationalistic
currents clearly shaped the American Civil War (1861–65) as well, which
because of geography more nearly resembled a war between states rather
than a civil war; it may have been the most pregnant of all in meanings for
the future conduct of war, though lightly regarded by European observers
at the time. Equally disregarded were the lessons of the civil wars that roiled
Asia in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, most notably the Great
Mutiny in India and the Taiping Rebellion in China (Geyer and Bright 1996;
Förster and Nagler 1997; Reid 1999). Not only was the third quarter of the
nineteenth century a period of transition in warfare that showed both the
persistence of older patterns and the initiation of new, it also marked an
especially significant period in women’s military history.
Historically, most camp followers, like most troops in the ranks, came
from the lower classes. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however,
women of a different class had begun to appear in military settings. Middle-
class and upper-class women eventually would subsume the tasks once
performed by camp followers into a much wider range of activities, lending
them a new sense of legitimacy and morality. Particularly in Britain and
America, ideals of womanhood and women’s unique nurturing and civiliz-
ing qualities supported claims for equality and civil rights that laid the
groundwork for expanded military roles for women (Offen 2000; Hacker
and Vining 2001). Even before undertaking direct military activities, middle-
class women began to make their influence felt in the early nineteenth-
century reform movements that sought, among other goals, to ameliorate
some of the worst aspects of military and naval life in the ranks. German
women reformers could only envy the range of action enjoyed by their
Anglo-American counterparts in attacking such social evils as flogging in
the armed forces (Langley 1967, 55, 59, 62; Glenn 1984. 17, 116–20; Melder
1964; Huber-Sperl 2002). The reform impulse broadened in the later nine-
teenth century to include the soldier’s spiritual as well as his bodily well-
being, as witness the women evangelical missionaries who established
“Soldier Homes” on British military bases to warn the men against the
perils of drink and sex (Hendrickson 1997).
Nursing also became a target for reformers who wanted to transform
what was then a menial lower-class occupation to a respectable middle-
class calling. This was the explicit goal of Lutheran pastor Theodore
Fliedner and his wife, Frederike, when in 1833 they founded the Institution
of Deaconesses, a Protestant nursing sisterhood inspired by the Catholic
Sisters of Charity. Established in Kaiserswerth, a small town on the Rhine
downriver from Düsseldorf, the institution proved a great success, its ideas
quickly spreading to the English-speaking world (Ferguson 1901a; Lowman
1907; Chambers-Schiller 1978; Vicinus 1985, 46–84; Helmstadter and Godden
2011, chap. 4). Respectable nursing, even military nursing, retained a sig-
nificant element of religious calling throughout the nineteenth century
and well into the twentieth. Even so scrupulously secular a practitioner as
Florence Nightingale claimed to have received her vocation as a nurse
directly from God (Widerquest 1992; Calabria 1997, 1–11) and the so-called
Nightingale nurse of the later nineteenth century “may have been without
vows or even sectarian affiliation,” as Sioban Nelson (2001b, 1217) remarks,
“but she was not without God or religion.” Nightingale learned about
Kaiserswerth practices during a two-week visit in the summer of 1850 and
learned even more when she returned the following summer for three
months of study (Nightingale 1850, 79–81; Calabria 1997, 147; Ferguson 1901b;
Seymer 1951).
The Crimean War. Nightingale also learned about the importance of
uniforms in elevating the social standing of nurses. Uniforms formed an
integral part of the Kaiserswerth nursing system from the beginning (Poplin
1994). As middle-class women moved into military nursing from the mid-
nineteenth century onwards, uniforms became even more essential.
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century and into the early twen-
tieth, by far the greatest military role for middle-class women was nursing
and succoring the wounded, for which women were perceived to have a
special talent. In taking over this service, they reasserted women’s claim
to nurse sick and wounded soldiers, eventually bringing to an end, at least
temporarily, the army’s brief and troubled experiment with male orderlies.
Scarcely had the socially prominent Nightingale begun her nursing career
in London when war broke out in the East. Taking advantage of her social
status and personal acquaintance with key government figures, she suc-
cessfully lobbied the War Office to allow her to lead a party of female nurses
to the Crimea, where wounds and disease were decimating British ranks.
Applying what she had learned in caring for the sick and wounded British
soldiers in the Crimea made Nightingale a legend. But it was not easy.
Among the myriad medical problems afflicting British forces in the Crimea,
lack of nurses ranked low on the list. The cry for nurses, in fact, came not
from the army but from a British populace appalled by on-the-spot reports
dispatched by the new breed of war correspondents using the new technol-
ogy of telegraphy. The same correspondents contributed greatly to the
Nightingale legend (Knightley 1975, 3–17). John Shepherd (1991) offers the
best recent account of British medical services in the Crimea, with sub-
stantial attention throughout to the place and value of female nurses. There
are, to the best of my knowledge, no comparable works on women in the
French, Russian, or Ottoman forces.
The line between good housekeeping and medical care was often
blurred, and much of the nurses’ work centered on hygiene, diet, and clean-
ing. Also blurred was the line between caring for the body and saving the
soul. Nursing sisterhoods, both Anglican and Catholic, provided 24 of the
38 nurses that Nightingale led to the Crimea. Nightingale was not the only
nurse in the Crimea, nor was her party the only official group. The second
party to arrive, over Nightingale’s objections, comprised 15 Irish Catholic
Sisters of Mercy and 10 ladies with little or no nursing experience, in addi-
tion to 21 trained nurses. Still other nurses came on their own, most nota-
bly the renowned Mary Seacole, “Mother Mary” as she came to be known
(Fletcher 2007; Griffon 1998; Robinson 1994). A grand total of 229 female
nurses served at one time or another in the British army and navy at widely
scattered facilities in European Turkey, elsewhere in the Balkans, and in
the Crimea. Leaving aside the Sisters of Charity, whose vows of obedience
endeared them to surgeons, considerable tension existed not only between
the nurses and the army medical staff, but also between the two grades of
nurses, the supervisory ladies, who like the nursing sisters were unpaid,
and the paid nurses who did much of the menial work. The ladies in par-
ticular objected to the nurse’s uniform, which they believed made them
look like domestic servants (Summers 1983; Summers 1988, 29–66; Stanley
2007; Gill and Gill 2005; Coates 2000).
Although Nightingale herself had no great enthusiasm for uniforms, she
recognized their particular significance for her respectable volunteers. “The
rule about wearing the regular dress applies particularly to when they are
out of Hospital,” she insisted. “The necessity of distinguishing them at once
from camp followers is particularly obvious when they are not engaged in
Hospital work” (Nightingale 1855, 154 [emphasis in original]). Uniforms,
Nightingale’s “regular dress,” distinguished her lady volunteer and trained
nurses from the lower-class camp followers, some of whom still nursed in
the Crimean War, though only in token numbers. Most hospital attendants
were male orderlies. In such an environment, uniforms became all the
more necessary for female nurses if they were to enjoy even a modicum of
respect. Although Nightingale recognized the plight of the camp follower
and allowed some to serve as hospital laundresses, she found that their
lack of skill and training made them unfit by her standards to nurse sick
and wounded soldiers (Watteville 1955, 163; Woodham-Smith 1951, 120–21;
Bishop and Goldie 1962, 50–53). Though perhaps less significant to
Nightingale, uniforms also asserted the professional status she sought for
those women she had selected to work as nurses in the war zone. The small
party of nurses led by Elizabeth Mackenzie that the Admiralty sent to the
naval hospital at Therapia north of Istanbul in 1855 also wore uniforms for
much the same reasons, liking them no more than the army nurses did
(Ewing 1975, 39–42; Huntsman, Bruin, and Holttum 2002).
The habits of nursing sisters served much the same function as uniforms,
and may in fact have served, at least in part, as models for nurses’ uniforms.
Long inspired by their training and professionalism, Nightingale made
nursing sisters, Anglican as well as Catholic, the core of her hospital nurs-
ing staff at Scutari, the main British army hospital on the Turkish coast
(Taylor et al. 1856, 316; Nelson 2001a, 76–77; Bolster 1964). Sisters of Charity
(or Sisters of Mercy, the generic designations of religious nursing sisters)
were even more prominent in the Russian and French armies. In Russia as
in Britain, the plight of sick and wounded soldiers inspired humanitarian
action. The tsar’s sister-in-law, the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, founded
the semi-religious Order of the Exaltation of the Cross, which drew volun-
teer female nurses primarily from the aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie.
Unlike their British and French counterparts, the Russian Sisters of Mercy
often worked under fire (Curtiss 1966; Benson 1992; Sorokina 1995). French
Sisters of Charity represented a much older tradition. Abolished in the
French Revolution but restored by the first Napoleon, the Sisters of Charity
had reestablished their control of nursing in civilian hospitals early in the
nineteenth century. They accompanied French forces to the Crimea as
essential staff members of French military hospitals. French nursing care
by Sisters of Charity, impressive during the early months of the war, dete-
riorated as the war dragged on and the volume of patients multiplied with-
out any corresponding increase in staff, while British practice greatly
improved (Chenery 1854; Longmore 1883; Barker 1970, 221; Bingham 1979,
42; 22–23).
Nightingale has received most of the credit for the Crimean success,
though she also received her share of criticism, not all of it attributable to
disgruntled subordinates (Iveson-Iveson 1964; Stanley 2007). However
Nightingale’s work in the war may be judged, no one can gainsay her role
in insuring that the Crimean experience led to permanent nursing reform,
something that failed to happen either in France or Russia, where reform
was long delayed (Schultheiss 2001; Murray 2004; Menning 1992, 82;
Urbanek 2000). Nightingale’s efforts not only directly promoted the admis-
sion of women nurses to British military hospitals and to the establishment
of the British and Canadian Army Nursing Services (Summers 1988, 68–77;
Nicholson 1975, 11), but inspired a host of imitators throughout the world
(Godden 2001; Nielsen 2005; Tappe 1971; Kurosawa 1994). Florence
Nightingale is the subject of an enormous and still growing literature, as
reference to William Bishop and Sue Goldie (1962) and Clair Cross (1998)
will make abundantly clear; these works also provide a convenient entry
into Nightingale’s voluminous writings. The classic and still arguably most
complete biography is Edward Cook (1913), but see also the more recent
biography by Hugh Small (1999). Cecil Woodham-Smith’s (1951) popular
biography has some notable flaws (Greenleaf 1959).
Helen Rappaport (2007) now offers the best overall treatment of women
in the Crimean War; though focused on the experience of British women,
she does not ignore the other participants. Piers Compton’s (1970) account
suffers from a patronizing, supercilious tone and too much playing for
laughs and easy sentiment; it is also limited to British women. The Crimean
War offers for the first time an opportunity to hear the voices of the women
themselves (e.g., Davis 1857; Doyle 1897; Duberly 1855; Duberly 2007;
Goodman 1862; Hobson 1888; Luddy 2004; Mesurier 1856; Seacole 1857/1988;
Taylor et al., 1856). There has been, to the best of my knowledge, no study
of women’s writing about their experience in the war.
The American Civil War. By far the largest group of early Nightingale
imitators was American. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861,
nursing still seemed something less than respectable for ladies, but times
were changing. Americans were well aware of Nightingale’s Crimean War
reputation and the principles she so forcefully espoused. Nightingale’s
example and the intense desire of many women to serve their nation in
crisis led thousands to volunteer as nurses, greatly reinforcing the move-
ment of middle-class women as civilian volunteers into military nursing
that began during the Crimean War. “All our women are Florence
Nightingales,” enthused the New York Herald on 5 April 1864 (quoted in
Massey 1967, 43). Northern women volunteered in far larger numbers than
Southern, both absolutely and proportionately, some 20,000 all told. This
disparity owed something to the South’s more conservative view of wom-
en’s roles and the greater restrictions imposed on public actions; it may
also owe something to the lesser ability of a more rural economy to mobi-
lize women’s labor. The Union was also a good deal more successful than
the Confederacy in organizing nursing services, both under government
auspices and through voluntary associations (Massey 1967, chapter 3;
Tierney 1990; Cutter 2003, 159–65; Rable 1989, 121–28; Simkins and Patton
1935).
In August 1861, just a few months after the war began, the U.S. Congress
authorized female nurses to serve under government contract. The War
Department named Dorothea Dix, well-known antebellum champion of
humane treatment for the insane and imprisoned, superintendent of army
nurses. Despite her strict requirements—nurses must be at least 30 years
old and plain-looking, hard-working, intelligent, and possessed of high
moral character―she was flooded with applications from women eager
to serve. More than 3000 nurses received salaries under army contract for
hospital duty during the course of the war. The Confederate Congress was
slower to authorize paid female nurses, passing “An act to better provide
for the sick and wounded of the army in hospitals” in September 1862. But
no central organization was provided and implementation remained
almost entirely a matter of local initiative (Brown 1998, chapter 13; Sarnecky
1999, 12–14; Pokorny 1992).
Many of the best-known women who served as nurses during the Civil
War were not paid by the army. Some, like Clara Barton, acted indepen-
dently (Burton 1995, chapter 2; Oates 1994; Schultz 1996). Others, like Mary
Livermore, Mother Bickerdyke, and Annie Wittenmyer, worked as part of
large, women-created organizations (Schnell 1975; Venet 2002; Sartin 2003;
Gallaher 1931; Zaring 1996). Women expanded their civic roles; no longer
simply part of a soldier’s family, they created their own national service in
the form of numerous voluntary aid organizations. By far the most signifi-
cant were the United States Sanitary Commission, the Western Sanitary
Commission, and the Christian Sanitary Commission, but there were many
similar groups loosely patterned on the Crimean model. In addition to
placing nurses that failed to meet Dix’s standards, transporting patients in
hospital cars, providing and staffing hospital river steamers, and maintain-
ing a hospital directory of the sick and wounded, the sanitary commissions
helped improve the soldiers’ diet, inspected the camps for healthfulness,
maintained soldiers’ homes, and assisted soldiers with pay and pension
claims (Hall 2006; Garrison 1999, 34–39; Attie 1998; Giesberg 2000; Ginzberg
1990). To support their efforts, the commissions relied on public fund-
raising through a remarkably successful philanthropic innovation, the
Sanitary Fairs held in major cities from New York and Baltimore to Chicago
and San Francisco from 1863 to the end of the war (Gordon 1998;
Schoeberlein 1995; Schnell 1975; Higgins 1945).
As in the Crimean War, nursing sisters played large though frequently
overlooked roles in both Union and Confederate hospitals; overall they
may have accounted for a fifth of all Civil War nurses (Leonard 2000; Wall
1993; Wall 1998; Maher 1989; Smaridge 1900). And again as in the Crimean
War, relationships between female nurses and medical men were often
strained, a situation scarcely ameliorated by the handful of female physi-
cians who volunteered for service, several of whom actually served as
nurses themselves. Male doctors both North and South tended to prefer
the obedient nursing sisters over the often independent-minded secular
nurses, whether under army contract or as civilian volunteers (Bellafaire
and Graf 2009, 11–21; Schultz 2004; Hanson 1995; Smith 1998; Wood 1972;
Pokorny 1992). Two recent works on Civil War medicine (Bollett 2002;
Freemon 2001) address the role of nurses in some detail, in contrast to the
relatively skimpy coverage in the classic studies of Adams (1952/1961, 153–
60) and Cunningham (1958/1970, 267). Nurses scarcely formed a united
front. The working-class women who comprised most of the 18,000 female
Union hospital workers, often designated cooks or laundresses rather than
nurses, clashed with the ladies often in charge. Such dissension had arisen
in the Crimea, but the Civil War added racial tensions to the mix, because
so many hospital workers were black. Despite their immense contribution,
female nurses did not become part of the regular armed forces for another
four decades (Schultz 1992; Schultz 1994; Schultz 1995; Schultz 2002; Silber
2005, chapter 6; Roca 1998).
Women other than hospital workers mostly avoided public activity
during the Civil War, largely working in their own homes or those of their
neighbors. They formed soldiers’ aid societies and sewing circles to supply
needs and amenities to the troops; such local activities in virtually every
community North and South occupied millions of women throughout the
war (Silber 1995, 162–75; Seidman 2001; Dannett and Jones 1963, 22–28;
Rable 1989, 138–44; Sterkx 1970, chapter 5). But the war drew (or forced)
many women from their homes. Although nursing the sick and wounded
may have been the most prominent task, it was far from the only one.
Federal and Confederate governments alike needed more clerks than ever,
at the same time that the pool of male candidates was much depleted.
Women seized this new opportunity, the first time most of them had ever
earned money outside the home. Others found jobs in war-related indus-
tries, such as sewing uniforms or filling cartridges with gunpowder, perhaps
the first time in history that a substantial number of women found such
employment, though it would become commonplace in the twentieth
century (Baker 1977; Silber 2005, 60–63, 76–82; Faust 1996, 88–92; Krug 1997,
436–38).
Although the regional character of the American Civil War made it more
a war between nations, it nonetheless resembled other civil wars in the
large numbers of women drawn into the battle zone. Some 240 women are
known to have served in the ranks disguised as men, and there may well
be hundreds more about whom we know nothing. Other women wore
disguises of a different kind as spies, guides, couriers, and even guerrillas
(Blanton and Cook 2002; Massey 1967, chapter 5; Leonard 1999a, chapters
1 and 2). But they also did a great deal more. The camps, as Mary Elizabeth
Massey (1967, chapter 4) observed in her pioneering study of women in the
Civil War, were “teeming with women.” Included among their number were
camp followers, vivandières (especially in Zouave units), cooks, washer-
women, nurses, relief workers, and officers’ wives (Bartlett 2001; Bauer 2000;
Hughes 2000; Christie 1997; Wendell 1999). These “half-soldier heroines,”
as the contemporary term had it, black as well as white and regardless of
social class, performed tasks vital to the well-being of the army (Hall 2006,
chapter 2; Leonard 1999a, chapters 3–4). Kaufman (2004) insists that the
prevalence of martial law both North and South denied all women and
other civilians the status of noncombatant. For some women, that meant
writing to shape perceptions of the war and their places in it for themselves,
for contemporaries, and for posterity (see also McMichael 2008; Young
1999, Endres 1984, Nelson 1997, Sizer 2000).
For other women, writing was a more personal attempt to address the
meaning of what all recognized as historical events of great importance.
Judith Harper (2004, 103–106) offers some thoughtful remarks on the sub-
ject of wartime diaries; she also addresses a number of other biographical
and topical articles in her unique one-woman encyclopedia. In the
American Civil War to a far greater degree than the Crimean War, large
numbers of literate middle-class women volunteered their wartime services
to both Union and Confederacy, and many published accounts of their
experience during or soon after the war (e.g., Alcott 1863; Greenhow 1863;
Souder 1864; Boyd 1865; Edmonds 1865; Cumming 1866; Powers 1866; Hoge
1867; Holstein 1867; Palmer 1867; Woolsey 1868; Bucklin 1869; Wheelock
1870); others followed in the ensuing decades (e.g., McKay 1876; Velazquez
1876; Parsons 1880; Swisshelm 1880; Livermore 1887; Beers 1888; Newcomb
1893; Wittenmyer 1895; Taylor 1902; Stearns 1909; Smith 1911). More recently
some of these accounts have appeared in scholarly editions (e.g., Jones 1960
[Alcott 1863]; Leonard 1999b [Edmonds 1865]; Harwell 1998 [Cumming
1866]; Davis 1968 and Kennedy-Nolle 1998 [both Boyd 1865]; Hoisington
1996 [Woolsey 1868]; Alemán 2003 [Velazquez 1876]; Romero 1988 [Taylor
1902]), joined by still other memoirs and diaries never intended for publi-
cation that have found their way into print as well (e.g., Swisshelm 1934;
Hancock 1937; LeComte 1957; Pember 1959; Ropes 1980; Hawks 1984; Jackson
1989; Edmondson 1990; Bacot 1994; Wakeman 1994; Van Lew 1996; Howland
and Bacon 2001). For many additional examples, see the excellent anno-
tated guide by Theresa McDevitt (2003).
Few in the United States knew of the international conference that had
adopted the Geneva Convention and established the International Society
of the Red Cross in 1864. The idea for a neutral society to aid sick and
wounded soldiers of all nations in wartime had originated in 1859. France
was once again at war, after Napoleon III decided to intervene in the Italian
wars as an ally of Piedmont against Austria. French medical preparation
had improved not a bit since the Crimean War. Although a series of Allied
victories, culminating in the Battle of Solferino, drove Austria from north-
ern Italy, enormous casualties led to widely reported breakdowns of med-
ical care. Volunteers, many of them local women, took up some of the slack,
but their efforts only partly compensated for the failures of the military
medical services (Mario 1877, 775–76; Turnbull 1985). Movingly recounted
by Jean Henri Dunant, a Swiss citizen who witnessed the carnage, in his
Souvenir du Solferino (1862), this experience led directly to the founding of
the Red Cross, which became the largest and most successful of the private
philanthropies addressed to soldiers’ needs. Headquartered in Geneva, the
international society guided more than directed the activities of the various
affiliated national aid societies with names that rarely included “Red Cross”
before 1872 (Pearson and McLaughlin 1872, chapter 3; Hutchinson 1996,
chapter 1; Moorehead 1998, chapter 1; Boissier 1985, 273–74). Although the
International Red Cross intervened only modestly in the 1866 war between
Prussian and Austria (Seven Weeks’ War), the Prussian national aid society
proved a major asset by providing hundreds of volunteer physicians and
nurses, female as well as male, to succor the sick and wounded soldiers of
both sides; Austria affiliated with the Red Cross only after the war, but did
not actively impede the volunteers’ work. The first great test of the Red
Cross and the first full-scale application of the Geneva Convention came
in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the final step in the creation of the
Second Reich and the last of the great European wars of the third quarter
of the nineteenth century (Boissier 1985, 179–82; Hutchinson 1996, 40–43,
59–76; Moorehead 1998, 29–30, 39–42, 52–54; Dock 1907).
The Franco-Prussian and Russo-Turkish Wars. Both France and Prussia
had signed the Geneva Convention, as had several other German states,
but the various German national aid societies, particularly the Prussian,
began the war far better organized and more numerous than the French,
echoing the superior organization of the German military medical services.
Under Prussian leadership, the national aid societies of several German
states agreed to unite in time of war; perhaps more significantly, the
Prussian national aid society operated under directions from the Prussian
War Office. Prussia regarded their most valuable assistance to be the cre-
ation of a volunteer nurse corps to supplement the Catholic and Protestant
nursing sisterhoods, which had provided nurses to both Prussian and
Austrian military hospitals in the 1866 war, and which played major roles
in the Franco-Prussian War as well. Inspired by the example of Queen
Augusta, founder and patron of the Patriotic Women’s Society (Vaterlän
dische Frauenverein), a number of local aid societies established nursing
sisterhoods on the Kaiserswerth model to meet the new demands, first in
Prussia then in the other German states. Women’s patriotic societies
became the mass basis for the German Red Cross. When war began, Queen
Augusta and her daughter, Princess Irene, raised funds, arranged supplies,
and set an example by making bandages, just as the local aid societies did;
thousands of volunteers donned uniforms and the distinctive wide arm-
band with the red cross to put themselves at the disposal of the state for
hospital work (Clune 1905, 420; Mumm 2001, 207–70; Swain 1970, 514;
Quataert 2001, 67–74; Moorehead 1998, 61, 67; Hutchinson 1996, 60–62,
119–21).
The French aid society remained rudimentary in 1870, notwithstanding
the well-known work of America’s Civil War sanitary commissions; a book
by Napoleon III’s American dentist on the subject had gone through five
editions before the war. The United States Sanitary Commission may have
served as the inspiration, if not the model, for several European aid societ-
ies (Evans 1865; Mario 1877; Stevenson 1910; Taithe 1999b, 29; Moorehead
1998, 62). Within France, as in Germany, women mobilized themselves,
often through patriotic women’s groups, to raise funds, promote national
unity, succor soldiers and their families with food and clothes, and con-
tribute to the war effort through work at home and in factories (Taithe
1999a, 22–47; Taithe 1999b; Moorehead 1998, 67, 69; Summers 1988, 134–42;
Quataert 1999). The ad hoc volunteer groups that sprang into action after
war began hastily assembled ambulances—the term introduced in the
Franco-Prussian War was far broader then than now; derived from the term
“ambulant hospital,” its central meaning was moveable field hospital, but
it might refer to anything from vehicles for transporting the wounded to a
full-scale base hospital complex. The results, at least initially, were not
happy. Lacking contacts with the army and staffed with eager but inexpe-
rienced doctors and untrained nurses, they were all too likely to be more
nuisance than help (McAllister 1993, 97–98; Moorehead 1998, 67). In the
end, however, the relief organizations of both sides acquitted themselves
admirably, as did the thousands of foreign volunteers from aid societies all
over Europe who helped make it a truly international effort; at least four-
teen nations sent help, including the United States, which was not yet a
signatory to the Geneva Convention. Female nurses participated in almost
every ambulance.
The Red Cross also interceded in the 1875 war between Serbia and the
Ottoman Empire and the 1877 Russo-Turkish War that followed. Despite
persistent major problems, Russian army medical care had become much
better organized since the Crimean War. The Russian Sisters of Mercy again
made their signal contribution to nursing the troops, as they had in the
Crimea, but Red Cross nurses both Russian and foreign now joined them.
Another group of Russian women served as medical assistants. The Russian
War Ministry began sponsoring advanced midwifery courses at the Medical-
Surgical Academy in 1872. The program quickly developed into the equiv-
alent of a full-scale medical school, by 1876 offering a five-year course of
study. When war with the Ottoman Empire began in 1877, graduates of this
program were ready to step in as medical assistants (Pearson and
McLaughlin 1877; Murray 2004; Menning 1992, 92; Johanson 1979, 435).
The Russian project of training midwives and female medicos under
military auspices curiously echoed an earlier Egyptian experiment. Both
reflected the military focus of much nineteenth-century modernization.
Egypt’s reforming efforts in the century’s second quarter began with the
army, which in turn became the framework for further development.
Military concerns about high levels of infant mortality and venereal disease,
threats to conscription thought to be best addressed by women, led in 1832
to the creation of a school, located in the major military hospital near Cairo,
to train hakimas (doctoresses) as distinct from the traditional dayas (mid-
wives). This quite extraordinary program in an extremely conservative
Muslim society that rarely allowed female literacy, much less education,
found recruits only with great difficulty. Female students, initially slaves
but later including the orphaned daughters of police and soldiers, received
substantial medical educations. Graduation brought the rank and pay of
second lieutenant, but neither military service nor high status. Despite a
measure of success, especially in providing rural medical services, the
program failed to survive British occupation (Elrab 2009; Sonbol 1991,
45–47, 129; Kuhnke 1974; Kuhnke 1992, 123–26; Fahmy 1997; Fahmy 1998).
Ottoman forces were slower than Russian to receive Red Cross help
during the 1877 war. Although the Ottomans had promptly ratified the
Geneva Convention, efforts at forming a civilian society to oversee care for
wounded soldiers ran afoul of the army high command. The threatened
civilian encroachment on military turf was certainly a factor, but the army
also objected to what it regarded as the international society’s use of a
Christian emblem. Another stumbling block was the equality of the sexes
that the Red Cross appeared to champion in Ottoman military eyes. Only
the exigencies of war against Serbia and Russia in the mid-1870s overcame
military resistance to a civilian relief society. The observed help Red Cross
volunteers accorded the Serbian and Russian wounded and the substitution
of a red crescent for the red cross eliminated the major obstacles, at least
momentarily. The new society did not long outlast the end of the Russian
war, but the idea survived and it was briefly revived during the Greco-
Ottoman War of 1897, then fully reestablished in 1911. In its final reincarna-
tion, the Ottoman Red Crescent drew on the energy of women through
nursing and sewing campaigns organized by the society’s central Delegation
of Women in Istanbul (and related provincial delegations), led by the high-
ranking wives and daughters of top-level government officials, including
members of the imperial household (Ada 2004, 23–26, 43–44; Başağaoğlu
and Ataç 2002; Özaydin 2002; Özaydin 2006).
The role of female volunteers, particularly nurses, was much debated
after the Franco-Prussian War. Many shared Florence Nightingale’s belief
that well-meaning but untrained volunteers had no place on the modern
battlefield. Responding to a postwar questionnaire, British medical and
military men alike gave low grades to female nurses, especially the lady
volunteers, a view fully shared by their French and German counterparts.
A French military surgeon termed some of them dilettantes du pansements
(bandage dilettantes). But other ladies proved their worth under the most
trying conditions. Neither German nor French medical services welcomed
them near the front, but even the most conservative might deem them
useful in supervising the menial work of working-class women and main-
taining order in base hospitals. Others were far more positive about wom-
en’s contributions (Brackenbury 1877; Moorehead 1998, 67, 85–86;
Hutchinson 1996, 115, 127–28, 228–29; Swain 1970, 513–14).
Women and Military Institutions in the Late Nineteenth Century
As national Red Cross organizations flourished and training expanded in

the later nineteenth century, women, in fact, became increasingly central
to the society’s mission. The Red Cross of France began with the largely
male French Society for Aid to Wounded Soldiers (Société de secours aux
blessés des armées de terre et de mer), the sole society recognized by the
International Committee of the Red Cross at Geneva until 1894, when it
affiliated with the Association of French Ladies (Association des dames
francaises) and the Union of Women of France (Union des femmes de
France) (Hutchinson 1996, 40–43, 59–76; Moorehead 1998, 29–30, 39–42,
52–54; Dock 1907; Chrastil 2010, chap. 7). By the end of the century, female
members of German Red Cross societies numbered in the millions. The
Red Cross became a visible presence at fairs and expositions throughout
Europe. It promoted highly publicized relief operations for natural disasters
worldwide and displayed well-developed support systems for military
operations. National Red Cross associations appeared not only throughout
the Western world, but also in the Muslim world (where they were known
as Red Crescent societies, after the Ottoman model) and Japan (Benthall
1997; Kosuge 2003). Lacking any cultural model for female nursing outside
the family upon which to draw, the Japanese Red Cross Society, like the
Ottoman Red Crescent, relied on an elite Committee of Ladies to promote
the movement of middle- and upper-class women into volunteer military
nursing (Ariga 1904; Hutchinson 1996, 208–209; Özaydin 2006).
During the decades that spanned the end of the nineteenth century and
the start of the twentieth, Western armies became almost exclusively male,
perhaps for the first time in history. As the centuries-long process of mili-
tary professionalization and bureaucratization reached its climax, lower-
class female camp followers all but vanished from military life, while
middle-class female nurses had yet to acquire a permanent military place,
despite their evident wartime value. The pace of change varied from army
to army, but camp followers were clearly much diminished in the mid-
nineteenth-century wars. From the 1840s on, as armies began to provide
married quarters, those women who remained became increasingly seg-
regated from the rest of the army (Trustram 1984; Strachan 1984, 62–65;
Skelley 1977, 30; Spiers 1992, 139–40; Hardy 1900, 382; Watteville 1955, 187–
88). They also tended to stay home. Camp followers in ever dwindling
numbers might still be observed even into the early twentieth century, but
only on the fringes of empire, in frontier garrisons like those in America’s
Far West (Brown 1974; Eales 1996; Knight 1978; Myres 1978, 1982, 1984, 1989,
1992; Stallard 1978), British India (Henriques 1963; Farwell 1981, 1989;
Williams 1988, 145–62), or French North Africa (Rosen 1910/1966; McKechnie
1987). But military wives, though they remain integral to the hierarchical
structure of armed forces and are routinely assigned seldom-compensated
duties, became largely invisible in the late nineteenth century and have
remained so ever since (Lehr 1996).
Frontier service exposed soldiers, the women who accompanied them,
and other agents of empire to the manners and mores of native peoples.
Western eyes observed ways of organizing life, including the conduct of
warfare, quite different from their own. And if they could free themselves
from their cultural blinders, they saw styles of warfare that included
women. On the Great Plains of North America during the nineteenth cen-
tury, wives might follow their husbands on the warpath, providing the kind
of support to war parties that camp followers provided to armies of the
state (Denig 1961, 195–96; Mayhall 1962, 135; Peters 2000, 107). But a surpris-
ing range of Plains societies—Apache, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Blood,
Cheyenne, Cree, Crow, Dakota, Mandan, Ojibway, Omaha, Pawnee,
Santee—allowed, if they did not encourage, women to assume the role of
warrior and granted them war honors (Aleshire 2001; MacEwan 1971, 45–50;
Ewers 1965; Hungry Wolf 1980, 62–68; Grinnell 1923, 21–47; Landes 1938,
135–53; Landes 1959; Landes 1968, 206–207, 212–13; Bowers 1950; 74;
Buffalohead 1983, 243–44; Wishart 1995). In the past quarter-century or so,
anthropologists (and the occasional historian) have begun to include
women in broader studies of Plains Indian warfare as an integral feature
of Plains life, rather than setting them exclusively in ethnographic studies
of one or a few societies (Whitehead 1981; Klein 1983; Medicine 1983, 273–
75; Williams 1986, 243–46; Ewers 1994; Kessel and Wooster 2005, 345–46).
Half a world away, in sub-Saharan Africa, the Western gaze also encoun-
tered the familiar and the exotic. In Africa as elsewhere in the world,
women regularly played key roles in the moral and logistical support of
armed forces at every level of social development (Talbot 1915; Krapf-Askari
1972; Tsehai 1979–80; Arhin 1983; Jones 1993; Awe and Olutoye 1998).
Persistent traditions of women warriors (Laurentin 1963, 130–37; Lebeuf
1963; Ardener 1975, 36; Llewelyn-Davies 1981; Tsehai 1981) seemed all the
more compelling given the plain evidence of the West African Kingdom of
Dahomey’s elite female fighting force, which remains as fascinating today
as it did a century and a half ago (Burton 1864/1966; Gourdault 1882, chap-
ter 9; Meyerowitz 1943; Lombard 1967, 86–89; Pollis 1974, 10; Law 1993;
Alpern 1998a; Alpern 1998b; Bay 1998, 200–209; Edgerton 2000). Far more
significant was the age-graded regimental system best known in its Zulu
and closely related variants, but characteristic of societies throughout
eastern Africa from the Horn to the Cape as a means of organizing society
for warfare (Cobbing 1974; Kurimoto and Simonse 1998; Lamphear 1998;
Baxter 1979). Details varied, but the system’s fundamental feature was the
segregation of men in military cohorts, of women in support cohorts
(Leakey 1977; Miller 1976, 227–28; Schapera 1940; Thompson 1968, 344–45).
Closer to home, even though some women were still drawing pay for
doing the men’s laundry in British barracks as late as the 1890s, and the
French army did not eliminate the last of its cantinières until 1906 (Compton
1970; Robertson 1921/1966; Corbett 1953/1966; Cardoza 2002; Cardoza 2010,
chapter 6), camp followers had long since lost their military utility and few
members of the public challenged the parliamentary committee that
judged them a “great evil and difficulty” (Barker 1970, 219). Such views
underlay the British Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s. These laws
equated camp follower with prostitute; in the name of controlling venereal
disease, maintaining discipline, and guarding the men’s health, army and
navy women, save the handful who remained on the strength, lost what
legitimacy they had left (Skelley 1977, 53–58; Sigsworth and Wyke 1972,
90–95; Walkowitz and Walkowitz 1973; Walkowitz 1982; Roberts 1995).
Applied throughout the British Empire, the Contagious Diseases Acts may
have been more symbol than cause of the final decline of lower-class army
women, who were nonetheless stamped as not merely useless but harmful
(van Heyningen 1984; Levine 2003; Smith 1990). Curiously, a very similar
pattern had marked Mehmed Ali Pasha’s modernizing army reforms in
Egypt two decades earlier (Fahmy 1997, 227–33). Ever fewer in number,
camp followers began also to vanish from mind and memory. How many
readers even paused for a moment upon reading the claim by an aging
Florence Nightingale in the columns of the Daily Graphic (1899) that “few
men, and perhaps no women, have seen as much as I have of the horrors
of war”?
The disappearance of camp followers from armies during the nineteenth
century only in part reflected the conclusion of a centuries-long process of
replacing with military personnel all civilian contractors and other less
formal purveyors of ancillary military services. It also reflected the dramatic
and far-reaching changes that Western military institutions underwent
during the century, which included the transformation of women’s military
roles. Innovations in military and industrial technology altered the nature
of battle and imposed the need for drastic reorganization on military sys-
tems. The new industrial order, in particular, enabled armed forces to
expand enormously. Modern states could equip, deploy, control, and main-
tain troops in numbers inconceivable in an earlier era. Conscription, an
old technique for mobilizing manpower that had flowered during the
French Revolution and its Napoleonic aftermath, was vigorously revived
in the decades before the Great War, especially among the continental
powers. The new conscript armies of the later nineteenth century swelled
to vast size, a major factor leading toward what some historians have called
the militarization of the Western world. The widening of European military
service obligations throughout the nineteenth century drew increasing
numbers of civilians, mostly middle-class and upper-class men and women,
into the national voluntary aid societies that now were taking on a distinct
official military character. In France, and especially Germany, state support
quickly led to state control over civilian preparedness groups. Both con-
scription and militarization lagged behind in Britain and the United States,
until the exigencies of the Great War compelled them to follow suit (Hacker
2005; Boemeke, Chickering and Förster 1999; Gillis 1989; Frevert 2004).
Infatuation with uniforms and their associated paraphernalia has long
been recognized as one of the markers of militarizing society. Germany’s
love affair with uniforms became a subject of satire. In the late nineteenth
century, women as well as men found reasons to wear uniforms. Even
Queen Victoria might find a uniform appropriate to wear on occasion, as
did other female members of the ruling classes throughout Europe (Vagts
1959; Ewing 1975, 52–67; Mansel 2005, 11–27). France’s colorfully uniformed
female auxiliaries, the cantinières, became popular lithographic subjects
under the Second Empire, and remained even as the army of the republic
moved to eliminate them from their official status (Martin 1967, plates 50,
51; Thorburn 1960, 426; Cardoza 2002; Mihaely 2005). The equation of mil-
itary service with citizenship may have stimulated, at least in part, the rage
for uniforms that swept the later nineteenth century Western world and
beyond, from the highest social levels to the lowest. Apparel of uniformity
spread from the armed forces and veterans societies to the higher civil
service, to professionals in several fields, to members of numerous fraternal
and social organizations, to factory workers, youth groups, and even to
school children. Pervasive nationalism and a growing martial climate char-
acterized many such organizations. Uniforms for such public servants as
police, firemen, postmen, and railroad employees all date from this same
period (Ewing 1975, chapter 5; Hastings 1993, 677–79; Chrastil 2005; Chrastil
2010, chap. 112; Anonymous 1903; Hacker 2007).
Uniforms for nurses, whether in the military nursing corps, the Red
Cross, or other nursing services, had become commonplace well before
the First World War (Darrow 2000, 28–30; Summers 1988, 125–53; Ewing
1975, 45–46; Stimson and Flikke 1943, 115–19). Provisions for military nurs-
ing took several forms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Germany, Japan, and other countries essentially militarized their national
Red Cross societies (Riesenberger 1994; Hutchinson 1996). France took a
different path, eliminating all female auxiliaries from its army during the
late nineteenth century and in 1903 attempting to replace the nursing
sisters who had long staffed French military hospitals with male nurses, a
controversial move that proved no more successful than the British exper-
iment before the Crimean War. They were soon succeeded by uniformed
female nurses (Cardoza 2002; Mihaely 2005, Schultheiss 2001, 147–57).
If military nursing represented the most widespread instance of the late
nineteenth-century “militarization of charity” (Hutchinson 1996, 202), the
most unexpected was the Salvation Army, which clothed religious revival-
ism in military trappings. Defining missionaries as soldiers, William Booth
modeled the regulations for the army he co-founded with his wife Catherine
on the British Army’s Field Pocket Book for the Auxiliary Forces. Members
also wore military-style uniforms, men and women alike. For unlike the
British Army, the Salvation Army welcomed women into its ranks. As its
religious mission expanded internationally, the Salvation Army’s work soon
extended to humanitarian aid and social services. When the World War
came, it stepped in as a major relief organization, and uniformed Salvation
Army women (widely known as “Sallies”) dispensing doughnuts behind
the frontlines became a staple of Great War imagery. Although primarily
male in leadership and administration, organizations like the Red Cross
and the Salvation Army opened new pathways for women’s action. But the
later nineteenth century also saw the proliferation of organizations led and
administered by women (Collier 1965/1968, 64; Troutt 1980, 34; Hattersley
1999, 235–39; Walker 2001, 113–17; Murdock 1994, 100–105; Winston 1999,
143–90).
In the United States, middle-class women’s clubs became increasingly
prominent in a wide range of political, cultural, and other activities. The
1876 centennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence, for exam-
ple, spawned numerous women’s hereditary societies. By the 1890s, such
patriotic societies as the Daughters of the American Revolution and the
National Society of the Colonial Dames of America had enrolled thousands
of women, mainly middle and upper class. They, along with the Young
Women’s Christian Association imported from England, the Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union, women’s clubs, and other organized groups,
gave American women a growing voice in public policy debates decades
before they attained the vote (Haarsager 2003; Clemens 1999; Scott 1992;
O’Leary 1999, 78–81; Davies 1955). Many late nineteenth- and early twenti-
eth-century women’s groups in several countries engaged in volunteer
philanthropic and social work. French women of both the right and the
left accepted the idea of social duty, often expressed in the terminology of
military action. The Catholic organization, Woman’s Social Action, no less
than the feminist Feminine Action of Rouen, saw parallels between their
duty to society and men’s military service. Rhetorical “campaigns,” “battles,”
“struggles,” and “missions” prepared women to assume their roles in war
when the time came (Darrow 2000, 22–23; Waelti-Walters and Hause 1996).
Nationalism and patriotism often colored the activities of clubwomen
instilled with a sense of duty to society and nation. The American women’s
club movement provided an organizational model for the middle-class
women of imperial Germany, many of whom shared a concern for social
reform (Sklar, Schuler, and Strasser 1998; Chickering 1988; Frevert 1989,
107–30; Quataert 1999). And for Americans, as for Germans, militant patri-
otism and nationalism went well beyond rhetoric.
Women in the Turn-Of-The-Century Wars
As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, women’s militant

patriotism and nationalism was much in evidence in three major imperial
wars: the Spanish-American War (1898), the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902),
and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). In the United States, such patri-
otic organizations as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), the
National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, the Women’s Relief
Corps of the Grand Army of the Republic, and the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union collected and donated money, food, clothing, blankets,
medical supplies, and good will. Like the Civil War, the Spanish-American
War generated a host of local soldiers’ aid societies throughout the country;
in addition to collecting and donating like the national societies, they also
provided meals and rest stations for soldiers en route to their posts or
returning to their homes. Local Red Cross chapters, which had not existed
in the Civil War, contributed greatly to mobilizing women in the Spanish-
American War (Cohen 1997, 273–77; Hunter 1991, 202; Lamar 1934, 102–106;
Hoganson 1998, 125–26). And again, as in the Civil War, women contributed
most notably as nurses.
The Spanish-American War. As successful as female nurses had been in
the Civil War, the army abandoned them when the war ended and returned
to male orderlies. The sanitary commissions vanished as well, but not
before they had served as models for the organization of wartime relief by
many foreign Red Cross societies. The United States did not sign the Geneva
Convention until 1882 and did not officially recognize the American Red
Cross until after the Spanish-American War. At the heart of the long strug-
gle was Clara Barton. Exhausted by her work during the Civil War and after,
Barton had sailed for Europe in 1869. When war between France and
Prussia began the following year, she learned about the International Red
Cross and threw herself into relief work (Burton 1995, chapter 3). She was
not, incidentally, the only woman to serve in both wars (Phinney 1903).
Determined to secure American adherence to the Geneva Convention,
Barton returned to America and applied her considerable talents to advo-
cating American membership in the Red Cross. She succeeded in 1882, but
only by stressing the potential role of an American Red Cross organization
in disaster relief over the alleviation of war’s miseries. In later life she often
referred to the so-called American amendment to the Geneva Convention
as her signal contribution, though other national aid societies, notably the
Russian, had long been active in civil disaster relief. The next step, estab-
lishing a national Red Cross society, proved a long one. Barton’s organiza-
tion, the American Association of the Red Cross, was only one of several
independent relief societies active in the 1880s and 1890s (Barton 1906,
72–96; Burton 1995, chapter 4; Hutchinson 1996, 228–29; Curti 1971).
Barton was in Cuba heading an officially sanctioned relief team con-
cerned with alleviating the suffering of the Cuban people when the United
States declared war. At that point, her organization, which had become
the American National Red Cross with a District of Columbia charter in
1893, should have been placed in charge of voluntary relief efforts, as per
the Geneva Accords. It was not. Objecting to female nurses, the War
Department planned to rely on the army medical department and its male
orderlies, except perhaps for small numbers of women employed in base
hospitals for menial work. That plan foundered on the reality of epidemic
disease in both camp and field and the collapse of army medical care.
Typhoid fever swept the southern camps where troops assembled, while
yellow fever proved to be the main culprit in Cuba. A suddenly desperate
War Department accepted Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee’s offer, on behalf
of the Daughters of the American Revolution, to organize a female nursing
service for the army. Socially prominent and well connected, McGee was
also an officer in the patriotic hereditary society, then only eight years old.
She headed the DAR committee that screened thousands of applications
from eager women volunteers and selected the best of them for military
service. Only healthy trained nurses aged 30 to 50 of good moral character
were accepted. From thousands of applications, McGee ultimately chose
some 1500 who signed up as contract nurses. They served not only in the
United States and aboard the hospital ship Relief, but everywhere the army
went: Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Hawaii (Cirillo 2004, 89,
111–12; Connor 1999, 37–38; Graf 2001a, 4–7; Sarnecky 1999, 29–33; Kalisch
1975, 414–18; Hunter 1991, 200–202). Dr. McGee’s prominence did not mark
a breakthrough for female physicians in wartime service. As in the Civil
War, a handful of them eager to serve were forced to volunteer as nurses
(Bellafaire and Graf 2009, 21–31).
When the task of selection was completed, the DAR was “honorably
discharged,” while McGee herself was appointed to the post of acting
Assistant Surgeon General in charge of army nurses, with the rank of second
lieutenant. She became the first woman in American history authorized
to wear the army uniform and to hold military rank. McGee’s army nurses
were all white and well bred. Not so the 32 southern black women
“immunes,” only five of them trained, who were recruited to nurse black
soldiers in Cuba suffering from yellow fever (Kalisch 1975, 426; Cirillo 2004,
89; Graf 2001a, 6; Hunter 1991, 201; Hoganson 1998, 126; Sarnecky 1999, 31,
38). Again echoing the experience of the Civil War, Catholic nursing sisters
participated actively in the Spanish-American War, roughly 250 in all
(Barton 1926; Graf 2002; Wall 1995). Despite its snub by the government,
Clara Barton’s Red Cross organization provided a great deal of help to the
American army. The 700 Red Cross nurses comprised approximately one-
third of all female nurses who served in the war. The Red Cross relief ship
State of Texas, carrying doctors, nurses, medical supplies, and food, reached
Cuba in late June. Barton’s team came to the aid of a military staff all but
overwhelmed by a combination of battle casualties and rampant disease.
They also extended relief to Cuban civilians and Spanish soldiers (Cirillo
2004, 16; Boissier 1985, 325–26; Cohen 1997, 273–76; Moorehead 1998, 103–
105). The most complete accounts of the Red Cross work in Cuba are those
of Clara Barton herself (Barton 1904, 115–63; Barton 1906, 360–662). The
Red Cross also came to the aid of the beleaguered staff at Camp Wikoff,
established at Montauk, Long Island, as a major quarantine facility for
troops returning from Cuba, as many as 80 percent of whom were suffering
from yellow fever or other tropical diseases. Most nurses’ contracts were
annulled with the end of hostilities, but 202 female nurses remained vol-
untarily on active duty after July 1899 (Cirillo 2004, 97; Cosmas 1971, 261–62;
Kalisch 1975, 420–22; Sarnecky 1999, 42).
Just after the turn of the century, the first uniformed and fully integrated
military nursing corps was established in the United States Army. Blatant
mismanagement during the 1898 war, despite its victorious outcome, led
to a government investigation, a new Secretary of War, Elihu Root, and a
wide-ranging reform program. Nursing emerged as one of the war’s few
organizational bright spots. The American Red Cross received a congres-
sional stamp of approval in 1900. The following year congress authorized
an Army Nurse Corps as a reserve force of trained nurses to be called on in
emergencies. Although not yet granted full benefits and duties, women did
officially join the U.S. Army. The U.S. Navy Nurse Corps followed in 1908.
In 1909, the American National Red Cross, which had reorganized in 1905
(and incidentally ousted Clara Barton) became a national corporation.
Supervised by the government and affiliated with the American Nurses
Association, it began to enroll nurses in reserve for the army and navy. The
Red Cross became less a private philanthropy and more an arm of the state,
which did not always sit well with military nursing services (Cirillo 2004,
112; Sarnecky 1999, 29–79; Godson 2001, 32–55; Hutchinson 1996, 231–36).
The Anglo-Boer War. In Britain, it was the mismanaged Anglo-Boer War
that called for reform and Richard Burdon Haldane who accepted the chal-
lenge. Inspired by the Root reforms, Haldane included military nursing
services as part of wide-ranging army reorganization, if only a small part
(Summers 1960, 193–99, 206–11). Despite the presumed lessons of the
Crimean War, the British military medical establishment remained
staunchly opposed to female nurses in all but limited numbers at base
hospitals. The small Army Nursing Service formed in 1861 in response partly
to the appalling conditions of the Crimean War, partly to the prodding of
Florence Nightingale, had not thrived and was, in fact, increasingly mar-
ginalized. The separate Indian Army Nursing Service, established in 1888,
fared even worse. For the most part, the British army reverted to male
orderlies, though a handful of nurses accompanied the army in its late
nineteenth-century African campaigns. Princess Christian’s Army Nursing
Service Reserve (ANSR), created in 1897, joined forces the following year
with the two major relief agencies—the National Aid Society (which some-
times termed itself the British Red Cross society) and the St. John’s
Ambulance Association—to form the Central Red Cross Committee. With
this move, British authorities began the process of creating a national Red
Cross organization more closely resembling the continental model as a
source of trained military nurses in the event of war (Summers 1989, chap-
ter 4; Hay 1953, 35–39; Arkle 1902; Durham 1889; Cuthell 1886–87; Hutchinson
1996, 241–42).
In 1899, when war broke out in South Africa, the nursing reserve was
still miniscule, but hundreds of women rushed to volunteer. The Central
Red Cross Committee delegated selection of nurses to the Army Nursing
Service Reserve. The numbers are uncertain, but about 1400 female nurses
went to South Africa, including contingents from Canada, Australia, and
New Zealand. As the situation worsened, a reluctant military medical estab-
lishment finally accepted local South African volunteers as well, some 400
of them in all (Nicholson 1975, chapter 3; Bassett 1992; Rogers 2003, chapter
1; Spies 1980, 178–80). Much ink was spilled over the ladies who flocked to
South Africa, many of whom seemed more interested in the adventure than
in the hard work of nursing. But not all ladies were “good time girls” or
“butterflies.” Led by Lady Jenny Randolph Churchill, for instance, a group
of expatriate Americans raised money to equip and support a hospital ship
that carried five nurses along with its complement of medical men and
orderlies on its first voyage to South Africa in early 1899 (Bingham 1979,
117–20; Taylor 2001, 45–46; Churchill 1900; Kahn 2001). To the familiar ten-
sions between military medical men and nurses, between trained nurses
and lady dilettantes, and between female nurses and male orderlies, the
South African war added discord between metropolitan and colonial
nurses. Some British nurses, for instance, resented Canada’s granting its
nurses equivalent military rank and benefits as second lieutenants and
outfitting them with smart military-style uniforms (Summers 1989, 195–98;
Marks 2002; Taylor 2001, 47; Nicholson 1975, 36).
Despite these distractions, the quality of nursing care ultimately
achieved a high standard. The Army Nursing Service expanded substan-
tially and the fluid nature of what became a guerrilla war meant that nurses
might well find themselves under fire, despite the reluctance of military
medical men to see women serving anywhere near the frontlines. But times
were changing. As the army expanded to almost half a million, the influx
of new doctors, more familiar with the good work of professional nurses
in civilian hospitals than their military colleagues, helped break down the
arbitrary barriers to female nurses. But what chiefly overcame medical
resistance to female nurses, in South Africa as in Cuba, was epidemic dis-
ease. Typhoid fever and other products of poor camp hygiene and lack of
sanitary precautions caused many more casualties than shells or bullets;
less than a third of the British soldiers who died in South Africa succumbed
to battlefield wounds (Summers 1988. 206–20; Low-Beer, Smallman-Raynor,
and Cliff 2004; Pagaard 1986).
Although Boer women lived in a highly conservative, predominantly
rural society, constrained even by Victorian standards, their voices emerged
the most militant, urging their menfolk to war and contributing signifi-
cantly to the war effort. Tales of Boer Amazons on the firing line may have
been overblown, but a number of wives accompanied their husbands on
commando, nursing and otherwise supporting the fighters (Hillegas 1900;
Bradford 2000). World opinion tended to side with the Boers, and several
countries aided the embattled farmers with Red Cross missions, which
invariably included female nurses. Among the Boers, the disease toll was
far higher, both absolutely and proportionately, largely because of the
deplorable conditions in the controversial concentration camps to which
the army moved much of the rural population, chiefly women and children.
Another 20,000 black and colored Africans, female and male, also died in
the camps (Boyden, Guy, and Harding 1999, 321; Morgan 2002; Spies 1980,
162–64, 176–77; van Heyningen 2002; Krebs 1992). British nurses worked in
the camps, not always comfortably, and some criticized what they observed.
But they generally saw their contributions as positive, despite criticisms
that war charity tended to sustain militarism. The Anglo-Boer War strongly
reinforced the idea, which had begun to revive among suffragists after the
Spanish-American War, that women’s military service justified claiming
full citizenship and the right to vote. This claim attracted only modest
support at the time, but it became central to women’s Great War participa-
tion a few years later and proved decisive in the postwar debate over wom-
en’s suffrage (Hoganson 1998, 127–30; Schmitz 2000, 52; Marks 2002, 172–73;
Mayhall 2000; Lewenson 1994; Hacker 2005). Like the other wars of the last
half of the nineteenth century, the Anglo-Boer War spurred a host of mem-
oirs by women who became involved (van Heyningen 1999; Van Hartesveldt
2000).
All nurses who served in South Africa received the South African War
Service Medal. Never before had a military medal been awarded equally
and it underscored the momentous changes already under way. Unlike the
reforms that followed the Crimean War, the Boer War changes were far-
reaching and permanent. In 1902, with war still raging in South Africa,
Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service became the British
army’s first fully integrated and permanent uniformed military nursing
service. Further reforms followed in rapid succession. In 1905 the British
Red Cross Society was created under royal patronage; it replaced the
45-year-old National Aid Society and the 6-year-old British Central Red
Cross Committee, both of which disbanded. The Territorial Force Nursing
Service was established in 1907 to support the new Territorial (home
defense) Army, and the Naval Nursing Service became Queen Alexandra’s
Royal Naval Nursing Service. Local branches of the Red Cross worked
closely with Territorial Army county associations to augment medical
reserve services (Arni and Searle 2002, chapter 2; Summers 1988, 199–226;
Harland 1984, 60–61; Bingham 1979, 121–24).
In 1909 the Red Cross and the Territorial Army further cooperated in
forming Voluntary Aid Detachments (VAD) on the German and Japanese
model, which began training to provide a wartime nursing reserve for the
Red Cross and the Order of St. John Ambulance Service. Female members
of the Red Cross, the Territorial Force Nursing Service, and the VAD all
wore uniforms and would all play major roles when Britain went to war in
1914 (Summers 1988, chapter 9; Bingham 1979, 124–26). South African expe-
rience also suggested the need for nurses able to ride into the countryside
to administer first aid, which led a small group of elite British women in
1907 to form a mounted unit they named the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry,
or FANY. Initially opting for elegant military dress—red tunics, riding skirts,
and showy peaked caps—by 1911 they had shifted to more practical khaki,
tunics and divided skirts over riding breeches, and begun to broaden their
membership (Bingham 1979, 128–29; Lee 2005).
The array of voluntary youth movements that marked the opening of
the twentieth century, foremost among them the Boy Scout movement
inspired by R.S.S. Baden-Powell in Britain, shared a distinctly military cast
often expressed by uniforms (Springhall 1977; Rosenthal 1986). Despite the
clear intent embodied in its name, the Boy Scouts attracted large numbers
of girls from the beginning. Baden Powell responded by founding the Girl
Guides, like the Boy Scouts uniformed but with even more direct ties to
the military. The Girl Guides were conceived, at least in part, as a kind of
cadet branch or feeder organization for the VAD. They also became
involved with the FANY. During the First World War, the Girl Guides
expanded greatly through its members’ participation in a variety of war-
related volunteer work, eventually surpassing the Boy Scouts in numbers.
The Girl Guides were but the most prominent of contemporary girls’ orga-
nizations that sprang up everywhere in the Western world; to a notable
degree, military nursing or first-aiding provided a model for their members
(Summers 1988, 279–82; Proctor 2002; Noakes 2006, 25–27; Cordery 2012).
The Russo-Japanese War. The success of the Russian Sisters of Mercy in
the Crimean War led to the proliferation of nursing sisterhoods, but not to
the establishment of a military nursing service. They persisted even after
the establishment of the Russian Red Cross society in 1867, religious and
secular nursing communities existing side-by-side throughout the nine-
teenth century. But the Red Cross always assumed control in time of war
and increasingly took on the mantle of an army nursing service, despite
sometimes troubled relations between the army and the Red Cross.
Nonetheless, in the Russo-Japanese War as in the Crimea, the heroic per-
formance of Russian nurses, many of them ladies and often under fire,
impressed all observers. Ladies were no less active at home, raising money,
collecting supplies, forming sewing circles, and generally supporting the
Red Cross in every way. If Russian military nurses were judged extraordi-
narily heroic, Japanese military nurses appeared extraordinarily efficient.
The Japanese army did not allow nurses anywhere near the frontlines, but
nurses formed an integral part of a military medical organization that
amazed Western observers even before the Russo-Japanese War elevated
its reputation to new heights (Murray 2004, 132–33; Hoff 1911, 344–45;
Edgerton 1997, 109, 116–17; Hutchinson 1996, 219–22; Linthicum and White
1904, 237–38).
The first Japanese relief society for sick and wounded soldiers had been
formed in response to the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877. Inspired by the Red
Cross example, it won imperial support and, remarkably, treated rebels as
well as loyalists. In 1886 it became the nucleus of the Japanese Red Cross
Society. The Japanese army had meanwhile taken the lead in introducing
modern Western nursing, a decade before nurses entered service in Japan’s
civilian hospitals. Female nurses posed a particularly difficult cultural
problem in Japan. Japanese women, like women in many other countries,
conventionally nursed only family members, but Japan also lacked any
tradition of nursing sisterhoods, religious or secular. The solution lay in
forming a Ladies Voluntary Aid Committee. Upper-class ladies—members
of the imperial household, wives and daughters of the nobility, of ministers,
of officials, of high-ranking officers—all participated to lend the enterprise
an air of respectability and legitimacy (Hutchinson 1996, 204–206; 208–209;
Takahashi 2004, chapter 4; Kurosawa 1993; Kurosawa 1994; Ariga 1900,
49–50; Ariga 1904, 14).
Although it began as a private charity, the Japanese Red Cross soon
became a military auxiliary, highly centralized, hierarchically organized,
and closely tied to the imperial regime. Its first trial by fire came in the
Sino-Japanese War of 1895. Once war began, the Red Cross came under
direct military control and acted as virtually part of the army medical
service. Like all Red Cross employees in wartime, nurses wore uniforms
and were subject to military discipline; the army paid them fixed salaries
and provided their food, bedding, and transport. Almost 500 nurses served,
though not all had completed the two-and-a-half year Japanese Red Cross
training program. Also included were volunteer ladies who may have
attended some lectures on nursing, and completely untrained war widows
and other patriotic women who simply wanted to do their part. Learning
from the mistakes in the war with China, the Japanese Red Cross Society
was even better prepared to fulfill its role in the war with Russia a decade
later. With few exceptions, the Japanese accepted only money and materiel
from outsiders, though they politely acceded to requests from influential
foreigners like Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee, well known for her Spanish-
American War work, to participate in short-term projects. Foreign observ-
ers were uniformly impressed with what they saw and the Japanese
example proved extremely influential in both American and British Red
Cross reforms in 1905 (Takahashi 2004, 78–81; Hutchinson 1996, 206–207,
209, 214; Sharf, Rhode, and Connor 2001).
The 1905 reorganization of their Red Cross societies by the United States
and Britain inspired by Japanese and German models completed what John
F. Hutchinson (1996, 202) has termed “the militarization of charity.”
Women, mainly of the better classes, had won the right to wear uniforms
in a growing number of noncharitable organizations as well. Whether
uniformed or not, many had fully bought into the nationalism and milita-
rism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were more
than ready to respond to their nations’ next calls for mobilization and to
stake their claims for full citizenship. Military thinking pervaded the suf-
frage movement no less than the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. And
for some women, at least, service in the armed forces themselves had
become possible. They had secured a foothold in the military hierarchy
that the experience of two world wars would make a permanent place.
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Volunteers, Auxiliaries, and Women’s Mobilization 189
chapter five
Volunteers, Auxiliaries, and Women’s Mobilization:

The First World War and Beyond (1914–1939)
Kimberly Jensen
The period of the First World War and interwar years was a time of paradox
and possibility, both a watershed for women and a period of backlash
against women’s achievements. Militaries were becoming modern, bureau-
cratized institutions and women’s traditional work with armies was now
often included in a vast supplies and services bureaucracy. Armies and
states needed wartime support of skilled medical, clerical, and communi-
cation workers. Voluntary agencies perceived urgent needs in supporting
soldiers at home and abroad and did so in modern, professionalized orga-
nizations. The World War took place in the midst of a powerful realignment
of gender roles in many nations as women pursued civic credentials as
voting citizens and office holders, established themselves in higher educa-
tion, and made inroads in the workplace, professions, and the academies.
Many women had also taken part in organized movements for reform,
including public health, workplace safety, suffrage, and movements for
political change. Many people perceived a crisis in masculinities as women
and members of ethnic and racial minorities and a newly-identified homo-
sexual subculture challenged elite native-born men’s power and authority
in law, at workplaces, and in cultural and social representations. Some
people saw military service as a way to remasculinize men and nations
grown “soft” through white collar work or the call to liberal reform. But
others viewed military service as a claim to a more full citizenship for dis
franchised men and all women.
Scholars are creating a rich and nuanced understanding of the ways in
which women and men tested these questions in wartime and in the inter-
war period by using women’s military service as a category of analysis.
Women in military service challenged categories of citizenship and the
traditional wartime roles of men as the protector and women as the pro-
tected. Some women used traditional concepts of female roles to argue for
inclusion in the military, and some women challenged those traditional
190 Kimberly Jensen
roles because of their military service. Scholars are asking questions about
the nature of women’s wartime work and service and also questions about
how women sought to transform the culture and rules of the military as
they entered it. Women addressed violence against women, hostile wartime
workplaces, and the relationship between military service and female
citizenship. They developed notions of professionalism and the right of
women to work as they approached the military as an employer. But they
faced continuing barriers to women’s military service during and after the
crisis of war, part of broader cultural constructions of femininity and mas-
culinity, class, race, and sexuality. And women associated with the military
were frequently criticized and vilified as sexually available or sexually
deviant in an effort to control them and dismantle their claims.
Women’s active claims to military service and their work with the mil-
itary in this period began, in Cynthia Enloe’s (2000, 226) view, to “unsettle
the military’s masculinized status.” Yet during and after the war renewed
definitions of women as mothers inhabiting the home front had a strong
impact on views about women’s place in the military and in society. Nations
needed women’s wartime work and many women campaigned for a larger
role in the military to claim civic and professional rights. But this took place
in a complex climate that also involved the containment of women’s mil-
itary roles. The postwar period brought some advances in women’s status,
yet it was also a period of a powerful backlash against women in a climate
of maternalism and a focus on men as protectors and women as the pro-
tected. The question of women’s official, permanent place in the militaries
of various nations, therefore, echoed the ongoing contemporary debates
about women’s roles in and across national cultures.
This chapter will examine the possibilities, paradoxes, and challenges
of military women’s lives and activities in the First World War and interwar
years with these questions in mind. It will address the service of women
physicians, nurses, and women workers with the military and voluntary
organizations. It will also assess the activities of women in revolutionary,
nationalist struggles and civil war beyond the First World War years. And
it will analyze the roles of women in the military in the interwar years and
as veterans of military institutions.
Women Physicians and Surgeons: Medical Service and Citizenship
In many ways women doctors were the best positioned group to seek
military service in the World War. While they battled strong and continu-
ing barriers to full professional equality with male colleagues they had
access to medical schools and internships, and were the most highly trained
of health care professionals. Many participated in the “social medicine”
movement in the decades prior to the war by linking medical and public
health reforms with the activities of settlement houses and women’s orga-
nizations (Morantz-Sanchez 2000, 266–311). Many were suffragists, leaders
in community reform organizations, and worked to achieve professional
equality through medical societies and in other leadership positions. While
there were far fewer women physicians than nurses, warring nations would
need skilled surgeons and doctors to provide medical services. Male physi-
cians, in Britain and the United States in particular, were struggling to claim
a stronger role within the military medical corps as part of their own con-
tinuing professionalization, and women’s claims were also a part of this
process (Watson 2004, 63–64; Jensen 2008, 79–80). With wartime service,
medical women could prove their civic credentials in addition to laying
claim to professional equality and recognition of their “economic
citizenship”(Kessler-Harris 2001).
Many women physicians provided skilled medical service in the war
zone and behind the lines serving with national militaries and organiza-
tions such as the Red Cross. A number formed visible and effective hospi-
tals staffed entirely by female medical personnel. In Britain and the United
States they mounted unsuccessful but significant campaigns for acceptance
as commissioned officers in the military medical corps. Others found ser-
vice within the military as contract workers, and some British and French
women physicians achieved temporary commissions as officers. Their
collective experiences suggest the promise of military service for civic and
professional postwar gains but also the limits to women’s claims for military
status, particularly as officers in charge of male soldiers.
France’s Dr. Nicole Girard-Mangin achieved rank and officer status
within the French Service de santé militaire for her service at a military
hospital at Verdun from November 1914 through February 1916 (Anonymous
1917b). In October 1916 the French medical corps appointed Girard-Mangin
to be the director of a training program for military nurses at the Edith
Cavell Hospital in Paris. She served there until war’s end and died soon
after in 1919 (Anonymous 1917a; Darcanne-Mouroux 1922). As an instance
192 Kimberly Jensen
of a woman having military command early in the conflict, Girard-Mangin’s
experience is significant. But hers was a special case. Most French women
physicians did not have a recognized place in the military medical corps
until the end of the conflict. The majority served at the home front by
replacing male physicians who entered military service or as individuals
with hospital units. A “corps” of women doctors assisted Marie Curie as
she directed twenty mobile x-ray units (known on the battlefront as “little
Curies”) and equipped 200 radiology rooms for wartime hospitals. Curie
and her staff trained 150 female radiology assistants for wartime work from
1916 to 1918 at her Radium Institute in Paris (Curie 1937, 289–99, 302–303;
Lovejoy 1957, 163). Some worked with the Service de santé militaire as vol-
unteers and with the Red Cross assisting behind the lines with war wounded
and medical cases. Yet it was not until 1918 that those French women doc-
tors “who had their work in military hospitals” received the rank of assistant
surgeon, second class (Darcanne-Mouroux 1922, 240). The number of
French women physicians expanded as a result of the conflict. A 1922 report
estimated that there were 95 women practicing in all of France in 1901, and
some 300 after the war, figures supported by Julie Fette’s recent study
(Darcanne-Mouroux, 1922; Odier-Dollfus 1948; Fette 2007, 68).
Italian women physicians, who numbered some 300 at the close of the
war, were all volunteers. The “great part” replaced men in civilian hospitals
and practice. Others served as volunteers without rank in military hospitals,
some near the front. Most concentrated in laboratory and x-ray work
(Lollini 1922, 83). In Austria, Dora Teleky, formerly assistant surgeon in the
Vienna University clinic, served as head surgeon in a military hospital
without rank (Anonymous 1933). Russian women physicians also served
in voluntary capacities. Dr. Schischkina Yavein, president of the Russian
Women’s Rights Society, established a hospital for soldiers with beds
financed by local chapters of the suffrage society and trained women nurses
for front line service. Dr. Elsa Winokurow established a 200-bed military
hospital in Moscow in August 1914 and served as head physician for this
all-female-staffed hospital for the length of Russia’s participation in the
war. Staff members included two women surgeons, women physicians
specializing in internal medicine, and women medical students (Tuve 1984,
114–15; Macmillan 1921, 134).
British women physicians, even those few granted temporary commis-
sions, were denied a permanent place as officers in the military medical
corps. Many linked their ongoing work for female suffrage and women’s
equality with their wartime service. When the war began, medical women
numbered some 3000 across Great Britain. They formed a variety of all-
female medical units to provide needed wartime medical care and to dem-
onstrate their skills. Dr. Flora Murray and Dr. Louisa Garret Anderson, both
strong suffragists and members of the Women’s Social and Political Union,
knew that the War Office was not sympathetic to a woman’s military hos-
pital. But in August 1914 the French Red Cross accepted their offer of an
all-female medical unit. Financed by private donations, they first estab-
lished a military hospital at the Hotel Claridge in Paris and soon the British
War Office recommended that the Army make use of the facility. The Royal
Army Medical Corps (RAMC) thereafter “treated the Hotel Claridge as
though it were a British auxiliary rather than a French one (Leneman 1994,
161–62; Geddes, 2007). In late 1914, Murray and Anderson established a
second women’s military hospital at Wimereux in the high casualty area
in Boulogne under the direct authority of the British War Office and then
headed operations in a third institution, the Endell Street Military Hospital
in London, from May 1915 through fall 1919. Like the other all-female med-
ical units, these employed women as surgeons and physicians but also as
drivers, clerks, orderlies, nurses, and dentists. Some 26,000 military patients
came to Endell Street for medical and surgical treatment, including victims
of the influenza pandemic of 1918–19 (Leneman 1994, 162–63, 170; Murray
1920; Lovejoy 1957, 291–301). And as Jennian Geddes (2007) demonstrates,
women at the Endell Street hospital considered wartime medical work to
be proof of women’s equality and their fulfillment of the obligations of
citizenship. Under the authority of the War Office, women physicians at
the Endell Street Hospital officially received the pay and benefits of grades
from lieutenant to lieutenant colonel, but they had no rank and could not
command men.
A number of British women physicians served with various medical
units in Belgium, Serbia, and France. Radiologist Florence Stoney and
surgeon Mabel Ramsey went to Antwerp with a unit, organized by Mabel
St Clair Stobart in service with the Belgian Red Cross, that later moved to
Cherbourg and served with the French Red Cross (Leneman 1994, 163–64;
Smith 2007). Alice Benham and Laura Foster both served in a British Field
Hospital unit in Belgium, and British women physicians served with the
Serbian Relief Fund Units from 1914 until the end of the Serbian campaign.
F. May Dickinson Berry was a medical unit anesthetist and her husband
James Berry was chief surgeon for their own independent Serbian unit in
1915 and formed a second unit for service in Russia and Romania in 1916
(Leneman 1994, 164–65).
194 Kimberly Jensen
The most prominent and largest of the all-female medical units was the
Scottish Women’s Hospitals (SWH) organized by Dr. Elsie Inglis, a graduate
of Edinburgh Medical School. Inglis was also an active suffragist and sec-
retary of the Scottish Federation of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Suffragists
sponsored SWH units over the course of the conflict, with fourteen units
serving in France, Belgium, Serbia, Macedonia, Romania and Russia. The
Scottish Women’s Hospitals included women on staff from England, Wales,
Ireland, Canada, and Australia and employed dozens of women physicians,
including Australian Agnes Bennett. Hospital staff members faced grave
dangers during arduous retreats in the Serbian campaign. And Inglis’s death
in November 1917, after service in Serbia and Russia, brought widespread
notice and additional recognition to the organization. The sacrifices of the
medical women of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals and their strong links
with suffrage groups also underscored women’s claims to equality and
citizenship with wartime service (Lovejoy 1957, 282–91; Leneman 1994,
166–68; Gullace 2002, 150–56).
In 1916, with the service of the many all-female units in evidence, the
War Office sent 85 women physicians to replace male doctors in Malta.
These women were civilians on contract with the Royal Army Medical
Corps, without temporary rank as officers and without uniforms. In this
capacity, women doctors also served in Salonica, Egypt, the Palestinian
border, India, and East Africa. Women physicians also served in the
Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps established in March 1917, renamed the
Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps in April 1918. Their status was as mem-
bers of an auxiliary rather than the RAMC and so they were not commis-
sioned officers (Leneman 1993; Leneman 1994, 170–74). British medical
women worked to achieve officer commissions and status within the
RAMC. The British Medical Women’s Federation, established in 1917,
formed a subcommittee, gathered testimonies, petitioned legislators,
mounted a publicity campaign, and met with War Office officials.
Federation president Jane Walker emphasized the importance of rank for
granting medical women the authority they needed to maintain smooth
discipline in military hospitals. The Federation also showcased the excel-
lent record of medical women in the conflict and the justice of granting
rank for equivalent service. Objections ranged from worries about women’s
physical capacities and the rigors of the trenches and the absence of suit-
able “accommodations.” But most often they reflected concerns about
women’s command of men and the fear that women medical officers might
start a movement for officer status for women in other branches of the
military (Leneman 1993, Watson 2004, 68–71).
Canadian women physicians, who numbered just under 200 in the years
before the war, served with voluntary organizations on the home front and
near the battlefront. Dr. Ella Scarlett-Synge of Vancouver, British Columbia,
began her wartime service as a Red Cross lecturer in first aid and home
nursing. She organized the Women’s Volunteer Reserve Corps of Canada,
and in August 1915 went to Serbia “with a ton of medical supplies” donated
by the Vancouver branch of the reserve. The Serbian government assigned
her as the medical officer for the district of Batocina, some one hundred
kilometers from Belgrade, until the German-Austrian advance in 1915
(Hacker 1974, 177; Anonymous 1915b; Anonymous 1918; Anonymous 1915d).
Following the advance, Scarlett-Synge worked in association with medical
personnel from the German Red Cross and toured British prisoner of war
camps in Germany in December 1915 (Scarlett-Synge 1917). Irma LeVasseur
of Quebec also provided medical relief in Serbia. Traveling in April 1915
with a group that included four male doctors, the medical crisis was so
intense that she directed her own unit in Kragujevatz before the retreat
from the Serbian front (Leneman 1994, 168; Hacker 1974, 172–77). Frances
Evelyn Windsor (Leacock), a public health physician for the Calgary,
Alberta, school system, was the first woman to receive an appointment
with the Canadian Army Medical Corps in 1916. She served in England as
an anesthetist in military hospitals and later transferred to the Royal Army
Medical Corps. Windsor married while in service, and when she became
pregnant and applied for release from the medical corps in preparation for
childbirth she found that “there was nothing in Army regulations which
allowed for such a contingency.” The RAMC finally released her from ser-
vice “on the grounds of ‘ill health’” (Hacker 1974, 184–85, Anonymous 1966).
In the United States, many of the 6000 women physicians sought to
define professionalism and female citizenship through wartime service.
The Medical Women’s National Association (MWNA), established in 1915,
led the way with efforts to gain officer status for women physicians. The
group sponsored a registration drive to demonstrate women’s readiness
for military medical service, organized petition drives, and lobbied the
American Medical Association for support (which it gave in partial measure
in the summer of 1918). The MWNA supported a group test case organized
by Dr. Mary E. Bates of Colorado that included the carefully selected appli-
cations of nine women physicians presented to the Surgeon General and
the Secretary of War. Individual women applied at recruiting stations such
as a group of four Oregon women in 1918, and others wrote letters and lob-
bied members of Congress. The sustained but ultimately unsuccessful effort
196 Kimberly Jensen
was, for many participants, a matter of asserting women’s rights to citizen-
ship (Jensen 2008, 75–97).
U.S. women physicians supported other avenues for wartime medical
service. Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy represented the Medical Women’s National
Association (MWNA) and other women’s organizations on a tour of France
to establish contacts and develop means of medical assistance. Several
all-female medical units, modeled on the Scottish Women’s Hospitals,
employed women physicians and other medical staff. The National
American Woman Suffrage Association sponsored the Women’s Oversea
Hospitals with two units in France. The MWNA sponsored the American
Women’s Hospitals with two French units and dispensaries during the
conflict. Both addressed the wartime violence against women in France
and demonstrated U.S. women’s medical skills and civic service (Jensen
2008, 98–115). Many other medical women served at the home front and
with voluntary organizations overseas such as the Red Cross. At least 76
were serving with various organizations by November 1918. They included
two African-American women physicians living in France, Dr. Mary L.
Brown, a Howard University Medical School graduate who worked with
the Red Cross, and Harriet Rice, who served in a French military hospital
and was decorated with the Reconnaissance Française for her care of French
wounded. Fifty-five women physicians served in the army medical corps
without rank or commissions as contract surgeons; 11 had military duty
overseas and 45 worked in U.S. states and territories, including Puerto Rico
(Jensen 2008, 86–88).
Nurses: Military and Auxiliary Service in Wartime
While there were relatively few women physicians in the combatant

nations, the First World War created a powerful opportunity for the larger
numbers of women nurses because their skills were needed by the armed
forces and by civilians in the wake of war. In many nations on the eve of
the First World War, medical care was moving to the hospital and nursing
leaders were forming a profession based on training and skill, but also on
a class- and race-based code of respectability. Nursing, however, has his-
torically been associated with women’s work and family responsibilities,
a “natural” and nurturing task for all women. Therefore the First World
War also provided the context for women who wished to serve their nation
to volunteer as unskilled medical workers with militaries and volunteer
associations. The World War would bring these two groups of women and
these two models of nursing together in a variety of organizations and
within the military itself. Wartime nurses and nursing would also be
invested with cultural meanings about the role of women in the conflict,
women as workers, and women vis-à-vis the military.
In France the Service de santé militaire worked with the Red Cross and
Catholic nursing orders prior to the war and so plans were in place to
mobilize nurses at the start of the conflict. The military began to train
nurses officially in 1909 and when the war began 23,000 Red Cross nurses
received orders to mobilize. But they were still volunteers who would
receive no pay and no official place in the military hierarchy. As a result
they were overwhelmingly elite and middle-class women (Darrow 2000,
134, 137). The Service de santé militaire established a new category of med-
ical worker in 1916, the Temporary Military Nurse. The position reflected,
in its very name, the impermanence of women’s military place. The wages
of 40 francs a month and board were much lower than factory work, and
these were not raised until October 1918. A shortage of nurses, therefore,
was a constant problem. Some 30,000 women worked as Temporary
Military Nurses during the course of the war, bringing working-class women
into the ranks in larger numbers. The French Red Cross sent 63,000 nurses
to military work, staffing 1480 auxiliary hospitals and military medical units
on the front lines (Darrow 2000, 140–41).
At the beginning of the conflict, Service de santé militaire regulations
drew a clear line between nurses and the battlefront. Military and Red
Cross officials assumed that wounded soldiers would be evacuated behind
the lines and therefore barred nurses from the war zone. But the over-
whelming destruction of the war, the need for male soldiers in combat,
combined with the efforts of leading French women nurses, the public
recognition of nurses’ success, and “women’s usefulness even in the most
dangerous locales,” caused officials to change their policy. The military
officially admitted Red Cross nurses to service in the war zone in the spring
of 1917. They staffed mobile surgical units beginning July 1917 and began
service in dressing stations in February 1918 (Darrow 2000, 139–40). Yet
commentators, feminists, traditionalists, and policymakers debated
whether this was true military service and whether the nurse was an equal
citizen, a selfless sister, or a sexual mondaine. Nurses’ own accounts of their
service, especially after the war, “presented volunteer nursing as similar to,
or even the equivalent of, men’s military service” (Darrow 2000, 142–51,
154–56).
In Germany, Red Cross nursing had its foundation in the Austro-Prussian
War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71; following these con-
198 Kimberly Jensen
flicts elite German women participated in Red Cross public health and
philanthropic work. The 1878 Medical Service in War Act established that
in case of war Red Cross nurses would become part of the military, and
Germany followed this plan in the World War. Across the conflict over
28,000 German women served behind the lines in hospital and aid stations
and in the occupied territories in the Volunteer Nursing Corps. Yet because
of the costs of training and the low salary (one-quarter to one-eighth of a
daily wage of factory work for women), military nursing in the First World
War continued to be the province of elite and bourgeois women
(Schönberger 2002, 88–89).
Nursing as a profession in Romania had not been well-developed before
the war; during the conflict, women served with the Red Cross and other
voluntary agencies, but not with the military. Local women’s groups and
voluntary organizations raised funds and established clearing stations for
medical units, often close to the front, caring for over 150,000 wounded and
sick. The work of nurses in wartime Romania, Maria Bucur (2000, 37, 38)
notes, “while not always well-coordinated or effective” was “more remark-
able because of their development primarily through grassroots initiatives.”
When part of Romania was occupied by the Central Powers, the army
employed local nurses to work in camps for Romanian prisoners of war. In
addition to providing medical care, nurses assisted some POWs to escape
to free territories. Queen Marie of Romania had nursed during the Balkan
Wars (1912–13) and during the World War she worked in Red Cross hospi-
tals in Bucharest and, following the occupation of southern Romania,
nursed in Iaşi, the capital in exile, and on visits close to the fighting front.
Queen Marie became “The Mother of the Wounded” for the press and
public, a symbol of the monarchy’s support for the war effort on the side
of the Allies in a nation with strong ties to Germany and Austria-Hungary
(Bucur 2000, 41–45). In a 1928 memoir of nursing service during the war
titled The Woman-Soldier, Jeanna Fodoreanu included many incidents of
courage and bravery that described women nurses as heroic subjects and
contributors in wartime. As part of a Romanian voluntary medical unit
serving close to the lines, Fodoreanu wrote about service under fire with
an ambulance train. By recounting the ways that women stood “up to the
military officers to preserve the well-being of the wounded and personnel
in charge of the ambulances” she underscored women’s attempts to address
and change military policy (Bucur 2006, 174–75).
Leaders of the Ottoman Empire supported women nurses in the Balkan
Wars and in the First World War and beyond. In the nineteenth century
Ottoman women had been admitted to public education as teachers and
midwives and the war brought a “large number” of elite women to nursing
training. The Ottoman Red Crescent Society opened a school of nursing in
1914; another school of nursing opened that same year at Istanbul University,
and still another at the Kadirga Delivery Clinic in 1916. In 1912 the Hilal-i
Ahmer Center for Women was organized within the Ottoman Hilal-i Ahmer
Association, a foundation established in 1877 to provide medical care in
Istanbul and surrounding communities. During the war the Center for
Women also trained nurses and “helped relieve the suffering of the sick
and wounded, including soldiers and their families, prisoners of war,
orphans and immigrants.” Nursing leaders and staff at the Center for
Women and other nursing schools challenged cultural practices by “main-
taining that men and women could work together.” They “broke through
their segregation, worked together with male physicians, and took care of
male patients at hospitals and on battlefields” (Hatýpoðlu 2006; Özaydin
2006, 164–65).
In Great Britain regular and reserve military nursing organizations were
well-established prior to the First World War and they and a number of
voluntary organizations provided nursing services during the conflict.
Professional, trained nurses who were an official part of the military were
members of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service
(QAIMNS). Formed in March 1902 at the close of the Boer War, the QAIMNS
replaced the British Army Nursing Service and incorporated the goals of
professional nursing leaders by requiring three years of training in recog-
nized hospitals. Two military reserve nursing services were also in place,
the Territorial Forces Nursing Service (TFNS) and the QAIMNS Reserve.
The British War Office had established both in 1907 as part of the movement
to prepare for war. Members of QAIMNS wore a distinctive scarlet cape
and members of the TFNS and QAIMNS Reserve wore a grey cape with
scarlet trim so that their different status was clear at first observation.
Members of these military nursing services were “subject to the RAMC but
had no real authority” (Watson 2004, 76–77; Summers 1988, 220–44). At
the beginning of the conflict there were less than 300 women in the
QAIMNS; by the end of the war 10,404 had been part of military service
(Piggott 1975, 46).
British women who wished to volunteer their services for wartime nurs-
ing joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), an organization estab-
lished in 1909. Nursing VAD membership consisted primarily of elite and
upper middle-class women and focused on domestic skills such as sewing
200 Kimberly Jensen
and hygiene in addition to first aid. At the beginning of the conflict most
VADs had little training and experience beyond two certificates in first aid
and home nursing from the Red Cross. As wartime demands for nurses
increased, the War Office assigned them to military hospitals and casualty
clearing stations at home and in the war zone under the authority of regu-
lar and reserve military nurses (Watson 2004, 84–85). The First Aid Nursing
Yeomanry (FANY), also established in 1907, was a nursing service but
increasingly focused on other kinds of war work, including ambulance
driving, across the war years (Lee 2005).
Historians underscore the cultural meanings of nursing as a woman’s
nurturing role in British society and an accepted way for women to provide
wartime service. Yet medical work in the war also brought women addi-
tional experiences and alternative interpretations. Janet Watson (2004,
2002) finds, for example, a powerful divide between professional trained
nurses and volunteers. Professional nurses in the QAIMNS and the reserve
corps most generally saw their wartime service as a demonstration of
women’s medical professionalism and viewed their activities as work (in
addition to patriotic service) and solid proof of the need for trained nurses.
They were generally women who needed to work for wages and who
invested in career opportunities in wartime. VADs, most of whom were
elite women, claimed their nursing as patriotic service parallel to that of
their male counterparts in status and wartime activities. Because their
nursing was wartime service and not a career, they did not have the same
commitment to professionalization as did military nurses. This led to con-
flicts between these two groups as professional and volunteer nurses served
in military hospitals and units.
Susan Kingsley Kent (1993, 51–73) emphasizes the life-changing aspects
of nursing and medical work for British women. From Vera Brittain, the
most celebrated female VAD through her publication of Testament of Youth,
to other nurses and volunteers at the front who wrote of their experiences,
this included the transformation of “normal life” and the skills needed to
confront medical and surgical crises, living in hardship and under difficult
circumstances, and coming to a new understanding of human bodies and
sexuality. Many women who worked in medical services found a comrade-
ship working with male soldiers. They “shared with the men the experi-
ences denied to those at home … and a greater sense of partnership, of
participation on equal terms, of fellowship with men, than did that of the
home front” (Kent 1993, 72).
The Canadian Army Nursing Service was established in 1901 and in 1904
nurses achieved the relative rank of lieutenant. Nurses received the pay
and benefits of a lieutenant, but not the title or command authority.
Addressed as “Nursing Sister” rather than lieutenant, she was explicitly
barred from issuing orders to men. A Canadian Army Nursing Reserve was
established in 1910. On the eve of the First World War there were 5 women
in the regular army nursing service and 54 in the reserve. In September 1914
the British army requested a Canadian contingent to fight with the British
army in France. Over the course of the war 2003 women enlisted for service
with this Canadian Expeditionary Force overseas and by 1917 military
nurses at home in Canada reached a peak level of 527. Other Canadian
nurses served with the British. Overall, Canadian nurses received 328 dec-
orations but were barred from receiving the Military Cross for valor and
front line service (Dundas 2000, 24–32; Allard, 2005; Fowler 2005).
Canadian women also experienced the divide between professional
nurses and women volunteers. The 500 VADs from Canada and New
foundland (a nation not yet a part of Canada but a colony of Britain) sent
as auxiliary assistants overseas found conflicts with British trained nurses
that underscored their colonial status. Canadian VAD Grace MacPherson
felt both the challenge to her reputation and the slight to her Canadian
nationality when she received a reprimand from her matron for being “free”
with stretcher bearers and was “told that it was a ‘Canadian failing’”(Quiney
1998, 119). Ruby Ayre, a VAD nurse and sometime ambulance driver sta-
tioned at Ascot Military Hospital, labeled a photograph of herself with a
group of Newfoundlanders as “Those Colonials” in her wartime scrapbook,
memorializing the discrimination she experienced. But Ayre also repre-
sented Newfoundland in the 1916 Christmas Pageant at Ascot and was
proud of her national heritage and contributions (Ayre n.d.). Frances Cluett,
a Newfoundland VAD serving at the 10th British General Hospital at Rouen,
also found comfort in working with the “Newfoundland boys” who were
soldiers abroad (Rompkey and Riggs 2006).
Like their Canadian counterparts, military nurses from the recently
created Dominion of New Zealand (1907) also held relative rank. When the
war began, members of the New Zealand Army Nursing Service served on
hospital ships, at hospitals near the front in France, in Egypt, and at New
Zealand military hospitals in France. New Zealand women also worked as
VAD nurses with the Red Cross and confronted prejudice against their
colonial status at the same time that they buffered New Zealand soldiers
from the same challenges (Rogers 2003). Australian nurses served across
the globe in France, Egypt, India, and Greece over the course of the war.
At the beginning of the conflict they did not hold relative rank as did their
202 Kimberly Jensen
colleagues in Canada and New Zealand. Many experienced workplace
discrimination and gender-based hostility from medical officers, and in
one case a matron-in-chief felt her authority so undermined that she
returned to Australia. In “an effort to enhance their status,” Australian
nurses achieved the right to “wear badges of rank” in 1916. They continued
to struggle, as did nurses from other nations, challenged by gendered ideas
of female service and worried about their sexuality and reputation (Maclean
1995, 76–77).
In the United States, white nurses were the only group of women
employed by the armed forces for the entire period of the conflict. The War
Department had organized the Army Nurse Corps in 1901 and the Navy
Nurse Corps in 1908. The American Red Cross was the reserve for the mil-
itary nursing corps during the conflict and local medical teams working in
concert with the American Red Cross formed base hospital units in antic-
ipation of the United States’s entry into the war. These units were mobilized
for service, first with the British Expeditionary Forces and then with the
United States Army and Navy. Julia Stimson, who would become the chief
nurse of the American Expeditionary Forces and later U.S. Army
Superintendent of Nurses, wrote home to her parents from such service in
letters published as Finding themselves in 1918, one of many collections of
letters and memoirs of U.S. nurses from the conflict. Over 21,480 women
served in the Army Nurse Corps during the World War, 10,660 of them with
the American Expeditionary Forces abroad. The Navy Nurse Corps had
some 1500 members at the close of the war (Stimson 1918; Stimson 1927;
Department of the Navy 2000; Dock et al. 1922; Schneider and Schneider
1991, 108–119; Gavin 1997, 43–69; Zeiger 1999, 104–136; Jensen 2008, 119–20).
African-American nurses, led by Adah Thoms and joined by community
organizations, lobbied across the war years for entrance into the Red Cross
and Army Nurse Corps. In the fall of 1918, with the crisis of the global influ-
enza pandemic, eighteen African-American nurses were accepted into the
Army Nurse Corps for service in two training camps for African-American
soldiers, Camp Sherman in Ohio and Camp Grant in Illinois (Hine 1983).
The Army Nurse Corps had 134 deaths and the Navy Nurse Corps had 19
during the period of the war, many from the influenza pandemic (Stimson
1927, 311; Department of the Navy 2000).
As Susan Zeiger (1999, 104–105) demonstrates, army nursing in France
offered U.S. women an opportunity to be at the “heart of the war” and army
policymakers recruited women on a large scale because of the great need
for their services. “For women who enlisted to gain a place within the
military, secure public legitimacy, and attain status on a par with men
through their work,” Zeiger notes, “nursing came closer to fulfilling their
goals than did any other form of service open to U.S. women in 1917.” Yet
women nurses were the “primary subject of gossip about women with the
AEF [American Expeditionary Force]” whether for sexual misconduct or
as victims of enemy atrocities and mutilation. They found ways to survive
the rigors of AEF work and life by creating community, developing a shared
sense of professional and military duty, and adjusting to the realities of war
and life in the battle zone (Zeiger 1999, 114–136).
A major concern for U.S. Army nurses and their supporters was that
members of the Army Nurse Corps were subject to military discipline and
regulations but had no official rank. Nurses and their supporters mounted
a campaign to change military regulations so that all army nurses would
be commissioned as officers, from the entry level of second lieutenant to
the rank of major for the Superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps. U.S.
suffrage organizations endorsed rank for military nurses. A coalition of
nursing leaders and advocates for suffrage and women’s rights organized
the Committee to Secure Rank for Nurses in 1918. They waged this campaign
for rank until 1920, when army nurses received relative rank. Like Canadian
nurses, they obtained officer status without many of the benefits and with-
out complete military command authority. Navy nurses would not achieve
formal officer status until 1942 (Jensen 2008, 120–23; Zeiger 1999, 110–11;
Department of the Navy 2000).
Many military nurses believed that rank would be an important tool to
address the hostile working environments they experienced in wartime
nursing. Service in isolated units far from home and with few official con-
straints on the power of male officers meant that nurses experienced a
heightened vulnerability to systematic workplace hostility during wartime.
In letters to editors and in letters and reports to Chief Nurse Julia Stimson,
military nurses expressed grievances as they were relieved of supervisory
positions, their orders were ignored, and as they experienced a sexualized
and hostile working environment. One nurse insisted that some medical
officers treated base hospitals as a kind of “Coney Island dance hall” and
subjected nurses to “indignities.” Other rank-and-file nurses worried that
officer status would separate them from the enlisted men with whom they
preferred to socialize and that it would not address the problems they faced
from officers. Stimson believed that nurses’ behavior, not military rank,
was the only solution to managing male behavior. This debate about a
hostile military workplace indicates that nurses were challenging the struc-
204 Kimberly Jensen
ture of power and authority within the American military. The achievement
of rank, even “relative rank,” was an important milestone for women in the
masculine military (Jensen 2008, 124–141).
Some women nurses also took on broader military and diplomatic roles.
Alon Rachamimov’s (2006) study of elite, aristocratic Austro-Hungarian
Red Cross nurses who visited prisoners of war in Russia in 1915 and 1916,
highlights their power as diplomats and ambassadors. They represented
Austria-Hungary and used their family and class connections to visit camps
and direct relief. “Under the socially acceptable label of ‘nursing,’”
Rachamimov notes, these elite women “were asked to perform complex
assignments and were given the official sponsorship of their states” with
“considerable power” and “formal and informal authority over millions” of
male prisoners of war (Rachamimov 2006, 41).
When Japan entered the war against the Central Powers the Ōkuma
Cabinet sent Red Cross relief groups as medical diplomats to allies Great
Britain, France, and Russia. On their way to Great Britain in January 1915,
the 22 Japanese Red Cross nurses bound for Britain met in New York City
with delegations from the International Council of Nurses, the American
Red Cross, and the U.S. Japan Society (Anonymous 1915b). The British Red
Cross and War Office provided a similar diplomatic reception for the
nurses. With financial support from the Japanese Red Cross, the group
provided medical services at the Netley Royal Victoria Military Hospital
close to Southampton from February to December 1915, serving some 2500
patients in seven Japanese Red Cross wards and on British wards. The two
head nurses received the Royal Red Cross First Class and met with Queen
Alexandra (founder of the British military nursing corps). Gordon Daniels
(2005, 230) asserts that the success of the mission was “based on the nurses’
work” and involved “important governmental duties” in their role as med-
ical diplomats for Japan. Japanese Red Cross nurses “were carrying out
international duties for Japan, at a time when the position of women in
international relations was extremely limited.”
Perhaps the most famous nurse of the war was Edith Cavell of Great
Britain, executed by the Germans for treason in 1915 for helping Allied
prisoners escape from occupied Belgium. As Tammy Proctor (2003, 103)
notes, Cavell’s execution “set off a firestorm of protest from both Allied and
neutral nations and sparked a wave of propaganda”; Cavell “became a
sensation overnight as the embodiment of the innocent woman wronged.”
Many groups used Cavell’s story and image to further their cause. The
German military used her as a “cautionary tale for those living in occupied
territory.” The British Army used her image and story in recruiting soldiers.
British feminists presented Cavell as a woman worthy of equality because
of her sacrifice for her country. Many memorials of the World War feature
Cavell’s image (Proctor 2003, 102–105; Gullace 2002, 156–58).
Women as Soldiers: Military and Paramilitary Service
During the World War a number of women participated as active combat-

ants, either as women or with a male identity in regular military units.
Others trained to be soldiers in paramilitary organizations offered for
battlefield service. And in Russia several battalions of women served in the
World War and in the civil war that followed. Female soldiers were the
final challenge to the gendered divide of home front and battlefront, to the
conventions of the male protector and the female protected, and the cul-
tural norms of female respectability and behavior. They also challenged
the boundaries that kept other military women from combat and command
or became larger-than-life symbols that obscured the work of other women.
It is difficult to estimate the number of women who enlisted as soldiers
by presenting a male identity because most who succeeded and who
wished to remain undetected did not leave a record. Sexologist Magnus
Hirschfeld (1934, 118–20) documented a number of cases from contempo-
rary news reports, and provided evidence of women who took on male
identities and uniforms for employment and patriotic service. Hirschfeld
also found several cases of what he termed “erroneous sex determination,”
emphasizing that taking on a male, soldierly persona may have involved
intersexual or transgender individuals who considered themselves to be
men. Peter Boag (2005) also urges historians to consider this dimension of
identity.
Wanda Gertzówna left Warsaw and took on a male identity, “avoided
the doctors” and the army physical with the “help of a few sympathetic
soldiers” and the “ambivalence of the unsympathetic ones.” She served
undetected on the Eastern Front in a Polish unit attached to the Austro-
Hungarian Army (Ponichtera, 1997, 16). Other women took on soldierly
dress but retained their identities as women, albeit fighting women. After
training as a VAD nurse in Britain, Flora Sandes volunteered with an ambu-
lance unit for service in Serbia. She joined the Serbian army, offering not
only her experience with riding and shooting but her British nationality
and the possibility of rescue for the retreating Serbian forces (Wheelwright
1989, 34–41). In Romania, Ecaterina Teodoroiu volunteered as a nurse and
206 Kimberly Jensen
then joined the regiment in which her two brothers had fought and died.
After escaping capture she was wounded, returned to the front lines, and
was killed in the Battle of Mǎrǎşeşti in September 1917. Descriptions of
Teodoroiu sometimes presented her as a virginal Joan of Arc; others
depicted an androgynous soldier who fit in with the battalion. Still other
representations were of a weak woman who found a way to take on war
“like a man.” Maria Bucur (2000, 45–48) concludes that these conflicting
and paradoxical representations reinforced “the image of Teodoroiu as
somehow abnormal” and worked to make the wartime work of other,
“unexceptional” women invisible.
In Britain, women organized two major paramilitary organizations, the
Women’s Volunteer Reserve (WVR) and the Women’s Legion, as part of a
larger umbrella organization, the Women’s Emergency Corps. There were
also a host of smaller groups, including the Home Service Corps and the
Women’s Signallers’ Territorial Corps. Participants cited women’s need to
defend themselves and their families. For example, members organized
the Women’s Volunteer Reserve in December 1914 following German bomb-
ing raids on the Eastern coast of England. Organizers and feminist support-
ers, as Lucy Noakes (2006) suggests, “argued that military attacks on
civilians had demonstrated the futility of attempting to maintain a divide
between home front and war front, masculine and feminine, opening up
a space in which female noncombatants could usefully undertake an active
defence of the nation.” The Women’s Volunteer Reserve was the most vis-
ibly military of these groups with drills, marches, khaki uniforms, and a
structure of battalions with women designated as officers and privates. By
January 1916 the Women’s Volunteer Reserve had 40 branches in the United
Kingdom with some 6000 members, and that year there were seven wom-
en’s paramilitary volunteer corps across Britain (Noakes 2006, 53–54,
Robert 1997, 54 and passim).
Class was a powerful factor in how women’s paramilitary activities were
perceived and received in wartime Britain. Janet Watson indicates that
elite women members were pictured as “merely filling the empty time of
the socialite,” while working-class members were thought of as sexually
promiscuous “khaki girls” (Watson 2004, 20 and passim). Noakes (2006,
53–60) also points to the fear and critique of the “mannishness” of Women’s
Volunteer Reserve members and notes that as the fears of invasion declined
and with them the stated purpose for the group, “antagonism towards the
WVR grew.” Members responded by emphasizing the practicality and ben-
efits of drill and marching for physical fitness, the fulfillment of duty to the
nation, and the “womanly” and nurturing aspects of their work. Krisztina
Robert (1997) notes that as the war progressed paramilitary groups down-
played the military and “mannish” aspects of their organizations in response
to these fears.
In Paris, Madame Arnaud, the widow of a French army officer, organized
the Volunteer Corps of French and Belgian Women for the National Defense
in 1915. The group marched in the Tuileries Gardens to petition the minis-
ter of war for active service in January 1916. Their goal was to be militarized
and serve the French nation at a time of shortages of male combatants. Yet
as the war progressed, French women also muted their claims, and rein-
forced the idea that theirs was “women’s work” that would free men to be
combatants (Darrow 2000, 235, 241–42). Yet Susan Grayzel (1999, 203–204)
notes that the formation of the Volunteer Corps signaled the beginning of
the acceptance of the mobilization of French women, the possibility that
women’s contributions would be necessary and patriotic.
Canadian women also established paramilitary female regiments to
prepare for signaling and telegraphy, “motor-car driving, and camp cook-
ing.” They wore khaki uniforms, drilled, and organized according to military
discipline. Some evidently used guns. Many of the women in these corps,
the British Journal of Nursing reported, “are already crack shots and good
horsewomen” (Anonymous 1915c, 161). Vancouver, British Columbia, phy-
sician Ella Scarlett-Synge organized one such regiment, the Vancouver
Women’s Volunteer Reserve, in 1915, and the group expanded to other areas
of the Dominion (Hacker 1974, 177; Anonymous 1915a). Toronto women
formed at least two women’s rifle clubs and Hamilton, Ontario, women
formed a home guard (Rutherdale 2004, 195).
Middle-class women organized the Australian Women’s Services Corps
in November 1916 to free men for the front lines by engaging in field work,
nursing, and clerical tasks. They also engaged in drills, trained as swimmers,
and donned uniforms. Australian wage-earning women formed the Khaki
Girls in 1917, with formal drill and paramilitary training. Women from
various social groups petitioned the Australian Department of Defence for
an official role as ambulance drivers and scouts without success (Maclean
1995, 76, 80).
In the United States, women formed paramilitary groups and shooting
clubs prior to the nation’s entrance into the war as part of the military
preparedness movement. Many of these women indicated their readiness
to be part of a women’s army and to participate in defending the nation,
even on the battlefield. As the press and public debated the “rape of
208 Kimberly Jensen
Belgium” and the violent consequences of wartime invasion for women,
these groups addressed the problem of “home defense” and also “self-
defense.” If American men could not protect their women, children, and
homes, like men in the invaded territories in Europe, then women would
defend themselves. This was part of a claim for civic rights for women; it
was also a challenge to violence on the home front as well as the battlefront
(Jensen 2008, 36–59). Many of these organizations made an explicit link
between women’s defense training and female citizenship. June Haughton
supervised the American Defense Rifle Club in New York City that she
hoped would be the foundation of a “great woman’s army.” In 1917 the suf-
frage journal Woman Citizen reported that “wives of soldiers in the Regular
National Army and National Guard” in Texas and Oklahoma were forming
a battalion “to serve in any way the War Department asks—in trenches if
necessary.” Some 39 women’s rifle and shooting groups were organized
around the U.S. during the war years. Perhaps the largest women’s para-
military group was the American Women’s League for Self-Defense
(AWLSD), organized in New York City in 1916. The league conducted infan-
try drills, formed a cavalry corps with regular marches, and sponsored
summer camps for paramilitary training. A popular women’s magazine,
The Delineator, featured the league in its “women’s preparedness” columns
throughout 1917. U.S. popular culture often linked these women’s para-
military groups with other women soldiers, including battalions of Russian
women. Negative representations of lesbianism or active heterosexuality
became ways to discredit all women soldiers and their claims (Jensen 2008,
42–45, 54, 60–76).
Russia was the “first country to employ women systematically in sexually
segregated military formations.” Some 6000 Russian women were soldiers
by 1917, a “completely new method of utilizing women in war.” Women
first enlisted as individual soldiers, 1000-strong by the middle of 1915.
Russian imperial statutes barred women from combat with the army and
so most individual women presented themselves as men. Medical exami-
nations were not always routine, recruits were needed, and most women
“avoided examination altogether by joining troops already en route to or
at the front,” instead of enlisting at home. Others were able to gain entry
to individual battalions as women. They came from every class and region
and worked across the armed services in medical, reconnaissance, cavalry,
infantry, and artillery units. Yet their actions were not enough to change
the Russian Army’s official policy prohibiting women’s service as soldiers
(Stoff 2006, 1, 30–32).
With pressure from women’s organizations and women soldiers, and in
the new political climate that followed the end of the monarchy and the
establishment of the Kerensky provisional government, more than fifteen
separate woman-only military units were established in 1917, with an enlist-
ment of more than 5000 women soldiers. This successful grassroots effort
included such organizations as the Women’s National Military Union of
Volunteers and the All-Russian Women’s Military Union of Aid to the
Motherland, a “women’s military movement” in wartime Russia. The com-
bat units included the famous Russian Women’s Battalion of Death, headed
by Maria Botchkareva, which included women from a variety of class and
social backgrounds, from elites to workers and peasants. Most were “ethni-
cally Russian, but a small number were Polish, Estonian, Latvian, or Jewish,”
and the battalion included one Japanese woman and one English recruit
(Stoff 2006, 53–113). Other regiments included the 1st Petrograd Women’s
Battalion, a second Moscow Battalion of Death, the 3rd Kuban Women’s
Shock Battalion and the 1st Women’s Naval Detachment (Stoff 2006, 114–
39). While women had a variety of reasons for enlisting, members of the
female battalions in Russia became propaganda tools for the Provisional
Government to demonstrate support for the war and to shame Russian
men into fighting. They became well-known through press accounts as
larger-than-life defenders of the motherland. An end to official military
funding of the units came in the fall of 1917 and after the Bolshevik
Revolution, the units were officially disbanded. Some women, however,
took up arms in the ensuing civil war in Russia (Stoff 2006, 163–202).
Women in Military Intelligence
Women employed in military intelligence work faced the same cultural

contradictions about and suspicions of women at war as did other women
associated with the military. They also provided vital wartime service.
Tammy Proctor’s (2003, 53–73) study of women employed by British intel-
ligence services demonstrates that the portrayal of women intelligence
workers as sexualized and untrustworthy “Mata Haris” has obscured their
contributions and military effectiveness as office workers and supervisors,
and as field officers and couriers. During the war years more than 600
women worked as historians, clerks, translators, cryptographers, writers,
and supervisors at M15 headquarters in London and at the Postal Censorship
Branch. Their services were crucial, not marginal, yet they worked as tem-
210 Kimberly Jensen
porary members of the military under conditions of discrimination in pay
and opportunity.
The British secret service employed French and Belgian women in occu-
pied territories, “soldiers without uniforms,” as field workers and couriers
in resistance to German occupation. La dame blanche, an intelligence-
gathering organization funded by the British War Office, employed more
than a thousand French and Belgian civilians. Women as well as men were
designated as soldiers in the resistance and La dame blanche leaders orga-
nized the group in a military structure of battalions and platoons with
members as corporals, lieutenants, and soldiers. British intelligence “even-
tually recognized the militarization” of women in the corps after repeated
requests by male leaders and intervention by several British officers, but
refused to acknowledge women as part of the rank and officer hierarchy,
perhaps “because in many cases women outranked and supervised men”
(Proctor 2003, 79–80, 91). In Battalion III, for example, Laure Tandel
directed operations with the assistance of her sister Louise Tandel and
supervised surveillance of key rail lines in and outside of Brussels. Women
comprised about 30 percent of Battalion III and served in major executive
positions, were the main couriers, and kept up correspondence with head-
quarters (Proctor 2003, 81).
Military status was “a point of pride for the men and women who took
it; it lent credence to their patriotic service, reassuring those who still saw
intelligence work as less than honorable” and also offered many women
“the excitement of active service in roles generally filled by men” and “a
chance to join men on an equal footing in wartime service”(Proctor 2003,
89, 91–92). Hundreds of Belgian and French women went to prison for their
resistance intelligence activities and in 1917 members of La dame blanche
in prison, both women and men, were officially declared prisoners of war
by Allied nations. At the end of the war La dame blanche received formal
recognition as an auxiliary to the British Expeditionary Forces and mem-
bers submitted claims for expenses, wages, and prison time served and the
“whole network received British War Medals and Order of the British
Empire decorations”(Proctor 2003, 79, 96).
Women were active in intelligence organizations in other areas of the
conflict. In Palestine, part of the Ottoman Empire during the First World
War, Sara Aaronsohn coordinated the work of the Jewish intelligence orga-
nization Nili. The underground group was anti-Ottoman and pro-British.
Aaronsohn worked in Palestine and Lebanon “handling Nili’s larger net-
work of supporters and occasional informers and the organization’s
finances.” Other women supported Nili activities in the area. Aaronsohn
led Nili from 1916 until October 1917 when she was captured and committed
suicide on behalf of the cause (Melman 1998, 123, 135–37). Polish women
gathered intelligence and served as couriers under the command of Józef
Pilsudski for the Brigade of Polish Legions attached to the Central Powers
from 1914 to 1916. Pilsudski also employed women for intelligence work in
the Polish lands of Russia with the Polish Military Organization, an under-
ground group that stood ready to assert Poland’s claims to the area in the
event of a Russian evacuation (Ponichtera 2007, 24).
Women Workers in the Military: Auxiliaries and Volunteers
Across the combatant nations women were employed by the military as

civilians or auxiliary workers but were not considered full members of the
armed services. Women also supported military actions through their work
in voluntary agencies. All faced the dilemma of women’s wartime chal-
lenges to the military as a workplace and as a masculine institution. As
with other women in the military, women workers faced challenges to their
reputation, gender-based hostility and discrimination, contradictory mes-
sages about their patriotism, and limits to their wartime roles.
In Germany, women joined the Etappenhelferinnen (Women Army
Auxiliaries) so that male “office soldiers” could be freed up for front line
service. These mostly working- and lower middle-class young women vol-
unteered with the Women’s Department of the German War Office in
greater numbers than positions for them were available in 1917. The cleri-
cal and office work offered good pay, food, and the possibility of an inde-
pendent life and travel that had previously only been open to elite and
middle-class women. By the end of the war over 20,000 women served in
the auxiliary (Daniel 1997; Schönberger 2002, 90–91). A small but significant
group of women who worked as translators in the auxiliary were from the
educated middle class. The military stressed that members of the women’s
auxiliaries were not official soldiers but rather civilian women employed
by the military and they did not have uniforms, rank, drill or training in
tactics or arms (Tuten 1982, 49).
Rumors and negative public images of these servicewomen stressed
their suspect status as women who were economically independent and
sexually available. The women also experienced “harassment” and a “hos-
tile attitude” from male soldiers in the form of threats, differential treat-
212 Kimberly Jensen
ment, and a hostile working environment. Women auxiliaries were “threats
to the exclusiveness of male military life.” Male soldiers viewed their pres-
ence as part of state policies that would not only prolong the conflict but
would also send them and their fellow soldiers to the front and the danger
of battle. The Women’s Department of the War Office (headed by women
from the bourgeois Federation of German Women’s Associations) and the
Quartermaster Corps (to which the women’s auxiliaries were attached)
tried to control women in the auxiliaries through billeting them in “dor-
mitories under the watchful guard of middle-class ladies.” Members of the
auxiliaries thus disrupted the male military and bourgeois women’s con-
ception of appropriate women’s service. And while German Red Cross
nurses and male soldiers had a strong place in the public memory of the
war, women’s auxiliary members’ threats to male soldiers, the military, and
middle-class women leaders meant that women in the auxiliaries were
“excluded from the public memory of the war” following the conflict.
(Schönberger 2002, 96–102).
The French government did not “mobilize” nor “militarize” women in
any official way, even though the military would become an employer of
French women as civilians. The strong ties between military service and
citizenship in French culture and the association of the military with mas-
culinity meant that government and military leaders would undermine the
“war’s mission to restore virility” to French society if they gave women an
official place in the military (Darrow 2000, 229–30). Early in the conflict
some French women pressed claims for citizenship and military service at
a time of a crisis in “manpower” for the French military. In the spring of
1915, women formed the Patriotic Union of Aviatrices of France, the
Women’s Automobile Club for the Transport of the Wounded, and the
Volunteer Corps of French and Belgian Women for the National Defense.
They asked to become part of the military and based their arguments on
women’s citizenship duties. Only the Women’s Automobile Club had its
services accepted by the Service de santé militaire for service in Paris for
some six months in 1915–16 (Darrow 2000, 240–46).
Instead, the French military employed women as clerical and domestic
workers, some 120,000 in all by war’s end. They were civilians and not part
of a military auxiliary, with no claims on the military past the end of the
conflict. The French found it easier to recruit local women in outlying areas
for the tasks of laundry, cooking, and cleaning but encountered more dif-
ficulty with hiring and keeping women clerks, telephone operators, and
drivers. These skilled women who were brought in to local bases from
cities and towns expected to be paid what they could earn in the civilian
workplace and “had no compunction about changing jobs in order to earn
more.” Because of this the “army gradually adjusted itself to being a civilian
employer in competition with other employers for a scarce labor supply,
rather than an omnipotent authority that could order things as it wanted”
(Darrow 2000, 246–47). Yet the situation for all of these civilian women in
military employ was ambiguous and precarious. Military officials delayed
hiring women as drivers, some refused to assign them once hired, and one
battalion commander summarily fired all women drivers. Male officers and
enlisted personnel “expected women drivers to be incompetent and pro-
miscuous” and women experienced a “hostile work environment” (Darrow
2000, 255–57).
Over the course of the war some 90,000 women served in women’s
services auxiliaries to the British Army, including the Women’s Army
Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) established in 1917 (later renamed the QMAAC)
and the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) and Women’s Royal Air
Force (WRAF) formed in 1918 (Robert 1997, 52–53). Members of the WAAC
wore a uniform and were subject to direct military authority but British
officials and the press emphasized that theirs was a female rather than a
military organization. WAAC members worked in five job categories:
“domestic, cookery, mechanical, clerical, and tending war graves.” As with
other women’s auxiliaries, WAACs were replacing male soldiers so that
they could serve at the battlefront and therefore faced resentment from
male soldiers. Many were close to the front lines, yet they were outsiders
to the military as auxiliaries and inferior to men in status (Noakes 2006,
69–70, 76–81).
The government of Canada employed many women in civilian jobs at
home, in Great Britain, and France. Some worked as drivers with the
Canadian Army Service Corps and others as civilian clerks and stenogra-
phers attached to the military. The British Royal Air Force (RAF) employed
several thousand Canadian women in Canada as civilian clerks and drivers.
The RAF headquarters in Toronto employed 1200 women and by war’s end,
some 750 women worked as RAF mechanics (Dundas 2000, 32–34).
Over 12,000 women worked for the United States military as Yeomen
(F) for the Navy and Marine Corps in clerical and recruiting positions and
in naval intelligence. Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, interpreted
the U.S. Naval Act of 1916, which contained gender-neutral language, to
mean that recruitment was open to women. Yeomen (F) challenged U.S.
naval policy in a variety of ways, including the provision for health care for
214 Kimberly Jensen
women in the military. Some women requested and were granted release
from duties for family care. But the navy did not adjust policies to provide
for child care, and pregnant women were discharged (Ebbert and Hall,
2002). Other women worked for the U.S. Army abroad and in the States as
clerical workers and telephone operators as part of the Signal Corps (Zeiger
1999, 77–103).
The World War was the first time that physical and occupational thera-
pists, known as reconstruction aides, became part of the military medical
corps. Several training programs for occupational therapy and physio-
therapy developed in 1918 as a response to the great need for therapists for
returning and wounded soldiers. The largest program, at Reed College in
Portland, Oregon, graduated its first class of 13 women in June 1918. The
first groups of reconstruction aides sailed for England and France in the
summer of 1918 and by war’s end more than 200 were in service at twenty
base hospitals. About 300 reconstruction aides served overseas and there
were some 2000 in service with the U.S. medical corps across the conflict.
They did particularly important work with the increasing number of neu-
ropsychiatric patients returning from the war. Reconstruction aides were
civilian employees of the U.S. Army but subject to army regulations (Gavin
1997, 101–28).
Women scientists were also employed by the U.S. military as civilian,
auxiliary workers and “the way in which women scientists were utilized in
World War I reflected and … even increased the prevailing sexual segrega-
tion in scientific employment” (Rossiter 1982, 116). Most U.S. government
projects in the sciences during the war were under the rubric of the armed
services, staffed by “inducting (male) scientists into the military and giving
them officer’s rank and uniform.” But the army “found a way” to employ
women scientists “as civilian assistants instead,” and thus avoided the
question of officer status for women and equal recognition of their abilities.
Physicist Louise McDowell was hired by the National Bureau of Standards
to work on radar, and physicist Frances Wick worked for the Signal Corps
on weaponry and radio systems. For male psychologists, participation in
the Army Psychological Testing Program was a crucial step to postwar
status and leadership, but because most women in the profession were
excluded they were barred from this bridge to postwar professional oppor-
tunities. Mabel Fernald and Margaret Cobb, experienced and trained psy-
chologists, served as “assistants” to male colleagues who were officers in
the project. Women scientists’ wartime service mirrored that of other
women in the war. While they had some opportunity for professional
development and demonstration of their skills, there was little or no official
recognition of that service and their relationship to the military (Rossiter
1982, 118–20).
Thousands of U.S. women worked with voluntary agencies at home and
abroad, including the Red Cross, Young Women’s Christian Association,
Jewish Welfare Board, and the American Library Association (Hacker and
Vining, 2001; Gavin 1997). Barton Hacker and Margaret Vining (2001) under-
score the importance of the rise of women’s voluntary organizations in the
years before the war in bringing elite and middle-class women into the war
effort in large numbers. Their work for civic causes, suffrage, and for a
stronger role for women in society before the war created a context for
similar claims during the conflict. They donned uniforms as a direct sym-
bol of their credentials as citizens engaged in wartime service. Susan Zeiger
(1999, 51–76) has found that for most of these women volunteers the war
front replicated gendered hierarchies. Women were to be maternal nurtur-
ers, under the direction of men, serving other men in “sunshine work.” They
were most notably women, not workers or comrades. Yet as Nikki Brown
(2006) demonstrates, three African-American women who served in France
with segregated African-American units fought “Jim Crow” policies in the
army and in the larger society. In their work with the Young Men’s Christian
Association (YMCA), Helen Curtis, Kathryn Johnson, and Addie Waites
Hunton were expanding the middle-class African-American women’s
“uplift” work in the progressive reform era. By assisting and supporting
African-American troops, who served primarily in Services of Supplies labor
battalions and in a segregated army, these women were challenging army
policy and racism at once as “race women and cultural ambassadors.” In
their 1920 memoir Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary
Forces, Hunton and Johnson “aimed not only to commemorate African-
American participation in the war but also to convince white Americans
of the moral debt they owed to African Americans” (Brown 2006, 84–107).
Women as Soldiers in Movements of Resistance, Independence,

and Revolution
For many women who resided in the warring nations, the years 1914 to 1938
were marked by the World War and its aftermath. For other groups of
women, revolutionary and resistance movements marked their experience
with war in the first decades of the twentieth century. These women chal-
216 Kimberly Jensen
lenged the divide between male protector and protected women and made
claims for national independence and women’s equality. They also faced
ideas about traditional gender roles and the negative stereotypes about
sexuality and limitations on their service with which other women soldiers
and military women had to contend.
Republican women founded Cumann na mBan (Irish Women’s Council),
in April 1914 to support Irish nationalism against British forces. Their goal
was to assist Irish men in their defense of Ireland and to train themselves
in the skills of guerilla warfare, including rifle practice, drill, and first aid.
Other women served in the Irish Citizen Army, and both groups partici-
pated in the Easter Uprising of 1916. In the aftermath, 77 women, all mem-
bers of the Irish Citizen Army, were arrested (Ward, 1995, 88–118). Cumann
na mBan members helped to rebuild the nationalist movement in the years
following the uprising. And in 1918 the organization moved to change
policy to develop military activities “in conjunction with the Irish
Volunteers” rather than as assistants. By the end of the War for Independence
in 1921, some 3000 women in 800 branches had fought for Irish nationalism.
They faced great danger as combatants, couriers, and health-care providers;
several were killed and many were wounded. In the Civil War that followed
(1922–23), Irish women continued to participate in guerilla conflicts. Over
400 were imprisoned for their roles in the movement, and many of them
faced violence and ill-treatment (Ward 1995, 130–33, 190–94; Ryan 2004,
47–48). Opponents used negative, gendered language to characterize
women in the guerilla movement as “furies” who “gloried in the fighting.”
But Irish Republican men also used gender to represent and contain the
women of Cumann na mBan as “caring mothers and selfless assistants,”
instead of comrades in arms (Ryan 2004).
Many Polish women “worked to achieve and then to defend Poland’s
national independence” before and after the World War. They “believed
that only the re-creation of an independent Poland would bring about their
emancipation” and linked nationalism and feminism (Ponichtera 1997,
16–17). As Poland battled for independence from 1918 to 1922, Polish women
were active in many areas of military service. In the western territories
women participated in the Great Poland Uprising from December 1918 to
February 1919 and “gave medical treatment, gathered intelligence, acted as
couriers, and even fought on occasion against the Germans.” Alexsandra
Zagórska headed a women’s militia on the Eastern front whose members
“guarded military installations, patrolled secured areas” and “maintained
a combat unit to help defend the city in the event of a Ukranian attack.”
Zagórska’s women’s militia became a regular unit in the Polish army in late
1918 known as the Ochotnicza Legia Kobiet (OLK, the Women’s Volunteer
League) with rights to “regulation quarters and supplies.” Ultimately there
were six OLK battalions with some 2500 women soldiers (Ponichtera 1997,
25–26, 28).
OLK members faced challenges from within the Polish army and from
the public. Zagórska reported to army commanders that her women sol-
diers faced “degrading or insulting treatment.” Many press reports mocked
the OLK and their uniform, and a member of the Polish assembly felt that
women soldiers made the “army look ridiculous.” Following the Polish-
Soviet war, financial stresses and negative attitudes about women soldiers
led to the dissolution of the OLK units in 1922. As participants in the war
for Polish independence women experienced the kinds of negative repre-
sentation that other women soldiers received and their services were not
valued by the military after the conflict. Yet like many other women they
sought to shape the institution of the military to reflect their own goals by
linking the cause of nationalism with women’s equality, citizenship, and
feminism. While inequities remained, they “prompted at least some
improvements after 1918,” including the right to vote, workplace protec-
tions, and increased participation in higher education and the professions
(Ponichtera 1997, 26–27, 30–31).
In the years of the revolution in Mexico from 1909 to 1924 women served
in various revolutionary armies and in the federal military as soldaderas.
They functioned as the “unofficial quartermaster corps” of the Mexican
military, preparing food and supplies for male soldiers as in many other
pre-modern armies (Salas 1990, 36). Many were female relatives of soldiers,
and among indigenous families and enlisted ranks they followed the mili-
tary camps as a way to maintain their families, earn wages, and care for
husbands, brothers, and fathers. Others formed partnerships with men and
some were forced into sexual and domestic service. During the active fight-
ing, marches, and travel of the revolutionary years, many soldaderas accom-
panied the troops. With this transformation in conditions, some became
soldiers and commanders. Soldaderas delivered ammunition and supplies
and took over the fighting when men were wounded or ill, with some gain-
ing a permanent status as combat soldiers. Some women served as coro-
nelas (colonels) in the Zapatista forces. Petra Ruiz fought, using the male
identity of Pedro, and became a lieutenant in General Venustiano
Carranza’s army. Petra Herrera also cross-dressed and created a male iden-
tity until “she established her reputation as a good soldier” and gained rank.
218 Kimberly Jensen
But after Herrera and four hundred women participated in the second
battle of Torreón in May 1914 in Francisco Villa’s army without recognition
and promotion, Herrera formed an “independent brigade of female sol-
diers” under her generalship that numbered up to 1000 members (Salas
1990, 39, 47–48). Thousands of soldaderas, both those in active combat and
those who supplied the armies, died during the years of the revolution.
Some soldaderas acted to transform the military and many more forced
the military to consider them in policy decisions. Petra Ruiz, presenting
herself as the male soldier Pedro, rescued another woman from rape by
soldiers. As general in charge of her women’s brigade, Petra Herrera ordered
that “no man could stay the night in the camp. She stayed up all night and
fired at any man who attempted to come near her sleeping soldiers” (Salas
1990, 47–48). Francisco Villa and other commanders were not supporters
of soldaderas, but neither the federal nor rebel commanders could elimi-
nate them from the ranks during the revolution. And the U.S. Army faced
“‘knotty problems’” when they interned captured federal and rebel forces
that included 3567 men and officers, 1256 soldaderas, and 554 children, first
at Fort Bliss, Texas, and then at Fort Wingate, New Mexico, from January
to September 1914. U.S. commanders wanted to intern male soldiers only
but “had to allow the women to stay in the camps” or face revolt. Soldaderas
and soldiers were successful in lobbying the U.S. Army command to change
its policies so that women could cook the food for internees rather than
have it distributed. The army purchased “thirty-six hand-powered corn
grinders” that were “in operation from morning to night.” Because they
were not considered as dangerous as male soldiers, some soldaderas found
it possible to serve as spies and messengers (Salas 1990, 53, 61–62).
After the end of the Mexican Revolution, the new war minister General
Joaquín Amaro, who considered soldaderas to be “the chief cause of vice,
illness, crime, and disorder” in the military, issued an order that banned
them from military barracks (Salas 1990, 49). But soldaderas were part of
the Catholic Cristero Rebellion of 1926–29 as members of the Feminine
Brigades of Joan of Arc, whose job it was to provide ammunition. When
brigade members disagreed with male Cristeros, a “serious decrease in the
flow of ammunition” resulted until problems were resolved (Salas 1990,
50–51).
Demobilization, The Interwar Years, and Women Veterans
Cynthia Toman (2005) has characterized Canadian nurses as an “expand-

able and expendable workforce” in the interwar years and this also
describes the situation for other military women. As militaries transformed
from wartime to peace they found women nurses, physicians, workers, and
certainly soldiers to be expendable, but nursing corps were expandable in
times of interwar crises. Women in many nations increased their civic
rights after the conflict. In 1918 women gained the vote in Canada (exclud-
ing Quebec), Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia, Britain (for women over
30), and all U.S. women gained the vote with the Nineteenth Amendment
in 1920. But historians also emphasize the powerful backlash against
women in the postwar years. This included claims that patriotic duty and
national security required a return to traditional gender roles with male
breadwinners and women as mothers in the home (Jensen 2008; Grayzel
1999, Beddoe 1989). These cultural demands had a powerful effect on
women in the period of demobilization and in the interwar military and
on women as veterans.
Great Britain had some 3.75 million men and 38,901 women in military
service at the end of the conflict and by the end of 1919 more than 3 million
military men had rejoined civilian life. Officials maintained some women
in service to free men for civilian employment and women served with the
Army of Occupation. But the branches of women’s military service were
phased out in the coming months. The WRNS ended active service in
October 1919 and the WRAF in April 1920. The QMAAC reduced its numbers
to just 31 women, who worked in the office of Graves Registration and
Enquiries in France until their demobilization in September 1921. The nurs-
ing services also reduced their numbers to a small peacetime force.
Demobilizing servicewomen faced an economic recession and strong views
about women as wives and homemakers who should not compete for work
with men (Noakes 2006, 83–85; Mason 1992, 33).
Canadian army planners envisioned 25 permanent force positions for
nurses in the postwar medical corps, with 1110 as a reserve force. Economic
crises in the 1920s and 1930s curtailed these goals and by the 1930s there
were just 12 permanent Nursing Sisters and just over 350 in the reserve. The
12 served at district military hospitals and taught first aid to noncommis-
sioned soldiers. Those on reserve were mobilized during emergencies,
including an outbreak of influenza in Kingston, Ontario (Toman 2005, 170).
As U.S. nurses demobilized, members of professional nursing organiza-
tions and the American Red Cross established the Bureau of Information
220 Kimberly Jensen
for Nurses in New York City, which operated from 1919 to 1920. Staff mem-
bers provided career and psychological counseling to nurses returning
home from war service. Some 700 nurses at peak numbers served with the
U.S. Army of Occupation in Germany. Other Army Nurse Corps women
who “wished to remain longer” left active duty in the military and then
entered service directly with Red Cross commissions for relief in the
Balkans and Near East (Stimson 1927, 346, 347). The Army Nurse Corps
went from 9616 in June 1919 to 1551 in July 1920. From the middle of the
1920s to the Second World War, numbers remained between 675 and 825
active duty nurses. Corps strength for navy nurses held steady at about 500
members between the wars. The navy called additional reserve nurses into
service to provide care for influenza patients, and in the interwar period
army nurses provided disaster relief for victims of the earthquake in Japan
and in public health work for soldiers and their families at various army
camps (Sarnecky 1999, 135–36, 150, 161–64; Department of the Navy 2000).
There were three plans that addressed the question of women and the
U.S. armed forces in the interwar period. The first plan, developed by Anita
Phipps in 1926, outlined a Women’s Service Corps for the 170,000 women
that experts suggested would be required if war came again. Most would
provide clerical duties and perform support services in laundries and kitch-
ens. Major Everett Hughes was the army planner for women’s affairs in the
Army General Staff; his plan, submitted in 1928, was similar to Phipps’s.
Chief of Staff George C. Marshall’s plan, in September 1939, was patterned
after the New Deal Civilian Conservation Corps in which women would be
a support to the armed forces but not part of them (Holm, 1992, 17–19). In
1933 British women created a Council of Women for War Service that
incorporated existing women’s voluntary groups into an umbrella pre-
paredness organization called the Women’s Legion. This group, pared down
to training for an elite female officer corps, became the Emergency Service
in 1936. As the Second World War approached, some 400 women had
trained with the Emergency Service in lectures, drill, and camping, and the
group was recognized by the War Office in 1937. This meant that “plans
were laid for women’s wartime auxiliary service which would be run by
upper-class women along much the same lines as during the First World
War (Noakes 2006, 94–99).
In August 1919, former U.S. soldiers organized the American Legion as
an advocacy and networking organization for military service members
who had fought in the First World War. Qualifications for eligibility were
officially gender neutral; “any person” who served in the armed forces of
the United States at some time during the period of the war or who served
with the Allies in military service during the course of the war in Europe
could be a member. This made the more than 34,000 women who served
with the Army and Navy Nurse Corps and with the navy and marine corps
as Yeomen (F), the women contract surgeons, and reconstruction aides
who worked in the Army Medical Corps, as well as women in clerical posi-
tions with such units as the Office of the Quartermaster and the Signal
Corps, eligible for legion membership. Women who had served in these
branches joined mixed-sex units of the legion, and by 1928 women veterans
had also formed 31 separate women-only units by service, such as the two
units for army and navy nurses. In 1926 Navy Yeomen (F) formed the
National Yeomen (F), with annual meetings to be held in conjunction with
national American Legion conventions (Jensen 1993, 467–84).
Women from other branches of service and other nations formed orga-
nizations in the postwar period to provide networking, advocacy, and
comradeship. In 1920 former Canadian military nurses began to organize
local groups in various cities and by 1929 local units associated in the
Overseas Nursing Sisters Association (Toman 2005, 170). In Great Britain,
women organized the QMAAC (formerly WAAC) Old Comrades Association
in 1919 and the Association of WRNS in 1920. Continuing members of FANY
and Women’s Legion Motor Transport Drivers constituted “active voluntary
associations” after the war (Noakes, 2006, 92–93; Mason 1992, 33). The U.S.
Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL), organized in 1921, was a veter-
ans’ organization that included both women who had served with voluntary
organizations and with the military. The 1928 national membership roster
indicates that 82 percent had served with civilian organizations overseas
and the other 18 percent had served as part of the military (Jensen 1993,
485–492). Reconstruction aides organized the World War Reconstruction
Aides’ Association in 1921 (Gavin 1997, 116–18).
In the postwar period the question of benefits and medical care for
women veterans became a test case of the extent to which women’s war-
time service would be taken seriously. Medical benefits raised the question
of whether women as a group were permanent, full members of the armed
forces, and whether the wartime civic sacrifices of women would be
acknowledged and would count for continuing recognition. In the United
States, the World War Veterans’ Act of 1924 brought a systematic overhaul
of veterans’ benefits, and changes continued on a piecemeal basis in the
interwar years (Weber and Schmeckebier 1934, 70–79, 212–18, and passim).
Advocates for women in the military worked to include women in these
222 Kimberly Jensen
changes. After the war the Veterans’ Bureau barred former military women
from medical care for the disabled and denied others compensation or
hospitalization due to gender bias. By 1923, 2 percent of all women in
military service during the war, over 1300 women, had put in disability
claims. Most of these women veterans suffered from tuberculosis, neuro-
psychiatric problems, and heart disorders. It was much more difficult for
women to establish the relationship of these illnesses to military service
than for a male soldier who had lost a limb in the trenches.
The War Department took an initial step in reform for women veterans
in September 1923 by announcing that separate facilities for ex-service
women would be set aside at the Danville, Illinois, branch of the National
Home for Disabled Ex-Soldiers and the Northwest Branch in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin (Jensen 1993, 515–22, Zeiger 1999, 170). Edith Nourse Rogers, a
member of the Women’s Overseas Service League who filled her deceased
husband’s congressional seat in Massachusetts in 1924, became an advocate
for veterans in the House of Representatives and worked with women’s
veteran groups. Rogers had served in a Red Cross canteen in France and
was well known for her work at Walter Reed Hospital during the war. In
particular, she sponsored the provisions in the World War Veterans’ Act
that removed restrictions on proving the service-relatedness of injuries.
This meant that the disabilities of women veterans with a high percentage
of psychiatric, neurological, and tubercular conditions counted even if they
were not incurred on the front lines. The 1924 legislation reiterated the
policy of admitting women veterans to special quarters in national and
state homes, and also made additional facilities available for medical care
(Jensen 1993, 523–25).
U.S. women who had served overseas as civilians were not covered by
these provisions. Members of the Women’s Overseas Service League and
the World War Reconstruction Aides’ Association addressed this failing
with a series of proposals and bills in the 1920s and 1930s to provide both
benefits and hospitalization to clerical workers, telephone operators, recon-
struction aides, and others who were with the military but classified as
civilian employees and volunteer workers. Some 60 years after the war, in
1977, the G.I. Bill Improvement Act recognized reconstruction aides, Signal
Corps operators, and clerks as veterans entitled to benefits (Zeiger 1999,
170–71, Gavin 1997, 117–18).
After the achievement of relative rank for the Army Nurse Corps in 1920,
U.S. military nurses were still the only regular members of the U.S. armed
forces without some kind of retirement benefits, and advocates worked
through several legislative sessions to campaign for these benefits. Congress
passed a watered-down bill for army and navy nurse retirement in 1926,
and a bill providing for retirement for nurses disabled in the course of duty
passed in 1928 (Sarnecky 1999, 140–42). While these benefits were not all
that nurses had hoped for, the legislation meant that nurses did gain addi-
tional footholds in the permanent structure of the military.
Following the Mexican revolution, soldaderas who had served with
regiments were sometimes able to prove eligibility for pensions if their
commanding officers would vouch for their service. But in the postwar
years, when soldaderas were being commemorated for their roles as sup-
portive wives and daughters rather than combatants, soldadera pensions
were often “so miniscule as to have no consequence.” In 1935 Ana Maria
Zapata, daughter of revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata, helped to orga-
nize the Unión de mujeres revolucionarias (Union of Female Revolutionaries)
that reached a membership of over eight thousand women. Soldaderas
who were members of the Unión emphasized their traditional relationships
to male soldiers rather than their own work for the military, but many were
able to obtain pensions as a result (Salas 1990, 51).
Women, Fascism, and the Spanish Civil War
With the rise of fascism in the years preceding the Second World War,
women from a variety of political and ideological perspectives participated
in military and paramilitary activities. Like women in the First World War
and revolutionary forces they had to address contradictions between the
military and cultural traditions about gender roles and motherhood. Fascist
ideology, in particular, stressed the importance of motherhood and femi-
ninity to the state. But women who opposed fascism also found their par-
ticipation challenged by those who held traditional ideas about women’s
work and fears of women’s radicalism.
In Italy a few women were involved early on in the paramilitary activi-
ties of the fascist party, even though leaders linked their cause and Italy’s
invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 to a “glorification of warfare” and ideas about
virility, manliness, and military service (Willson 2003, 12, 21–24). The several
thousand members of the Fascist National Association of Women Artists
and Degree Holders, led by Maria Castellani, established paramilitary
“squads of volunteers [who] specialized in technical services, first aid,
propaganda, transportation and policing”(De Grazia 1992, 280–81). In
224 Kimberly Jensen
Britain, the British Fascists formed women’s units in 1923 to provide first
aid and ambulance work (Durham 2003, 215, 229). Some women in the
British Union of Fascists (BUF) also participated in auxiliary corps and the
BUF sponsored groups such as the Women’s Defence Force, “members of
which held the St. John’s Ambulance certificate and were trained in ju-
jitsu.” Women’s Defence Force members also served as uniformed stewards
or guards at fascist meetings and rallies (Gottlieb 2000, 66–67; Durham
2003, 221). These women were often suspect and restricted in their activi-
ties by party leaders.
As civil war began in Spain in 1936 between Republican forces and fas-
cist supporters of Franco (with assistance from Germany and Italy), anti-
fascist leaders encouraged women to support their husbands, sons, and
male relatives in warfare. But a small number of women known as milici-
anas took another path and joined the militia. Nash (1995) finds that mili-
cianas came from two general groups in Spanish society. Women in the
first group were generally young and members of unions, political parties,
and social justice organizations, from which they developed a commitment
to resist fascism. Because they had worked side-by-side with men in these
prewar organizations, they were “already integrated into political circles”
and “headed off with their comrades and friends to join the militia.” A
second group “enlisted with friends, husbands, or novios (fiancés)” and
even a few mothers went with their sons to war (Nash 1995, 106–107). Some
milicianas engaged in combat, but their numbers were “relatively few.”
Mika Etchebéhère’s husband was a commander of militias organized by
the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Workers’ Party of Marxist
Unification, POUM). He died early in the war and she became a captain in
the POUM Second Company militia (Nash 1995, 107). Several women,
including a captain in the machine gun company, served with the Second
Asturias Battalion. Thirty milicianas joined 400 male comrades in battle in
the Balearic Islands. Casilda Mendez served with a unit in the Basque
country (Nash 1995, 107–8).
Republican militias had no official recruitment policy for women, sug-
gesting official opposition to women’s soldiering beyond the “supportive
and spiritual.” A women’s battalion attached to republican forces defend-
ing Majorca against fascist troops engaged in “auxiliary support services”
rather than front line combat. Fifth Regiment milicianas also faced a
“decided degree of sexual division of labor” at the front with “culinary,
laundry, sanitary, postal, liaison, and administrative assignments.” As Mary
Nash (1995, 107–109) demonstrates, the image of milicianas spurring men
to service in advertisements and recruiting posters was far more prevalent
and socially accepted than real women at the front lines of battle. Across
the war women’s place was defined as the home front and by 1937 women
could not enlist in the militia.
Nurses fighting with the antifascists in the Spanish Civil War were not
considered milicianas, but many were militarized and served in field hos-
pitals at the battlefronts. Before the conflict, many Catholic nuns had pro-
vided nursing care, but most religious supported the Franco regime.
Therefore, antifascist forces drew upon a new population of the nonreli-
gious for training as war nurses. This meant that nursing was now possible
for younger women, with less academic training outside the upper classes.
Further, the “antifascist model of political and technical commitment” was
an additional reason for the changing demographics of nursing in the war
years. Many women who served as military nurses in the Republican cause
saw their work as a vital contribution to the antifascist movement (Nash
1995, 151–153).
Women came from outside Spain to participate on both sides of the
Spanish Civil War. Most on the Republican side served with the
International Brigades. Some 80 U.S. women went to Spain as volunteers,
many of them as nurses with the Spanish Medical Aid unit. They combined
their medical skill with their desire to combat fascism and faced front line
fighting and danger. Esther Silverstein left her position as a nurse with the
U.S. Public Health Service and had to convince the medical unit recruiters
that she was not an “adventuress.” On her first morning at the Segovia front
she changed 80 dressings, and continued to work for some time on a mobile
surgical unit on the active front. The medical staff she worked with drew
volunteers from at least twenty nations. Salaria Kea, an African American
and a 1934 graduate from the Harlem School of Nursing, viewed the strug-
gle for Republican Spain as “part of our struggle, too” and equated fascism
with the Ku Klux Klan. African-American soldiers serving with the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade “celebrated at the news” of an African-American nurse
working with them at the front. Dozens of other U.S. women joined them
in heavy surgical and medical work on ever-changing fronts subjected to
bombardment (Newman 2002). British women from across the empire
volunteered. From Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and
South Africa, they came to provide nursing care at the front and behind
the lines. They also came from different ideological positions: British aris-
tocrat Priscilla Scott-Ellis nursed for the fascist forces, while Nan Green, a
London communist nursed with International Brigade forces. Medical
226 Kimberly Jensen
facilities ranged from convents, barracks and other public buildings to
“trains, disused railway tunnels, and towards the end, a cave near the river
Ebro” and brought new techniques of triage and surgery to the conflict
(Jackson 2002, 92, 84–123; Preston 2002, 11–201; Fyrth and Alexander 1991;
Rogers 2003, Keene 1988). At least one British woman, Felicia Browne,
enlisted as a miliciana and was killed soon after in guerilla action (Jackson
2002, 103). Republican forces withdrew the International Brigades from the
front lines in October 1938 and Franco’s forces declared victory in April
1939. In 1996 Spain gave honorary citizenship to the surviving members of
the International Brigades, including the women who worked with the
medical services (Newman 2002, Jackson 2002).
Conclusions
The World War and interwar years brought many advances for women in
the military. They were also challenged by continuing discrimination and
hostility to women in the institution and powerful views about respectable
roles for women in larger national cultures. Women in medicine, as work-
ers, as volunteers, and as combatants defined key roles in the wartime
military and in revolutionary and civil struggles. They also sought to shape
the institution of the military in ways that would recognize and protect
them as workers, as professionals, as veterans, and as citizens.
Women physicians across combatant nations provided important ser-
vice on a variety of fronts with all-female units and with temporary com-
missions or contract service with the military. Their claims for full officer
status were important but ultimately unsuccessful and were blocked by
official concern about women’s permanent military status and the question
of commanding men. The range and nature of their military service gave
them important status and experience in the military medical corps. While
they were ultimately denied permanent commissions, their service illus-
trates the intersection of civic, professional, and economic citizenship for
women through military service.
Nurses during the First World War served their nations and communi-
ties with professional and volunteer services attached to militaries and
with voluntary organizations such as the Red Cross and Red Crescent and
in diplomatic roles. They were often represented as nurturing mothers or
sisters, but could also be castigated as sexualized women of poor reputation
by those opposed to their wartime roles. Professionally trained nurses and
nursing volunteers envisioned themselves and their service in different
ways. As they sought to enter the military, nurses also worked to change
the institution as they identified gender-based hostility in the wartime
workplace and called for military rank. Many identified their work as part
of the cause for women’s equality.
Women workers in the military, volunteers, paramilitary women and
women soldiers faced many challenges. They were entering an institution
without having an official place, and many worked to “unsettle” the mas-
culine military. They also encountered hostile working environments,
gender-based discrimination, and negative stereotypes about their behav-
ior and sexuality. Popular opinion included fears of lesbianism and women
in command, a new world with women in charge. All of these limited
women’s work and women’s place in the military. And a postwar climate
across many nations that constricted women’s options and defined their
roles as mothers had a strong effect on women inside and outside of the
military in the interwar years. Yet women also took an active role in trying
to address these challenges and to define their place in the masculine
institution of the military as workers, veterans, and citizens. Scholars must
continue to investigate these important watersheds for women in the First
World War and after, tempered by a strong analysis of the cultural, social,
and economic challenges they faced.
The author is grateful for the collaborative process involved in the making
of this volume and wishes to thank colleagues who made strategic sug
gestions for this chapter and the editors for their ideas and facilitation.
Thanks also to Todd Jarvis and Linda K. Kerber.
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232 Kimberly Jensen
Women Join the Armed Forces 233
chapter six
Women Join the Armed Forces: The Transformation

of Women’s Military Work in World War II and After
(1939–1947)
Margaret Vining
World War II exceeded previous wars in scope and devastation. Global

conflict reshaped human experience, transforming the ways people lived
and thought. Traditional boundaries separating fighting armies and enemy
citizens were largely erased; no longer limited to the battlefield, women
and civilians would also wage war. Now soldier as well as civilian might
fear losing loved ones in battle as war brought danger and terror for tens
of thousands of civilians. “Home front,” the term used often during World
War I to distinguish between military combat service on the battle front
and the war service of civilians safely at home away from the war, lost its
relevance in this war. Civilians were on the front, direct targets of the
enemy. The entire female population, not only the women who were par-
ticipating for the first time in the armed services, was no longer insulated
from the brutality of the battlefield (Townsend and Townsend 1989). Even
those in regions untouched by land and air war found their lives profoundly
unsettled as everywhere the effects of the war were felt. Social relations of
all kinds shifted when the conduct of industrialized war made the civilian
no less a resource than the soldier, the woman no less subject to conscrip-
tion than the man. Without question, total war affected some women more
than others. American women, for example, did not experience the vio-
lence inflicted upon women in numerous other countries. Leila J. Rupp’s
(1982) comparative look at the impact of total war on women’s lives draws
attention to disparate conditions among belligerent nations that shaped
women’s circumstances. Many countries recruited, conscripted, or im-
pressed all able-bodied citizens to maintain production and keep supplies
flowing, sustain the home front, and cope with shortages. Those under
occupation relied heavily upon women to sustain civil society and to carry
out irregular warfare. Civilian and military society became intertwined as
governments sought to persuade women of their personal stake in the war
and its outcome (Gallagher 1998; Quétel 2004; Gubar 1987).
234 Margaret Vining
Women’s Changing Military Roles
The Second World War is regularly termed a “watershed” or a “break-

through,” a turning point for women in military service. This is in large part
because several major industrialized countries brought significant numbers
of women who were not nurses into their uniformed armed forces where
few had served before. National recruitment campaigns almost everywhere
bore out the fact that war planners now looked to women as the largest
available reserve of war workers. In a departure from their traditional roles
in sustaining and supporting military culture, women at every opportunity
now flocked to join the military, to wear the uniform of their country; there
were many more applicants than allowed quotas could accommodate. A
precedent for authorizing women in armed forces was set a quarter-century
earlier during the First World War, when a considerable number of women,
including nurses, were officially recruited for uniformed military service
from among tens of thousands of nonmilitary volunteers who pressed into
other kinds of war-related work. Then, as never before, female (and male)
members of a host of volunteer organizations chose to wear distinctive
uniforms while involved in quasi-military and humanitarian work. Uniform
wearing expanded in the late nineteenth century throughout the Western
world as one of the manifestations of the militarization of Western society
(Hacker, chapter 4, this volume). At the same time, women’s organizations
grew explosively. Clubwomen and suffragists in uniform marched in the
forefront of women’s mobilization for war. Barton Hacker and Margaret
Vining (2001) show that during the First World War, women throughout
Europe and the United States felt that volunteering (as they had done in
past wars) was not enough, that wearing a uniform visibly validated their
service. By wearing uniforms in voluntary organizations, women identified
themselves with the same principles of military order and discipline as
men (Grayzel 2002; Jensen, chapter 5, this volume).
World War II was different. Most armed forces would not only deploy
women members, but also count upon a massive amount of civilian female
labor in their war economies (Harrison 1998). Policies for obligatory war
service for women and girls were established early in the war. Mandatory
service for civilian women was already in place in Germany when, in 1941,
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill introduced work orders for com-
pulsory service for civilian women, establishing thereby a course of action
for the recruitment, distribution, and control of womanpower. National
Defense Headquarters of Canada recruited Canadian women for the labor
force in 1941–42. Russia impressed large numbers of women into both its
civilian wartime work force and its armed forces. By 1943, workers in the
United States were being shifted from area to area, from industry to indus-
try, and from industry to the armed forces, exponentially expanding wom-
en’s employment. In Italy restrictions against employment of women lifted,
permitting a sizable female contingent to take part in the war effort.
Women in occupied countries often determined their own brand of patri-
otic endeavor (Braybon and Summerfield 1987; Allen 2008; Cottam 1998;
Pennington 2001; Schwartz 1995; Summerfield 1998; Williamson 2003:
Dombrowski 2004).
This chapter will survey the formation of military women’s units in
armed forces in World War II and review their recruitment, organization,
training, military discipline, and clothing. Nursing corps and their inter-
relationships with the Red Cross are prominently included because they
too reorganized for the war largely along the lines of new women inductees
and they served in the uniform of the armed forces. It will also draw atten-
tion to the militarization of hundreds of thousands of women who were
mobilized to produce war materiel and fill war-caused labor shortages.
While distinctions are sometimes unclear and difficult to make, women’s
military history, and military history more generally, must address the large
numbers of civilian women workers, conscripted and otherwise enlisted,
whose employment was sanctioned by wartime governments. It will look
at women in the war both through the lens of contemporary writings and
also through important later works, particularly the profuse literature of
the 1970s and afterward that reflects changing trends in historical scholar-
ship. It will point out ways the study of military history, and to a lesser
degree women’s history in general, were reshaped in this period (Anderson
1981; Stewart 2000; Lee 2001; Chambers 1991; Klein 1997; Smith 2006).
As distinctions between home front and battlefield increasingly blurred
during the war, official definitions of women’s military roles remained
largely fixed; authorities seemed oblivious to the artificial construct they
attempted to impose. Seriously outdated notions of the expectations of
modern women confounded participants in numerous wartime associa-
tions. Women in civilian organizations often wore uniforms and performed
duties indistinguishable from their counterparts in military service, or
toiled to provide basic and essential services wearing uniforms with
national insignia validating them as members of government-sponsored
wartime enterprises. Recognizing such contradictions, women in several
wartime organizations made postwar attempts to obtain military veteran
236 Margaret Vining
status. Two notable instances involved the Women’s Land Army (WLA), a
branch of the Ministry of Agriculture in Britain, and the Women Airforce
Service Pilots (WASP) in the United States, both discussed in this chapter.
Mustering Nurses for the War
Caring daily for battle casualties is one of the worst trials of war, a grisly,
harrowing duty at least equivalent to soldiering on the front. Nurses were
the first women to be called for war service in almost every country. Like
the military medical services to which they belonged, nurses were a nine-
teenth-century innovation initially considered a dispensable luxury in
many armies. Following the early twentieth-century establishment of
military nursing corps, nursing organizations worked toward occupational
development, seeking professionalization through education, improved
training standards, and registration. By World War II, nursing services were
firmly established as an essential military component; for nurses, military
service promised a route to professional recognition and respect. Their
male co-workers, field medics, had achieved a status near that of combat
soldiers, but nurse’s work remained undervalued. Authorities in charge of
filling military nursing corps ranks too often placed expedience before
training and professionalism (Starns 2000). Registered military nurses now
wished to be respected for their hard-earned medical skills rather than
their supposed maternal instincts, as was still the perception among many
wartime decision-makers.
The controversy created by female military nurses when they entered
the armed forces early in the twentieth century was minor compared to
the vehement opposition faced by uniformed women entering military
ranks in World War II. Nurses, of course, filled a role that was undeniably
subordinate. Military nurses were often termed “ministering angels” for
their presumed dedication to the care and morale of soldiers. In many
locales they were still called “sisters,” owing to the profession’s early asso-
ciation with religious orders. World War II nurses in several armies now
wore newly authorized outdoor uniforms that left only their insignia to
distinguish them in appearance from the servicewomen who were stirring
controversy by entering other military branches. This change in appearance
altered public attitudes toward military nurses (Starns 2000).
British Nurses
All British nursing organizations began expanding their peacetime comple-
ments with reserves and new recruits by 1938, recognizing that British
hospitals were to be in the front line of the war. There was no longer a rigid
distinction between military and civil nursing; London hospitals would
take in air raid casualties at home and also receive war wounded from
across the English Channel. Recruitment and distribution of nurses proved
to be a problem throughout the war because of the increasing need for
military nursing services in multiple theaters of war (Edwards 1944). Nurses
in reserve for Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service
(QAIMNS) were activated in 1939. Affectionately known as the QAs, theirs
was the largest wartime combat nursing organization. Also activated were
the smaller military nursing organizations, Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval
Nursing Service (QARNNS), Princess Mary’s Royal Air Force Nursing Service
(PMRAFNS), and the Territorial Army Nursing Service (TANS). Recruits for
auxiliary and orderly duties in military hospitals at home were mostly sup-
plied by Emergency Medical Service (EMS), Volunteer Aid Detachment
(VAD), and the British Red Cross Society.
Nursing does not figure prominently in major histories of the medical
service in Second World War Britain, but others writing specifically about
the nursing corps have done a better job. In his highly readable history of
army nursing in England, Ian Hay (1953, 158, 351) points up what the gov-
ernment was loath to accept; that an important tradition of the British
Army ceased when QAs went to France aboard the first convoy of soldiers
to leave Britain at the start of war in September 1939, thereby ending the
male monopoly of hazardous active service.
Equipped with steel helmets and gas-masks, Q.A.s went overseas with the
rest. There was no distinction between the sexes now in any theatre of war;
a nurse on active service during the Second World War took many of the
same risks as a regular soldier.
Hay’s work is the earliest and one of the most complete accounts of the
work of British nurses in World War II, recounting convincing and quite
gripping accounts of their participation in campaigns in the Mediterranean,
the Middle East, and Far East. He devotes one chapter to the QA’s service
on troop-carrying vessels and another to an engaging account of their
landing on the French coast in June 1944 within a week of D-day. From
there, hospitals moved forward in the wake of the army “leap-frogging
238 Margaret Vining
through France” until they became an established feature of most of the
French landscape (Hay 1953, 158, 304–05).
The QA’s smaller sister corps, Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing
Service reached 1300 members during the war. There are fewer published
accounts of activities of the QARNNS than other nursing services although
their nurses served in naval hospitals and worked with the medical officers
as sick berth attendants in hospital ships, often under perilous conditions.
As the end of the war approached, QARNNS became flight nurses assisting
in the evacuation of thousands of naval casualties from the Admiralty
Islands to Sydney, Australia. After the war, a number of them took part in
the work of the Royal Naval Medical Air Evacuation Unit, carrying out
duties aboard the three hospital ships converted from aircraft carriers that
were used for repatriating former prisoners of war from the Philippines.
Eight members of the QARNNS died on active service; 110 were decorated
for meritorious service (Hay 1953; Nicholson 1975; Harland 1984). Princess
Mary’s Royal Air Force Nursing Service was established by royal warrant
as a permanent branch of the new Royal Air Force in 1923. PMRAFNS nurses
served with the RAF in every combat area. They also drew duty on troop
ships. Mackie (2001) has written an exhaustive account of this sparsely
chronicled branch of Britain’s military forces. The PMRAFNS is mentioned
briefly in Calder and Spencer (1971), with excellent sketches of their uni-
forms along with similar illustrations of the uniforms worn by women in
nursing services throughout nursing history (Hay 1953).
Penny Starns (2000), in her volume on British nurses, successfully ad-
dressed the connections and interactions among British military nursing
organizations. She looks closely at circumstances of wartime nursing from
the viewpoint of military nurses who were regarded as the elite in the nurs-
ing profession. Nicola Tyrer’s (2008) volume of the personal accounts of
frontline British nurses should dispel any notions that women do not serve
in combat. The stories of the nurses are evocatively horrific, stark narratives
of experiences that have not been comprehensively reported before now.
Brenda McBryde (1986) has published extensively on British military
nurses, including an account of her own wartime experiences as a member
of QAIMNS/R. Her work on nurses in World War II is a remarkable coun-
terpoint to the general histories of the British medical service. It is a well-
informed narrative focusing on nurses in each of the Commonwealth corps
and their experiences in the theaters of war in which they served. She
recounts the horrors nurses endured during the Japanese invasion and
occupation of British territories in the South Pacific, Singapore, and Hong
Kong, citing instances of bravery among nurses, accounts that were
described quite differently in or were altogether missing from other works.
For example, Kenneth Attiwill’s (1960) day-by-day account of the siege of
Singapore, “the battle that changed the world,” (Leasor 1963) scarcely men-
tions nurses at all.
Nurses from the British Commonwealth

Except for the Nursing Service of the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps
(RCAMC) which had its beginning in the late nineteenth century, Canada’s
armed forces had been all male until the beginning of World War II. Indeed,
organized Canadian nurses had a distinguished past. In 1885 they formed
Red Cross societies to provide medical services for the militia in Canada’s
North-West Rebellion; Victorian Order nurses accompanied the Canadian
Yukon Field Force to the Klondike in 1897. Creation of the Army Medical
Department in 1899 at the outbreak of the South African War held the
promise that an army nursing service would soon be brought in as a com-
ponent. Before that hope became a reality, Canadian nurses accompanied
the militia to South Africa where their service demonstrated beyond all
doubt the benefits of military nursing. As a result, the Canadian Army
Medical Corps created a reserve nursing service in 1908. King George V
granted it the title of “Royal” in 1919 after World War I (Hay 1953).
In September 1939 the Canadian government called into service its
mobile force, the Canadian Active Service Force (CASF) for overseas
deployment and with it the RCAMC to supply its medical function. Initially,
eight of the twenty-six wartime Canadian General Hospitals included
female nursing sections; six nursing sections in the general hospitals and
two in casualty clearing stations. Nurses to staff them were drawn from
interwar reserves and from new applicants. The most complete publica-
tions on the roles of Canadian nurses are found in personal accounts and
memoirs that provide in-depth accounts of their work in the CASF hospi-
tals at home and overseas. A Medical Corps circular makes it clear that all
members of the nursing service were commissioned officers.
They are enlisted as second lieutenants and remain in this rank for six months
after enlistment. They attend an officers’ training school in Army procedure
at special centers in each district, and if recommended, then become full
lieutenants. (Landells 1995, 11)
Landells’s edited volume (1995) of autobiographical sketches uses the
nurses’ own voices to give a veritable sense of military nursing. They inform
240 Margaret Vining
through a wealth of details about nursing schools and hospital stations,
conveying many useful historical facts about medical practices and medi-
cines that were used during the war. One of the earliest histories of
Canadian military nurses is Nicholson (1975), which devotes three of its
twelve chapters to World War II. Generously illustrated with photographs,
Nicholson’s work scrupulously chronicles the formation of Canada’s mili-
tary medical nursing units into which women from all the Canadian prov-
inces entered, and follows their subsequent wartime displacement to
England and the Continent. The first contingent crossed the Atlantic en
route to Europe in late 1940.
Anna Rogers’s (2003) history of nursing in New Zealand includes an
informative section on military nurses in World War II. It also articulates
clearly the duties of the several nursing corps that were attached to various
branches of service, something that can be quite confusing in a casual
reading of the history of military nurses in the British Commonwealth
during the war. Goodman (1988) discusses the Royal Australian Army
Nursing Corps in an unconventional format with plentiful photographs.
His section on World War II nurses provides a concise account of Australian
nurses by theater. Similarly, Taylor’s work (2001) covering a century has a
generous section about British nurses in World War II. Nurses have always
served near the battle lines. In this war, military nursing corps in Britain,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Burma and India worked together in the
Commonwealth’s far-flung medical detachments. British wartime nursing
corps saw combat with loss of life on many fronts as they served under
ruthless enemy occupation and suffered as prisoners of war.
Military Nurses in the United States

The long-held dominance of the American Red Cross over the supply of
nurses for the military nursing corps in the United States lost its practical-
ity by the beginning of the Second World War. Alternatively, President
Roosevelt’s Office for Emergency Management tasked its subcommittee
on nursing to coordinate all defense nursing matters, opening up a broader
recruitment base than the previous policy of drawing nurses almost solely
from Red Cross registers. Nurses had been rising steadily in professional
status within the military, attaining formal recognition as officers by 1940
albeit in relative rank that still lacked pay and benefits equal to those
received by male officers. Susanne Gaskins’s dissertation (1994) provides
a precise study of the Army Nurse Corps, including useful tables and graphs
that draw attention to the quest of nurses for professionalism through their
military service.
The urgent need for military nurses after the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor in December 1941 prompted an intense recruitment program that
drew nurses from fresh sources: the National Nursing Council for War
Service survey, Red Cross registers, and public appeal largely through the
use of colorfully enticing Army Nurse Corps and Red Cross posters. Despite
the dire need for nurses in the U.S. armed forces, the corps at first rebuffed
the attempts of well-qualified black women to join and then later accepted
limited numbers to serve in segregated units assigned to segregated hos-
pital wards. Although the War Department ended its policy of exclusion
and quotas of black nurses in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps early in 1945,
the armed forces remained decidedly unfriendly to blacks. Emily Yellin
(2004, 201) devotes a chapter in her excellent work on American women
during WWII to “Jane Crow,” a feminized reference to the segregationist
stereotype Jim Crow. Leisa Meyer (1996) draws attention to the often over-
looked resources that the Black press holds as a primary contemporary
source for gaining a fuller understanding of the roles of African Americans,
women as well as men, in wartime activities.
As the nursing shortage persisted, Congress appropriated funds for the
Public Health Service to promote nursing education by subsidizing nursing
schools and offering scholarships to student nurses. When incentives failed
to attract sufficient candidates, the Public Health Service in 1943 estab-
lished a highly successful military Cadet Nurse Corps program. The Cadet
Nurse Corps was heralded by a massive recruitment and public information
campaign featuring ubiquitous images of attractive young women dressed
in smart gray uniforms. Student nurses attended accredited nursing pro-
grams in participating schools affiliated with hospitals approved by the
American College of Surgeons. The Cadet Nurse Corps offered more exten-
sive studies than generally taught in nursing programs, including special-
ized courses in public health education, industrial nursing, and psychiatric
nursing. A departure from earlier apprenticeship training, the program had
a transformative and lasting effect on military nursing because of the aca-
demic approach it promoted. Further, the Cadet Nurse Corps is credited
with expanding the concept of postgraduate nursing studies. By the time
of its termination in 1948, the program had graduated 124,065 nurses for
the Army and Navy Nurse Corps and left a legacy of improved nursing
education along with a core group of professionally trained nurses for the
postwar period (Kalisch and Kalisch 1976).
Still, by 1944 the Medical Department had raised the Army Nurse Corps
ceiling to 60,000 nurses in the face of a “nearly hopeless” nursing situation
242 Margaret Vining
caused by the ever increasing casualties returning from offensives in
Europe. Sick and wounded soldiers were pouring in at a rate of 20,000 each
month while the majority of army nurses were on assignment overseas
(Treadwell 1954). An indication of the severity of the nursing crisis was the
proposed legislation to draft nurses that worked its way to Congress early
in 1945. Aside from the possibility of the draft, interim emergency plans
called for the Red Cross to train and supply civilian nurses’ aides and for
the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) to recruit enlisted medical or surgical
technicians. Planners reasoned that nurses aides and medical and surgical
technicians could pick up a portion of the duties of an average nurse, allow-
ing one nurse to handle the work of two. Inevitably, efforts to impose
nursing duties on enlisted women aroused the consternation of the head
of the WAC almost to the extent that enlisting aides—threatening nursing
standards—infuriated leaders of the Army Nurse Corps. As a solution, the
Surgeon General’s Office swiftly established new hospital companies of
WAC members trained in technical and clerical jobs adaptable to any
general hospital. In addition, an energetic public recruitment effort brought
resounding results, especially among nurses faced with a possibility of
being drafted. The Surgeon General dissolved the hospital units shortly
after the end of the war. They had lasted less than a year.
More than 57,000 nurses served in the U.S. Army in all theaters of the
war, including frontline assignments. Understandably, the best accounts
of their service are episodic, autobiographical, and biographical narratives
that tell a riveting war story. Almost 9000 nurses in the navy served mainly
in naval hospitals and on hospital ships. Elizabeth Norman’s (1999) work
recounting the long suppressed stories of American nurses captured on
the Bataan Peninsula by the Japanese is one of the first to provide solid
information through first-person interviews of their prisoner experiences.
As prisoners of war, 83 nurses, 16 of them navy nurses, barely survived three
years of captivity in the Philippines, where they cared for thousands of
civilians and other prisoners of war under atrocious conditions (Sterner
1997). Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee (2004) also bring
to light the experiences of nurses on the front lines in North Africa, Italy,
France, and Germany.
When Congresswoman Margaret Chase Smith, newly appointed to the
House Committee on Naval Affairs, toured hospital facilities in the Pacific
during the war she was appalled at the working conditions of navy nurses
and their lack of benefits—if struck by on-the-job illness or injury that
prevented her from working, a nurse was sent home. Despite Smith’s best
efforts, it required three years to work out the legislation that in February
1944 provided actual military rank for army and navy nurses (Sherman
1990).
For interwar and early World War II ANC developments, Julia Flikke’s
(1943) work is instructive. Mattie Treadwell’s (1954) official study of the
WAC remains one of the most straightforward, useful accounts of internal
government policies relating to the wartime organization of army nurses.
There is no authorized official history of either the Army or Navy Nurse
Corps, but Mary Sarnecky’s (1999) 518-page volume comes close for the
army, and includes a chapter on Army Air Corps flight nurses as well. Doris
Sterner’s (1997) history of the Navy Nurse Corps effectively combines anec-
dotal narratives with historical fact. Unfortunately, its usefulness is limited
by the absence of index and bibliography. Kathi Jackson (2006) relies heav-
ily on anecdotal and broadcast news accounts for her work on American
military nurses, both army and navy, in all war zones. An array of memoirs
and biographies interweave Army and Navy Nurse Corps history with anec-
dotal accounts (Jackson 2006: Friedenberg 2004; Danner 1995; Tomblin
1996). Even though nurses were a regular and necessary part of the medical
corps, women doctors were not viewed as such. A study of American
women doctors from the nineteenth century to the early twenty-first by
Bellafaire and Graf (2009) has two particularly useful chapters on World
War II. They address limitations placed on the service of the relatively few
women doctors who joined the medical corps at the beginning of the war,
pointing out serious inequities between male and female doctors such as
commissions and recognition of dependents. Navy women doctors could
not serve if they had children under 18 years of age. The children and ailing
parents of women physicians were not eligible for treatment in hospitals
to which the doctors were assigned; neither did government incentives for
medical students extend to female students.
Military Nurses in Russia

The Sisters of Mercy, Russia’s notable nineteenth-century nursing service,
collapsed during the Russian Revolution and Civil War of 1917–21. Some
sisters joined medical units of the White Army and subsequently left Russia
after the Bolshevik victory. Many others joined Red Army medical units to
become “red sisters,” working with detachments of the Red Cross. During
the interwar years, the Soviet regime set out to establish a standardized
health service in which nursing was formed anew. Elizabeth Murray (2004)
244 Margaret Vining
found in studying the migration of nursing knowledge and skills in Russia
during this period that nurses were essentially left out of the creation of
their occupation. In a contemporary account of Russian wartime nursing,
Frances Mason (1944) asserts that by the beginning of World War II, women
doctors and nurses were coming into prominence and the war gave them
increased opportunity for equal participation with men in all phases of
Soviet military medicine. Indeed, Soviet nurses and doctors were the only
women in any of the Allied armies to serve on the front lines armed with
infantry weapons (Brayley 2002, 38). Citing reports of the Russian War
Relief, Mason, who was on the staff of the National War Fund, described
an active and vital Russian Red Cross, one that graduated hundreds of
thousands of field nurses called “frontline girl friends.” They treated
wounded soldiers in the field, often under fire on German occupied terrain.
A field nurse’s job, according to Mason’s dramatic description, required
both medical skill and daring (Mason 1944, 934).
These field nurses must crawl across battlefields, under fire with a heavy
burden: medical supplies plus a shovel. A field nurse must know how to dig
in. A field nurse must also know how to render first aid lying down; how to
protect a wounded man from being injured a second time; and how to
remove a wounded man while crawling under fire … . [M]ore than 60 per
cent of wounded Russians are given surgical attention in the front-line zone
before being evacuated to a field hospital.
Mason also briefly mentions women pilots as medical personnel, parachut-
ing Russian nurses, and flying ambulances transporting wounded from the
fronts to base hospitals. Robert Kaplan (2000), in a brief essay on medicine
at the battle of Stalingrad (July 1942–February 1943), reinforces Mason’s
description but with a much graver account of women’s experiences in the
Red Army’s medical service. While he cites similar heroic sacrifices of the
Russian women whom he called medical orderlies, he also looks at their
seriously high casualty rates and details the hopeless conditions under
which they served. Kaplan refers to the medical orderlies as the bravest
figures in the battle. S. Alexiyevich’s (1988) interviews with women veterans
of the Red Army include several remembrances of medical orderlies that
confirm many devastating lifelong effects of their horrendous experiences
in the savage battles of the Great Patriotic War.
Military Nurses in Germany

Nurses’ associations in Germany all but vanished in 1937 as all organizations
connected with nursing and social work were reorganized into one national
body under the German Red Cross, which was in turn wholly absorbed into
the Nazi party. Alex Buchner’s illustrated monograph (1999) on the German
Army Medical Corps in World War II neither mentions nor depicts women
anywhere in text or photographs. Later studies by Sabine Rödiger (2007)
and Markus Wicke (2002) are more inclusive. Still, works on the German
Red Cross tend to focus on its male-centered organizational structure,
paying less attention to women workers.
Women’s Military Service in World War II
The most plentiful and reliable primary sources for research relating to the
development of women’s units in the armed forces and the logistics of
accommodating them within the framework of established military orga-
nizations are official and internal wartime documents. These are found in
official state repositories in the form of military directives, letters and
memos, legislative procedures, and special government studies. The same
documents give insight as well into the unwillingness of many in govern-
ment and the public at large to allow women to be inducted into the armed
forces at all. Charlotte Seeley’s (1992) meticulously compiled guide to
records in the National Archives and Records Administration pertaining
to American women and the armed forces provides an excellent starting
point for further research. So far, no comparable compendium of govern-
ment documents in official archives pertaining exclusively to military
women has appeared elsewhere.
Until the postwar establishment of permanent peacetime women’s units
in 1948, the largest measure of contemporary public information about
military women is found in wartime military public affairs releases and
items in popular publications, newspapers, and magazines. The widely
circulated published letters of Father Theodore Hesburgh, a Catholic priest
in the United States, reflect prevailing attitudes everywhere towards
women in the military. Hesburgh (1943, 26) paternalistically cautions:
Christian service women [to] make the most of their opportunities and
avoid dishonor—a girl cannot philander around during her term of service
and then expect to settle down and raise a good family after the war (cf.
Collins 1942; Knight 1943; Lissey and Harvey 1943).
Uniformed military women comprised but a small fraction of the millions
of women and men who volunteered or were conscripted for military,
industrial, municipal, and other war work. But more often than their civil-
246 Margaret Vining
ian counterparts who wore the uniforms of their groups, including govern-
ment sanctioned quasi-military organizations, military women were looked
upon as an aberration. In most countries, implicit in the oft-repeated and
widely accepted dictums that a woman “filled in for a man” and “freed a
man to fight,” was the assurance that her service was but a temporary
emergency measure, limited to the duration of the war; that she would “do
her bit” then be demobilized, dismissed from the armed forces quickly, and
returned to her place when the crisis ended. The novelty of women soldiers
also attracted notice in the popular press out of proportion to their num-
bers. They were frequently caricatured and subjected to derision and
denigration in newspapers and popular magazines, even as the more news-
worthy aspects of their groundbreaking roles went unacknowledged. They
did not seek the publicity they received, but military men nonetheless
resented them for it (Sherman 1990).
The strongest and most enduring protests against women entering the
armed forces have been predicated on an irrational fear that women would
face combat even as modern war placed almost all women and men in
danger. Ann Taylor Allen (2008, 61) posits that the reluctance to deploy
women in the Second World War,
arose less from an objective estimate of women’s abilities than from ancient
and powerful taboos that defined men as the fighters and women (along
with land, possessions, and honor) among the things men fought for—prize
assets to be defended or spoils to be seized.
The seemingly endless debates over the women-in-combat controversy
diverted untold resources from indisputable issues of national defense
during the war, gaining in resonance afterwards when women became
permanent members of peacetime armed forces. An evenhanded set of
essays placing the women-in-combat debates in historical perspective is
found in Goldman’s (1982) edited volume. It includes discussions of women
combatants in Great Britain, Germany, and Russia. D’Ann Campbell’s study
(1993) of women in combat in World War II is another salient work on this
topic. She reviews women’s military units in Great Britain, United States,
Germany, and the Soviet Union, exposing fallacies associated with women
and combat (see also Goldman 1982; Frevert 2004; Laffin 1967, 66–67; Allen
2008; Taylor 1989; Saywell 1985; Pennington 2003; Alfonso 2009).
British and Commonwealth Women in Military Service
Unlike women in the military nursing corps who remained in service dur-
ing the interwar years, women inducted into Britain’s First World War
volunteer corps were never accorded official military status, their well-
received and necessary work as adjuncts to the military notwithstanding.
At the end of that war, veterans of the women’s volunteer units who accom-
panied the British Army to France were classified upon demobilization in
1919 as “camp followers” because they fit neither military nor civilian gov-
ernment procedural designations. This time, for this war, members of
women’s organizations, now largely franchised, pressed the War Office to
accommodate women’s interests in wartime labor planning. The Women’s
Power Committee, an active caucus of female members of parliament, and
the British Federation of Business and Professional Women, in particular,
promoted the principle that women ought to have equal access to jobs
previously reserved for men and receive the same wages (Summerfield
1998; Harris 2003; Smith 1981).
In June 1938 the British Home Secretary established an organization
called the Women’s Voluntary Services for Air Raid Precautions (WVS), in
part to assure concerned women of an early role in national mobilization
as it got underway. Described as a back-up for Civil Defense, its purpose
was to train women to protect their own homes and families in the event
of air attack or invasion. Within the year, three British women’s voluntary
emergency units from the interwar years negotiated with the War Office
to form a broad coalition of women’s military service for the entire British
Commonwealth. By combining the membership of the aristocratic wom-
en’s paramilitary organizations, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY),
the Emergency Service, and the Women’s Legion, women formed a new
Commonwealth-wide Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). Essentially a
revival of the earlier WAAC of World War I, the ATS was the umbrella
organization for the majority of British army women in World War II
(Bidwell 1977; Harris 2003; Summerfield 1998; Terry 1988; Braybon and
Summerfield 1987).
The organizational scheme for women in the ATS forces of the Common
wealth called for the FANY to recruit a core unit of women consisting of
potential officers; the Emergency Service to create a training school for
woman soldiers; and the Women’s Legion to muster enlisted women with
special skills such as drivers, clerks, and domestics. A revived Women’s
Land Army (WLA), sanctioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, prepared to
248 Margaret Vining
take the task of providing food in an emergency. Margaret Goldsmith’s
(1943) conversational wartime account of English women in the war has
brief chapters on each of the British women’s military units. Appealingly
contemporaneous, it also includes numerous illustrations of British society
at war. As Braybon and Summerfield (1987, 152) insightfully point out, the
initial core of British women’s World War II army organization were “local
great ladies,” primarily veterans of World War I, who recruited the first
officers for WVS, ATS, and WLA from among their own ranks. This was but
a fleeting concern during ATS expansion into other areas of the
Commonwealth, for in December 1941 Parliament adopted the National
Service (No. 2) Act conscripting unmarried women between the ages of
twenty and thirty into service in the ATS and other military organizations.
Volunteers would always outnumber conscripts, but far more problematic
was the grave threat that registration and conscription of women held for
solidly gendered definitions of duty and citizenship in England (Goldsmith
1943; Braybon and Summerfield 1987; Stone 1999; Taylor 1989).
The ATS was by far the largest British women’s military organization
with a wartime enrollment of 222,000 (Crang 2008, 383). It was headed until
mid-1941 by the indomitable Great War veteran and fervent suffragist,
Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughn, who was mercilessly caricatured by anti-
feminists and opponents of policies enabling women to enter the military
services. Among women, the ATS was considered the least popular of all
the services because its jobs offerings were often viewed by both army
women and civilians as unimportant and boring. Lucy Noakes (2006) offers
a useful discussion of attempts to reconcile the need for women in the
military with maintaining the army as a male preserve. A deliberate strat-
egy to discourage women from joining the armed forces by spreading
rumors of immoral, rowdy, and disorderly behavior among army women,
a vicious slander campaign, succeeded in lowering ATS recruitment rates.
This was not a new problem. British women in France were plagued during
the First World War by a similar campaign, and another would afflict
American women in 1942 and 1943, after the U.S. Women’s Army Auxiliary
Corps was established. Pierson (1986, 15, 188) examines the “moral panic”
underlying the “whispering campaign” aimed at the Canadian Women’s
Army Corps in 1943. Janann Sherman’s description (1990, 61) of the slander
campaign that began in 1943 in the United States applies aptly to these
movements everywhere:
As it became clear that the women were in the military for the duration,
evil-minded rumors were spread by GIs eager to drive the women out of
the service. They appeared to rest on the assumption that the military was
“unnatural” for women and that only those with base motives could wish
to serve. The women who joined must therefore be deviants in some respect.
The rumors and gossip portrayed women as either prostitutes intended to
‘service the troops’ or lesbians who staged orgies in the barracks. The WAC
and WAVE became stereotypes like the farmer’s daughter, certain to enhance
shaggy-dog stories and stag smokers. The jokes and innuendos did not drive
women out, although they did appear to have some effect upon recruiting.
Primarily they served to humiliate and demoralize the women and to fuel
the resentment of the men.
The slander campaign had an unfortunate lingering effect on the public
image of military women, even after investigations disproved the allega-
tions in every instance. Nor were civilian women war workers immune
from similar innuendo and aspersions about loose morals. Sonya A. Rose
(1997, 1998) has studied the subject of British women in WWII extensively.
Her erudite serial essays are well informed and rewarding. Through evi-
dence gathered in oral histories, Summerfield and Crockett (1993) have
thoughtfully examined how workers themselves experienced and
responded to derogatory allegations in the wartime workplace.
Efforts to enhance the public image of the ATS and to increase enlist-
ment included replacing Gwynne-Vaughn with the younger Jean Knox.
Among the improvements Knox implemented were better living conditions
for the women and issuance of a new, smartly tailored ATS uniform. Crang
(2008, 384–85) points out that Princess Elizabeth joined the ATS in early
1945, training as a driver. Souvenir postcards bearing a photograph of the
youthful uniformed queen-to-be can be purchased today at British military
museum gift shops (Rupp 1978; Goldsmith 1943; Harris 2003, Goldman 1982,
30; Treadwell 1954; Braybon and Summerfield 1987, 152; Terry 1988, 125–31;
Summerfield 1998; Saywell 1985, 13).
The first ATS women could take little pride in their uniforms, described
by the London Times as dowdy and unattractive, making women appear
“almost shabby” (Saywell 1985, 12; Crang 2008, 385). In both Britain and the
United States, women’s army-issue khaki undergarments, nicknamed “pas-
sion killers,” were universally despised. Members of the ATS who disliked
their uniforms were not alone in their predicament. Yet attitudes toward
wearing the uniform were mixed. An ATS truck driver recalled in an inter-
view (Saywell 1985, 15):
People said women hated to be in uniform, that they missed their party
dresses. Balls! It was lovely, all that way from home and boarding schools,
with no one knowing who you were. The uniform took away your identity
250 Margaret Vining
and gave you freedom—even if it was just to do something like have a pint
of beer in a pub.
Clothing would be a particularly challenging aspect of integrating women
into military organizations. Women’s military apparel is a conspicuous
subject in most works about the services, particularly in memoirs, poems,
and songs. That their uniforms were of paramount importance to women
soldiers is borne out in references to military apparel in thousands of letters
and diaries, and by the ubiquitous photographs of proud uniformed women
that appeared in family albums and on parlor pianos everywhere (Ewing
1975; Treadwell 1954; Risch 1945: Adie 2003; Harris 2003; Hacker and Vining
2001).
The importance of trim professional uniforms is well established. They
are a key factor in troop morale; smart uniforms also hold immense appeal
to soldiers in general. The precise soldierly appearance that military orga-
nizations have always demanded of their members would necessarily apply
to women as well. World War II women’s uniforms differed widely among
countries and branches of services, reflecting the uncertainty of military
planners about the appropriate appearance for the yet-to-be-determined
roles of temporary military women volunteers. From the start, army officials
and motherly directors of the women’s contingents preoccupied them-
selves with incorporating a feminine appearance into women’s uniforms.
The emphasis on femininity that characterized the uniforms of all women’s
services only pointed up the disjuncture between expectations of society
and demands of military service. At first, women took over support jobs in
a wide variety of fields wearing uniforms deemed appropriate for ladies
rather than functional apparel for the work they would do. Design elements
that influenced the new women’s uniforms were current fashion, apparel
considered acceptable in feminine occupations and, finally, special cloth-
ing, clothing that was restricted for wear solely in unconventional work
areas and only while engaged in specific types of work. Trousers and boots
were in this category. Clearly women valued the military uniform foremost
because it was evocative of the collective social identity that validated
national military service. Uniforms for women served as a highly visible
marker of their fuller roles as citizens, an appreciated change from their
previous exclusion or relegation to underpaid and little acknowledged
wartime work (Noakes 2006; Vining 2007; Adie 2003; Hacker and Vining
2001; Treadwell 1954; Terry 1988).
The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), revived in mid-1939 from a
civilian volunteer corps of the Great War as an adjunct of the ATS, was the
most popular branch of the British women’s forces. Not only did the WAAF
offer almost fifty diverse work specialties, it had the added appeal of an
exciting connection with legendary RAF fighter pilots. WAAF members
were quite happy with their dark blue version of the despised ATS uniforms;
theirs were accessorized with the coveted RAF albatross badge. Sarah
Churchill, one of the prime minister’s three daughters to join the uniformed
services, served in the WAAF. As the organization’s work specialties
expanded, jobs in antiaircraft batteries opened for women in 1940. The
highly contested but successful plan implemented mixed batteries in the
Anti-Aircraft Command allowing teams of women and men to serve
together in integrated batteries. Mary Churchill, another of the prime min-
ister’s daughters, volunteered early to serve in the ATS as the junior com-
mander of 481 Battery in Hyde Park, London (Campbell 1993; Taylor 1989;
Harris 2003; Peake 1993).
WAAF members also joined British airmen in barrage balloon opera-
tions on crews of military defense systems, working in all weather and
under aerial bombardment. In addition to requiring physical strength and
special training, both jobs placed women in imminent danger, contrary to
the work approved by military recruitment policies. Worse, their duties
risked suggesting that airmen had been doing a woman’s job. Since it was
important to rule out any sense that this could be the argument, women
were not officially incorporated in the defense systems. Further, officials
claimed that 16 airwomen were required to do the work of 10 airmen.
Gerard DeGroot (1997) also takes a provocative look at the controversial
use of female recruits in antiaircraft batteries and the measures taken by
senior officers in the ATS to preserve their noncombatant status. Another
striking example of atypical work of women in the WAAF was that of
Constance Babington Smith (1957), whose account of her assignment in
the Allied Photographic Intelligence Service is exciting reading. Photographs
illustrate examples of the challenges she encountered in her highly special-
ized photographic intelligence work. Smith’s skill in developing new tech-
niques for bringing more accuracy to the evaluation of aerial photographs
brought her into rare prominence in the international intelligence network
(Taylor 1989, 247–50; Harris 2003; Campbell 1993; Bird and Botes 1982).
Historians and sociologists studying the first wave of military women
have paid considerable attention to questions arising from the wartime
work of women in fields traditionally assigned to men. Since war itself was
considered a wholly masculine affair, the experiment with women in uni-
form served as a model for examining relationships between the way sexes
252 Margaret Vining
are defined and the ways World War II disturbed that definition. One such
study, a discerning essay by Tessa Stone (1999), focuses precisely on non-
traditional WAAF jobs in antiaircraft batteries and barrage balloon defense
systems, where traditional gender roles were subverted. Drawing from
Higonnet and Higonnet’s (1987) “double helix” model of gender relations,
Stone determines that gender was inevitably important to a military wom-
an’s self-identity as a skilled woman in uniform, but the military context
was quite apart from that, a framework within which her identity and
status as a citizen operated. Others have contributed valuable pioneering
analyses of women’s wartime experiences under the late twentieth-century
rubric of studies in gender, war, and society. One such work is Angela Clare
Smith’s (2006) analysis of the impact of ideologies of the first military
women in the British forces on the way women are accepted in today’s
military (cf. Costello 1985: Milkman 1987; Dombrowski 2004; Braybon and
Summerfield 1987; Summerfield 1998; Campbell 1993; Noakes 2006;
Hagemann 2007).
Fewer works look closely at the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS)
in the Second World War. Nicknamed Wrens, the corps, too, was reacti-
vated in 1939 from a World War I uniformed civilian volunteer service. One
of the more popular services, the Wrens were initially set up as a small
part-time service in which duties were restricted to clerical work, domestic
work, and driving. In the early days of the organization, relatives of serving
or retired officers held most of the coveted slots and their uniform initially
consisted of a brassard—an armband with the letters “WRNS.” The prime
minister’s daughter, Diana Churchill, was a member of the WRNS. Their
first full uniform, a fashionable blue serge outfit, was considered so smart
that British Overseas Airways bought up surplus Wrens uniforms after the
war for their flight attendants. As with the other services, manpower short-
ages brought about a rapid expansion of the Wrens after 1941, opening
opportunities previously unimaginable for young women, not a few of them
jobs that put them in harm’s way. Like the ATS and WAAF, the WRNS were
linked directly with the British fighting forces. The service peaked at around
75,000 members and approximately 100,000 women served as Wrens
throughout the war (Allen 2008; Harris 2003, 91; Taylor 1989, 168–72).
Wartime recruitment of women elsewhere in the British Commonwealth
was equally vigorous. The Canadian Air Force was the first to recruit women
in World War II. From the start an integral part of the Air Force, the
Canadian Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (CWAAF) was established in 1941.
In a subsequent reorganization in 1942 the CWAAF became the Royal
Canadian Air Force (Women’s Division), the RCAF (WD). The Canadian
Women’s Army Corps (CWAC, Active) also gained full integration into the
Canadian Army in 1942 (Dundas 2000). The Women’s Royal Canadian Naval
Service (WRCNS), familiarly known as Canada’s Wrens, followed closely.
It was the smallest and most selective of Canada’s women’s services (Plows
2008).
Commonwealth recruitment was also as wide-ranging as it was vigorous.
In 1943 the War Office overcame its earlier resistance to racially-mixed
women’s units, opening the ATS to West Indian women. Women joined
by the hundreds, coming from all over the Caribbean to sign up for ATS
duty in the islands and in Britain (Bousquet and Douglas 1991: Pierson 1986;
Newfoundlanders in War website n.d.; Smith 2006; Sullivan 2002; Verrill-
Rhys and Beddoe 2002; Bird and Botes 1982).
In a fascinating sidebar to the chronicle of the British Empire in the war,
Fay (1993) describes the heroic action of soldiers of the British Indian Army.
Fighting against the invading Japanese all the way down the Malaysian
peninsula until the fall of Singapore, Indian soldiers thereupon allied with
Japan and formed the Indian National Army (INA) to pursue a broader
struggle for Indian independence from Britain. A female contingent of the
INA, the Rani of Jhansi regiment, became an extraordinary element of
India’s newly formed army’s unsuccessful struggle for independence
between 1942 and 1945.
Women in Military Service in the United States

In preparation for World War II, the United States War Department in 1940
approved the first peacetime draft for men, at the same time asking for a
plan to mobilize women in support roles for the armed forces. The govern-
ment’s interwar initiative to create a women’s reserve component had been
shelved in 1931, but the women’s organizations involved in the project did
not suspend their preparedness activity. Margaret Chase Smith, an ardent
advocate of military preparedness, gained a wider audience after 1940 when
she was elected to the office of her late husband, Congressman Clyde H.
Smith, in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the spring of 1941, First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt convened a group of women, including seven women
members of the House of Representatives and Secretary of Labor Frances
Perkins, to draw up a plan for the mobilization of American women for the
war effort. It was an endeavor that aroused disquiet among male members
of the Congress. At the same time, civilian humanitarian agencies had
254 Margaret Vining
begun to expand, preparing to again organize a vast network of wartime
volunteer activities as they had in the First World War. War planners,
recalling disruption and confusion caused by the numerous overlapping
volunteer services in World War I looked to regulate their services in this
war. Women, too, were rejecting the civilian volunteer model and pushing
instead to be included in military ranks as part of the national mobilization
program.
In the United States, as elsewhere, opposition to women’s military ser-
vice was widespread, not only among members of Congress and the mili-
tary, but also in the general public. Only a national emergency on the scale
of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 would
compel the reluctant Congress to move forward on long-pending legislation
calling women to military service. In order to undercut the War Depart
ment’s aversion to recruiting women for the regular army, Congresswoman
Edith Nourse Rogers, a longtime proponent of full military status for
women, introduced legislation to establish the Women’s Army Auxiliary
Corps.
Within two years, eight women’s services had been created in the United
States, six of them military. The Army Nurse Corps and the Navy Nurse
Corps were already several decades old when the war began. They were
soon joined by the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), established
in 1942, then converted to a regular component of the army in September
1943 as the Women’s Army Corps (WAC); its members were universally
referred to first as Waacs, then Wacs. The U.S. Navy created the Women’s
Reserve of the Naval Reserve, naming it WAVES, for Women Accepted for
Volunteer Emergency Service; its members were nicknamed Waves. SPAR
was the Women’s Reserve of the Coast Guard Reserve. The name was not
an acronym but an abbreviation of the U.S. Coast Guard motto “Semper
Paratus”; individual members were termed Spars. Sixth among the women’s
services was the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve (MCWR). Two of the eight
services were ostensibly civilian, though they performed military duties:
the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) and the Cadet Nurse Corps
of the U.S. Public Health Service. Government publications provide the
best documentation of the development of policies surrounding the estab-
lishment and organization of the women’s corps. Laurie Scrivener (1999)
assembled an excellent bibliography of pertinent government publications
to shed light on that process. Her primary sources were drawn mainly from
the University of Oklahoma Libraries’ Government Document Collection,
where she was social sciences reference librarian. Well annotated, the
bibliography covers publications of the services, congressional activity,
recruiting brochures, flyers, and pamphlets, recruiting posters, and miscel-
laneous booklets and pamphlets.
Members of the women’s services were volunteers. Opening the military
service to women overshadowed the efforts of humanitarian organizations
to fill their ranks with women as they had with great success in the First
World War. The prospect of official uniformed military status, military pay,
educational opportunities, and the excitement of travel proved all but
irresistible; women flocked to join the armed forces. Adapting military
policy and administration to regulate women’s work and behavior in an
institution so deeply rooted in the traditions of male order and discipline
proved complicated for all armies. Military officials in the British
Commonwealth had only recently begun to encounter unanticipated com-
plications. Proponents of women’s military service stressed the importance
of strict military authority and control over women’s war work that would
be lacking if they were civilian volunteers. U.S. Army officials, including
the new director of the WAAC, Oveta Culp Hobby, consulted with British
and Canadian military authorities to draw from their experiences in estab-
lishing women’s services. After the first year, the army converted the WAAC
to the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), more nearly resembling the British
organization and giving its members some military privileges. American
servicewomen’s pay moved closer to that of their male counterparts.
Among other changes, the new status required formal commitment to
terms of enlistment and made women subject to military discipline. In a
contemporary account, Nancy Shea (1943) observed and documented the
introduction of women to the first somewhat naive policies and expecta-
tions of the army. Following policies similar to those of most other armies,
U.S. officials made efforts to house women auxiliaries in camps separate
from those of men. Otherwise, as Ronald Spector (1985, 395) observed of
Wacs serving in the Pacific where separate camps were impractical, they
lived in “barbed wire compounds” for protection from the perceived threat
of “sex starved GIs.”
Policies were mixed concerning enlistment of black women into the
services. Protests against the segregation of black women and assertions
that it had a negative effect on enlistment were offset by the government’s
contention that integration would cause white enlistment to fall off. Martha
Putney (1992) and Brenda Moore (1996), both of whom entered the WAAC
when it was created, have written accounts of their service based on per-
sonal observations that are well worth reading. Moore (2003) has also
256 Margaret Vining
looked at Japanese-American military women during World War II. Mattie
Treadwell’s classic “Green Book” on the Women’s Army Corps (1954)
remains the best and most comprehensive reference on the subject. She
also devoted a chapter to the slander campaign and another to women in
the Army Air Forces section of the WAC. The WAC Detachment of 9th Air
Force was among the first to compile a postwar unit history (WAC 1946).
Women members of the armed forces received training and education
that were central to their military experiences. Never before had so many
women had opportunities for specialized, disciplined schooling and on-
the-job training in such a wide variety of trades and professions, education
that would benefit them, their families, and communities when they
returned to civilian life. As Janann Sherman (1990, 58) points out in her
essay on the fight for regular status for women in the military, as women
proved themselves they won reluctant acceptance and even the confidence
of their commanders. By the end of the war, categories in which women
could qualify grew from 4 to 239 encompassing a wide range of nontradi-
tional job skills such as athletic instructor, surveyor, motorcycle repairman,
photographer, and pharmacist.
Among the more than 140,000 women who served in the WAC at its peak
were scientists and highly-skilled specialists pressed into service by the
government, quietly using their expertise to further wartime aims. Jordynn
Jack’s (2009) study of women scientists, psychologists, anthropologists,
physicists, and nutritionists on the home front offers compelling insight
into the gendered composition of wartime science. The National Security
Agency pays tribute to women pioneers in World War II who laid the
groundwork for its creation (Wilcox 1988). Dorothy Schaffter’s study (1948)
of women’s military training, written in 1947–48 concurrent with delib-
erations on retaining women permanently in the armed forces, provides
an erudite analysis of effects of armed forces training programs for women.
Much has been written about ways that war service changed the status of
women. As Sherman (1990, 58) astutely observes, “While scholars disagree
about the liberating effects of wartime for women, it is clear that war dis-
rupts traditional patterns and often speeds up social changes” (cf. Gubar
1987; Braybon and Summerfield 1987; Breuer 1997; Anderson 1981; Costello
1985; D’Amico and Weinstein 1999).
At least 20,000 women in the WAC served overseas. Letters home from
women in foreign assignments often reveal they were not out of harm’s
way. The letters of Millie Weinstein (Schaffer and Schaffer 2010) provide a
detailed first-hand account of many of her experiences as a WAC inductee
serving in the European Theater of Operations. Leisa Meyer’s introduction
to this collection of letters brings invaluable insight to women’s military
service overall. War correspondents assigned to the ETO, quite a few of
them women, found that every reporter and photographer moving into
the war zone had first to be accredited to a particular branch of the service
in order for the War Department to keep track of them. Nancy Sorel’s work
(1999) on the women reporters and photographers who wore U.S. Army
uniforms near the front lines in Europe exposes a little known incidence
of women’s military service. Lilya Wagner’s (1989) slender volume offers a
series of vignettes on the wartime experiences of U.S. women war reporters
and journalists, while providing entertaining facts about a surprising num-
ber of them at home and abroad.
When the U.S. Navy in 1942 created the WAVES, naval planners clearly
intended them to serve only as reserves during a national emergency, not
auxiliaries like the Wacs. Black women were initially barred from joining.
The WAVES reached peak strength of 88,000 officers and enlisted women.
Among them were navy scientists engaged in special projects that linked
academic science at major universities and research centers to national
defense. Kathleen Broome Williams (2001) profiles four such women who
were dedicated to research and development in fields of oceanography,
meteorology, computer science, and scientific administration. The WAVES
tended to attract more college-educated women than the other services.
With officer training classes located at exclusive Smith College, Waves
more often qualified for specialized jobs such as translators for the U.S.
Military Intelligence Service. In their history of navy women, Jean Ebbert
and Marie-Beth Hall (1993) devote 70 pages to the Waves, placing them in
the context of the larger story of women’s roles in American naval history.
The WWII section of their book provides a concise and quite readable
overview of WAVES from its inception until the end of the war.
Shortly after the navy brought women into its ranks, the U.S. Coast
Guard followed suit with its SPAR. More than 10,000 women ultimately
served in the SPAR before it was terminated in June 1946. Women marines
were enrolled under the same law that authorized navy women but the
marines lagged behind the navy, establishing its women’s reserve corps in
1943. As the navy and coast guard did, the marines accorded women the
same military privileges as men. The Marine Corps Women’s Reserve lacked
an officially assigned acronym, but its members were inevitably tagged
with imaginative, usually unflattering, unofficial names: Lady Leathernecks,
SheMarines, and FeMarines, to name a few. The Navy Department enlisted
258 Margaret Vining
18,840 Women Marines for wartime service. Unlike the army, in which
women wore ill-fitting feminized versions of men’s quartermaster-pro-
duced uniforms, the naval services gave considerable attention to provid-
ing smartly designed uniforms for women members. A clothing allowance
enabled them to purchase authorized uniforms and accessories, including
the specified “Montezuma Red” lipstick and nail polish that matched the
red cording on their uniforms. Until 1944, women in the naval services were
restricted to duty in the continental United States, but later were allowed
to serve elsewhere in the Americas.
Joy Bright Hancock’s reminiscence (1972) represents one of the few
memoirs of a military woman to appear before the fiftieth anniversary
commemorations of World War II prompted an outpouring of women’s
war stories. A high-ranking WAVES officer, she presents an instructive,
informative work that is more history of women in the navy than personal
memoir. Mary Stremlow (1996), herself a retired member of the USMCR,
drew from official documents and personal observations to publish exten-
sively on the development of the women’s corps in the Second World War
and beyond. Peter Soderberg’s (1992) collection of stories by women
marines captures their varied remembered experiences. Since the early
1990s women, both military and civilian, have more willingly recounted
their wartime experiences in memoirs and autobiographies. Although
enlisted women are neither fully nor proportionately represented in print
when compared to officers, Irene Brion’s (1997) memoir focusing on her
tour of duty in the South Pacific is the best. The edited letters of Lt. Col.
Betty Bandel (2004) captivate the imagination. They are fascinating in ways
that a surreptitious reading of expressive personal letters can be. Emily
Yellin’s (2004) important work brings to light the range of diverse jobs
undertaken by women in the United States during the war. Eleanor
Stoddard (1997a) devoted considerable time and effort to collecting mem-
oirs of military women in World War II in the form of transcripts and tapes
which are in the California State Library, Long Beach Archives. Stoddard
(1997b) also compiled a useful bibliography of published memoirs of mili-
tary women in World War II.
Members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, an organization univer-
sally known by its acronym, WASP, considered themselves military. WASP
founders, Jacqueline Cochran and Nancy Harkness Love, offered proposals
as early as 1939 to U.S. officials to organize women pilots to fly noncombat
and ferrying services in the United States, citing the massive production
of combat-ready aircraft already underway. Even in the face of a growing
need for military pilots, the Army Air Corps declined the offer, turning
instead to older male civilian pilots. Prospects for women pilots improved
after Cochran and 25 women pilots moved to England to train women
pilots for ferrying military aircraft for the Royal Air Force. Following the
U.S. declaration of war in December 1941, the shortage of combat pilots
grew so serious for the American Army Air Forces (Army Air Corps before
1941) that recruiting women pilots began to appear practicable.
The Air Transport Command’s official history holds a wealth of docu-
ments and correspondence relating to establishment and operations of the
WASP (Marx 1945). The command first approved Nancy Love’s proposal
to hire women pilots for ferrying planes. Her Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying
Squadron went into service in September 1942 (Air Transport Command,
Historical Office, n.d.). The pilots received their first assignments to form
ferrying squadrons at New Castle Army Air Force Base in Delaware, where
one contingent served under the command of Lt. Colonel Barry Goldwater.
Cochran, who had counted on becoming the sole organizer and head of an
American women’s wartime flying operation, hastily returned to America
to set up a training program for women pilots, the Women’s Flying Training
Detachment (WFTD), of which she became director (Parrish 2008). One
of her original licensed women pilots, Jean Hascall Cole, has written a his-
tory of the organization (Cole 1992). A contemporary WASP chronicler,
flight instructor Cornelia Fort (1943), had witnessed Japanese planes attack-
ing Pearl Harbor from the air while training a student pilot on 7 December
1941. At least three other WASP pilots have written books recounting their
experiences: Ann B. Carl (1999) focused on her assignment at Wright Field
in Ohio as a test pilot; Marion Stegeman Hodgson (2005) recounts her
WASP experiences through correspondence, primarily letters exchanged
with her mother; and Ann Noggle (1990) whose beautiful art book of pho-
tographs includes portraits of WASP members as older women. Hers is
introduced by an informed concise history of the WASP by member Dora
Dougherty Strother. The disbandment of the WASP organization was the
dissertation thesis of non-WASP Molly Merryman (2001) which she
expanded into a first-rate book.
An astonishing 25,000 female pilots volunteered, of whom 1800 were
accepted, and more than 1000 completed the necessary additional flight
training in military aircraft to qualify as air force pilots in the quasi-military
flying unit. For the sake of expediency they were assigned civil service
status pending a military service category designation. The women’s
detachment initially went to Avenger field in Sweetwater, Texas. These
260 Margaret Vining
pilots were featured in a Life magazine cover story in 1943, a photographic
essay that provides a fresh contemporary look at the “girl pilots”(Anonymous
1943). As more women qualified, both ferry and training groups spread to
other airfields; 52 target-towing women pilots went to Camp Davis in east-
ern North Carolina, where 15 female pilots were part of a secret training
program for pilots qualifying to fly radio-controlled drone planes (Stallman
2006). Wearing men’s flying suits, they gradually moved up from decrepit
cast-off civilian planes to fighters, bombers, and a range of up-to-date
military aircraft.
In July 1943 the two units were consolidated into the WASP. The com-
manding general of the AAF, General Arnold, approved for them a distinc-
tive new designer uniform and Walt Disney created a special patch for
WASP pilots, the Fifinella, that became their badge of honor. WASP duties
included delivering new planes from factories, flying military planes across
the country and abroad, training new pilots, and trailing targets for gunnery
practice, occasionally taking live rounds (Gutierrez 1992). According to
David Stallman (2006), whose book centers on the Camp Davis contingent,
by the end of the war WASP pilots flew upwards of 60 million miles on 78
different types of aircraft; each woman qualified in almost a dozen different
planes. Overall, their losses were fewer than those of male pilots flying
comparable hours and missions. There were 38 members killed on active
duty, including Cornelia Fort (Verges 1991). Still, the AAF prohibited use
of the traditional American flag on coffins of WASP casualties, provided
no funds to defray burial expenses, no benefits for families, and no honors.
In the spring of 1944, as WASP pilots were entering more sophisticated
experimental flying assignments, it seemed likely that their program would
become a permanent part of the Army Air Force. Despite General Arnold’s
strong backing, however, legislation to give them military status was nar-
rowly defeated by the Congress. WASP members were deactivated in
December 1944 as civilians.
Veteran status was denied them ostensibly to safeguard against “water-
ing down” military or veterans’ benefits (Morden 1990, 41). In 1949 more
than a hundred members accepted commissions in the new U.S. Air Force
with rank based on their time as WASPs, but they were not accorded flying
privileges. After deactivation, members of the WASP pushed for more than
thirty years to attain veteran status, succeeding in 1977, albeit too late for
many WASP veterans. Very few wartime “civilian” organizations applied
for and succeeded in gaining belated veteran status. In 2009, the Congress
approved a bill awarding a Congressional Gold Medal to the Women
Airforce Service Pilots. (Keil 1979; Bird and Botes 1982 Holm 1982; Van
Wagenen 1990; Scharr 1986; Cornelsen 2005; Gallagher 1998). Margaret
McCaffrey (1998, 6, 7) used the history of the WASP to suggest how a gen-
der analysis might illuminate the impact of technological change on “the
nature of modern warfare and soldiering.”
Women in Military Service in Russia

Thousands of determined, civic-minded women, eager to defend the Soviet
Union in the Great Patriotic War in 1941, were initially rebuffed (Krylova
2004). Beginning in 1942, however, the German onslaught drew the entire
Soviet population into war service; female military formations mobilized
for the Red Army, joining both ground and air forces in far greater numbers
than women entered the armed forces of belligerents elsewhere. Accounts
of women’s roles in the Russian armed forces were muted for almost forty
years after the war, and many unanswered questions await more serious
inquiry. For example, the indeterminate number of women in the Soviet
ranks in the years after Hitler’s Wehrmacht unleashed Operation Barbarossa
in June 1941, and particularly the desperate battle for Stalingrad, represents
an untold combat history of military women of epic proportions. Ordered
to take no prisoners, the German army left in its wake tens of thousands
of captives summarily executed. German Field Marshall Günther von Kluge
ordered specifically “Women in uniform are to be shot” (North 2006). Only
a few of the hundreds of works published about Barbarossa mention that
a significant number of women were among the Soviet soldiers facing
slaughter. Susanne Conze and Beate Fieseler’s (2000) overview of the “blind
spot” in the history of the war points up important areas of Russian wom-
en’s participation that invite more study.
The postwar Soviet Union promoted a heroic, masculine “patriotic war”
narrative that belied women’s significant activities in the war (Markwick
2008, 404). Literature on women’s roles in the war, particularly English
language works, emerged slowly. S. Alexiyevich’s (1988) translated work
represents an early and compelling series of personal accounts of Soviet
women at war. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent dis-
integration of the Soviet Union opened up connections with Europe and
Western culture, helped give voice to Russian women’s military past.
Barbara Engel’s (1999) work does exactly that, asking what the war meant
to the women who took part in it and using their experience to challenge
the authorized memory of the war. The studies of Euridice Cardona and
262 Margaret Vining
Roger Markwick (2009) are exemplary. Their well-researched works on
women in the Red Army, including formation, recruitment, and service of
the all-women Rifle Brigades units are immensely informative. They pro-
vide historical context and analysis, and do not overlook implications of
gender relations in wartime Soviet society. Markwick (2008) also examines
critically the memoirs of numerous veterans, primarily nurses and snipers
in the Red Army, bringing invaluable insight to Soviet women’s military
history. Kazimiera Cottam (1998) and Reina Pennington (2001) have given
us well-researched studies of Soviet airwomen in combat. Nevertheless, a
great deal more remains to be done to synthesize women’s roles in Soviet
military history (Campbell 1993; Sakaida 2003).
German Women in World War II

Hitler’s negative views of women as soldiers protected women who were
not nurses, in theory, from German military service. In practice, however,
beginning in 1939, hundreds of thousands of women participated in their
country’s martial endeavors. Publications in the English language on the
subject of German women’s participation in WWII military activities were
almost nonexistent until the late twentieth century. Without question,
German women shouldered the war-making machinery equally with their
male compatriots although there are few works to bring them fully into
the picture. Much of what they actually did in the military organization of
the Third Reich has been obscured; archives were destroyed in the war and
extant official documentation is rife with contradictions. But in the wide
sense, the concerted militarization of the entire population after 1943 gave
every citizen a greater role in the process than in most other nations
(Maubach 2009). Ute Frevert (1989, 2004) broke new ground with analyses
of German women’s place in society and their military roles in particular.
Karen Hagemann accurately points out in chapter 13 of this volume,
“women in the Third Reich had to support the Second World War far more
actively than scholars have long assumed.” Her research and well-informed
work has not only mitigated the paucity of English language works about
women in the Wehrmacht, she has introduced research that situates them
strategically as a vital element of the organization of its armed forces. Other
research on German women’s wartime activities is emerging. Evelyn
Zengenhagen’s (2009) study of German women pilots brings to light little
known incidences of women serving as test, ferrying, and fighter pilots in
the Luftwaffe, “wearing uniforms and holding the rank of captain.” Women
pilots in popular gliding clubs had been excluded from military duties until
late in the war when experienced female pilots were drafted into the
National Socialist Flying Corps (Zengenhagen 2009, 10).
German women’s military work under totalitarian rule is the subject of
numerous works in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century,
advancing theoretical as well as empirical studies in the field. Both Ute
Frevert (2004, 225–39) and Eric Taylor (1989) skillfully expose myths sur-
rounding war work and the frequent use of semantics in defining women’s
military service in Nazi Germany. Jeff Tuten (1982), D’Ann Campbell (1993),
and Russell Hart (2008) each bring valuable insights to issues of women in
combat. Margaret and Patrice Higonnet’s (1987) plausible assertion that
“war must be understood as a gendering activity, one that ritually marks
the gender of all members of a society” and that it “draws upon preexisting
gender definitions at the same time that it restructures gender relations”
is an inescapable conclusion (see also Scott 1986). A more recent volume
edited by Karen Hagemann and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (2002) illus-
trates that historians have begun to analyze the mutual influence of war
and gender, shifting the conversation from women to gender and thereby
developing a more sophisticated theoretical and methodological frame-
work for historical analysis. Hagemann (2002, 31) points out that this is
fruitful for researchers working in the history of the military, war, and
gender because it adds the dialectic of men and masculinity to the equation
of historical research. It also encourages an integrative history of the era
of the world wars that equally encompasses the economy and society,
culture and politics, as well as the military and warfare, making the inclu-
sion of gender history self evident, given that it is far more nowadays than
a history of women.
As need arose, women formed uniformed auxiliaries in all three branches
of Germany’s armed forces. They were first attached to the army to fill
administrative jobs in Germany’s expanding occupied territories. Compul
sory military service for women followed. By 1944, the Corps of Female
Signals Auxiliaries, the Corps of Welfare Auxiliaries, and the Corps of
Female Staff and Economics Auxiliaries were combined into a single Corps
of Female Auxiliaries. Women in the German army, assigned civil service
status and subject to the full range of military law and military discipline
were never officially designated soldiers. German military authorities
remained unyielding in their insistence upon nonmilitary status for wom-
en’s service; the ambiguity of women’s formal place in the German armed
forces continued unaffected for the duration of war while officials stub-
264 Margaret Vining
bornly asserted that uniformed national service was but a vital “political
education” for women. This remained the case even after women had taken
over many of the duties of German military men. In the final months before
Germany’s defeat, women held a high percentage of previously all-male
administrative posts and an even higher percentage of the frontline anti-
aircraft artillery auxiliary positions. The last vestige of Nazi insistence on
nonmilitary status for women turned out to be the ban on issuing firearms
to women, a prohibition that persisted as defeat closed in on Berlin. In the
end, Hitler authorized an armed women’s military corps to shame male
soldiers, but the war ended before his order took effect (Stephenson 2001,
103; Williamson 2003; Hart 2008; Tuten 1982).
Japanese Women on the Home Front in World War II

In Japan, as in other contemporary fascist states, patriarchic officials were
throughout the war reluctant to impose systemized mobilization on
women fearing its impact on family structure. From the beginning, Japanese
women were expected to adhere to strict wartime austerity measures and
lend themselves to maintaining social stability through traditional wartime
female duties. Anticipating a long duration of the war, the government
instituted a plan to raise the birth rates by nearly half. According to Havens
(1975, 928), Japan’s pronatalist policies, “promoted early marriages, set up
matchmaking agencies, and asked companies to pay baby bonuses to their
workers.” Wartime exigencies soon forced women to take on wider respon-
sibilities. National registration and voluntary patriotic labor associations
brought some women into war work early. By 1944, however, enrollment
for volunteer labor became compulsory, drawing women into the general
national labor force to work in aircraft manufacturing and other essential
industries under more centralized and efficient management (Cohen 1947,
303). Efforts by Japanese women to resolve the deep conflicts between their
traditional roles and wartime demands would produce revolutionary post-
war consequences (Havens 1975).
Women in Resistance and Underground Movements
Women in countries occupied by Axis powers often took an active part in

resisting forces of aggression and occupation. Written records of wartime
resistance movements are disparate and uneven, usually concentrated on
specific movements in a single country with little mention of women.
West European Resistance Movements
Bob Moore’s (2000) edited work is singular because it provides an unparal-
leled introduction in English to the resistance movements in Western
Europe during World War II, one that does not overlook women’s activities.
He has drawn together in one volume a series of studies by contributors
who define resistance in their country of expertise: Pieter Lagrou provides
the study for Belgium, Louise Willmot for the Channel Islands, Hans
Kirchhoff for Denmark, Olivier Wieviorka for France, Gustavo Corni for
Italy, Dick van Galen Last for the Netherlands, and Arnfinn Moland for
Norway. It also includes a useful country-specific bibliography. Hanna
Diamond’s is a cogent and comprehensive work on women in the French
Resistance. Most important, her interpretation speaks to the plight of
France under German occupation, acknowledging the participation of all
citizens. Marie-Louise Osmont’s (1994) diary of the war years gives a gentle
insider’s account of being forced to share her home, Château Périers, first
with occupying German officers and then with British soldiers. The wid-
owed Osmont and her servants defended her home in the village of Périers,
near Caen in Normandy, throughout German occupation and then endured
the battle of liberation by British soldiers.
Gender as a category of analysis here again proves useful in facilitating
a common history of women in resistance movements as Paula Schwartz
(1987; 1995) has demonstrated in her exceptional works on the French
Resistance. Margaret Weitz’s (1995) portrayal of the French Resistance
through interviews with women who fought to free France brings to light
a wide range of often perilous activities they braved under harsh occupa-
tion. Margaret Rossiter’s (1986) exciting-to-read study looks at resistance
activities of individual women in France and includes a section of images.
Shelley Saywell (1985) also captured first-hand accounts of women’s par-
ticipation in partisan and resistance organizations in France, Italy, Poland,
and the Soviet Union. Although women’s activities in underground and
resistance movements throughout German-occupied Europe varied accord-
ing to local circumstances, they also shared a number of common features.
Yehudit Kol-Inbar (chapter 14 in this volume) provides an illuminating
discussion of Jewish women’s work in the underground and in partisan
warfare. Much of what she writes applies equally well to non-Jewish
women, both East and West.
266 Margaret Vining
Resistance Movement in Eastern Europe
The edited volume of Nancy Wingfield and Maria Bucur (2006) offers excel-
lent essays that bring attention to women in Bohemia and Moravia,
Romania, Poland, and the siege at Leningrad. Women did not usually
engage directly in combat operations, though there were important excep-
tions, especially in Eastern Europe. In the twentieth century as in the nine-
teenth, they tended instead to fill the long-familiar roles of women in civil
and irregular wars, acting as couriers and spies, nursing the sick and
wounded, providing such basic support services as administration, cooking,
laundering, and intimate relations (Hacker, chapter 4, this volume). Barbara
Jancar’s (1982) revelatory essay on women’s roles in Yugoslavia’s war of
resistance examines the relationship between women and the Yugoslav
military from a historic perspective, drawing from their past experience in
an effort to inform the future of women in the armed forces.
Biographies and memoirs of women in underground movements draw
an intimate picture of the lives of participants. Sonya N. Jason’s (2009)
biography reveals the underground work of Maria Gulovich, a Slovakian
schoolteacher who was hired by the United States Intelligence Agency’s
Office of Strategic Service (OSS) as a liaison agent for both Russian and
American groups. More exciting than the best fiction, the riveting spy
escapades recounted in the biography won Gulovich the Bronze Star which
was presented to her at the United States Military Academy at West Point
NY in 1946. The memoir of Maria Savchyn Pyskir (2001), who was active in
the Ukrainian underground, discloses much about the work of the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (UKN) during Polish oppression,
Soviet conquest, and finally, German invasion. Despite many hardships
and personal losses, Pyskir remained active in the UKN until 1954 when
she immigrated to the United States and raised another family.
Finland’s corps of uniformed women, auxiliary to the Finnish Civil
Guard, formed during World War I, named themselves the Lottas in 1920
for Lotta Sväin, heroine in a historic Finnish poem. Their duties were sim-
ilar to those of auxiliary corps in other nations—nursing, air surveillance,
signal training, and working in field post offices. Most trained nurses in
Finland served in the military reserves although only Lotta nurses wore
military-type uniforms. Their uniforms made them role models for the large
numbers of hastily recruited auxiliary workers imposed by the crisis, as Lea
Henriksson (1999, 317) makes clear:
The uniform symbolised the unity of the profession and served as a kind of
‘visiting card’ of sisters in civil service. A strict dress code signaled that nurses
were not private persons, but civil servants with a certain degree of knowl-
edge and skill.
Without that model, the challenge of integrating into the wartime nursing
system might have been insuperable. For Finland, World War II was divided
into the Winter War (1939–40) against the invading Soviet army, and the
Continuation War (1940–44, in which Finland, now allied with Germany,
sent most of its able-bodied men to fight with the German army in Russia.
This left the Lottas to manage the home front. Their duties expanded with
the war, along with their numbers, increasing to 173,000 by 1943 (Allen
2008).
The Anti-Japanese Resistance

In Southeast Asia, the Japanese invasion and capture of the Philippines in
December 1941 coincided with the ongoing upheaval of peasant-based
organizations engaged in a struggle to reform the oppressive Philippine
tenancy system. In response to harsh Japanese occupation, a guerrilla
resistance movement took shape among peasant farmers in villages and
mountains in the spring of 1942, the People’s Anti-Japanese Liberation
Army (Hukbalahap). The movement became known as the Huk Rebellion.
Vina Lanzona (2009, 7) points out that Huks were important because theirs
was the first major political and military organization in the Philippine
Islands to include women and actively recruit them. Guerrilla enrollment
swelled after a Huk group headed by a female guerrilla leader, Felipa Culala,
took retaliatory action against Japanese soldiers and Filipino policemen,
killing almost 100 and capturing a supply of weapons and ammunition. The
Culala raid was the first big news from the organized anti-Japanese resis-
tance movement and it greatly heartened others in the faction (Kerkvliet
2002). Culala, who later took the name Dayang-Dayang, was an early leader
in the People’s Anti-Japanese Liberation Army. At the height of the guerrilla
movement in the Philippines, an estimated one in ten active guerrillas was
a woman (Lanzona 2009). After the 1944 Japanese defeat, the Huk peasants
continued to agitate for agricultural reform until the early 1950s, while
women rose in their ranks to become important community and political
leaders. Vina Lanzona (2009) takes a fresh look at the Huk Rebellion from
the viewpoint of Filipino peasant women. Her meticulous research makes
clear that women did actually gain agency through their participation in
268 Margaret Vining
the movement. The opportunities they embraced as communist warriors
and their training as soldiers and spies drilling in the use of weapons, made
many of them highly skilled in the arts of war. Lanzona’s work alters the
perception of peasant women in the Philippines.
In the Philippines and elsewhere, the Japanese Imperial Army estab-
lished a system of “recruiting” into military service “comfort women” to
provide sexual companionship to soldiers, a military practice that expanded
rapidly after 1939 and persisted throughout the war. The system was osten-
sibly set up for two reasons; to control sexually transmitted diseases and
to discourage the rape of local civilian women by Japanese soldiers. Early
in the Sino-Japanese War, Japanese Imperial forces brought into its occu-
pied territories as comfort women only Japanese professional women.
Thereafter, they turned to mobilizing large numbers of women from China,
Korea, Taiwan, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, and other Asian
countries into the army’s comfort women system, generally using some
form of coercion or force. The Japanese navy had a system that was not as
far-reaching. In the 1990s, after fifty years of denial, official documents
confirmed Japanese military authorization of the system. Since then, details
of its organization, its broad reach, and its destructive consequences have
come to light. The authoritative work of George Hicks (1997) was among
the first to appear in English. Yuki Tanaka’s (2001) comprehensive book
documents the system from inside out. Through the use of military orders
and correspondence, photographs, interviews, and personal accounts, he
presents a thoroughly researched history of the system of comfort women.
Tanaka also wrote the introduction to an autobiography of a Filipino
woman, Maria Rosa Henson (1999), who was forcibly inducted into the
Japanese Imperial Army’s comfort women system as a fifteen-year old. Her
heart-wrenching story of prostitution and slavery is illustrative of the worst
savagery against women in wartime. The George Washington University’s
(n.d.) website on Memory and Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific offers a
superb bibliography of the literature on comfort women.
Military Women in China

A military history of Chinese women remains to be written. Kazuko Ono
(1989) gives women a place in the century of Chinese revolution that began
in the mid-nineteenth century. Autobiographical works by women in China
reflect their participation as soldiers during the protracted revolutionary
turmoil of the first three decades of the twentieth century. Vignettes of
women in China written in the 1920s and 1930s by Agnes Smedley (1976),
herself an ardent feminist and revolutionist, give voice to their varied and
unsettled lives, illustrated by photographs of uniformed women soldiers
from the author’s collection. The autobiography of Xie Bingying (2001),
who served as a cadet in the Northern Expedition of 1927 against the war-
lords, then returned to service a decade later in the war against Japan,
depicts a passionate nationalist who loved the military because it promised
national redemption; photographs show a uniformed Xie with her hair
shorn, the identifier of the modern liberated women. Young’s (2007) study
of Chinese women soldiers on the Long March that saved the Red Army
from destruction by its nationalist foes in the mid-1930s preceding the
Anti-Japanese War is an excellent primer for placing women in the context
of the period of the Second World War. It includes a month-by-month
chronology of the march.
The Second Sino-Japanese War, also known in China as the Anti-Japan
ese War (1937–45), occurred amidst intense internecine strife caused by
competing ideals and visions in the revolutionary upheaval of a rapidly
modernizing China. Women’s lives in the war years were as complicated
as their options were varied. Not only were many women active resistance
workers and partisans, they also participated routinely as soldiers in con-
flicts between the factions. But the greatest number of women entered the
armies of the emerging Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Communism
held the promise of liberation for women, a way out of abject poverty and
the rigid constraints of such outmoded customs as arranged marriages and
the painful practice of foot binding. In 1937, the CCP gained an uneasy
respite from the ongoing civil war with the nationalistic Guomindang
(GMD) Party when both parties agreed to temporarily establish a united
front against the invasion of the Imperial Japanese Army (Williamsen 1992).
After their country’s overwhelming defeat by Japan, China’s women were
thrust into every aspect of war service: under Japanese occupation a wom-
en’s resistance movement took shape that became a critical arm of the
united front. In 1938 the War of Resistance and the women’s movement
rose in unison, merging hundreds of women’s organizations to form a
Women’s Steering Committee that enabled women from all factions to
combine resistance forces against Japan. The united front included many
women’s combat groups. Some of the notable ones were the Hunan War
Zone Service Corps that accompanied fighting troops from Shanghai to
Hankou, the Yunnan Women’s War Zone Service Corps that marched 3000
kilometers to the battle lines of central China, and the Guangxi Women’s
270 Margaret Vining
Fighting Corps who walked 4000 kilometers to fight against Japan (Ono
1989, 163–70).
Women on the Home Front
Mobilizing Women in Britain and the Commonwealth

Hostilities with Germany were looming in 1938 when British military plan-
ners turned in earnest to mobilizing for war against an enemy that could,
and soon would, inflict destructive attacks upon Britain. Already in the
interwar period the government had initiated contingency plans for pro-
tecting the civilian population from the massive air attacks that were
expected to be a major part of the German war strategy. It faced a formi-
dable task; evacuating three-and-a-half million people from the cities into
relative safety of the countryside. This required developing an immense
infrastructure of transport, lodging, and food for evacuees, and schooling
for hundreds of thousands of students. The medical service alone for such
a migration was extraordinary—not only would it provide wartime health
care for dislocated citizens, it also survived to form the foundation for a
postwar British National Health Service. The 1937 Air Raid Precautions Act
called for 800,000 volunteers to structure an overall civil defense program
in the cities that would accommodate the anticipated millions of injured
citizens and returned injured servicemen. Air Raid Precaution members
issued hundreds of thousands of gas masks and easy-to-assemble air raid
shelters, instituted emergency evacuation procedures, enforced blackout
regulations, established an Auxiliary Fire Service, and prepared for the
great number of casualties predicted by contingency planners. At the same
time, large-scale rearmament and military buildup dramatically changed
the shape of the labor force (Brayley 2005, 42). The War Office expected
that women would be required in all segments of industry as well as in the
armed forces everywhere in the British Commonwealth. Nevertheless,
women had to lobby the government to get even a small voice in the poli-
cies that would regulate the roles they would have in the war. British
Minister of Labor Ernest Bevin, whose job it was to oversee mobilization
of women, expressed concern about the effects of the extensive conscrip-
tion of women on “the standard of domestic life” (Summerfield 1984, 185).
But during the so-called Phony War, the half-year between the fall of
Poland in October 1939 and the 1940 German spring offensive in the West,
British civil defense measures swiftly brought the realities of the imminent
offensive into public consciousness, overriding concerns about such mat-
ters as domestic life in Britain. In addition to those women who flocked to
join the armed forces, women also donned uniforms to take their places
in a bewildering array of civilian organizations, usually labeled by acronym:
ARP (Air Raid Precautions) and AFS (Auxiliary Fire Service), WVS (Women’s
Volunteer Service), ROC (Royal Observer Corps), MTC (Mechanized
Transportation Corps), NAAFI (Navy, Army, Air Force Institute), HG (Home
Guard Auxiliary), WAPC (Women’s Auxiliary Police Corps), CD (Civil
Defense), WTC (Women’s Transport Service, the former Fannies), WLA
(Women’s Land Army), WTC (Women’s Timber Corps), to name a few.
Following a temporary surge in unemployment while factories moved
into war production, many women moved into new wartime jobs but not
nearly enough to fill the need; compulsory service began in January 1942.
Conscription of women was disorganized and unsystematic and women’s
organizations protested the lack of comprehensive planning, contending
they had been treated as an afterthought in the overall process. Despite
this, women made up approximately one-third of employees in Britain’s
metal and chemical industries, vehicle assembly, transport, utilities, and
shipbuilding. Their positions in white-collar occupations also tripled
(Summerfield 1984, 29). When Prime Minister Churchill stated that the
“frontline runs through British factories,” he referred not only to factories
as targets of bombings, artillery bombardment, and later, V1 and V2 rockets,
but also to their absolute necessity in Britain’s defense. War casualty figures
often omit the deaths of civilians; British civilian casualties accounted for
15 percent of the wartime total of British subjects killed and missing
(Brayley 2005, 3; Jones 2006). Penny Summerfield and co-authors (1984,
1993, 1998, 2007) have devoted considerable research and study to the lives
of British women during wartime, bringing well-researched observations
to circumstances of their mobilization and employment, and to govern-
ment policies relating to childcare and household maintenance. The study
of the Home Guard by Summerfield and Peniston-Bird (2007) is instructive
in that it integrates evidence from multiple sources to deconstruct earlier
accounts of the HG and bring out sound fresh interpretations. Asa Briggs’s
(2000) brief tribute to workers on the home front, although far from com-
prehensive, relies upon fascinating and evocative photographs, posters,
cartoons, and other wartime memorabilia from collections at the Imperial
War Museum. The museum itself, focusing on twentieth-century conflicts
from the First World War to the present, has contributed much to the lit-
erature of women and war in the form of books, monographs, and exhibit
272 Margaret Vining
catalogs. Martin Brayley’s (2005) compendium of illustrations and vignettes,
though a brief 64 pages, offers knowledgeable and noteworthy observations
about government procedures that shaped civilian activities during the
war (see also Goldsmith 1943). The social research organization, Mass
Observation, intended by its founders to “create an anthropology of our-
selves,” developed an extraordinary collection of studies of the everyday
lives of ordinary people in Britain between 1937 and the early 1950s.
Sheridan’s (1990) excellent edited Mass Observation anthology on wartime
women, drawn from the Mass Observation archive, exemplifies the value
of this public resource. The archive is now housed at the University of
Sussex.
At the end of the war, members of the Women’s Land Army pressed
unsuccessfully for veteran status and a pension comparable to that of civil-
ian conscripted women. First organized during the Great War in 1915 as an
adjunct of the Food Production Department of the British Board of
Agriculture, and sustained with assistance from the welfare officers of
various counties throughout England and Scotland, the land army’s “land
girls” ploughed, milked, weeded, and even felled trees (Scott 1986). Demo
bilized in November 1919, the Women’s Land Army was reorganized in
1939, a few months before the outbreak of the Second World War, in a
semi-official arrangement with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.
Considered a mobile force, members might be assigned anywhere in the
country. They received authorized uniforms, a very modest subsistence,
and one week of leave each year. The work was hard, the hours long and
the pay low. Land girls who worked in the southern and eastern areas of
England were issued gas masks and helmets because they could reasonably
expect to experience explosions of flying bombs and antiaircraft guns.
Nicola Tyrer (1996) brings thoughtful insight to the workings of the
Women’s Land Army in her well-informed organizational history. By 1945,
membership reached close to 100,000 women laboring to maintain the food
supply in the United Kingdom after extensive imports of agricultural prod-
ucts were drastically curtailed early in the war. In 1942, an offshoot of the
land army the Women’s Land Army Timber Corps, took over the forestry
work of the organization. Almost 5,000 “lumberjills” worked in British
forests felling, loading, crosscutting, and measuring timber; driving tractors,
trucks, and horses; and operating sawmills. They wore the standard land
army uniform with the exception of a special green forestry beret and
badge.
After the war, women who had served in the Women’s Land Army and
Timber Corps and were excluded from perquisites enjoyed by women
veterans of the military services. Moreover, their claims for civilian benefits
comparable to the postwar awards to civilian women war workers were
likewise rebuffed. Joan Mant’s (1994) anecdotal remembrances collected
half a century after the war from land army veterans, and Marion Kelsey’s
(1997) land army diary both vividly illustrate the best and worst of wartime
farm work experiences. Kelsey, a Canadian, followed her soldier husband
to England where she worked as a British “land girl” in the fields while he
was away at the front. Land armies in Australia and New Zealand also
worked the fields to support home front food production. They also sup-
plied food provisions for American forces stationed there even as they
produced essential products for Britain. In her concise account of the
structure and duties of the Australian Women’s Land Army, Jean Scott
(1986) includes reports of the keen disappointment felt by veterans at the
absence of postwar recognition, or even acknowledgement, of their service.
The government benefits offered to Australian women land army veterans
were negligible and difficult to obtain. Australian Land Army veterans
petitioned for forty years after the war to be allowed to participate in the
Anzac parade, the country’s annual national day of commemoration.
Women’s Land Army survivors were allowed to march for the first time in
the 1985 parade. In 2008 the British government acknowledged the tremen-
dous efforts of the Commonwealth’s Women’s Land Army and the Women’s
Timber Corps organizations by presenting surviving members with a spe-
cially designed commemoration badge.
Elsewhere in the British Commonwealth, recruitment of women for war
industries was forceful, although in most places the threat of aerial attack
remained small. In 1942 military service had already drawn a portion of
Canada’s men and women, exacerbating the demand for women workers
in industry. As a result, 255,000 Canadian women were recruited into war
industries by 1943 through a National Selective Service recruitment cam-
paign similar to the one in Britain (Pierson 1986). Mari Williams’s (2002)
study of female munitions workers in South Wales is another important
contribution to women’s military history. She brings to light the impact of
women’s wages—unaccustomed income that brought a new independence
to housewives. She also looks at wartime daily life in close communities,
paying attention to concerns about the effect of work for pay outside the
home on the quality of domestic life. For wartime New Zealand, Deborah
Montgomerie’s (1996) examination of ideologies of femininity and stereo-
typical depictions of gender differences also provides important insightful
analysis.
274 Margaret Vining
Mobilizing American women. The threat of imminent enemy attack never
seriously extended to the American mainland. A year before the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, drew the country formally into the war,
President Roosevelt (1940) instituted a Lend Lease program to supply vast
shipments of arms and material to allied nations, calling America the “arse-
nal of democracy” for a war-stricken Europe. After America entered the
war, the induction of men into the armed forces swiftly created so severe
a labor shortage that even employers prejudiced against hiring women
were forced to do so. Burgeoning war-related paper work drew thousands
of women to government office jobs, especially in the War Department, as
secretaries, stenographers, data tabulators, file clerks, and many other roles.
Indispensable to the war effort, what they did nonetheless remained largely
unacknowledged as authentic war work and little has been written about
them.
War work meant something quite different in the 1940s. The War
Manpower Commission’s vigorous propaganda campaign idealized the
image of the war worker woman and “portrayed her as the strong, compe-
tent, courageous ‘unsung heroine of the home front’” (Yesil 2004, 103). But
until late in the twentieth century, public knowledge of the enormous share
of work shouldered by the wartime female labor force remained seriously
lacking. The “Rosie the Riveter” poster gained a human face only with the
proliferation of biographies, memoirs, and other works stimulated by the
war’s fiftieth anniversary commemorations. Kathleen Endres’s (2000)
account of women’s work in Ohio rubber factories, Amy Kesselman’s (1990)
study of women shipyard workers, Penny Coleman’s (1995) “Rosie” for
young readers, and many others are bringing attention to the critical war
work of civilian women.
From the closing decades of the twentieth century onward, a significant
amount of scholarly inquiry centered on the powerful wartime influences
on women’s lives, their self-images, and their work outside the home. Bilge
Yesil’s (2004) work looks at the interplay between wartime propaganda
and advertising that surrounded depictions of women war workers. She
analyzed common themes in government propaganda documents and
advertisements in mainstream women’s publications to develop a reveal-
ing picture of ways propaganda messages worked to encourage or coerce
women’s assimilation into the labor market when they were needed, and
conveniently draw them back to the kitchen when they were not (Yesil
2004, 114). Maureen Honey’s (1984) study of themes in advertising and fic-
tion that shaped wartime women’s public image (and their self-image) was
the first and remains among the best works on this topic. Susan Hartmann’s
(1982) classic work synthesizing women’s social, political, and domestic
history in the context of the war, emphasizes the complexities of the wom-
en’s roles. Jennifer Purcell’s (2006) brief essay considers ways that women
thought of themselves in relation to the war. Doris Weatherford’s (1990)
survey is a useful primer that looks at nurses, women in the military, indus-
trial work, and aspects of the home front that have not been adequately
addressed by scholars of military history. Judy Litoff and David Smith (1994)
use wartime letters written by a cross-section of U.S. women to foster
understanding of how they perceived their participation in the war effort.
Melissa McEuen’s (2011) work examines the popular war rhetoric of WWII
with a particular focus on impressions of women advanced by their depic-
tions in public media. Trey (1972) provides an informative analysis of the
contributions of women’s work to the wartime economy, with a discerning
discussion of the postwar joblessness of thousands of disillusioned women
war workers.
Volunteer associations that placed thousands of uniformed workers in
numerous military-related duties in the First World War would be more
carefully controlled and directed in this war. Six of the religiously affiliated
social welfare organizations, the YMCA, YWCA, Jewish Welfare Board,
Salvation Army, National Catholic Community Services, and Travelers Aid
Society cooperated with local defense or war councils and the federal
government to establish national policies under two entities for taking care
of military personnel, the United Service Organizations (much better
known by its acronym, USO) and the American War-Community Services,
Inc. Not long after the war ended, Brooks Creedy (1949) documented an
obscure YWCA program for war production workers and Bertha McCall
(1950) described the wartime relationship between the National Travelers
Aid Association and community services. The USO is regularly conflated
with the entertainment oriented USO-Camp Shows which was affiliated
with the USO only for the purposes of financing and administration. Carole
Landis (1944) offered a light and amusing look at the experiences of
actresses in a USO-Camp Show troupe.
More recently, Gretchen Knapp (2000) carefully detailed the politics of
tailoring special USO and community service units for regional and national
needs and for maintaining a vast network of social service outreach pro-
grams for soldiers away from home. Women who volunteered as USO
hostesses performed “women’s work” as war service in quasi-state organi-
zations. Several other recent studies have explored the contradictions
276 Margaret Vining
surrounding women’s participation in wartime morale-boosting, primarily
in the USO and community services. They look particularly at the ambi-
guities of official policy as it related to civilian women who were, according
to Marilyn Hegarty (2008, 129), “all absorbed into the military machine in
some way. But most of these women received little recognition from their
country for their conscripted services.” Meghan Winchell (2008) also crit-
ically analyzes the implications of women’s roles in providing companion-
ship and hospitality for servicemen when they were off duty.
Another major recruiter of volunteer labor was the American Red Cross.
In almost every town across the nation a vast network of Red Cross volun-
teers provided tons of clothing and supplies for military hospitals, soldiers,
and overseas victims of the war. Volunteers served doughnuts and coffee
from Clubmobiles to thousands of soldiers overseas. Although civilian
volunteer workers are routinely mentioned in histories provided by Red
Cross organizations, James Madison’s (2007) biography of one such mobile
canteen volunteer reveals the work to be more complicated, strenuous,
and dangerous than one has been led to believe.
Many women volunteered in such secular organizations as the American
Women’s Land Army, modeled on the British example in both world wars.
In World War I, the land army was a progressive, semi-private organization
primarily associated with women’s colleges that hoped to develop profes-
sional education techniques to modernize agriculture along scientific lines.
The land army’s ultimate goal of securing a postwar role for women in the
agricultural labor force never materialized (Weiss 2008). The land army of
the Second World War was not a direct descendent of the earlier organiza-
tion, though it shared some features with its predecessor. As farm workers
left for military service and women family members could not take up the
slack, women and urban youth were drawn into agricultural work through
vigorous model programs such as the Volunteer Land Corps that began in
New England and spread to other areas. These were usually supported by
agencies created through local initiatives—desperate farmers, civic orga-
nizations, and private local and regional associations. In 1943, after pro-
tracted debate, the Department of Agriculture established an Emergency
Farm Labor Program that called upon farmwomen to raise food for the war
cause. It promoted the use of motorized field equipment and other farm
machinery, technology that was previously marketed solely as masculine
machinery.
Little has been written about the Women’s Land Army of the Farm Labor
Program. Farming was classified in America as a vital war industry and
many farmers received military deferments and exemptions from military
service. As Jellison (1993) points out, farmers in the Midwest rejected the
land army, favoring family members as farm hands instead—mostly farm-
women who had a vested interest in the output of the farm and were more
knowledgeable about the jobs and how they should be done. When wives
and daughters took on the work of absent field labor, they were sometimes
relieved of domestic duties in the home by hired help. Recruitment cam-
paigns for the Farm Labor Program stressed that in the civilian “Crop Corps”
women “Tractorettes” would be behind the wheel only temporarily, return-
ing to the farm kitchen at the end of the war, even though the work of
farmwomen had never been restricted to the farmhouse. Carpenter (2003)
devotes a chapter to World War II in her work. Entitled “A Call to Farms:
Tractorettes,” it is an exceptional analysis of women’s experiences in the
land army.
The wives of military men have long been institutionalized and used to
provide necessary, if unacknowledged, services in tandem with their hus-
bands (Doreen Lehr 1996). In World War II, many wives pulled up roots
and traveled to wherever in America the husbands’ assignments took them.
Others remained at home while their husbands were overseas, often vol-
unteering for some kind of war service, always temporary, sometimes paid,
usually not. Those who followed their husbands lived under military rules,
often in deplorable conditions, stratified in the military community by
gender and husbands’ rank, and enigmatic to the civilian community (Lehr
1996, 30–31). The Women’s Defense League of Macon and the Infantry
School Women’s Club of Fort Benning, Georgia, published Clella Collins’s
extraordinary compilation of useful and practical information for army
wives in 1942. Remarkably, the handbook offers only one chapter on mili-
tary courtesy. Collins’ observation that “every girl in America is a potential
Army wife today,” reflects the overriding militaristic attitude in the civilian
community early in the war.
Women Join the Armed Forces
The two world wars of the twentieth century changed the nature of warfare,
expanding in scope any previous wars in terms of territory, technology,
and domestic involvement. This was a new class of warfare, total war, in
which soldiers and civilians equally were combatants. It challenged every
belligerent nation to maximize the use of national resources for military
278 Margaret Vining
purposes. For centuries women were assigned support roles in armies,
mostly as unpaid volunteers, but the face of the female volunteer changed
dramatically as armies multiplied in size, reaching an apex during in Great
War when hundreds of thousands of women provided volunteer support
for the armies. Although their nonsoldier volunteer support roles had
seldom been acknowledged as necessary, by 1939 it was commonplace for
women to feature as essential elements of military planning for wartime
mobilization. The institution of women in the military marked the begin-
ning of a major shift in the definition of women’s role in war (McCaffrey
1998). They then entered a work world that was previously dominated by
men; military recognition of the importance of women’s service to national
defense lagged behind their transformation from peripheral unpaid vol-
unteer to full members of the armed forces. Viewing women’s war work
within the framework of a traditional conception of women’s place in the
family and society, war planners were loath to acknowledge it as serious
military service. In the six-year duration of World War II the most salient
and potent national resources for expanding national armies were the
contributions of women. Included in this work are numerous examples of
unrecognized support occupations that constituted national military ser-
vice of women in World War II. This was particularly the case in countries
that came under aerial bombing attacks.
The induction of significant numbers of women into previously all-male
uniformed armed services in World War II brought immediate and unan-
ticipated consequences for both women soldiers and military organiza-
tions. This chapter points up the vehement opposition across the
mainstream and in military organizations to what was believed by many
to be violation of a time-honored principle. It discusses some of the extraor-
dinary logistical problems associated with the induction of women soldiers,
particularly in the British Empire and the United States. Less has been
studied about women in authoritarian and occupied countries where gov-
ernments met wartime exigencies by drawing heavily from the female
population. More often than not these women performed national military
service in supposedly nonmilitary positions. Almost everywhere women’s
work was described in euphemistic terms to avoid confronting the actual
soldierly activities in which they routinely engaged. For example, use of
the phrase “political education” to describe the duties of German female
wartime units reflects the unbending notions of women’s proper roles
among officials in dire need of their services.
In Russia and China women were inescapably drawn into frontline
action; they often formed their own special air warfare battalions, fighting
units, and participated in resistance and partisan activities. Much more
investigation is needed into women’s military involvement during World
War II in a number of geographical areas. Almost everywhere, the substan-
tial female presence in armed forces indicates that military women will
take an increasingly larger role in shaping future war-making strategies.
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290 Margaret Vining
Almost Integrated? 291
chapter seven
Almost Integrated? American Servicewomen and Their

International Sisters Since World War II
D’Ann Campbell
Making American women soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines was the
most dramatic break with traditional gender roles that occurred in the
twentieth century. World War II was a watershed event and much has been
written about servicewomen’s roles during that conflict (See Vining, chap-
ter 6, this volume). Servicewomen’s roles in the second half of the century
have attracted much less attention and what has been written often focuses
on a theme such as women in combat or on a single branch or war such as
nurses in Vietnam. This essay will provide an overview on the various and
changing roles that servicewomen have played since World War II and
suggest roles servicewomen will play in the American military of the future.
The analysis will include the contributions and limitations faced by service-
women during wartime—Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, the Middle
East—and during peacetime. It will highlight turning points such as the
Army-Navy Nurse Act and the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act
of the late 1940s. The watershed decade of the 1970s saw the near passage
of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; the admission of
women to Officer Training Corps, Officer Candidate School, Reserve Officer
Training Corps, and the service academies; and the replacement of the
draft by an all-volunteer force. During the tumultuous 1990s, American
servicewomen served valiantly in the Persian Gulf, a catalyst for congres-
sional repeal of the combat restrictions of the 1948 Integration act. It also
prompted the Secretary of Defense to replace the “risk rule” with “direct
ground combat,” opening an additional 32,700 army positions to women.
Finally, this essay will compare and contrast the roles of servicewomen in
other nations, especially members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), which have in some cases led, in others followed, American exam-
ple.
The American armed forces imposed no universal set of roles for women.
Each of the services set its own rules and regulations. In addition, relatively
292 D’Ann Campbell
little has been written from the perspective of the enlisted ranks, with the
notable exception of Judith Hicks Stiehm’s Arms and the enlisted woman
(1969; see also Stiehm, chapter 16, this volume). Moreover, the roles and
regulations of military nurses are distinct from other military women; their
histories, too, most often remain separate. Men were first allowed to serve
in the nurse corps in the 1950s, for instance, a key event seldom mentioned
outside histories of nursing. In fact, only two books, both about navy
women, treat nurses together with other military women in depth (Ebbert
and Hall 1993; Godson 2001). Even within a single branch, the rules have
changed, sometimes multiple times, as to training women in mixed or
segregated units. Only marine policy has never changed—women marines
train in segregated units. While each service is separate and different, we
can agree with Judith Hicks Stiehm (1985, 157) that “the most dramatic
differences in women’s implicit contracts … are found not by contrasting
the terms set by each of the services but by examining how those terms
have changed over time.” This essay, then, will focus on general trends and
turning points in servicewomen’s history since World War II.
First Steps toward Integration
By the end of World War II, nurses had secured a critical role for themselves
in any future force. The army had formed its nurse corps in 1901, and the
navy followed suit in 1908. Once the air force separated from the army, it
created its own nurse corps in 1949. During World War II nurses had “rela-
tive rank,” which meant that they had neither the same pay and benefits
as male officers nor the same authority over men. They received equal pay
only in 1944. With the passage of the Army-Navy Nurse Act in 1947, nurses
became commissioned officers rather than appointees. Men were allowed
to join the nurse corps in 1955. In 1957 Public Law 85–155, 85th Congress,
provided “retirement pay equal to all other officers in the Regular Army,
and authorized retirement in a grade equal to the highest temporary grade
held for six months” (Piemonte and Gurney 1987, 6, 20, 25, 34).
Whether or not women other than nurses would have a military role in
the United States after World War II was not so clear. Those who served in
women’s reserves during the war—army WAACs/WACs, navy WAVES,
women marines, and coast guard SPAR—had volunteered “for the dura-
tion.” As the war wound down, policymakers remained divided on whether
women should be part of any future American armed forces, either as
reserves or as regulars. Senator Margaret Chase Smith insisted that women
must be members of the regular and reserve forces, arguing that “they either
need these women or they do not” (Sherman 1990; 2000). Led by Smith
with strong support from top army and navy officers—Gen. Dwight
Eisenhower and Adm. Chester Nimitz both testified in favor of the bill
(Leviero 1947; Holm 1992, 116–17)—Congress in 1948 passed the Women’s
Armed Services Integration Act.
Integration did not mean equality. The law restricted women to 2 per-
cent of the forces and prohibited them from commanding men. It also
prohibited women in the navy, marines, and air force from combat roles
in planes and ships. Although not mandated to do so, the army soon
adopted similar policies. As part of the Department of Transportation in
peacetime, the coast guard faced no such restriction and later would pio-
neer women’s service at sea. A month after the women’s integration act,
President Truman issued executive order 9981. Intended to end racial dis-
crimination in the armed forces, it did not end racism. While African-
American women had served in segregated army and navy units in World
War II, they did not serve at all with the U.S. Marine Corps until 1949. Being
black and female remained a double handicap. Col. Clotilde Bowen, an
African-American physician who served with the U.S. Army Medical Corps
in Vietnam, judged the sexism worst. Interviewed by the Baltimore Sun
about her experience, she explained (as quoted in WIMSA n.d.) that:
Many assume you are weak and inferior, not very capable. At best, you are
patronized. At worst, there is just outright discrimination. But it’s not so
much because you are black, but because you are a woman. The Army is
learning, often painfully, how to accept blacks as people. But it is still uptight
about women.
Taken together these acts and orders had a widespread impact on the
American armed forces. For the next fifty years, American policymakers
and the military would struggle first to implement the acts and orders and
later to modify them because of the changing nature of war and society.
With the services wanting to keep “their” women in uniform and needing
women to fill the ranks of the all-volunteer force, barriers began to crumble.
By 1967, Public Law 90–30 lifted the 2 percent cap. Before the end of the
century, all limitations and restrictions were modified or eliminated.
Wars in Korea and Vietnam
An analysis of women’s changing postwar roles must begin with women

recruited after the 1948 integration act. For research on the challenges of
integration, readers can begin with works by Martin Binkin and Mark
Eitelberg (1982), Charles Moskos (1966), and Alan Gropman (1978).
Interestingly, the coast guard actually integrated ships during World War
II (Tilley 1996). For roles played by black women, consult works by soci-
ologist Brenda Moore (1990, 1991) and political scientist Cynthia Enloe
(Enloe and Jordan 1985). For more on nurses during the Korean War, con-
sult Susan Godson (2001), Frances Omori (2000), Margaret Moore (1985),
and Mary Sarnecky (1999). For the marines in particular, consult Peter
Soderbergh (1994).
Linda Witt and her colleagues at the Women in Military Service for
America foundation offer an excellent study of servicewomen in the Korean
era. As they (Witt et al. 2005, 12) observe, “the armed forces attempted to
establish a permanent place for women at an inauspicious time.” Few
women enlisted before the summer of 1950 and the outbreak of war in
Korea, which tended to undermine the claim that women were necessary
in the regular armed forces (Witt et al. 2005, chapters 5 and 6). The admin-
istrative posts to which the integration act limited them were not particu-
larly attractive, and even the incentive of travel—a major inducement to
WAC recruiting in World War II—was sharply restricted. Of the approxi-
mately 120,000 women in uniform during the Korean conflict, only 540
army nurses were stationed in theater (Piemonte and Gurney1987. 26;
Manning 2008, 3). Ninety navy nurses served aboard three hospital ships
in Korean waters throughout the conflict; navy nurses served in 25 foreign
posts as well; a particularly coveted assignment was a medical evacuation
unit in which one nurse and two corpsmen flew missions to Korea to pick
up the wounded for return to Japan. While no military woman died in
combat, 29 navy nurses and 18 enlisted WAVES perished during the war,
most in plane crashes (Godson 2001, 185, 187).
Vietnam was the next war to test the “proper” roles of servicewomen.
While records were not well kept regarding gender, approximately 7000
women served in theater, only 10 percent of them WACs, including 75
African Americans. Almost all served in intelligence. With the exception
of nurses, women landing an assignment in Vietnam found life extremely
difficult for many reasons. Among the worst were deplorable living condi-
tions without separate facilities, extreme humidity and heat. Women also
lacked weapons training (Holm 1992, 205–13; Morden 1990, 282). Nurses
comprised 90 percent of the American women in uniform who served in
the Vietnam theater. Four navy nurses received the Purple Heart for their
wounds when a car bomb exploded in Saigon in 1964 (Sterner 1997, 310–11;
Holm 1992, 242).
In addition to attending the other personnel of the Military Assistance
Advisory Group (Vietnam), as early as 1956 three army nurses were assigned
to train South Vietnamese nurses. In March 1962, ten army nurses arrived
at the 8th Field Hospital in Nha Trang. By 1965 there were 215 army nurses
in the Vietnamese theater (Piemonte and Gurney 1987, 32, 45, 50). More
than 5000 army nurses served in Vietnam through 1973, peaking in 1969 at
over 900 (Piemonte and Gurney 1987, 54, 57). Navy nurses began serving
in Saigon hospitals in 1963. Marine Corps divisions used only male navy
nurses. Most navy nurses were stationed at the Naval Support Activity
Hospital, Danang, which treated over 70,000 patients and boasted only a
1.5 percent death rate. While the hospital ship Repose remained in
Vietnamese waters, 145 navy nurses worked in a 721-bed unit and helped
treat 24,000 inpatients (Godson 2001, 213–16, 232). On 11 November 1969,
1st Lt. Sharon A. Lane died in an enemy rocket attack on the 312th
Evacuation Hospital in Chu Lai. She was the only army nurse killed by
enemy action, but seven others died in helicopter or plane crashes in coun-
try.
Responding to the continual shortage of nurses, many volunteered for
a second tour of duty, and the nurse corps made extra efforts to recruit
minority nurses (WIMSA n.d.). Nurses who had experienced service in
World War II and Korea found their tours in Vietnam the hardest of any.
The wounded seemed so young, just boys, and the war seemed so fruitless.
Many of these nurses became pacifists (Sarnecky 1999, especially 350, 359,
377–78; Campbell 1990). As the largest group of American military women
in Vietnam, nurses have been the subject of much oral history. Many oral
history collections include servicewomen other than nurses as well.
Interested readers should consult the works of Elizabeth Norman (1990),
Kathryn Marshall (1987), Keith Walker (1985), and Ron Steinman (2000).
Joe Dunn (1989) has provided a useful bibliography.
The Vietnamese women who fought in the war have also found their
voices. Karen Turner and Phan Thanh Hoa (1998, 22, 37) interviewed doz-
ens of Vietnamese women soldiers. One of their findings was that their
government wanted them to have “courage in battle without losing their
womanly virtues.” After the war, women soldiers were marginalized while
their male counterparts received acclaim for their heroism and sacrifices.
Often bearing the scars of their service and perceived as “older,” many
returning female soldiers never married. Through the use of materials col-
lected by the Rand Corporation and through personal interviews, Sandra
Taylor (1998) documents the long history of Vietnamese women soldiers,
not as victims but as active participants in their history. Young women or
girls were recruited because American soldiers initially did not see them
as a serious threat. Other women served as porters or replaced Vietnamese
men in the fields in order to free them to fight. Like Turner and Hoa (1998),
Taylor discusses the poverty and illness that Vietnamese women faced after
the Americans left. For other works from the Vietnamese women’s perspec-
tive and other women guerrilla fighters, see William Duniker (1982) and
Shelley Saywell (1985).
Postwar Blues
More influential for the future roles of American servicewomen than the
Vietnamese war itself was the turmoil surrounding the war. In 1973 the
unpopular war led to an end of the draft and the establishment of an all-
volunteer force. Adding to recruitment problems was a declining birthrate
that even further limited the number of available 18-year-old men. The
falling birth rate was in part offset by immigration, especially of Hispanics,
who often viewed military service as a mark of citizenship (National Center
for Health Statistics 2005). Faced with a shortage of men, the services were
forced to significantly increase the number of servicewomen in the ranks,
which in turn led to a reduction of restrictions on women’s service. First
to vanish was the 2 percent ceiling on active duty servicewomen. In 1973
women comprised 1.6 percent of the active duty force; by 2005, 14 percent
(Manning 2008, 14). The 1973 Supreme Court decision Frontiero v Richardson
helped by ruling that female service members would receive the same
dependents benefits as their male counterparts. In 1975 the discharge
policy for pregnancy became voluntary, not mandatory. The next step was
to integrate servicewomen more fully by merging basic training and elim-
inating the last of the women’s corps; by the end of the decade, all women’s
units established in 1948 had been dissolved. See Bettie Morden (1990) and
Ann Allen (1986) for the army, Mary Stremlow (1986) for the marines, Susan
Godson (2001) and Winifred Quick Collins (1997) for the navy, Jeanne Holm
(1992) for the air force, and John Tilley (1996) for the coast guard. Constantly
changing regulations complicated the situation. Judith Stiehm (1985) iden-
tified seven distinct cohorts of enlisted army women who served between
1952 and 1976. The one constant was the reluctance, even hostility, of female
military leaders toward accepting changes that established and opened
roles for women in uniform (Holm 1992). In 1947, for instance, all directors
of the women’s corps in World War II opposed establishing permanent
corps, though voicing their opposition only off the record. Perhaps the
Washington battles they had experienced persuaded them that the military
would never accept women on equal footing and they hoped to protect
women from a permanent second-class status. Retired Air Force Maj. Gen.
Jeanne Holm (1992, chapters 10 to 13) concluded that the women leaders
in the years from 1950 to 1980 feared that opening up more roles for women
could threaten their future existence in the regular military. Judith Hicks
Stiehm (1985, 169, also 156, 157) agrees with Holm but concludes that “on
balance, those women may have been overly defensive or protective of the
old female military culture.” It could also be that some agreed with the
British officer who explained that she had a “right to be different” (Dandeker
and Segal 1996, 42).
Besides Vietnam and the all-volunteer army, another issue also pro-
foundly affected servicewomen. In 1973 Congress sent the Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA) to the states for ratification. Much of the ERA debate
centered on the future roles of servicewomen, especially issues of drafting
women and forcing them into combat. The intertwined feminist and anti-
war movements complicated the issue (Titunik 2000). As political scientist
Cynthia Enloe (1994, 89) remarked, “the emergence of peace activism
within the 1970s–1980s women’s movement … made the issue of women
in the military either seem to be trivial or ideologically awkward.” Some
feminist scholars argued that military service is an indispensable part of
full citizenship. The majority were either ambivalent on the subject or
wanted neither men nor women to fight (Feinman 2000; Enloe, 1983;
D’Amico and Weinstein 1999; Katzenstein and Reppy 1999). Political sci-
entist Jane Mansbridge (1986) persuasively argued that the public’s reluc-
tance to see women drafted or serving in combat was the key reason for
the defeat of the ERA. Pacifism turned out to be the only significant gender
difference between men and women voters; women were 10 to 15 percent
more dovish than men (Goldstein 2001, 329; Leal 2005; Center for American
Women and Politics 1997).
Women Enter the Service Academies and Military Schools
Women in the military did not join the debate; they neither used feminist
language nor saw themselves as feminists. Though concerned with tearing
down barriers that limited their careers, they did not view equality with
servicemen as part of a feminist agenda. After all, as Jane Mansbridge
pointed out, ERA lost because of the ambivalence of feminists who did not
want to be drafted (nor volunteer) for military service. (Mansbridge, 1986,
2000; Stiehm, 1985, 156–57; D’Amico and Weinstein, 1999; Holm 1992).
What’s more, women in units or those attending the service academies
often avoided or disparaged other women, while men were bonding with
other men. These cadets and servicewomen could tell that “females” were
treated as second class citizens and wanted to prove to the males that they
were special and should be treated better than “females” especially feminist
females. (Adams 1980, 141; see also Barkalow 1990; Mace 2001; Disher 1998;
Gelfand 2002). In addition to the all-volunteer force and tensions between
pacifism and the ERA, a key decision in the 1970s allowed women to attend
the military service academies: the U.S. Military Academy at West Point,
the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, and the U.S. Air Force Academy at
Colorado Springs. The U.S. Coast Guard Academy at New London, unlike
the other three, did not fall under the Department of Defense. An agency
of the Department of Transportation between 1967 and 2003, it moved to
the Department of Homeland Security in 2003. That academy announced
that it would take women in its 1976 class (Tilley 1996).
Officer training schools and the Reserve Officer Training Corps had
already opened their doors to women; the air force in 1968, the army and
navy in 1972. But it took an act of Congress to force the army, navy, and air
force academies to follow suit. If training men for combat was their mission,
they argued, the academies could not accept women, who were statutorily
excluded from combat. But was it their mission? Many academy graduates
were commissioned into combat support units or combat service support
units—units like the medical corps and the judge advocate general legal
office (Vitters and Kinzer 1977, xii). Most male graduates of the Air Force
Academy, in fact, were never assigned to combat roles. Admitted over
vehement protest, women found rampant discrimination and sexual
harassment. To focus on the experiences of women at West Point, readers
should begin with books by Lance Janda (2002) and Carol Barkalow (1990).
The army, as part of Project Athena, collected more thorough data on
women’s experiences than the other service academies. The army began
collecting data as soon as President Ford signed Public Law 94-106 on 7
October 1975, the authorization for admission of women to the military
service academies. Researchers Jerome Adams, Nora Scott Kinzer, and Alan
Vitters wrote monograph-length studies from 1977 to 1980..
The navy actually had an opportunity to foresee what some of the larg-
est challenges would be when women were accepted to Annapolis because
members of the first class of women enrolled in the Naval Academy’s
Preparatory School at Newport, Rhode Island. The school’s commanding
officer ordered the men to treat the women “as if they were his daughters.”
Thus the women were originally ignored. Then, when the women attend-
ing the prep school won admission to the naval academy and some of the
men did not, anger exploded. Interestingly, African-American midshipmen
at both the 1976 preparatory school and at Naval Academy seemed much
more willing to befriend these women pioneers (Gelfand 2002). The expe-
rience for the midshipmen has been retold by Kathleen Dunning (1978),
Sharon Disher (1998), and Jessica Bertini and Alison Weir (1997). Valuable
information also appeared in the unpublished reports by the Women’s
Midshipmen Study Groups of 1987 and 1999.
To study women’s experiences at the U.S. Air Force Academy, consult
the works of Judith Hicks Stiehm (1981) and Lois B. DeFleur, David Gillman
and William Marshak (1978). Women reported that many blatant forms of
sexual harassment had subsided after a few years, though more subtle
forms persisted. As one upper-class male West Pointer explained, “the
classes of 1978 and 1979 see the women as women. The classes of 1980 and
1981 see them as classmates” (Vitters 1978, xiii). The air force academy
discovered in 2003 that many of its women were still subject to sexual
harassment and sexual assault and that 20 percent of the male cadets did
not believe that women belonged at the academy. One of the first things
the academy leadership did was order the major icon of the academy, the
“Bring Me Men” chiseled across the entering arch, to be removed (Air Force
Inspector General 2004).
Individual academies handled the arrival of women differently. What
constitutes physical fitness was a key and persistently thorny issue for the
academies. The army held to a high physical standard for women with the
first classes, but not as high as for men (Vitters 1978, xiii, xiv; Adams 1979,
xiv). Indeed the army discovered “how to challenge women physically and
push them to new levels of endurance” (Vitters 1978, xvi). The army in
World War II had used the infantry for men rejected by the other branches,
and its performance suffered. After the war, the army made the infantry
prestigious and the other branches less so by insisting that all soldiers
achieve infantry-level physical fitness requirements. Navy and air force
physical standards were much lower than the army’s.
The fitness policy did not easily adapt to women who went into the
noninfantry branches. A lingering result was that a male cadet at West
Point might flunk with the score that would earn a female cadet an A.
Consequently, few men believed that comparable scores that measure
difficulty for each sex are truly equal and fair, despite academy-sponsored
workshops to elucidate the reasoning behind policies of equivalency in
training and tests (GAO 1994, 3–4; Adams 1979; xiv, 199–200; Adams 1980,
140). West Point researchers documented a link between a woman’s score
on the physical tests and her leadership score. Only those who could do
well physically had a chance to be seen as a viable coed leader (Vitters and
Kinzer 1977, 147; Adams 1979, xv). Areas such as academics, where the
female cadets could hold their own, did not count in the male cadet’s
evaluation of future leaders. Project Athena researchers concluded that
“the majority of the women who have resigned from West Point have felt
that their own physical performance was a major factor for acceptance by
their male peers” (Adams 1980, 69). On the other hand, possibly some male
cadets who opposed women’s presence did not believe in equality in the
first place, so their rhetorical arguments were artificial.
Bulimia and anorexic nervosa seem greater problems for women at
service academies than civilian colleges and during the first few years the
academies were poorly equipped to handle such issues. They had not expe-
rienced the malady of an obsessive concern with thinness in their male
cadets. Ironically, none of the academies considered reevaluating the
meaning of appropriate physical fitness. They ignored tests for swimming,
water deprivation, or ability to squeeze through small passages—real life
issues in a military crisis. Instead, the academies catered to anti-women
sentiments by stressing infantry-type tests at which they knew men would
excel, usually featuring upper body strength. Likewise they downplayed
team performance exercises—which replicate real life military experi-
ences—and focused on the artificial case of the solitary individual outside
the team. Many soldiers and sailors have argued that women’s relative lack
of upper body strength should keep them from military service. Conversely,
British policymakers rejected that line of attack on women, tying physical
fitness requirements to the specific job tasks, thus distinguishing between
gender-fair and gender-neutral criteria. (McManners 1996).
Physiologist Everett Harman conducted a series of experiments to deter-
mine if women’s upper body strength could be increased significantly
through training. At the end of the training, the percentage of female par-
ticipants who qualified for very heavy army jobs increased from 24 percent
to 78 percent. In addition, “the average weight lifted onto a two and one-
half ton truck was one hundred and eighteen pounds, and females com-
pleted a seventy-five pound forced march at a four and four tenths mph
rate of speed” (Tragos 2006, 27–28). More specifically, Dr. Harman recorded
that “the trained females perform[ed] 93 percent as many 40-pound box
lifts to a 52” height in 10 minutes as the male controls … [and] towed the
110-pound trailer 82 percent as fast as the males did over the two-mile
mixed-terrain course.” Dr. Harman (1997, quoted in Tragos 2006, 28) spec-
ulated that if the training continued, the differences between the perfor-
mances of the men and women would decrease. Such training was vital
because “physiological differences between male and female physical train-
ing have remained as a barrier of non-acceptance for women” (Adams 1980,
47).
Adding to traditional concerns about uniforms, badges, medals, and
insignia, military policymakers now pondered makeup, jewelry, length of
hair, and even skirts versus pants, as they puzzled over whether to empha-
size or de-emphasize women’s femininity (Vitters and Kinzer 1977, xvii,
148). Even the women cadets and midshipmen themselves disagreed on
whether women should wear slacks or skirts for their Class A and dress
uniforms. An entire class might opt for or be required to wear slacks while
another class called for wearing skirts instead. Women were often teased
whichever uniform they selected, and to add to their discomfiture, their
uniforms were also ill fitting (GAO 1994, 174–75).
Intra-group solidarity overlapped with sexuality, so that male cadets
and midshipmen were also teased if they dated women in their own units,
often seen by some as “sisters” more than as potential girlfriends. The
service academies established dating polices restricting dating of fresh-
men—plebes, swabs, and doolies—and also prohibiting dating within
one’s chain of command. At West Point, female plebes found a common
bond with male plebes that might disappear after the plebe year when the
differences between male and female were reemphasized to the detriment
of the women (Grove 1980). In addition, there was a marked difference
between reactions to male and female leaders by the plebes in the first
summer during Cadet Field Training, and in the second summer during
Cadet Basic Training. Specifically researchers found:
Subordinates in Cadet Field Training indicated that they felt worse follow-
ing negative leader behavior (reprimand) and better following positive leader
behavior (praise), when such behaviors were done by a female leader than
by a male leader. In Cadet Basic Training the reverse was true. Plebes felt
worse following negative reprimands from male leaders and better receiving
praise from male leaders than they did from female leaders. (Adams, 1980,
42)
Although integration came to The Citadel and the Virginia Military
Academy (VMI) almost twenty years after the other military academies,
they recycled the leftover arguments that had been put forth earlier to try
to keep women from attending their institutions. In fact, few Citadel or
VMI graduates ever sought combat roles; the majority at all times planned
civilian careers in business or professions. They added to the old arguments
a new plea for the advantages of single-sex education for men. VMI repre-
sentatives also argued that its “adversative” method (harsh and humiliating
verbal and physical discipline, which the service academies had long since
eliminated) was gender-specific and not suitable for women. However,
federal courts took the position that government institutions were never
allowed to discriminate. VMI followed the Marine Corps model, insisting
that all cadets do pull ups. As a result, fewer than 1 percent of the graduates
at VMI would be women (Strum 2002; Synott 2003).
The first women at The Citadel (1996) and VMI (1997) faced obstacles
similar to those faced by women in the military service academies in 1976
(Brodie 2000; Mace 2001; Manegold 2000; Strum 2002). The Citadel and
VMI were outliers—not all institutions with a strong corps of cadets under-
went such hardships. As historian Marcia Synott (2003, 63) concluded, “a
strong case can also be made that women cadets have initially fared better
in the less rigid institutional cultures of Virginia Tech, Texas A&M, and
Norwich University.” Historian Katherine Irish (2007, 19) found in her study
of Norwich’s integration efforts that the impetus there was largely internal.
This enabled Norwich “to avoid many of the problems experienced by
USMA and VMI.” Women never constituted more than 2 percent of
Norwich’s first cohorts, yet they had relatively little trouble integrating. On
the other side of the spectrum is the Coast Guard Academy, which quickly
moved to 30 percent women and maintained that level. Sociological lit-
erature suggests that a critical mass of women ameliorates the problems
of tokenism (Kanter 1977). As a result, the army, navy and air force aimed
for 20 percent women in their future classes.
Women and War at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century
Relatively few women participated in America’s small wars in Grenada and

Panama during the 1980s—170 in Grenada, 770 in Panama—and those who
did were classified as not serving in combat (Manning 2008, 3). The Persian
Gulf War changed everything. As political scientist Cynthia Enloe (1993,
201) reminded us, “more American women fought in a war zone during the
1990–91 Gulf War than had fought in any American war since World War
II.” Besides watching large numbers of women deployed, the public saw
women performing admirably in a wide variety of roles. Approximately
40,000 women served in theater, about 6 percent of the total deployed
(Manning 2008, 3). Women were killed, wounded, and captured. For indi-
vidual accounts see Rhonda Cornum (1992), Elizabeth Kassner (1993), Molly
Moore (1993), and Mary Stabe (2003). The American public learned that
women were in harm’s way even when the front line was clear (it was more
often than not nonexistent). In addition, women were well integrated. They
echoed what Rear Adm. Paul A. Yost had said in 1983 (as quoted in U.S.
Coast Guard n.d.), “the men and women on our vessels are trained and
function as a team. Removal of women during wartime would degrade
operation readiness while replacement personnel are trained and acquire
experience.” International sisters joined American servicewomen. As part
of Operation GRANBY, approximately 1110 British women were deployed,
2.8 percent of the total British forces. Although smaller in numbers and
percentage than the American armed forces, this was a watershed event,
the first time British women had been deployed to a war zone since World
War II (Dandeker and Segal 1996, 33).
Congress soon repealed combat exclusion laws. First, Congress opened
combat aircraft to women. Then President Bush established a commission
to study the future assignment of women in the navy, air force, and army.
The Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed
Forces (1992) recommended opening combat ships to women, which
occurred two years later. The commission also recommended opening
more (but not all) army military occupation specialties to women. Secretary
of Defense Les Aspin (1994) then replaced the “risk rule” that excluded
women from high-risk combat support positions with a definition of direct
ground combat. This new definition was:
Direct ground combat is engaging an enemy on the ground with individual
or crew served weapons, while being exposed to hostile fire and to a high
probability of direct physical contact with the hostile force’s personnel.
Direct ground combat takes place well forward on the battle-field while
locating and closing with the enemy to defeat them by fire, maneuver or
shock effect.
Aspin’s memorandum included restrictions on women serving “where units
and positions are doctrinally required to physically collocate and remain
with direct ground combat units that are closed to women.” Gwen Gibson’s
1996 dissertation, “Breaking the mold,” offers an excellent analysis of the
reasons policies changed to allow women in combat.
One result of these changes was new opportunities for the promotion
of women officers to general and flag ranks. The first woman to receive a
star was Brig. Gen. Anna Mae Hays in 1970 as chief of army nurses; the first
to receive two stars was Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeanne Holm in 1973 as direc-
tor of WAF (Women in the Air Force). Three stars took another quarter-
century; the first set going to Lt. Gen. Carol Mutter of the Marine Corps in
1996. In 2008 Ann Dunwoody was named to head the Army Materiel
Command and became the first woman to wear four stars (Joyner 2008).
Other firsts for military women have been regularly featured in the media,
and some women have recounted their own experiences: the first women
to go to sea (Tilley 1996); the first to command a ship (Tilley 1996); the first
command master chief petty officer (DiRosa 2007); one of the first fighter
pilots (Cummings 1999); the first black woman combat pilot (Johnson
2007); and the first woman to win a Silver Star, the nation’s third highest
combat medal, since World War II (Tyson 2005). The first woman veteran,
Heather Wilson, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and
served from 1998 to 2009.
Backlash
Gains for military women in the early 1990s provoked a serious backlash.
Sociologist Herbert Blalock’s minority proportion discrimination hypoth-
esis may be helpful in explaining it. As discussed in Rosen et al. (1996,
550–51), Blalock’s hypothesis stands Kanter’s theory of tokenism on its
head. He suggests that the larger the minority group grows, the more it
threatens the majority. Blalock’s hypothesis could then account for the
increased sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. Whatever the
reason, the backlash against American servicewomen was severe.
The 1991 Tailhook scandal was followed by the 1996 revelations of
sexual misconduct at the army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland
(Zimmerman 1995). Policymakers using hotlines, and later surveys by the
Government Accounting Office, soon discovered that sexual harassment,
sexual assault, and rape were omnipresent. Several scholars have written
about the discrimination and sexual harassment faced by turn-of-the-
century military women: Carol Burke (2004), Francine D’Amico and Laurie
Weinstein (1999), Mary Katzenstein and Judith Reppy (1999), and Dorothy
and Carl Schneider (1992). Servicewomen have also chronicled their per-
sonal experience with sexual harassment: Claudia Kennedy (2001), Missy
Cummings (1999), and Kayla Williams (1999). Sexual harassment is not just
an American issue, as witness the British 1995 newspaper headline, “Sexual
harassment ‘rife in army’” (Burke 1995, as quoted in Dandeker and Segal
1996, 45; see also Titunik 2000). While progress was made, the military
service academies and the armed forces in general continued to report
widespread sexual assaults and sexual harassment (Roeder 2007; White
2007). ABC news reporters discovered “over 500 reports of sexual assault
among U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan” (Shine and Sauer 2006). In fact,
sexual assault rates reported by the Department of Defense increased up
to ten times the rate for the comparable civilian population (Kendrigan
2005, 47).
Another result of the backlash might have been that women did not
flock to many of the newly-opened positions. A 2002 RAND study (Beckett
and Chien 2002, 38) found that women are not represented in newly-
opened occupations at a level comparable to the service overall. Thus it is
not clear the extent to which gender representation is reflective of personal
choice or of systemic hindrances to women interested in less traditional
career areas. Alternatively, the majority of women recruits may not have
been especially interested in these male-dominated arms. In terms that
could apply well to the United States, sociologists Christopher Dandeker
and Mady Wechsler Segal (1996, 47) wrote of the situation in the United
Kingdom:
We would predict that even with a formally open system in which all employ-
ment were open to men or women, some arms and services will continue
to be ones in which males are the overwhelming majority and others, such
as the largely administrative Adjutant General Corps, will have very high
proportions of women (officers and enlisted ranks).
Not everyone found sexual misconduct at the service academies and within
the various services surprising. A naval academy graduate and conservative
lawyer specializing in military criminal law, Charles Gittins (as quoted in
Scarborough 2006), observed, “When you put 18- to 25-year olds together
in close quarters, sex is going to happen.” The underlying suggestion is that
if women were not allowed in the academies and in the services, sexual
encounters and perhaps sexual assaults would be eliminated. Others might
have pointed to the Japanese “comfort women” of World War II and sug-
gested that the solution is to treat women as equals, not inferiors, rather
than keeping men and women apart.
Added to the sexual backlash is the issue of gays in the military that has
been openly debated since World War II. Indeed, army policymakers dis-
covered that army servicemen created and spread rumors during World
War II that all WACs were “whores” or lesbians who violated the norms of
appropriate female conduct. The army’s recruitment efforts were seriously
hurt by this slander campaign. In reality, the women were far less sexually
active than the men were, and infinitely less active than the men wanted
them to be (Campbell 1985, chapter 1). Many troubled World War II service-
men warned sisters and girl friends not to enlist in any service because they
would have acquired indelibly bad reputations (Campbell 1985, 37;
Treadwell 1954, 191–218; Meyer 1996).
President Clinton’s compromise “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of the early
1990s regarding gays continued in effect for more than 15 years, without
abating the issue. In fact, 51 percent of Americans in 1977 said in surveys
that homosexuals should be allowed to serve as openly gay or lesbian. By
1993 the percent deadlocked at 47 saying yes and 47 percent saying no.
However, by January 2000 the percentage of yeas was up to 67 (Torres-
Reyna and Shapiro 2002, 621–22). For discussions of gays in the post-World
War II military see Melissa Herbert (1998); Gregory Herek, Jered Jobe, and
Ralph Carney (1996); Lois Shawver (1996); and Oscar Torres-Reyna and
Robert Y. Shapiro (2002). The issue was also an area for discussion inter-
nationally (Scott and Stanley 1994). Based on British data, sociologists
Christopher Dandeker and Mady Segal (1996; see also Harries-Jenkins and
Dandeker 1994) asserted “We would predict that, as with the employment
of women, the current exclusionary position on employment of homo-
sexuals [is] not as fixed as some official pronouncements suggest.” In fact,
in 2002 parliament lifted the ban on homosexuals serving in the United
Kingdom Armed Forces (CWINF 2001: UK). This set an example for other
countries to follow.
Women in Combat
Women in uniform continued to serve effectively in newly-opened roles

in Afghanistan and Iraq, winning medals, commendations, and public
approval (Tyson 2005). In 2007, 14.3 percent of the 1,365,571 personnel in
American forces were female. The army had the most (71,100), trailed by
the air force (64,430), navy (48,755), and marines (11,706). But the air force
had the largest percentage of women, 19.6, followed by the navy (14.7 per-
cent) and the army (13.7 percent), with the Marine Corps again last at 6.3
percent. The coast guard had 4,950 female personnel, 12.2 percent (Manning
2008, 14). Not only were more women serving as a percentage of the total
force, they also wrote and spoke about their experiences in the media (Ruff
and Roper 2005; Moniz 2005; Holmstedt 2007, Skiba 2005; Wise and Baron
2006). In fact, the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings of December 2007 was a
“Women in the military issue,” devoted entirely to stories and accounts of
women serving in Iraq with each of the services.
Unlike the Persian Gulf War of 1990–91, when the possibility of service-
women coming home in body bags aroused official consternation, fewer
seemed concerned about servicewomen slain in the wars of the early
twenty-first century. By the end of the fifth year of Operation Iraqi Freedom,
almost 100 women were among the 4,000 military personnel who had lost
their lives. The media seemed particularly reluctant to feature service-
women amputees. One notable exception was the program on women
amputees aired by ABC Nightline in 2005 (Akers 2006, 13–14). There were
remarkable instances of mother/daughter and mother/son serving in the
military, even serving together in the Middle East (Mother/son quoted
online at H-Minerva 2007; Bacque 2007, 2–3). More highly publicized were
the women guards implicated in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib
Prison (Jeffreys 2007; Karpinski and Strasser 2005). Questions, still unan-
swered, arose as to why only reservists, many of them women, were pun-
ished (Wright 2006, 68, 71, 87). Others questioned why the rank-and-file
were basically the ones punished when the policy of torture was initiated
by top American leaders (Anonymous 2008; Johnston and Shane 2008). Of
course the woman Prison Commander, Janis Karpinski, was also demoted
(Karpinski and Strasser 2005).
Amid the controversies raging over torture and sexual orientation, ser-
vicewomen and their supporters have fought to maintain the combat roles
opened to them. Intense opposition to women in combat was led by Elaine
Donnelly and the Center for Military Readiness. Resting on the claims that
the army bent or ignored its official policies to accommodate women in
Afghanistan and Iraq, Donnelly’s repeated assertion was: “The military …
is on the cutting edge of liberal social change” (Scarborough 2006). At her
2006 conference, “Respect for women: Where is the military taking us?”,
Donnelly’s invited speakers reviewed the growing number of wounded
women and children. There, Kate O’Beirne, Washington editor of the
National Review, asked, “Does our national security really have to rest on
single parents and teenage girls?” (Scarborough 2006). Issues of women
leaving their children without a parent were thus added to the reasons
repeatedly articulated by those who believed that American women should
not serve in combat roles.
On the other hand, a 2007 congressionally commissioned RAND Cor
poration study found a lack of public understanding of key concepts and
such terms as “direct combat” and “collocation.” It found that military
policies “do not seem well suited to the type of operations taking place in
Iraq” (Harrell et al. 2007, xiv, xv, xix). An example of this ambiguity and its
results is Pfc. Monica Brown, the second woman since World War II to win
a silver star, for her heroic efforts in Afghanistan. Brown, a medic, repeat-
edly treated her wounded comrades while also dodging enemy fire. Yet
after Vice President Cheney pinned the third highest combat medal on
Brown, she was removed from her cavalry unit. Her platoon commander
explained that because of the army restrictions on women in combat, she
should not have been allowed on such a mission and he was making sure
that it did not happen again. He defended his action of allowing her on
that mission, explaining that she was the only one available at that time
to help rescue the wounded soldiers. She “was one of the guys, mixing it
up, clearing rooms, doing everything that anybody else was doing” (Tyson
2008). In other words, she could do the job and did, but the unit had not
followed the current army policy.
To protect the army from more embarrassing incidents, the same RAND
study (Harrell et al. 2007, xx.) recommended recrafting “the assignment
policy for women to make it conform—and clarify how it conforms—to the
nature of warfare today and in the future and plan to review the policy
periodically.” Naturally, reviews of women’s combat roles reopened the
debate on whether women should be in combat at all. Conversely, it was
cogently argued that policies should catch up with the nature of current
wars and the military, not the reverse. A large literature already exists on
women’s historic combat roles and proper military roles. A good starting
point to understand the pros and cons of the debate about whether or not
women should be in combat is Lorry Fenner and Marie DeYoung’s Women
in combat (2001), which highlights the basic arguments and provides a rich
bibliography. An older but still useful resource, especially for its interna-
tional perspective, is Nancy Goldman’s Female soldiers (1982).
One of the basic fears of those opposed to women in combat was that
they would reduce military efficiency and cohesion. The history of World
War II demonstrates that hundreds of thousands of women in countries
other than the United States performed well in combat operations. They
served on antiaircraft artillery crews in Britain and as frontline soldiers and
combat pilots in the Soviet Union. The United States at that time refused
to allow women in combat because the army high command feared hostile
public opinion and also worried that allowing women in combat would
lower the recruitment of women urgently needed in noncombat roles
(Campbell 1993; see also Vining, chapter 6, this volume). For post-World
War II material M.C. Devilbiss (1985), Rosen et al. (1996), and a 1997 RAND
study are excellent starting points (Harrell and Miller 1997, 99). Devilbiss
(1985, 543; see also Devilbiss 1990) persuasively argues that “cohesion is
based on commonality of experience, shared risk, and mutual experiences
of hardship, not on gender distinction.”
Whether to train women in integrated or segregated units has been hotly
debated. This continued even though “studies done for the Navy and the
Army suggest that gender-integrated basic training programs do not nega-
tively affect trainees’ performance” (Gebicke 1997, 174, 2). A three-year army
study of basic training units also found that integrated training did not
adversely affect trainees’ performances. Next, mixed-gender basic-training
data was compared with all-male locations. Then the data from the three-
year study were compared with data from an all-male location. The com-
parison showed “the pass rates for male trainees in the gender-integrated
companies exceeded the pass rates for trainees at the all-male location”
(Gebicke 1997, 174, 4). Interestingly, while mixed-gender basic training was
not detrimental to men, it was a positive for women in terms of morale and
performance (Walker 1995).
In addition to studies of mixed-gender basic training, the army con-
ducted two major studies of its servicewomen. The first, Women Content
in Units (MAX WAC), focused on increasing the proportion of women in
noncombatant units in the field. The study revealed that the operational
capabilities of units with up to 35 percent women (higher than most units)
were not significantly affected (U.S. Army Research Institute for the
Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1977). The second study, REFWAC, exam-
ined women during extended field exercises in Germany. Here again there
was no diminution of operational capabilities in units with 10 percent
female members (Johnson et al. 1978).
The anti-women-in-combat arguments were fierce: men would try to
protect women from the risk of capture, rape, and torture, it was alleged.
In the Persian Gulf War, captured doctor Rhonda Corum reported that she
was fondled and “violated manually, vaginally and rectally” (Maginnis 1998,
58). Conversely, there are no equivalent reports of male prisoners violated
sexually, as late as the Vietnam conflict (U.S. House of Representatives
1994, 79). Further, it was argued that women were too weak and not aggres-
sive enough for service in such combat arms as infantry and armor because
of their weaker skeletons and upper bodies. A test of army officer candi-
dates reported results that “only one woman out of 100 could meet a phys-
ical standard achieved by 60 out of 100 men” (U.S. House of Representatives
1995, 59; Mitchell 1989). Then, to advance their arguments to a more cere-
bral level, some turned to a theoretical framework, maintaining (without
historical validation) that militaries with a high percentage of service-
women are unable to fight serious wars against armies with few or no
women. This is a particularly startling claim in view of the Soviet victory
over Nazi Germany in World War II. Phrased differently, feminization of
the military is part of the symptom, part of the cause of the decline in
world-class militaries. For such arguments against combat roles for women,
see Martin van Creveld (2000), Stephanie Gutman (2000), and Brian
Mitchell (1989).
The argument that in modern wars military service by its very nature
meant risking combat was used effectively by both sides in the debate
(Solaro 2006; Enloe 1993; Fenner and DeYoung 2001). Yet, before the end
of the first decade of the twenty-first century, it had become obvious that
the debate itself was moot. Take, for example, the case of Lt. Dawn Halfaker.
The platoon of military police she commanded was ambushed in Barquoba,
Iraq, and Halfaker lost her right arm to a rocket-propelled grenade. She
told USA Today that “women in combat is not really an issue. It is happen-
ing” (Moniz 2005). The modern technological nature of war means that the
military needs men and women with specialized skill sets, not just physical
strength (Fletcher, McMahon, and Quaster 1993). Scholars assessing mod-
ern military needs discovered that qualities typically seen as female served
best in its ever-growing peacekeeping roles (DeGroot 2001; Kennedy-Pipe,
2000). For an excellent overview of women’s historic service including
combat roles, see John A. Lynn II’s Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early
Modern Europe (2008) and Linda Grant De Pauw’s Battle Cries and Lullabies
(1998).
Women in NATO Forces
American policy makers, always acutely aware of what was happening in

other countries, remained cognizant of the changes needed to meet the
military needs of the twenty-first century. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, Gen. Henry Shelton (1999, as quoted in Garcia 1999) explained,
NATO must face a new direction as “the unpredictable and multidirectional
nature of threats such as regional conflict, weapons of mass destruction
and terrorism” change the landscape. Women were not left out; to dis-
seminate accurate data, NATO nations formed a Committee on Women
in the NATO forces (CWINF) in 1976 and, as more women joined the armed
forces, an Office on Women in the NATO Forces in 1998 (WINF) (Garcia
1999, 35, 41). In 2001 NATO marked the fortieth anniversary of the first
NATO conference of Senior Service Women Officers, the twenty-fifth anni-
versary of the formation of CWINF, and the first year of WINF. NATO’s
committee on women is divided into three subcommittees: Quality of Life,
Equity and Leadership, and Utilization and Development. The United
States was a member of the utilization and development committee.
CWINF collects data in the form of annual reports each year from NATO
member nations. For NATO’s 40th anniversary celebration, CWINF (2001)
compiled 18 reports in a special edition of the year-in-review. CWINF pub-
lished a second set of national reports in 2005 that comprised data in a
similar format for 24 countries. It was intended as a review of changes that
had taken place since the first report. The reports provided updates on
legal rulings and policies, and new or revised sexual harassment guidelines.
It served to augment efforts in surveying the needs of servicewomen.
Policymakers often took lessons from partner nations, but only if they
generally fit current desires. Israel’s wars are a good example. Israel does
conscript women, but they serve less time than the men and are excluded
from combat (Robbins and Ben-Eliezer 2000). On the other hand, the
Scandinavian countries took the lead in providing mentors for service-
women. Their success with this innovation prompted other nations to copy
the practice (Nielsen 2001).
NATO member countries provide a quick study in the wide range of
issues involved in mainstreaming servicewomen. While she was advisor to
the NATO Military Committee, Maj. Sarah Garcia compared and contrasted
important differences in military policies in NATO countries as part of the
fifty year celebration of NATO’s founding. She looked at which countries
provided integrated or segregated training, whether they offered maternity/
paternity leave, if they had combat restrictions, whether they gave physical
fitness tests by gender, and in which nations servicewomen were allowed
to be deployed to peacekeeping/peace operations. She also pointed out
the highest rank servicewomen were allowed to attain in 1999 in each
country. Garcia discovered that all nations allowed integrated training
except for the Czech Republic and Greece where it was allowed only at the
advanced level; Hungary allowed only segregated training. In the United
States some of the branches have integrated and others segregated training,
usually citing the risk of sexual harassment. The Marine Corps maintained
segregated training for their men and women (Garcia 1999, 45). In some
countries, women were not allowed to stand guard duty which placed an
unwanted extra duty on servicemen. Indecisiveness in the matter in
Germany was pointed out by social scientist Ruth Seifert (2006, 148), who
declared in 1995 that “sentry duty was not to be considered a military ser-
vice, but rather a police task similar to the service under arms with the
Federal Border Guard—which women were allowed to do.” German
authorities then reversed themselves in 1997, declaring female sentry duty
in the Federal Armed Forces to be unconstitutional.
In terms of the highest rank a servicewoman could hold, Canada, France,
Germany, Greece, the United Kingdom, and the United States all allowed
women to become general or flag rank. Luxembourg allowed women only
in the enlisted ranks. Yet, the highest rank possible does not provide the
full picture. For example, in France, women could become generals but
opportunities were restricted to only two openings for female generals,
one in the air force and one in the medical services (CWINF 2001: France).
In Greece, the brigadier general rank was open only to women in the nurs-
ing corps (CWINF 2001: Greece). High ranking civilian appointments were
open to women in NATO, however. In 1999 Kristin Krohn Devold was
appointed the first female Norwegian minister of defense (CWINF 2001:
Norway). The highest rank held by a Norwegian servicewoman was colonel,
ostensibly because women officers “change from operational to administra-
tive service after maternity leave reducing their chances of being selected
to study at military academies.” Studying at military academies opened the
door to promotion; fewer women in senior positions had a devastating
effect on attrition and remained a key issue in the Norwegian forces
(Nielsen 2001).
By 2001, NATO nations had increased almost tenfold their 1961 strength
of 30,000 servicewomen. NATO nations averaged 6 percent women in their
country’s national forces (Nielsen 2001). All NATO countries had women
in military uniform except Iceland, which has no military establishment.
Percentages provided are for 2001 and either 2006 or 2007 unless specified
differently. Not all countries reported the percentage of servicewomen
each year; several countries joined NATO in 2004. Latvia with 23 percent
and Canada and Hungary with 17.3 percent lead the NATO nations with
the highest percentages of women serving in uniform in 2007. The Czech
Republic (3.7 to 12.2), France (8.5 to 14), Lithuania (6 percent in 2004 to 12),
Slovenia (19.2 percent in 2004 to 15.3), Spain (5.8 to 12), and the United
States (14 to 15.5 in 2005) have double-digit percentages of servicewomen.
Belgium (7.6 to 8.25), Germany (2.8 to 7.5), Bulgaria (4.2 in 2004 to 6),
Denmark (5.0 to 5.4), Greece (3.8 to 5.6), Luxembourg (5.71 in 2006), the
Netherlands (8 to 9), Norway (3.2 to 7.1), Romania (3.99 in 2004 to 6.37) and
the United Kingdom (8.1 to 9.3) are at or higher than the NATO member
nation 6 percent average. Italy (0.1 to 2.6), Poland (0.1 to 1.0), and Turkey
(0.1 to 3.1) started at less than 0.1 percent and rose to between 1 and 3.1
percent women in their armed forces. Slovenia downsized and women felt
the cut disproportionately (19.2 to 15.3). Some countries established quotas
or ceilings for the percentage of servicewomen. Spain did not and its per-
centages rose from 5.8 percent in 2001 to 13.47 percent in 2006 (CWINF
2001: Spain).
Overall, in NATO’s forces in 2000, women constituted 12.2 percent of the
air forces, 10.2 percent of the navy, but only 6.3 percent of the army.
However, within a country’s armed forces, the percentage of women in
each branch of service varied widely. Following the NATO pattern, in the
United Kingdom in 2006, servicewomen comprised 12.3 percent of the
Royal Air Force, 9.3 percent of the Royal Navy but only 8.2 percent of the
army. (Dandeker and Segal 1996, 47). Likewise in the United States by 2005,
the air force also led with 19.5 percent of servicewomen and the marine
corps brought up the rear with 6 percent. Switching the navy and army
positions in Bulgaria, the air force led with 12.8 percent, followed by the
army at 10.6 percent, the general staff at 8.3 percent, and the navy at 3.9
percent (CWINF 2001: Bulgaria). By contrast, in Turkey, the army employed
533 of the total of 918 women officers. The Turkish navy had 192, the air
force 160, and 33 served in the gendarmerie (CWINF 2001: Turkey). The
French army had 500 women officers, the navy and air force 348, the gen-
darmerie had 33. However, the medical service had 2,865 (CWINF 2001:
France). The medical services of Belgium (19.8 percent) and Lithuania (50
percent) had the largest percentage of servicewomen. (CWINF 2005:
Belgium; CWINF, 2007: Lithuania). In the Netherlands, the navy took the
lead with 9.2 percent women followed by the military police at 8.7 percent,
the air force at 8.0 percent, and the army in last place with 7.2 percent
servicewomen (CWINF 2001: Netherlands).
Percentages of servicewomen varied by country among enlisted, non-
commissioned officer, and officer ranks. Germany allowed women only as
officers until 2001. Turkey originally had women only as officers but later
recruited women NCOs (CWINF 2005: Turkey). Other countries, like
Luxembourg, allow women only in the enlisted ranks. Overall, by 2000, the
percentages of women paralleled percentages of men in each of the ranks;
slightly lower in the percentage of officers and slightly higher in the per-
centage of enlisted ranks.
Terms of Service for Women
China, Eritrea, Israel, Libya, Malaysia, North Korea, Peru, and Taiwan all
legally authorize compulsory service for women, although the implemen-
tation and meaning may vary widely (CBC News 2006). NATO nations have
had a wide range of policies: Denmark, Norway, Poland, Portugal, and
Turkey draft men but not women. Norway’s male conscription is justified
as necessary. Some NATO countries continued conscription with a justifi-
cation that the male draft enabled them to fulfill its NATO peacekeeping
functions. Women in Norway and Denmark can volunteer for conscription
as a way of trying out military service before making a long-term commit-
ment (CWINF 2001: Norway; Denmark). Belgium, Canada, Greece, Italy,
the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, the United Kingdom,
and the United States have ended the draft, though all citizens in the
Netherlands and in Greece are subject to wartime conscription. In twenty-
first-century Greece, emergency measures call for servicewomen to serve
a 14-month term that can be extended to 24 months. Single mothers with-
out parents or family providers are exempted (CWINF 2001: Netherlands;
Greece). France ended compulsory service for all men in 2002. Beginning
in 2000 all young French women “born after Dec. 31, 1982, must attend a
one-day course to prepare them for national defence” (CWINF 2001:
France).
Canada recorded the largest one-year increase in the percentage of
serving military women in 2007, jumping from 12.8 percent to 17.3 percent.
Other countries that increased one or more percentage points from 2006
to 2007 include Germany (6 to 7.5 percent), Romania (5 to 6.37 percent),
Italy (1.6 to 2.6 percent), and Portugal (12 to 13 percent). Latvia did not
provide data for 2006 but increased from 20 percent in 2005 to 23 percent
in 2007. Spain recorded a decline, from 13.47 percent in 2006 to 12 percent
in 2007. Poland recorded a steady gain from 0.1 percent in 2001 to 1 percent
by 2007. The Czech Republic went from 3.7 percent to 12.21 percent from
2001 to 2005. (CWINF 2007). Germany in 2001 opened all occupations in
the Bundeswehr to women except conscripted positions. The wording of
the Constitution was changed from “Under no circumstances must women
serve with arms” to: “Under no circumstances must women be obliged to
serve with arms” (Seifert 2006, 151).
The nations that maintained a male draft were the least successful in
mainstreaming servicewomen, according to sociologist Helena Carreiras.
In her recent book, Gender and the Military (2006, 98), she divided the
NATO Western democracies into four basic categories on the basis of an
“index of inclusiveness.” She explained that even though a country opened
up a significant number of roles to military women early on, it did not
always mean that women were in actuality offered more than symbolic
access. She also looked at the percentage of women in a country’s military
occupational ratings and concluded that countries such as Portugal were
not very advanced in their index of inclusiveness because its servicewomen
were mostly in menial service roles. She concluded that time, size, and
policies were not sufficient for effectively bringing servicewomen into the
mainstream.
Carreiras (2007, 9) conducted extensive interviews with men and women
to learn why some nations’ armed forces were better integrated than oth-
ers. In the Netherlands she found strong resentment against positive dis-
crimination, perceptions of inequity derived from different physical
requirements; the ambivalent evaluation of part-time measures; resistance
to women mentors; devaluation of the importance of courses aimed at
promoting gender equality. These findings led her to conclude that “policies
aiming at formal integration may turn out to work against social integra-
tion.” Not wishing to be discouraging, Carreiras (2007, 12) concluded her
talk at the annual CWINF conference in Berlin in June 2007 by suggesting:
There is no reason to believe that equality will be achieved or perceptions
will be changed in the absence of formal equality and fair representation.
… If reaching objective positions in the social structure does not guarantee
equality (is not a sufficient condition for), not reaching them will certainly
ensure the reproduction of inequality.
Encouraging Women’s Military Service
Half of NATO countries have allowed both maternity and paternity leave
for service members. These include Canada, Denmark, France, Germany,
Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway and Poland. With the exception of
Portugal, which authorized no family leave, the other countries allowed
maternity leave only. In 1999 Italy had not yet allowed women to serve in
the armed forces (Garcia 1999, 45). Maternity or maternity/paternity leave
provisions vary widely. For example, Norway offered the most generous
policies: servicewomen received 42 weeks off at 100 percent salary, or 52
weeks at 80 percent, the same as Norwegians civilians. Norway also created
a family policy action plan that supported families when both parents were
deployed on international assignments (Nielsen 2001). In Greece, service-
women were entitled to a one-year leave with full pay (CWINF 2001:
Norway; CWINF 2001: Greece). The Czech Republic offered servicewomen
28 weeks of leave, “with additional leave up to three years upon request.”
The Czechs also offered “other entitlements provided to a female soldier
during pregnancy/maternity leave and until her child reaches 15 years of
age” (CWINF 2001: Czech Republic). Turkey allowed nine weeks of mater-
nity leave (three weeks before, six weeks post birth). “If requested, six
months of unpaid leave can also be taken. Furthermore, women officers
are entitled to 1.5 hours of breast-feeding leave each day for six months”
(CWINF 2001: Turkey). But if a woman accepts the option of six months of
unpaid leave, she loses one rank and “becomes a lower rank than the peer
group with which she was commissioned”. Turkey offered no paternity
leave (Kuloglu 2006, 165). In the Netherlands servicewomen could take six
years of unpaid leave and also have the option of working part time (CWINF
2001: Netherlands). Belgium allowed 15 weeks of maternity leave which
count as active duty; mothers could also change to part-time status. In
addition, “both men and women can take three months of unpaid parental
leave before the child’s tenth birthday” (CWINF 2001: Belgium). In Spain,
until the child is nine months old, parents “have the right to enjoy one hour
off per day that can be divided into two halves or substituted by cutting
half an hour off the daily working period. They are also entitled to enjoy
up to three years leave without salary for childcare, holding the assigned
post for the first year” (CWINF 2001: Spain). France had an adoption policy
similar to the maternity leave policy. “The parental leave policy applies to
women and men in six-month intervals until the child is three years old”
(CWINF 2001: France). Canada also had provisions for adoption and allowed
women to “take up to 119 days paid leave with an additional 70 days avail-
able as parental leave upon application (available to the military spouse
also)” (CWINF 2001: Canada). In Denmark service members were given as
much control as possible over their assignment schedules. Military person-
nel could even “take a temporary downgrading without jeopardizing future
career possibilities” (Nielsen 2001).
Belgium changed its gender policies to diversity policies in order to
include Belgians of foreign origin and citizens recruited in EU member-
states (CWINF 2005: Belgium). In developing their policies most countries
referred to U.S. resolution 1325 or the earlier 1995 United Nations Four
World Conference on Women Beijing Platform as markers of ways coun-
tries could adopt new approaches to increasing the number of women in
military service. Policymakers discussed the increased “will” of military
leaders to recruit servicewomen, and initiatives for supporting families
when both parents were deployed out of the country. The British reissued
a policy in March 2005 allowing for flexible work hours to help balance
family life and military service (CWINF 2005: United Kingdom).
NATO countries also considered the importance of service academies
and staff colleges for promotion to the highest ranks. Turkey was the first
military academy to accept women in 1955, but then it closed the academy
to women in 1961 as part of the plan to limit women to noncombatant
officer roles. In 1992 Turkish academies began again to accept women
cadets (Kuloglu 2006, 162). Indeed, in the 1980s and 1990s (Bulgaria, Canada,
Poland, Portugal) and in the early twenty-first century (Lithuania, Slovakia)
more NATO countries opened up positions to women in academies and
other educational and training facilities.
Many policymakers tried to avoid the appearance of tokenism by assign-
ing more than one woman to a unit. However, in the unit training, as the
British and Canadians discovered, a one-test-fits-all approach caused dis-
proportionate female injuries and attrition. Countries attempting a uni-
versal physical test for all military personnel found that a gender-free test
by rating worked better. (Gemmell 2002; CWINF 2001: Canada). Belgium
swiftly returned to gender fair testing. (CWINF 2005: Belgium).
What NATO Women Do
Knowing the percentages of women officers, NCOs, and enlisted women

does not tell the whole story. Most women officers in Germany, Portugal,
and Poland served in the medical corps until recently. Indeed, in most
countries, women served primarily in traditional roles. Taking all NATO
countries into account, 46 percent of personnel served in support roles,
but 70.4 percent of women. In contrast, women served in much smaller
percentages in technical and operational roles. Again taking NATO as a
whole, 28 percent of all military personnel filled technical positions, only
17.5 percent of the women. Operationally, the figures were 22.2 percent of
all military personnel, 7 percent of servicewomen (Nielsen 2001). Sociologist
Helena Carreiras (2002) created a useful chart to represent the factors
affecting women’s military participation.
Norway took the lead in opening combat ratings to women in 1985.
Denmark followed by opening all army positions in 1988. In the 1990s
Canada, France, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, the
United Kingdom, and the United States all opened combat arms ratings to
women (NATO 2007). In Canada servicewomen have served in a wide range
of combat roles but only in 2001 were they admitted to submarine service
(Nielsen 2001). On occasion, one branch of a nation’s military organization
has taken the lead for the country. For example, the Royal Navy in the
United Kingdom took the lead in gender integration in the late 1980s. The
Falklands conflict demonstrated to the Royal Navy that no real difference
existed between combat ships and noncombat support ships when it came
to causalities, but only women recruited in the navy after 1990 were liable
for sea service. Those who had joined before had the option but it was not
mandatory for them (Dandeker and Segal 1996, 36–37, note 18). In a similar
fashion, active duty women in France who were mothers before 1 January
1999 had to volunteer for sea duty (CWINF 2001: France).
Norway was not only first but also went farthest in opening up all ratings
for women including service aboard submarines (CWINF 2001: Norway).
A non-NATO nation, Australia, along with Canada, followed Norway’s lead,
opening submarines to women members. Belgium, France, and the United
Kingdom soon allowed women to serve on countermeasure vessels and
survey ships (Garcia 1999, 46–47). In 2004 Poland opened all posts to
women (CWINF 2005: Poland). While there were no legal barriers, women
in Denmark, Norway, and Portugal served neither as para-rangers nor
marine commandos, possibly because of contemporary physical entrance
requirements (Nielsen 2001). British, Dutch, and French navies did not
allow women in submarines and also denied them a handful of other rat-
ings, citing physical requirements, medical reasons, or combat effective-
ness. Restrictions on combat roles “are consistent with a European Court
rule that allows women to be excluded from certain posts on the grounds
of combat effectiveness, leaving it up to national authorities to decide
which” (Nielsen 2001). More specifically in the 1999 Sirdar case, the
European Court of Justice “upheld the policy of not employing women in
the Royal Marines General Service” (CWINF 2001: UK)
For decades after World War II, military women were recruited to sep-
arate women’s corps (not all branches had corps). In the 1970s France and
the United States disbanded the women’s corps. But France did not drop
quotas and focused seriously on integration until the late 1990s. In the 1980s
the Netherlands ended segregated women’s corps and in the 1990s the
United Kingdom followed suit. (Nielsen 2001). Restrictions on some com-
bat positions remained but most are open to servicewomen in most NATO
nations. Table 1, developed by the Office on Women in the NATO Forces
and the Women’s Research & Educational Institute, summarizes changes
in servicewomen’s roles, especially in the area of combat arms. Column
Table 1. Women’s Admittance in the NATO Countries Armed Forces and Subsequent
Changes.
Country Year of Legal Major Opening Most Recent
Admittance of Posts Openings
USA 1948 1973 1993
Canada 1951 1968 2002
France 1972 1973 1998
United Kingdom 1949 1991 1992
Czech Republic Early 1980s Early 1980s 2002
Netherlands 1979 1979 1981
Belgium 1975 1977 1981
Portugal 1992 1992 1992
Luxemburg 1980 1987 1997
Denmark 1962 1971-74 1988
Hungary 1996 1996 1996
Norway 1977 – 1985
Greece 1979 1979 –
Spain 1988 1988 1999
Germany 1975 1975 2000
Poland 1988 – 2003
Turkey 1955 1957 –
Italy 1999 2000 2000
Slovenia 1991 1991 2002
Slovakia Early 1980s Early 1980s 1993
Romania 1973 – 2001
Latvia 1991 1991 1991
Lithuania 1991 1991 1991
Bulgaria 1995 1995 2001
Sources: Office on Women in the NATO Forces and The Women’s Research & Education
Institute.
one lists the year that women were officially admitted to service in their
country’s armed forces; column two lists the year servicewomen became
integrated and had many career opportunities available to them, and col-
umn three lists the date of the most recent reduction or elimination of
assignment restrictions.
Germany admitted women to the military medical services and musical
bands in 1975 but did not open up other career options for women until
1991, when enlisted women were allowed. In 1992 they began to recruit top
female athletes (Krawehl-Nakath 2001, 45–47; Garcia 1999, 46). Interestingly,
East Germany had no restrictions on women’s military service until 1990
(Kammerhoff 2005). German women could volunteer for armed combat
after the ruling of the European Court of Justice on 11 January 2000. Legal
pressure caused other NATO nations to open up combat arms ratings to
women. The Canadian Human Rights Act of 1979 provided a legal basis for
opening all ratings to women. By 1989 the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal
removed all restrictions barring women from employment in the Canadian
Forces except on submarines. In 2001 Canada opened submarines to
women (CWINF 2001: Canada). The commitment to gender integration
was made clear in a statement released by the Chief of Defence Staff: “he
who does not understand or fully support the right of women to serve
equally with men in today’s Army has no place in the Army’s chain of com-
mand” (CWINF 2001: Canada). Until 1955, Turkey had allowed women to
serve as civilian doctors, engineers, teachers, and secretaries attached to
military units. In 1955 women began attending the military academies and
in 1957 began serving in officer ratings. The officer billets included fighter
pilots. Turkish women first served only as officers and only later were
noncommissioned officers admitted (CWINF 2001: Turkey).
As a corollary to national policies on combat, some countries began to
require the same physical fitness tests for men and women in the same
rating. They include Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Spain and the United
Kingdom. The United Kingdom pioneered the concepts of gender fair, then
gender-free fitness tests and developed nine tests to be administered
according to occupational specialty. Still, British officials left open the
possibility of adjusting basic fitness tests in order to use their gender-free
tests primarily for advanced training in specific areas (Gemmell 2002,
23–27). Just as in the United States, male cadets in the United Kingdom
seldom understood the need for gender fair testing and believed that female
cadets lowered the physical standards (for Turkey, see Kuloglu 2006, 163,
167; Adams 1980, xiv, xv, 47, 68).
Women in NATO Multinational Forces and Peacekeeping Assignments
Servicewomen have served in a wide range of roles as part of multinational

NATO forces for observing, peacekeeping, and enforcing peace. They have
served with KFOR in Kosovo; SFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which became
European Union Operation Althea in December 2004; ISAF and Operation
Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan; and UNOMIG in Georgia. Depending
upon the specific mission and location, women might engage in such
activities as monitoring borders, supporting the work of international orga-
nizations, preventing hostilities between the different ethnic groups; guar-
anteeing a secure environment in the country; and monitoring ceasefire
agreements. Women served as military police, in air base operations, and
monitoring ship-borne traffic (Kammerhoff 2005).
Servicewomen made significant contributions to peacekeeping opera-
tions, at least in part, precisely because they traditionally were not trained
in combat arms. Because “peacekeeping can be violent, combat training is
essential,” historian Gerald DeGroot (2001) explained. “But the peacekeeper
must also be conciliatory and patient. Few conventionally trained male
military personnel combine the qualities of soldier and social worker essen-
tial to the job.” The profound difference between peacekeeping and con-
ventional soldiering was underlined by sociologists Laura Miller and
Charles Moskos (1995, 615), who studied American servicemen assigned to
a peacekeeping mission in Somalia. They discovered that white men in
combat support units tended to adopt a more “humanitarian approach,”
enabling them to better understand the problems of individuals in a host
country, while white men assigned to combat units often reverted to a
“warrior” mentality. White men serving in support units were accustomed
to working with women, whether or not they were engaged in a particular
peacetime mission.
Military training tends to encourage the recruit “to develop strength and
aggression, while ridding himself of stereotypical female attributes like
sensitivity and compassion,” DeGroot (2001) observed, but “in peacekeep-
ing, violence signifies failure.” Whether for biological or cultural reasons,
women are not usually inclined toward violence and their mere presence
can calm stressful or tense situations. Even a handful of women in a unit
could change behavior for the better. A 1995 study for the UN Division for
the Advancement of Women found that “the incidence of rape and pros-
titution falls significantly with just a token female presence. Stated simply,
men behaved when in the presence of women from their own culture”
(DeGroot 2001).
Servicewomen were particularly crucial for NATO operations in Muslim
countries because women play roles forbidden to men. Women were
needed on patrols, at checkpoints, conducting body searches, establishing
contact with local families, especially with the female members. According
to Lt. Col. Kristin Lund (Anonymous 2004), chair of the 2004 conference
of the Committee on Women in the NATO Forces, servicewomen in
Afghanistan proved their worth as “door-openers” and “force multipliers”
for NATO’s operations. The commander in Kosovo, Lt. Gen. Holger
Kammerhoff (2005) asserted as “a fact that in peacekeeping and peace-
enforcing operations, likewise where nation-building is concerned, women
are needed in the front line.” The United Nations, DeGroot (2001) noted,
“is quite keen that its female warriors should remain ‘womanly.’” In suc-
cessful United Nations operations in Guatemala and South Africa, service-
women made up almost half of the troops, DeGroot (2002) points out, while
the disastrous Cambodian operation had no women at all. He concludes
that “there is no evidence that women make better peacekeepers but a
great deal of evidence to suggest that the presence of women improves an
operation’s chances of success.”
Given that evidence, it is not surprising that in 2000 the United Nations
Security Council passed Resolution 1325 (UN 2000) calling in part for
“increased involvement of women at all levels, from early conflict preven-
tion to post-conflict reconstruction,” which further “acknowledges the need
to take special measures to respect the different needs of women and girls.”
A similar endorsement of the need for servicewomen came from NATO
Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (2004) at the 2004 Conference of
the Committee on Women in the NATO Forces:
NATO transformation is not just about the way NATO functions and wishes
to be perceived as an open, transparent and modern organization, recogniz-
ing and promoting the role of women throughout the Alliance. It is essential
to benefit from the energy and talents of the entire population not just half
of it.
What Carreiras, DeGroot, Enloe, Garcia, Manning, Segal, Stiehm, and other
scholars have made clear is that the American and international military
forces are constantly changing and will be forced to continue to change to
meet the needs of the twenty-first century and beyond. Military institutions
in any country are complex organizations that when studied often lead to
broader research rather than clear conclusions. Finally, it is also clear that
the United States has been a leader in some aspects of gender integration
(percentage of servicewomen, percentage of high ranking officers) but has
fallen in the middle (ratings open to servicewomen) or to the bottom in
other areas (maternity/paternity leave benefits). A close working relation-
ship with other nations will be key if the United States continues its learn-
ing and leadership roles. The main issues defining and blocking integration
have been identified—clarity of combat roles in a changing battlefield,
cultural definitions of women’s and men’s proper roles, balance between
family and military, and the necessity to staff an armed force in both peace-
time and wartime.
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Revolutionaries, Regulars, and Rebels 331
CHAPTER EIGHT
Revolutionaries, Regulars, and Rebels:

Women and Non-Western Armies since World War II
Barton C. Hacker
This chapter centers on women’s military work in both regular and irregu-
lar armed forces in the non-Western world since the end of World War II.
Women’s military work could be direct and formal, as performed by uni-
formed female members of the Russian and Chinese armies, or in any
number of guerrilla armies around the world. More often, especially with
irregular forces, women’s military work was indirect and less formal, in a
variety of indispensable support and maintenance activities that recall the
age-old interaction of women and armed forces described in the first four
chapters of this volume. Although women in the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries began playing larger combat roles than they normally
had earlier, the fact remains that most militarily active women did not
participate in frontline combat. Neither did most men. Armies are complex
social organizations that employ workers in a wide variety of jobs other
than fighting. The women engaged in such jobs were just as much soldiers
as male clerks or quartermasters. Yet the quantum leap in women’s front-
line numbers, from 1 in 20 in the 1950s to 1 in 3 in the 1970s and after, can-
not be easily discounted.
Unlike the desperation that drove Russian and Chinese leaders to fill
their combat ranks with female soldiers during the first half of the twenti-
eth century, insurrectionary leaders in Latin America, Africa, and Asia later
in the century deliberately included women in the mass mobilization they
saw as indispensable to victory. This change might well reflect nothing
more than pragmatic concerns about bolstering the strength of fighting
forces, but it might also spring from ideological commitments to women’s
equality. In some cases pragmatism and ideology converged. The full range
of the relationships between women and war in the non-Western world
since 1945 is clearly beyond the scope of this chapter. For a start on these
questions, the interested reader can do no better than to consult Jean
Elshtain (1987), Cynthia Enloe (1983, 2000), Linda De Pauw (1998), and
Joshua Goldstein (2001). In particular, this chapter will not directly address
the extensive social scientific literature on women’s motivations for mili-
tary participation, nor will it discuss in any detail the impact of war on
women, including such issues as sexual violence and rape by armed forces,
military prostitution, women’s wartime suffering and displacement, or the
concerns of female veterans and their social reintegration. However impor-
tant, such problems are ancillary to the main issue of women’s military
work, the focus of this chapter.
Women in Russian Military Forces
Russia and China have two of the world’s largest and most important mil-
itary establishments, and they share a Marxist heritage, if not the reality,
of equality for women (Meyer 1977; Maloney 1980). Women played sig-
nificant military roles in the 1917 revolution that founded the Soviet Union
and took on even larger roles in World War II. Russian women served in
great numbers, reaching a peak of as many as a million at the end of 1943.
They participated not only in a wide range of noncombat jobs, as did
women in many other belligerent nations, but also fought as snipers,
machine gunners, fighter pilots, and antiaircraft artillery crewmembers
(Stoff 2006; Jones 1985, 99–100; Herspring 1997, 46–47; Krylova 2010; see
also Jensen, chapter 5, and Vining, chapter 6, this volume). Although the
Red Army, unlike the armies of the Western powers, remained on near-war
footing after 1945, Russia did not differ from its former allies with respect
to military women; they were sent home soon after the war ended. The
percentage of women in the Soviet armed forces dropped from a wartime
high of 8 to a postwar 0.5. Almost all who remained were officers in a lim-
ited number of medical, veterinary, and specialized technical positions,
and there weren’t very many of them. By 1959 they numbered 659 in an
army of four million or more (Hill 1961, 20; Leibst 1976, 5; O’Brien and Jeffries
1982, 76).
Despite the virtual absence of women from the postwar Red Army, both
the Soviet Universal Military Law of 1939 and its successor, the Universal
Military Duty Law of 1967, stipulated drafting women in wartime. Young
women with special skills were also required to register. To prepare for the
contingency of a wartime draft, girls as well as boys received military train-
ing in schools; they also participated at all levels in the Soviet Union’s highly
militarized sports programs (Hill 1961, 27–28, chapter 4; O’Brien and Jeffries
1982, 77). The 1967 law was, in part, a response to Russia’s demographic
crisis stemming from World War II losses; the consequences first became
evident in the early 1960s with a sharp drop in the supply of young males,
which prompted efforts to recruit more women. Although their number
had increased to perhaps 10,000 by the mid-1970s, women in the Soviet
armed forces remained largely limited to relatively specialized communi-
cations, medical, and clerical work. They were also denied entry to the
military academies, which greatly restricted their access to higher rank
(Leibst 1976, 5, 10; Scott and Scott 1981, 389; O’Brien and Jeffries 1982; Jones
1985, 101; Griesse and Harlow 1985, 139–49; Isby 1988; Herspring 1997, 49).
Notwithstanding the long record of frontline service by women in both
Tsarist and Soviet Russia, women’s role in combat remains contentious.
Some women served as army members in combat support units both in
Afghanistan and Chechnya; 1390 women were awarded state medals for
courage in Afghanistan (1979–89), 231 in the First Chechen War (1992–96),
600 in counterterrorist operations in the northern Caucasus as part of the
Second Chechen War (1998–2009). Many other women worked under
military control in the war zones as civilian employees of the Ministry of
Defense. The Soviet-sponsored Afghan government also made substantial
use of women in its regular armed forces, the militia, and Women’s Self
Defense Units (Strenina 2006; Eifler 2006, 131; Ellis 2000, 13–28; Moghadam
1994, 226–27).
Women played significant roles in the Afghani and Chechen resistance
as well; jihad called upon women as it did men, though not in the same
ways (Shalinsky 1993; Freamon 2003; Cook 2005). In Afghanistan, as is
typical of irregular warfare, women mostly cooked, cleaned, and cared for
the men (Ellis 2000, 42, 46–47; Maley 2002, 155; Evangelista 2003). But
women also fought, if not necessarily in large numbers. Historians Nancy
and Richard Newell (1981, 151) described Afghan women as no less willing
than men to sacrifice themselves “in the resistance cause—mothers with
children in their arms inviting soldiers to shoot, old men and women vol-
unteering to throw themselves under tanks with satchel charges.” Reporting
on the 1980 Russian attack in the Panjshir Valley, the Associated Press (as
published in the Des Moines Register, 19 September 1980, 2A, and quoted
in Newell and Newell 1981, 167) reported “women fighting alongside their
husbands and brothers on the rebel side.”
None of these actions were unique to Afghanistan. When Chechen reb-
els attacked the pro-Russian regime and fought the Russian army in the
1990s and into the new century, women took an even more active, though
far less conventional, role than they did in Afghanistan—as suicide bomb-
ers, widely known as “black widows” (Nivat 2005; Bloom 2005a, 153–58;
Abdullaev 2007; Speckhard and Akhmedova 2008; Eager 2008, 201–209;
Kemoklidze 2009). Women in the very forefront of irregular warfare proved
highly successful from a military viewpoint, confounding soldiers, unnerv-
ing politicians, and puzzling scholars (Kramer 2005, 240–45; Myers 2003;
Bowers, Derrick, and Olimov 2004, 266–69, 273–76; West 2004–05; Knight
and Narozhna 2005; Moore 2005; Frombgen 2008; Dronzina 2010).
Throughout the Muslim world, women have regularly joined the struggle
in times of crisis, and more often than the conservative nature of many
Muslim societies might suggest, themselves taken up arms or otherwise
actively participated in the resistance. That activity has often included
terrorism and, controversially, suicide bombing conceived as martyrdom
in the name of Islam (Cook 2005; Cunningham 2008; von Knop 2007, 2008;
Coughlin 2000; Reeves 1989).
In the late 1980s the Soviet Union sought to bolster recruitment in the
face of still falling birthrates and widespread draft evasion during an unpop-
ular war by allowing women as well as men to contract for military service.
A contract-based volunteer system officially replaced conscription in 1992
(Smirnov 2002, 78). Initially, many of the women who sought contracts,
typically for two to five years, had been civilian employees of the Ministry
of Defense who continued to do the same jobs they had before. Many oth-
ers were officers’ wives, working to eke out their husbands’ meager salaries.
The numbers of women serving grew substantially in the chaotic years
surrounding the breakup of the Soviet Union, reaching 100,000 under con-
tract by the early 1990s, over a third of all contract soldiers and about 3
percent of total forces (Herspring 1997, 50–51). The number of women in
the Russian armed forces has continued to grow. Estimates vary widely,
but they may have reached 115,000 or perhaps even 160,000 by the early
twenty-first century. The percentage of women in the armed forces has
increased even more sharply as Russian armed forces have shrunk. Woman
now account for almost 15 percent of a military establishment that has
declined to about 1.2 million (Mathers 2006, 130; Eifler 2006, 122).
Notwithstanding a single female jet fighter pilot, a female combat heli-
copter pilot, a female tank commander, and a thousand women in elite
airborne and special forces units, women were still officially barred from
combat, except in air defense forces (PVO) units. Most servicewomen
continue to work in medical, communications, and administrative or
clerical positions (Eifler 2006, 123, 125). According to one officer writing in
Krasnaya zvezda (8 December 1992, as quoted in Herspring 1997, 51), grow-
ing numbers of women in the PVO was not a bad thing: “Now they occupy
up to 50% of key combat positions—radar and automated command and
control system operators, radio repair personnel, radio operators, and
plotters in PVO subunits. And they are earning their keep.” Many officers
regarded female volunteers in the PVO and throughout the armed forces
more highly than the male conscripts that had formerly filled such posi-
tions, but their praise often seemed patronizing and most male officers
remain ambivalent about the so-called “feminization” of the military, which
they often see as an affliction borrowed from the West (Herspring 1997, 51;
Austin and Muraviev 2000, 277; Mathers 2000, 137–38; Kuzovchikova 2006).
The fact that Soviet and Russian armed forces have needed women since
the 1960s, and still do, has never meant that officers and military officials
welcomed their presence or treated them as equals (DiGuglielmo 1992,
51–56). Article 19 of the 1993 Russian Constitution guaranteed equal rights,
liberties, and opportunities to all citizens, meaning that even in the military
all positions and career opportunities were theoretically available to both
sexes. Indeed, 85 percent of military specialties were open to women. In
practice, however, military women are not treated equally. A 2000 socio-
logical survey found that almost two-fifths did not receive their intended
benefits, more than a quarter had their labor rights, such as overtime and
holidays, violated, and 30 percent found their socioeconomic rights unre-
alized (Eifler 2006, 128; Mathers 2000, 135–36; Mathers 2006, 211–12).
Discrimination against military women was the subject of a 1999 parlia-
mentary hearing, which concluded (as quoted in Eifler 2006, 128–29) that:
Violations of the law are a mass phenomenon. Practically everywhere in the
army it is noticed that women serving in the military do not receive the
guarantees, benefits and compensation which are fixed in federal laws and
other normative legal measures to protect families, motherhood and children.
To make matters worse, sexual harassment or coercion may be a far greater
problem than the small number of reported incidents might suggest, affect-
ing perhaps as many as a quarter of all women in military service. Restricted
access to higher military education and compulsory retirement at age 45
limit promotion opportunities, leaving women overrepresented in military
jobs of low financial and social prestige. Despite these problems, service-
women tend to express a high degree of job satisfaction that reflects their
personal sense of competence and efficiency. For most women, military
service seemed more a matter of financial expediency than commitment
to a military career. They contract for military service to enjoy the privi-
leges, the pay, and the social status, still significant despite the problems
(Herspring 1997, 49; Mathers 2000, 134–36; Smirnov 2002, 83–87; Ustinovich
2003; Mathers 2006, 210; Strenina 2006; Eifler 2006, 129–30, 133).
Women in the People’s Liberation Army
In China as in Russia, active female military participation long predated

World War II. Women played significant military roles in the civil wars that
pitted nationalist against communist forces in the 1920s and early 1930s
(Segal, Li, and Segal 1992, 49–51; Ono 1989, 136, 151–52, 154–61; Jiang 1995,
139–55; Gilmartin 1995 188–90; Young 2001). They continued to do so when
the antagonists formed a united front against the invading Japanese; the
Second Sino-Japanese War lasted from 1937 to 1945. The nature of women’s
work varied considerably both within the communist armies and between
communist and nationalist forces. Chinese women did participate in com-
bat, but not nearly to the extent that Russian women did in the Second
World War. Their contribution primarily took the form of such support
activities as clothing, feeding, nursing, entertaining, recruiting, and educat-
ing the troops (Selden 1971, 166, 260; Ono 1989, 163–64; Jiang 1995, 156–67;
Young 1999; Rigdon 2000, 276–77; Howard 2004, 99–100; Lindsay 2006; Li
2010, 128–75). Their paid and unpaid labor also helped produce the eco-
nomic sinews of war (Segal, Li, and Segal 1992, 51; Benton 1999, 68–69).
The defeat of Japan precipitated the final phase of the Chinese civil war
that ended in 1949 with the triumph of the People’s Liberation Army and
the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Although hundreds
of women during the final struggle “have actually participated in combat
as gun-shooting soldiers,” observed an American officer who served in
China from 1945 to 1948 (Rigg 1952, 132), “their regular roles are those of
medical technicians, nurses, unit propagandists, cultural workers, and …
even political commissars. Their main roles are with the cultural and med-
ical services.” Neither drafted nor actively recruited, women could be found
everywhere in 1949, including the navy and air force, though only in aux-
iliary roles. Restricted though it might be, military service for women was
crucial to a political system committed ideologically to inclusiveness and
egalitarianism (Segal, Li, and Segal 1992, 52; Jiang 1995, 168–70; Rigdon 2000,
278).
Partial demobilization of the People’s Liberation Army followed the 1949
victory. The Chinese decision to send troops to Korea stalled the process,
but women were “excused” from frontline service (Jiang 1995, 170–72).
Female cadres were removed from active duty and assigned to civilian
support jobs, a process that continued after the war. Demobilization
resumed in 1952; before the end of the decade an army of 6.1 million had
been cut to 2.4 million. Reduction in size was accompanied by moderniza-
tion and professionalization on the Soviet model, which included the sub-
stantial elimination of servicewomen. The People’s Liberation Army shed
over 800,000 women as it became more a conventional military force than
a revolutionary army (Segal, Li, and Segal 1992, 52–53; Rigdon 2000, 278–79;
Li 2007, 86–87, 105, 114, 118–19)
Reform proved to be a fleeting episode, however, as China reverted to
Mao’s theory of people’s war and the mobilized population it demanded.
During the period of the Cultural Revolution, from the mid-1960s through
the mid-1970s, as Susan Rigdon (2000, 279) observes, “the discipline and
regimen associated with military life was viewed as the appropriate work
model for the population at large.” Military training was universal and
women with special skills were liable to conscription. All able-bodied
citizens aged 15 to 50 were enrolled in militia units, but special emphasis
was placed on recruiting younger women. Female students, in particular,
as Rigdon (2000, 280–81) notes, “lived in quasi-military conditions, dressing
in ersatz military uniforms, doing militia drills, and working and studying
in units with joint military-civilian leadership.” Becoming a member of the
armed forces held particular attractions for women during the Cultural
Revolution. It allowed city dwellers to avoid a trip to the country for “re-
education”; for young women from the country, it meant a chance to see
the outside world. The People’s Liberation Army had no problem in finding
the 7500 female recruits it sought annually; in 1967 it began to recruit
women into active duty units (Salaff and Merkle 1970/1973; Milton 1970/1973,
191; Yuan 1977; Li 1993, 70–71; Yao 1995, 415; Rigdon 2000, 280–81).
Throughout the Cultural Revolution, Chinese popular culture was alive
with images of female fighters. Symbolic women soldiers, heroines from
legend and history as well as modern militia women, Red Guards, and war
veterans, appeared in plays, operas, ballets, and films designed to arouse
patriotism and rally the troops. But except on International Women’s Day,
real-life women soldiers were largely ignored in the Chinese military press
(Li 1975; Rigdon 2000, 275–76. 281; Yao 1995, 414–15). They also seemed to
be invisible to foreign observers. Scholarly studies of the People’s Liberation
Army have rarely mentioned women. The U.S. Defense Intelligence
Agency’s Handbook on the Chinese armed forces (1976/1979, 163–65, and
color plates between 16 and 17), for instance, does not mention service-
women until they mysteriously appear in the section of the text on uni-
forms, and in the color plates of uniforms. Even a feminist writer like Julia
Kristeva (1977, 149) could acknowledge militia women while finding “no
women in the People’s Army of China: they serve only in liaison, adminis-
trative, or medical capacities.” Quite true for most servicewomen, but as
Susan Rigdon (2000, 281) notes, “it is hard to believe that anyone would
refer to a conscripted man performing clerical or support services as not
being ‘in the army’ simply because of the duties he was assigned.”
Following Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping instituted defense mod-
ernization along with massive economic reforms. Military service remained
very popular for women even when economic growth since the late 1980s
sometimes made men hard to recruit. For women, the armed forces still
offered better chances than the civilian economy for secure jobs, higher
education, and access to otherwise highly restricted urban registration.
Since 1991, when China began reporting the gender of active-duty soldiers,
the number of women has remained steady at 136,000, three-quarters of
whom are officers. Both the militia and the Production and Construction
Corps have been removed from direct control by the People’s Liberation
Army, and likely have far fewer women than formerly. But the People’s
Armed Police, which has long trained women for work at border crossings,
is now part of the army. Adding police women and army reserves to women
in the civilian officer corps, a uniformed civil service within the army estab-
lished in 1987 to allow servicewomen (and men) whose work was more
professional than military to stay on the job beyond the standard term of
service, raises the number of military women to 300,000. Policy continued
to restrict women to service and support roles, barring them from combat
assignments, though not necessarily from war zones. Relatively large num-
bers of female medical, communications, service, cultural, and propaganda
personnel are known to have served, for instance, in the 1979 Sino-
Vietnamese border conflict (Rigdon 2000, 282–83, 286; Li 2007, chapter 8;
Yao 1995, 415, 417; Yao 1996, 87; Li 1993, 74–75).
The new and more sustained reform era that began in the 1980s gradu-
ally began to affect the air force and navy as well as the army. Both had
included women from the beginning, the air force training a few hundred
female pilots to fly, the navy using female clerks and radio operators who
have become indispensable to naval communications. Mostly assigned to
such transport missions as airlift and disaster relief, women were not
allowed to fly in combat, though a few have become training instructors
for male bomber pilots. Air force-trained female paratroopers appear only
at air shows or competitive meets. Women have also figured prominently
in the navy’s troupe of entertainers for men at sea, though the first group
of seventeen women entered training as sailors only in 1991. Most of China’s
best athletes and performers of all kinds, women and men alike, are in
military service, trained and supported throughout their careers. Periodic
searches for talented youngsters help fill the ranks of trainees at the People’s
Liberation Army Art Institute and the August First Sports Team (Rigdon
2000, 278, 283–84; Lu 1977; Li 1993, 71; Yao 1995, 416; Jiang 1995, 179–93).
Another path into the armed forces for women is enlisting during the
annual recruiting period. Most of the 7500 female enlistees accepted each
year are high school graduates, who ordinarily receive vocational training
as switchboard operators, file clerks, medical orderlies, and the like. They
serve as enlisted personnel for three or four years, then return home where
they may expect to receive jobs based on their military training. Some
enlistees may also be selected to take the qualifying examination for one
of the specialized military colleges or training schools. Higher education
is one of the most attractive features of military service, though only a
limited number of women are admitted and they have to score significantly
higher than men to qualify. Graduates of civilian undergraduate or gradu-
ate programs may also sit for the qualifying examinations to enter one of
the military institutions of higher education directly. The successful can-
didate becomes a cadet at one of more than a hundred military colleges or
training schools, such as the National Defense Science and Technology
University, or one of several medical universities, nurses training schools,
engineering institutes, telecommunications schools, or language institutes.
Women are rarely selected for command and staff programs. Upon gradu-
ation, men and women alike are commissioned as junior officers (Rigdon
2000, 284–85; Yao 1995, 415–17; Li 1993, 72–73)
All new recruits receive three months’ basic training. Cadets then go to
their professional colleges and schools, while enlisted women proceed to
vocational or technical training. Apart from morning drills and annual
shooting practice that will continue throughout their military careers to
remind them of their service status, women are not expected to acquire
much in the way of military skills because they are excluded from combat.
Most of their technical or professional training differs little from what
might be found in civilian institutions, except for its often higher quality.
Because of the limited noncombat specialties open to them, enlisted
women mostly serve in gender-segregated or semi-segregated units mostly
commanded by women and attached to division or higher level organiza-
tions. Women professionals, whose work is similar to their civilian coun-
terparts, are not segregated but are highly concentrated in hospitals,
research institutions, colleges, and General Headquarters (Li 1993, 71–72;
Yao 1996, 84–85).
Gender segregation may make sexual harassment less of a problem in
China than elsewhere, but the problem has not been studied. Servicewomen
do face prejudice against their holding more specifically military jobs, and
they must outperform their male colleagues to win respect. The biggest
drawback for women’s military careers is their exclusion from combat,
which sharply restricts the military jobs they may hold and their prospects
for promotion (Li 1993, 76, 80; Yao 1996, 86–87). Servicewomen, as Yunzhu
Yao (1996, 87), a colonel in the People’s Liberation Army and a graduate of
its Foreign Language University, observes “are among the most talented,
best educated and hard working women professionals in China.” Despite
their equality in pay and benefits, many feel frustrated by the narrow range
of jobs open to them, which too often are traditionally female and offer
notably less opportunity for advancement than their male colleagues enjoy.
Women in Anticolonial Wars, 1945–60
The formal end of World War II in 1945 brought sharp reductions in the
number of women in the military services of the major belligerents,
although the decline proved relatively ephemeral. In subsequent decades,
women’s military numbers everywhere increased, and not only in armed
forces that had a tradition of serving females. Throughout Asia, Latin
America, and much of Africa, many women entered military service for
the first time in the armed forces of both established and emergent nations.
Their experience in Israeli, Vietnamese, Latin American, South Asian, and
southern African armed forces are discussed more fully at the appropriate
points later in this chapter, but they came to serve in many other places as
well, including Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Oman, Turkey, and Libya
(Wiegand 1982; Hong 2002; Walsh 2007; Brooks 1995, chapter 6; Brooks
2002; Kuloglu 2006; Graeff-Wassink 1993, 1994; more generally, see Isaksson
1988). Women’s most significant military work in the postwar non-Western
world, however, took the form of backing or joining irregular armed forces
in wars of national liberation from colonial powers or rebel, often com-
munist, challenges to unpopular regimes. Initially, such forces relied on
women in substantial numbers chiefly for support services, as armies had
for centuries, but in the later twentieth century they deployed large and
growing numbers of women in frontline combat units. In China, as we have
seen, women remained a significant part of communist forces until victory
in 1949. Women also helped other irregular forces contest Japanese occu-
pation and then joined the fight for a new order after the Japanese defeat:
Huks in the Philippines against the newly formed anticommunist Republic
of the Philippines; nationalists in Indonesia, communists in Malaya, and
the Viet Minh in Indochina against returning colonialists, Dutch and
French, respectively (Lanzona 2009; Logarta 1996; Tantri 1960; MacFarland
1994, 196–97; Tan 2008; Taylor 2007).
Before the Huk rebellion ended in the early 1950s, its female members
had variously spied, organized, nursed, acted as couriers, soldiered, and
even commanded, but always within the framework of a masculine orga-
nization that armed them reluctantly and preferred to keep them from
combat. A similar pattern marked women’s military roles in the New
People’s Army that renewed communist insurrection thirty years later. A
Muslim secessionist movement led by the Moro National Liberation Front
paralleled communist insurgency. Women began as MNLF organizers and
recruiters. When fighting broke out in the 1970s, they communicated
between rebels and the civilian population, provided intelligence, and
transported supplies. Some stayed home, sewing and cooking for the
troops. Military training for women was intended chiefly to enable them
to help defend themselves and their communities, not to enter combat.
Women who did join the forces in the field were expected to keep the
camps clean, boost morale, and nurse the wounded (Lanzona 2009, 71–73;
Hilsdon 1995; Angeles 1996).
“Let women replace men in all tasks in the rear” was the slogan that
guided Vietnamese women’s participation in the war against French colo-
nial forces that began in 1946. With the men off to war, most women worked
in the fields and paddies to maintain the food supply. Others were recruited
for production tasks and road repair. Though never accepted as formal
members of the regular army, women served in home militias and territo-
rial guerrilla units. Female guerrillas, as many as 980,000 of them in all,
were nurses, couriers, guides, propagandists, and, above all, porters bearing
food and supplies to frontline troops. The numbers of women with the
French forces were far smaller, but had their own significance. In addition
to the North African volunteers who traditionally earned their dowries by
working in French military brothels, over 2600 women served with French
forces in Indochina. In the decisive siege of Dien Bien Phu that led to the
French ouster from Vietnam, Viet Minh artillery forced the victory, but a
never-ending line of women on foot and bicycle transported the ammuni-
tion across hundreds of miles from the Chinese border to keep the guns
firing; perhaps needless to say, the French had women in the besieged
outpost too (Fall 1972; Turley 1972, 797; Duiker 1982, 112; Saywell 1985, 192–
224; Duiker 2003; Tétreault 1994, 115; Taylor 2007, 170–72). When the United
States replaced France in Vietnam after 1954, women continued to play
major roles in the military as well as the political struggle for a united and
independent Vietnam. Women also served with American and South
Vietnamese forces (Bergman 1974; Tétreault 1994, 117–25; Bennett, Bexley,
and Warnock 1995, 156–79; Turner 1998, 2000; Taylor 1999, 2007; Bradley
2009, 135; Nguyen 2009; Stur 2011; Campbell, chapter 7, this volume).
A continent away, in lands around the Mediterranean, the end of World
War II brought renewed challenges to the colonial system, women again
playing major roles, especially in Palestine and Algeria. Jewish terrorist
organizations—Irgun, the Stern Gang, Palmach, Haganah―intensified
their efforts to overthrow the British Mandate in Palestine. All included
women. In 1948, after the Jewish state of Israel was proclaimed and British
forces withdrew, the armies of several Arab states invaded. Israeli women
fought alongside men to defend their new homeland (Bloom 1982; Goldman
and Wiegand 1984; Saywell 1985, 159–91; van Creveld 2000, 82–87;
Pennington 2003). Victory confirmed the existence of Israel, but the newly
formed Israeli Defense Force promptly relegated women to support roles.
Established in 1948, the Israeli Women’s Army Corps, known from its
Hebrew acronym as Chen (Hebrew for charm), took for its model the British
A.T.S., the umbrella organization for army women’s support activities in
which many had served during the war (Rolbant 1970, 136; Gal 1986, 46–47;
Eylon 2003; see also Vining, chapter 6, this volume).
Although Israel has continued to conscript women as well as men for
military service, a significantly larger number of women receive exemptions
and no women have been allowed to serve in combat since 1948, although
a restricted number of secondary combat activities opened from the mid-
1990s to women who volunteered for them, mainly in the border police
and in antichemical weapons and antiaircraft units. Israeli female soldiers
mostly do traditional women’s work in military (and sometimes civilian)
offices, kitchens, schools, and hospitals. Despite the gendered structure of
the latter-day Israel Defence Forces and the reality of women’s military
service being largely confined to support functions in Israel as in other
regular armies, the mythology of the fighting Israeli female soldier has
nonetheless persisted (Yuval-Davis 1985; Bloom and Bar-Yosef 1985; Bloom
1991; Gal 1986; Johnson 1989; Sharoni 1995, 45; Klein 1998; Izraeli 2000;
Sasson-Levy 2003; Sasson-Levy and Amram-Katz 2007). Although Pales
tinian women have also played military support roles, the fighting
Palestinian woman, in contrast to the Israeli, has become quite real, espe-
cially since the first Intifada in the late 1970s (Antonius 1979; Sayigh 1983;
MacDonald 1991, 63–89; Peteet 1991, 149–52; Young 1992). Martyrdom in
the form of suicide bombing looms as the most salient military expression
of Palestinian women’s commitment to the cause. Questions of why and
how Palestinian women become suicide bombers have aroused intense
interest among a variety of social scientists (Fighel 2003; Victor 2003; Patkin
2004; Alvanou 2004, 2008; Israeli 2004; Bloom 2005a, 19–44; Hasso 2005;
Brunner 2005; Issacharoff 2006; Tzoreff 2006; Yadlin 2006; Schweitzer 2006,
2008; Naaman 2007; Berko and Erez 2005, 2007, 2008; Erez and Berko 2008;
Gentry 2009; Dunn 2010). Relatively few studies, however, consider female
suicide bombing from a military viewpoint (Bloom 2005a, 37–39; Brym and
Araj 2005–06; Skaine 2006, 121–49; Eager 2008, 184–94).
Further west along the Mediterranean littoral, the French colonial
empire suffered another blow in Algeria, where nationalist agitation, qui-
escent during the war, resumed even as victory was celebrated. French
reprisals provoked renewed uprisings, eventually leading in 1954 to a full-
scale guerrilla war that lasted eight years. Women’s roles in the resistance
have attained legendary status, at least in part because of the stark contrast
between the traditional veiled seclusion of Muslim women and their widely
publicized actions as urban terrorists. The female fighter and terrorist
became a potent symbol of the struggle against colonial oppression (Decker
1990–91; Bouatta 1994; Cherifati-Merabtine 1994; White 2007). The French
army interpreted the symbol too literally as a striving for women’s eman-
cipation, which they offered in the futile hope of detaching women from
the revolution. The reality was that Algerian women had yet to imagine
emancipation (Ladewig 2000; Seferdjeli 2004, 2005). Few women, in any
event, bore either arms or bombs. Their contribution was far more prosaic,
as women’s military participation always tended to be. In her careful anal-
ysis of the registration cards archived in the Algerian veterans’ ministry,
Djamila Amrane (1982, especially the table at p. 129 and associated discus-
sion, 127–34), herself a resistance fighter from 1956 to 1962, provided an
unusually clear picture of women’s military work, despite limited and
incomplete data that greatly understated the total numbers of women
actively involved. Militant women activists fell into two groups, those
attached to the Civilian Organization of the National Liberation Front
(OCFLN), about four-fifths of the total, and those who belonged to the
Army of National Liberation (ANL). Civilian militants supported the strug-
gle primarily by providing food and shelter, but they also served as couriers
and guides, and collected money, medicine, and arms for the fighters. Two
percent were terrorists. Half the military women were nurses, and most of
the rest were cooks and laundresses. Whether civilian or military, in short,
women did what women had always done, meeting demands for caring
and nurturing (see also Benallègue 1983, 704–10; Knauss 1987, 75–77; Hélie-
Lucas 1988, 171–75; Hélie-Lucas 1990, 105–107; Cherifati-Merabtine 1994, 47).
In sub-Saharan Africa women figured in another, less successful, inde-
pendence struggle during the 1950s, the abortive Mau Mau rebellion in
Kenya. Nationalist aspirations long preceded the outbreak of Kenyan vio-
lence. As in many other areas, World War II proved only a respite. Like the
French in Algeria, the British authorities facing unrest in Kenya recognized
the significance of women’s participation, which they identified as the
“passive wing” of Mau Mau; they sought, again like the French and with
equal futility, to detach women from the movement. Women’s most impor-
tant activity was maintaining supply lines to rebels in the field; information,
food, medicine, and guns flowed from the towns and reserve areas into the
forests. Women also went into the forest themselves to support the fighting
communities. Some acted as nurses, or “forest doctors,” and some bore
arms, though how many is impossible to say (Kanogo 1988, 88; Presley 1986,
62–67; Presley 1988, 503–504).
On the other side of the Atlantic, the revolution in Cuba was more suc-
cessful. The target was not a colonial master but a home-grown dictator.
Although the greatest revolutionary mobilization of women occurred only
after the insurgent victory, women contributed to the insurgency as well.
In recounting Episodes of the revolutionary war, Che Guevara (1963, 36)
identified three prominent women fighters by name. Unmentioned was
Tania, the East German who became a Cuban revolutionary heroine, fight-
ing with Che in the Sierra Maestra and dying with him in the Bolivian
jungle (Jaquette 1973, 346–47; Lobao 1990, 191; Rojas and Rodríguez Calderón
1971; Scheer 1968).
Aside from a few prominent women and a single all-female platoon
formed near the end of the fighting in September 1958 (Franqui 1980, 404;
Maloof 1999, 26–27, 64–65; Waters 2003; Shayne 2004, 120–21), women were
rare among the fighting units, rarer still as fighters. Only one guerrilla in
twenty was female, according to war correspondent Dickey Chapelle (1962,
327), who spent a month with the rebels during 1958; she noted that “the
women in uniform were non-combatants who did housekeeping and sup-
ply assignments.” Noncombatant scarcely meant danger-free. As one guer-
rillera recalled, “when we were cooking we did it under fire; we went to the
trenches to deliver food and we had to return under fire and bombard-
ments. So we weren’t going to let the men tell us. ‘No danger! Danger of
what?’” (Mujeres [September 1983], as quoted in Bayard de Volo 2009, 1185).
Guevara himself underlined the vital support role women played in
guerrilla warfare. “Of course, there are not too many woman soldiers,” he
observed in his reflections On guerrilla warfare (1961, 57–58).
But they can be used in many capacities, particularly in communications.
They should be entrusted with carrying confidential messages, ammunition,
etc. … They can cook for the troops, and perform other duties of a domestic
nature, teach the soldiers and the local population, indoctrinate the children,
perform the functions of social workers, nurse the sick, help sew uniforms,
and, if necessary, even bear arms.
Far from being the sexist expression of patriarchal culture, as several have
suggested (e.g., Lobao 1990, 189; Mason 1992/2000, 250–51; Kampwirth 2002,
128), this is a straightforward observation about the realities of women’s
roles in guerrilla warfare throughout history. In her essay on Cuba’s female
guerrillas, Olga Lopez (1976, 112) reaffirmed their performance of “domes-
tic tasks … [in] guerrilla fronts [battalions],” as well as their service as
nurses, messengers, scouts, and teachers, further confirmed by Carlos
Franqui (1980) in his examination of the revolution through letters and
interviews. To women, in short, fell the indispensable support tasks that
sustained the fighting fronts; they provided the logistics of revolutionary
warfare. These activities, perhaps needless to say, were not limited to guer-
rilleras; large segments of the female population actively or passively sup-
ported the revolution without ever donning a uniform (Reeves 1960;
García-Pérez 1998, 123 [note 1]; Lobao 1990, 191–92; Maloof 1999, 26, 45–47,
58; Shayne 2004, 120, 126–28; Foran, Klouzal, and Rivera 1997, 32–33).
Women and Insurrection in Latin America
The Cuban revolution set the pattern for women’s participation in what
Timothy Wickham-Crowley (1992, 21–22) has termed the first wave of Latin
American insurrection. During the 1960s, Cuba’s revolutionary success
encouraged left-wing rural guerrilla movements, short-lived in Venezuela,
Peru, and Bolivia, more persistent in Guatemala (1968–96) and Colombia
(1965–98), though inspiration came from Moscow, Beijing, or Hanoi as well
as Havana. Communist ideology notwithstanding, women played the same
limited frontline roles in these armed struggles as they had in Cuba. Female
participation ratios in the several movements varied widely, but none
exceeded 1 in 5 or included women in top leadership roles; all consistently
restricted women from combat while relying on them for support. That
support, though vital, tends to receive only incidental mention in contem-
porary and scholarly accounts. It also remains largely unquantified; figures
for female participation in irregular warfare everywhere tend to include
only combatants, leaving uncounted the myriad helpers upon which the
fighters depend (Jaquette 1973, 348; Wickham-Crowley 1992, 21; Luciak 2001,
23–29; Gonzalez-Perez 2006). Both Guatemalan and Colombian guerrilla
forces recruited or impressed large numbers of child soldiers, many of them
girls, which contributed significantly to the difficulties of reintegration
once the fighting ended (Hauge 2007; Keairns 2003; Hernández and Romero
2003; Herrera and Porch 2008; Graham 2008, 206–10). The expanding world-
wide participation of children as well as women in armed conflict had
many causes, not least of which was the widespread availability of light-
weight automatic weapons (Farr, Myrttinen, and Schnabel 2009).
Although part of this first wave of Latin American insurrection, the
urban guerrillas of Uruguay, the Tupamaros, presented a different picture,
not least because the movement centered on Montevideo rather than the
countryside. It also mobilized a much larger proportion of women than
had any previous Latin American insurrection. From 1966 to 1972, the
percentage of women actively involved with the Tupamaros rose from 10
to 27 (Porzecanski 1973, 30–31). The Tupamaros divided themselves into
active and passive groups, essentially fighters and supporters. Bank robbery,
political kidnapping, and assassination fell to active Tupamaro squads,
each of which included at least one or two women. As always, however,
women seldom fought; they mostly helped to provide logistical support
and also contributed to intelligence and propaganda work (Jaquette 1973,
351; Miller 1980, 161–62; Lobao 1990, 194).
Women’s frontline participation increased markedly in the second wave
of Latin American insurrection. In the early 1970s, several Latin American
revolutionary organizations abandoned the foquista conception of guerrilla
warfare—based on the Cuban model of a small band of full-time revolu-
tionaries (the guerrilla foco) engaged in direct military action—and
adopted a concept of prolonged people’s war derived from China via
Vietnam (Chinchilla 1983, 431). People’s war demanded the mobilization
of women as well as men. “In no other fashion does the second wave of
guerrillas differ so thoroughly from the first wave,” observed Wickham-
Crowley (1992, 215), than in “the striking expansion of women’s revolution-
ary roles,” both as fighters and leaders. Notwithstanding savvy
public-relations campaigns that fed foreign academics what they wanted
to hear, the reality of sharply rising numbers of female fighters since the
1970s seems incontestable—the Zapatista movement that burst into prom-
inence in Chiapas, Mexico, epitomized both the public relations savvy and
the centrality of women’s participation (Mora 1998; Kampwirth 2002,
83–115). Women comprised fully half of all combatants in Peru’s Shining
Path (Sendero Luminoso, 1980–95). Over the long course of the struggle, the
women of Shining Path not only expanded their responsibility for a wide
range of logistical, medical, and intelligence support activities, but increas-
ingly became fighters and leaders (Lázaro 1990, 243–44; Palmer 1994, 277;
Kirk 1997; Coral Cordero 1998, 352; Andreas 1999, 318–19).
The growing worldwide feminist movement may have been a factor in
overcoming cultural resistance among guerrilla leaders to women in non-
traditional roles, a likelihood reinforced by increasing numbers of women
in regular Latin American armed forces as well, little though their officers
welcomed the change (Chinchilla 1983, 424–25; Lobao 1990, 194–203;
Wickham-Crowley 1992, 216–17; Kampwirth 2002, 132–33; Seitz, Lobao, and
Treadway 1993, 173; Zalaquett 2009; Estrada 2009; Loveman 1999, 263). But
whether as the result of a proto-feminist streak, leftist ideology, or simple
pragmatism, guerrilla armies opened new doors for women.
No doors opened wider for women than those in Nicaragua. Like
Augusto Sandino’s insurrectionary Army in Defense of the National
Sovereignty of Nicaragua (1927–33), the guerrilla movement that took his
name four decades later offered women new places outside the traditional
gender structure (Sandinista National Liberation Front 1987, 14; Chinchilla
1983, 429; Harris 1983, 901–902; Schroeder 2002, 230). Initially the Nicaraguan
guerrilleras of the 1970s, like those of the 1930s, were few in number, but
the latter-day Sandinistas could draw on a large and growing politically
active women’s movement. Women suffered the same violent repression
as men when they challenged the regime, and so, like men, were driven
toward insurrection. Not long content with support roles, women
demanded larger pieces of the action and the Sandinista leadership recog-
nized the value of rallying such a large proportion of the population to the
cause. As a result, women not only acted in a variety of support roles―mes-
senger, nurse, cook, spy, supply carrier, driver, keeper of safe houses, even
bomb maker―but also became almost a third of Sandinista combat forces
and gained a major foothold in the command structure. Four of the seven
battalion commanders in the 1979 battle that sealed the Sandinista victory
were women (Randall 1981; Ramírez-Horton 1982, 150–52; Harris 1983, 902;
Deighton et al. 1983, 50–52; Chinchilla 1983, 422–23; Lobao 1990, 196;
Bennett, Bexley, and Warnock 1995, 212–13, 225–26; Mason 1992/2000, 266;
Foran, Klouzal, and Rivera 1997, 43–44; Kampwirth 2002, 21–44; Luciak
2001, 16–23). The image of the female guerrilla fighter did not long survive
the war; while men lived in memory as heroic, women tended to be remem-
bered for passive resistance. In a familiar pattern, the end of the war
brought a sharp drop in women’s military participation, from a wartime
high of roughly 30 percent to 10 percent or less of the rank-and-file a year
later, and only 6 percent of officers, though some former guerrilleras
remained active in the militias or the national police. Subsequently, the
long war against the U.S.-backed contras did not see the same level of
female participation as had the earlier revolutionary war. Though still
deemed available for combat duty in an emergency, women who remained
in the army mostly shifted to technical and administrative positions
(Gorman 1982, 123–24; Ramírez-Horton 1982, 153; Deighton et al. 1983,
52–62; Harris 1983, 905; Harris 1988, 204; Molyneux 1989, 132–34; Collinson
et al. 1990, 155–61; Chuchryk 1991, 158; Bennett, Bexley, and Warnock 1995,
207–11; Mulinari 1998).
Women also played major roles in the Salvadoran insurrection, compris-
ing as much as 35 percent of the guerrilla army overall. Like the Nicaraguans,
they were driven to rebel by harsh government repression and assumed
both combat and support roles, but mostly support (Saywell 1985, 280–304;
New American Press 1989; Lobao 1990, 197–99; Mason 1992/2000, 267;
Bennett, Bexley, and Warnock 1995, 180–203; Ibáñez 2002, 121; Dickson-
Gómez 2002, 330; Kampwirth 2002, 45–75; Shayne 2004, 42; Luciak 2001,
3–16). As Ana Matilde Rodar, a former guerrillera, told Julia Shayne (1999,
96), “women had the role of cooks, as radio operators, working hospitals,
doing a lot of work with the population, and doing a lot of running from
one place to another.” Maria Marta Valladares, a long-time activist and
guerrilla leader whose nom de guerre was Nidia Diaz (1992, as quoted in
Phillips 1997, 16), explained that the “war front in which you worked, deter-
mined the type of job you held. The women performed all types of jobs,
from the traditional roles of cook, to messenger, to radio operator, and to
front line combatant.” Support came from outside guerrilla ranks as well.
Many women who did not leave home collaborated with the guerrilla army;
the hardships might be less, but not the risks of imprisonment or death.
Collaboration might mean hiking to a nearby camp to cook for the guerrilla
or making food at home to carry to the camp. It might also mean buying
supplies and dropping them at designated locations (Viterna 2006, 31).
Vital and risky though support roles might be, they lacked the cachet of
combat. Irma Amaya, another ex-guerrillera, recalled that women did:
a little of everything; from the woman who lived at the edge of the guerrilla
camps and who took a basket and went to the market to buy and sell things
and hidden inside her basket took messages, or took money that other
people gave, or brought food; from these seemingly insignificant acts that
really showed women’s heroism even though the importance of those tasks
wasn’t recognized at the time and is still not recognized today. (Shayne
2004, 42–43)
Women’s taking up arms in liberation struggles excites discussion because
it seems to challenge the social order, but that may be misleading. “It is no
accident,” observed Anne Simpson (1983, 895) “that our most familiar image
of women bearing arms is the young attractive woman shouldering a rifle,”
which in fact corresponds to “wider male definitions of femininity. We do
not visualise old and fat or mutilated women in a military setting.” And in
El Salvador as in Nicaragua and Cuba, war’s end not only brought a sharp
reduction in the numbers of military women but also began the process of
erasing the memory of their actual contributions to victory. Whether or
not participation in armed struggle brought women any lasting social gains
remains an open question throughout the non-Western world (Seitz, Labao,
and Treadway 1993; Luciak 2001; Dickson-Gómez 2002, 330; Kampwirth
2002, 75–81; Stoner 2003; Sajjad 2004).
Women in African Liberation Struggles and Civil Wars
From the 1960s to the 1990s, wars of independence and civil wars wracked
sub-Saharan Africa, too often entwined in Cold War maneuverings. This
chapter focuses on the conflicts in which women figured prominently in
military roles, sometimes on both sides, though not usually in the same
ways. Although African independence movements, like those in contem-
porary Latin America, leaned leftward and shared at least a rhetorical
commitment to women’s liberation, the gendered military division of labor
generally prevailed; again as in Latin America, the proportion of female
combatants increased over the course of struggle. The wars of indepen-
dence in the 1960s and 1970s can most readily be classified according to
the nature of the oppression from which liberation was sought: foreign
colonialism, white racism, or domestic colonialism. Only Portugal among
the colonial powers refused to negotiate independence for its African
colonies—Guinea-Bisseau, Angola, and Mozambique―claiming them to
be overseas provinces. All three wars began around 1960 and ended with
independence by 1975 after an officers’ coup overthrew Portugal’s fascist
regime. The armed struggles in Angola and Mozambique overlapped and
interacted with revolts against white settler regimes in Namibia, Zimbabwe,
and South Africa (Urdang 1984; Lyons and Israel 2002). Far to the north, in
the Horn of Africa, the oppressor was the Ethiopian empire, which faced
long-lasting liberation struggles in Eritrea (1961–91) and Tigray (1975–91).
Like the liberation wars against Portugal, the wars against Ethiopia also
ended with the collapse of the oppressive colonial regime, though in this
instance the colonizer was African rather than European (UNESCO 1984,
5–6; Turshen and Twagiramariya 1998; Nzomo 2002, 9–10; Maloba 2007).
Shared ideology and frequent contacts among the leaders lent the lib-
eration wars of Portugal’s African colonies a certain unity, despite wide
variations in geography and circumstance. All three regarded mass mobi-
lization as the foundation of a successful armed struggle for liberation, and
all three brought significant numbers of women into their guerrilla forces
(Lyons 2001, 308; Andersson 1992, 25–26; Sheldon 1994, 41–42; Arthur 1998,
67; West 2000, 183–84; Coulter, Persson, and Utas 2008, 11). Participation
for many women began with preparing food for the guerrillas and carrying
it to them; in many places, women remained in charge of the food supply
throughout the war. They became key elements of the supply system, bear-
ing not only food but arms, ammunition, and every other type of military
materiel, sometimes over very long distances from base camps to front
lines (Cornwall 1972, 168; Urdang 1979, 120–23; Ducados 2000, 15; Isaacman
and Isaacman 1984, 153, 155, 156; Arnfred 1988, 5; Urdang 1989, 95; Arthur
1998, 73–74). In Guinea-Bisseau, observed Stephanie Urdang (1979, 124) as
“in all guerrilla wars women have been the supply line—be it Yugoslavia
during the Second World War, Vietnam, Algeria, Angola, or Mozambique.”
In addition to food supply and portage, women played especially sig-
nificant roles in spying and other covert operations, in nursing and other
health care activities, in social welfare activities such as teaching and run-
ning orphanages, and in political activities, especially mobilizing other
women (Chaliand 1969, 32, 128–29; Urdang 1979, 120–23; Ducados 2000, 15;
Isaacman and Isaacman 1984, 153, 165; Arthur 1998, 74). While women
learned to use weapons and received other military training, they seldom
joined the battle. For the most part, they were asked to help defend the
liberated areas and train local militias (Urdang 1979, 119–40; Ducados 2000;
Isaacman and Isaacman 1984, 158–59, 161, 164–65; Sheldon 1994, 42; Urdang
1989, 95; West 2000, 183–84). Portuguese forces also used women, air force
nurses, though in relatively limited numbers. Perhaps more striking,
Portuguese forces used African troops in ways that corresponded to rebel
uses of women. Initially, African males served chiefly as auxiliaries, servants
in the barracks, informers, and guides. As the Portuguese situation dete-
riorated, black troops assumed larger and larger combat roles, accounting
for over half Portugal’s fighting force when the wars effectively ended in
1974 (Venter 1973; Isaksson 1988, 422; Borges Coelho 2002, 130, 138).
Armed struggles in Angola and Mozambique against Portuguese colo-
nialism became closely entwined with guerrilla wars against white settler
regimes in three other southern African territories: Namibia (1966–88),
Rhodesia/Zimbabwe (1969–79), and South Africa (1976–92). South Africa’s
determination to convert Namibia from United Nations Trust Territory to
province and impose apartheid provoked the armed uprising. From the
mid-1970s onward, in fact, the guerrilla war in Namibia merged with the
civil war in Angola, fomented at least in part by South Africa’s deliberate
policy of destabilizing the newly independent Angolan state. As in the
other southern African guerrilla wars, Namibian women played vital, if
often unacknowledged, support roles as couriers and porters. They shel-
tered the guerrillas and fed them, often at great personal risk. Although
some did join the fighting, especially later in the war, armed combat was
not their main contribution (Lapchick and Urdang 1982, 115–16; Cleaver
and Wallace 1990; Shikola 1998; Lyons and Israel 2002).
British and French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa largely achieved inde-
pendence through negotiation with their majority black populations.
Rhodesia was the great exception, as its ruling white regime issued a
Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. Armed resistance soon
followed. Spirit mediums able to channel royal Zimbabwean ancestors
greatly aided the guerrillas in mobilizing the peasantry. One such ancestor
of special significance was Nehanda, whose medium was always female.
Nehanda had also been invoked in the failed uprising of the mid-1890s, the
chimurenga, in which women also had been active; the memory of the
medium hanged by the British lived on to inspire the second chimurenga
(Mutunhu 1976; Beach 1979, 1998; Lan 1985, 140; Lyons 2004, 67–82). In other
respects, women’s roles in the Zimbabwean guerrilla war followed the
familiar pattern: food and shelter providers, weapons smugglers, lookouts
and messengers, nurses and paramedics, teachers and political organizers
(Raeburn 1979, 145–46; Lapchick and Urdang 1982, 106–107; Nyasha and
Rose 1983; Batezat, Mwalo, and Truscott 1988, 156; Ranchod-Nilsson 1994,
74; Nhongo-Simbanegavi 2000, 84–93; Lyons 2001, 305). Together with a
relatively small number of fighters, these women comprised up to a third
of guerrilla forces. Many others worked the fields that fed the camps,
though they were not considered part of the army. Ultimately, as many as
250,000 women actively participated in the liberation struggle, of whom
perhaps 10,000 served in the guerrilla forces, mostly in support roles.
Though widely acknowledged as vital, women’s contributions were just as
widely perceived as secondary to men’s (Stott 1990; Ranchod-Nilsson 1994,
62–63; Kesby 1996; Nhongo-Simbanegavi 2000; Lyons 2001, 318; Lyons 2004,
159–70).
White Rhodesian women increasingly joined the struggle on the other
side, in defense of the regime. They served in the Rhodesian Women’s
Service, in both the army and air force; though some women went to the
battlefield to help with casualties, most served as clerks. Rhodesia also
recruited farmers’ wives for part-time work in the Women Police Auxiliary
Service; their main task was running a radio warning system in rural areas.
Most Rhodesian women, white as well as black, contributed domestically,
cooking for the troops. Race and ideology might differ, but gendered dis-
tinctions were nearly universal (Lyons 2004, 128–36). Much the same was
true in South Africa. The 90,000 women who served in South Africa’s armed
forces during World War II had all been demobilized after the war, but the
apartheid regime’s concern to display white unity began bringing white
women into the South African Defence Force (SADF) in the early 1970s;
women’s numbers expanded enormously after the Soweto uprising of 1976,
from 300 to as many 13,000 in the regular forces and militia. Women’s
military work was largely administrative, medical, and technical. Though
rigorously excluded from combat and destined for desk jobs, women none-
theless received serious basic training in firearms and other military skills
(Unterhalter 1988; Cock 1989, 51; Cock 1991, 96–149; Cock 1994, 156).
The guerrilla army of the African National Congress in South Africa,
known as Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) or MK, differed sub-
stantially from the SADF, but the two did share certain common features.
Both increased the numbers of women in their ranks rapidly from the
mid-1970s onward, though women never formed more than 20 percent of
the MK or 15 percent of the SADF. Both armies excluded women from
combat, largely restricting them to support roles, and neither army included
many women in its leadership. Such similarities should not obscure the
fundamental differences. For the MK, women’s liberation was an article of
policy, as it was for other left-wing rebel forces. It certainly was not for the
SADF or the society it represented, which simply extended traditional
female roles into military service; it also rigidly separated male and female
soldiers in training and deployment, something quite foreign to the MK,
in which men and women trained side by side. “Our chores and daily rou-
tine was the same. We dug trenches, did guard duty, shared cooking and
washing―everybody did their own washing. We all did the same things
and ate the same food. We did lots of physical exercises so we all had
beautiful bodies,” recalled a female MK cadre in a 1988 interview (as quoted
in Cock 1994, 158). Once past training, MK cadres moved into a variety of
support activities. The female population also contributed to the rebel
army’s infrastructure as couriers, spies, and providers of shelter (Kimble
and Unterhalter 1982; Lodge 1987; Pillay 1992; Morris 1993; Cock 1991, 150–
86; Cock 1994; Lyons and Israel 2002). The new South African National
Defence Force, established in 1994, amalgamated the formerly contending
armies and was formally committed to a program of affirmative action
intended to promote gender and racial equality. Although the process was
far from smooth, the percentage of military women actually increased;
women were no longer excluded from the combat arms, and higher ranks
opened to them (Cilliers et al. 1997; Heinecken 1998, 2002).
Women played exceptionally large roles in the Eritrean and Tigrean
wars of liberation against Ethiopia, accounting for as much as 40 percent
of the guerrilla forces and a quarter of frontline fighters. Many observers,
in fact, have been struck by the large numbers of women in Eritrean and
Tigrean guerrilla forces, the more so since images of women fighters figured
so prominently in guerrilla propaganda (Burgess 1989; Pateman 1990, 465;
Brooks 1995, 5–8; Pool 1998, 32; Le Houerou 2000; Coulter, Persson, and
Utas 2008, 10, 14; Krosch 2005, 11–14). Women’s active military participation
was nothing new in Ethiopian history; the memory of women guerrillas
fighting against Italian invaders in the 1890s and again in the 1930s remained
alive (Seltene 1994; Minale 2001; Tsehai 2005). Eritrea achieved an extraor-
dinary level of sexual equality in the liberation struggle, but like many other
countries, failed to translate wartime practice into peacetime change (Le
Houerou 2000; Bernal 2000, 2001; Krosch 2005; Mama 1997, 54–56).
Initially, under the leadership of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF),
women participated only in noncombat roles, mainly providing food, gath-
ering intelligence, and nursing. By the early 1970s, the ELF’s successor, the
Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), a more left-leaning group con-
cerned with social reform as well as independence, was giving women
larger roles. Women began to receive military training and become fighters,
though not necessarily combatants. Guerrilla fighters in Eritrea (as in most
other irregular armies), male or female, had many duties besides serving
on the front lines. Women did fight side-by-side with men in mixed units,
but they also helped staff EPLF schools, hospitals, and repair shops, along
with providing health and educational help to peasants in liberated areas.
Women fighters were particularly crucial to mass mobilization (Magos
1981, 35–36; Silkin 1983, 911–12; Wilson 1991; Selassie 1992, 69–70; Bernal
2000, 62–63; Bernal 2001; Mason 2001; Zerai 1994). Much the same was true
of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front, modeled on and closely allied
with the EPLF (Copson 1994, 94; Hammond 1990; Bennett, Bexley, and
Warnock 1995, 71–72; Tsegay 1999; Veale 2003, 17–20).
In several of the civil wars that roiled the continent from the 1970s
onward, aspects of women’s military service changed sharply, though much
also remained the same. Several of the newly independent states of south-
ern Africa, notably Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe, moved almost
immediately from liberation war to civil war, at least partly because South
Africa not only supported guerrilla proxies in all three countries but
launched frequent raids with its own forces, all part of a policy aimed at
destabilizing the new regimes. Women now appeared more as victims than
participants (Fauvet 1984; Thompson 1999). Other African civil wars of the
late twentieth century in Uganda (Turshen 1998; Behrend 1998, 1999;
Mugambe 2000; Leibig 2005; Schubert 2006; Graham 2008, 211–14), Sudan
(Halim 1998; Weber 2006), Liberia (Jameson 1991; Moran 1995; Utas 2005a,
2005b; Specht 2006), and Sierra Leone (Abdullah and Muana 1998; Richards
2002; Shepler 2004; Mazurana and Carlson 2004; Denov and Maclure 2006,
2007, 2009; Denov and Gervais 2007; Park 2006; van Gog 2008; Coulter 2008,
2009) shared many of the characteristics of the southern wars, but also
introduced novelties of their own. In particular, they became notorious for
the routine recruitment, often by force, of children, girls as well as boys,
for purposes both military and sexual (Peters, Richards, and Vlassenroot
2003; Kostelny 2004; McKay and Mazurana 2004; McKay 2005; Onekalit
2005; Whittington 2005; Macdonald 2007; Coulter, Persson, and Utas 2008;
Quénivet 2008).
Female Terrorism in Late Twentieth-Century Asia
Earlier sections of this chapter have already addressed women’s participa-

tion in both regular and irregular military forces in the Middle East and
western Asia, in Russia, China, and southeastern Asia. South Asia was no
exception. Women in lesser or greater numbers played the same variety of
roles in insurrection and civil war in south Asia as they had elsewhere
(Manchanda 2001, 2002; Gonzalez-Perez 2008b; Goswami 2000;
Cunningham 2003, 180–81). But female terrorism emerged as the hallmark
of irregular and revolutionary warfare in Asia. Just as they have participated
historically in other military activity, women have played their roles in the
long history of terrorism as a weapon of the weak (Bloom 2005a, 1–18;
Laqueur 2007). Those roles were usually small, with the notable exception
of the Russian radical movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century (McNeal 1971–72; Engel and Rosenthal 1975; Broido 1977; Knight
1979; Pomper 1994; Boniece 2003). When left-wing political terrorism
reemerged in the 1960s and 1970s, now centered on Western Europe and
the United States, women assumed larger roles, especially in Germany and
Italy (Laqueur 1987, 79–80; MacDonald 1991; Zwerman 1992; Cataldo
Neuburger and Valentini 1996; Cunningham 2003, 175–77; Varon 2004; Eager
2008, 31–36, 45–53, 59–68; Gonzalez-Perez 2008a, 102–21, Alison 2004;
Alison 2009). Female suicide terrorism, however, was something new.
During the 1970s and 1980s, female suicide terrorism emerged in Palestine
and Chechnya, as discussed earlier in this chapter. Muslim women were
not, however, the only female suicide bombers, nor has religion always
played the major role in fostering such attacks. In fact, female suicide ter-
rorism began with secular groups; piety made most religious separatists at
first reluctant to follow the path of female martyrdom (Schweitzer 2003;
Reuter 2004; Ness 2005; Bloom 2007, 96–99; Bokhari 2007, 58–61).
Most female suicide bombers have belonged to secular separatist move-
ments, notably the Kurdish Workers Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan,
PKK) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). PKK launched an
insurgency in 1991 intended to unite the 20 million Kurds divided among
Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran into a single independent Kurdish state. The
movement actively and successfully recruited women, offering them not
only military training but a level of freedom from traditional restrictions
otherwise unavailable in highly conservative rural Kurdish society. Their
greatest military value, in the eyes of PKK leadership, was acting as human
bombs, a service for which they rarely volunteered but loyally executed in
numbers much larger than men. Between 1996 and 2003, when suicide
bombing ended, women launched two-thirds of the 21 suicide attacks in
Turkey (Bloom 2005b, 56; Skaine 2006, 80–84; Eager 2008, 176–79; Gonzalez-
Perez 2008a, 84–88; Ergil 2000, 48–51).
Female suicide bombers in the Tamil war of independence against a
Sinhalese-dominated government in Sri Lanka far outnumbered those in
Turkey, perhaps more than 80 in all, though they accounted for a smaller
proportion of the 200-plus total attacks, no more than 40 percent. The
insurgency began in 1983, with the fighting forces supported by a female
auxiliary responsible for clerical work, nursing, cooking, and similar func-
tions (Balasingham 1993; Stack-O’Connor 2007, 45). Women graduated to
more active military roles with the 1984 formation of a female combat unit
called Birds of Freedom, in part inspired by the well remembered, Tamil-
led, all-female Rani of Jhansi Regiment of the Indian National Army in
World War II; the INA also deployed a suicide squad that included female
members (Visram 1992; Hills and Silverman 1993; Lebra 2008; Schaulk 1994,
174; Hellmann-Rajanayagam 2008). By 1986, actively recruited and well-
trained girls and women had become an integral element of the fighting
forces, accounting for as much as a third of fighting strength by the early
1990s (Schaulk 1994; Alison 2003, 38–39; Jayamaha 2004; Ramasubramanian
2004, 11; Stack-O’Connor 2007, 47–48; Jordan and Denov 2007, 43–44, 46;
Eager 2008, 139–41; Davis 2008). They also became members of the elite
Black Tigers commando force. Suicide’s deep roots in Tamil culture not-
withstanding, the suicide attacks of highly-trained female Tamil Tigers
more closely resembled military missions of no return than they did the
quest for martyrdom that characterized most other groups (De Mel 2004;
Bloom 2005a, 158–61; Gunawardena 2006; Silva 2006; Skaine 2006, 85–96;
Gonzalez-Perez 2008a, 60–65). The Sri Lankan regular armed forces, like
other South Asian armies, recruited women as well, though never so enthu-
siastically nor in such large numbers (Anonymous 2004; Anonymous 2000;
Anonymous 2006).
The history of latter-day female terrorism remains to be written. Both
the phenomena of female terrorism in general (Georges-Abeyie 1983; Taylor
2000; Morgan 2001; Cunningham 2003; Bloom 2005a; Garrison 2006; Ness
2007, 2008; Sjoberg and Gentry 2007; Eager 2008; Gonzalez-Perez 2008a;
Speckhard 2008; Jacques and Taylor 2009) and female suicide terrorism in
particular (Beyler 2003a, 2003b; Schweitzer 2006; Skaine 2006; Bloom 2007;
Rush and Schafluetzel-Iles 2007; Zedalis 2008; Wray 2009) have generated
huge and growing scholarly literatures, mostly of a social scientific nature.
A long-standing concern has been understanding the motives of female
terrorists and the methods used to recruit them (Galvin 1983; Lester, Yang,
and Lindsay 2004; Bokhari 2007; Gultekin 2007), especially for suicide mis-
sions (Grimland, Apter, and Kerkhof 2006; Jacques and Taylor 2008; Kobrin
2008; O’Rourke 2009). Scholars have also probed the ways media coverage
has shaped perceptions of female suicide terrorism (Nacos 2005; Shedd
2006; Brunner 2007; Gardner 2007; Sternadori 2007) and explored possible
links between terrorism and feminism (Moser and Clark 2002; Stinson 2005;
Hoogensen 2005; Repo 2006; Friedman 2008; Sixta 2008). Only a relatively
small number address female terrorism from a military viewpoint (Lennon
2006; Cunningham 2007; Thomson 2008; Cragin and Daly 2009; Sutten 2009;
Zedalis 2004).
In some respects, women’s military work in the decades since World
War II diverged from precedent. In particular, women joined combat in
growing numbers, regularly coming to form a third of frontline troops and
sometimes substantially more. Women have also in recent decades
assumed large and growing roles with terrorist organizations that placed
them in the forefront of a new kind of irregular warfare―suicide bombing.
These sensational and widely publicized new developments, however,
should not obscure the substantial continuities in women’s military work.
In many respects, the history of women in non-Western military institu-
tions since World War II has reiterated the familiar pattern of previous
centuries. Women’s active participation in a wide range of military activi-
ties continues to support regular and irregular armed forces alike.
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INTRODUCTION TO PART II 379
PART II
PICTURES OF WOMEN’S MILITARY WORK
SINCE THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
380 Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining
INTRODUCTION TO PART II
Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining
Photography has thoroughly documented the large and growing role of

women as members of the armed forces during the twentieth and twenty-
first centuries. Such works as Diana Condell and Jean Liddiard (1987) on
images of women in the First World War, Claude Quétel (2004) on women
in the Second World War, and Vickie Lewis (1999) on American women in
war have literally made women’s military work visible in ways never before
possible. Publications like these, as well as such photographic archives as
those of the U.S. Library of Congress and the British Imperial War Museum,
allow us readily to compile a pictorial record of military women over the
past century and a half. But women belonged to armies long before the
advent of photography.
Armies have rarely been all-male institutions. Throughout history,
women have worked for the system and benefited from their efforts, though
rarely as much as men. Pejoratively termed camp followers well into the
nineteenth century, women were nonetheless integral parts of the infra-
structure of army supply and maintenance virtually everywhere through
most of recorded history, although chroniclers and historians rarely
acknowledged the reality of women’s presence. Until roughly the mid-
seventeenth century, armies resembled mobile towns populated by women
as well as men to form distinctive military communities. The growth of
state control of armed forces from the mid-seventeenth century onward
altered the nature of women’s military service. Like army men, female camp
followers still came from the lowest social classes, but their status became
increasingly regularized and systematized as they traded freedom for secu-
rity. That system grew increasingly marginalized in the nineteenth century
as lower-class women began to lose their military roles to middle-class
women. This shift coincided with the introduction of photography, which
greatly expanded the pictorial coverage of women’s military history.
Before the late nineteenth century, however, photography had barely
touched military activity and writers on military affairs rarely referred to
women. For this earlier period, we must rely on the graphic arts. The seri-
ous scholarly study of military art is little more than two decades old
(Corvisier and Harrington 1994; Paret 1997; Pepper 2003). With the excep-
tion of a single article (Andersson 1998), we know of nothing specifically
addressing women’s place in military art. Yet though men remain by far
the most common figures in military art, as abundantly shown in such
studies as those of A.E. Haswell Miller and N.P. Dawnay (1970), J.R. Hale
(1990), Pia Cuneo (2002), and Peter Harrington (1993), women have not
been absent. Sketchers, painters, and printmakers of all kinds regularly, if
spottily, included images of women in military settings. Although far from
comprehensive, their body of work is nonetheless most persuasive. It is
also a surprisingly extensive record of women’s military life in the Western
world, the surface of which George and Anne Forty (1979) barely scratch
in their pictorial anthology of camp followers.
From this store of images we have selected drawings, prints, and paint-
ings, all at least roughly contemporary with the scenes they depict, to
illustrate women’s participation in military activities from the sixteenth
century into the nineteenth. These images reveal, more clearly than the
often relatively sparse textual evidence of earlier periods, the pervasive
association of women with armies and their activities throughout Europe
before the twentieth century. Together with the photographs that show
women’s military work since the nineteenth century, the images repro-
duced on the following pages offer a glimpse of women’s military life over
the past five centuries.
Works Cited
Andersson, Christiane. 1998. Von “Metzen” und “Dirnen”: Frauenbilder in Kriegsdarstellungen

der frühen Neuzeit. In Karen Hagemann and Ralf Pröve, eds., Landsknechte,
Soldatenfrauen und Nationalkrieger: Militär, Krieg und Geschlechterordnung im histori-
schen Wandel, 171–98. Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag.
Condell, Diana, and Jean Liddiard. 1987. Working for victory? Images of women in the First
World War 1914–1918. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Corvisier, André, and Peter Harrington. 1994. Iconography, military. In André Corvisier and
John Childs, eds. A dictionary of military history, 369–75. Trans. Chris Turner. Oxford
and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Reference.
Cuneo, Pia, ed. 2002. Artful armies, beautiful battles: Art and warfare in early modern Europe.
Leiden: Brill.
ers through the ages. Speldhurst: Midas Books.
Hale, J.R. 1990. Artists and warfare in the Renaissance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Harrington, Peter. 1993. British artists and war: The face of battle in paintings and prints,
1700–1914. London: Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal.
Lewis, Vickie. 1999. Side-by-side: A photographic history of American women in war. New
York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang.
Miller, A.E. Haswell, and N.P. Dawnay. 1970. Military drawings and paintings in the collection
of Her Majesty the Queen. 2 vols. London: Phaidon.
Paret, Peter. 1997. Imagined battles: Reflections of war in European art. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press.
Pepper, Simon. 2003. Battle pictures and military scenes. In Grove Encyclopedia of Art.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Quétel, Claude. 2004. Femmes dans la Guerre 1939–1945. Caen: Caen Memorial; Paris:
Larousse.
Thomas, Denis. 1977. Arms and the artist: 106 reproductions. Oxford: Phaidon; New York: E.P.
Dutton.
1. From 1520 to 1522, Swiss artist Niklaus Manuel Deutsch (1484–1530) sketched scenes from camp life
while in military service. Drawings of a soldier and women talking to each other, a woman cooking, and
a woman eating alone before a hut offer a persuasive glimpse of early sixteenth century Swiss camp life
(Kunstmuseum Basel, Kupferstichkabinett // Photo: Kunstmuseum Basel, Martin P. Bühler).
2. Numerous artists developed stereotypical imagery of sixteenth-century mercenaries and their wom-
en. Typical of such popular representations is this etching about 1530 by German artist Daniel Hopfer (c.
1470–1536), Soldier and a woman. Note women’s burden of utensils and the purse she carries; the soldier
carries only his weapons (Division of Armed Forces History, National Museum of American History,
Washington, DC).
3. Woodcut by unidentified artist of Swiss pikemen on the march from the Schweizerchronik, by
Johannes Stumpf, 1548. Note the burdened women in the middle and rear of the column (Money
Museum, Zürich).
4. This anonymous woodcut, published in Rafael Holinshead’s Chronicles (of England, Scotland and
Ireland) (London, 1577), depicts a camp scene. A woman is shown serving food in the right foreground,
other women are shown serving food and drawing drinks in the left middle ground.
5. An engraving by an unidentified artist published in Kriegskunst zu Fuss, by Johann Jacobi von Wall-
hausen (Oppehheim, 1615) depicts the pitching of a camp. Numerous women appear, some carrying
bundles, one laundering (Dibner Library, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC).
6. About 1621, French artists Jacques Callot (1592–1635) executed a series of four etchings entited Les
Bohémiens. Although art historians have usually translated the title as “The gypsies,” the arms and ac-
couterments carried by the men suggest that the title ought to be taken more literally and that what Cal-
lot depicts is actually a band of Bohemian mercenaries. Reproduced here is Les Bohémiens IV: In camp.
Women are shown serving food, mending gear, drawing fowl, carrying water, cooking, and midwifing,
mostly helped or watched by children (Mackelvie Trust Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki,
bequest of Dr Walter Auburn, 1982).
7. An oil painting on wood by two Flemish artists, Jan Breughel the Elder (1568–1625), mainly respon-
sible for the landscape, and Sebastian Vrancx (1573-1647), who covered the action, reminds us that camp
followers, women as well as men, faced some of the same dangers as the soldiers when a baggage train
came under attack (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).
8. Women figure prominently in this detail of an oil painting on panel by Sebastian Vrancx (Flemish
painter, 1573–1647) of an army column on the march (Musee Municipal, Soissons, France / Giraudon /
The Bridgeman Art Library Nationality).
9. A 1630 etching by German artist Johann Hulsmann (fl. 1630–1644) depicts Soldiers on the march,
including one woman on foot with a backpack, another mounted carrying an infant (Staatliche
Graphische Sammlung München, Inv. 113961 D).
10. In this 1655 oil painting on an oak panel, Dutch artist Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668) depicts Sol-
diers carousing with a serving woman outside a tent (The Bridgeman Art Library Nationality).
11. Painted in oils on canvas in the 1720s, The vivandières of Brest by French artist Jean-Baptiste Pater
(1695–1736) referred to the French repulse of British forces at Brest in June 1694. It depicts numerous
women, some working, most dallying with soldiers in an encampment (By kind permission of the Trust-
ees of The Wallace Collection, London, catalogue nr. P542).
12. A drawing and etching by English artist Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827), published as a colored
aquatint (London: T. Malton, 1788), shows English light dragoons in barracks with several of their
wives, one nursing an infant, another laundering, still another drinking (Courtesy of the Council of the
National Army Museum, London).
13. In about 1795, the Dutch artist Jan Anthonie Langendijk (1780–1818) painted this watercolor of a
French soldier and a camp follower (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II).
14. Thomas Rowlandson drew a series of military camp scenes, from which Carl Schütz (1745–1800)
engraved a suite of six aquatints published in 1798 (London: R. Ackermann). In the first of the series, two
women wash clothes in the stream as a third hangs the wash to dry while soldiers man the cooking pot
(Brown University Library, Digital Collections).
15. An 1803 lithograph by an unidentified artist depicts A sutler and her customers in the peninsula. One
woman serves food to a soldier as a second scrubs a pot (Courtesy of the Council of the National Army
Museum, London).
16. In 1803 English artist William Henry Pyne (1769–1843) sketched women’s duties in camp, which in-
cluded cooking, dispensing liquor, and laundering, among other activities (Courtesy of the Council of
the National Army Museum, London).
17. The ladies seen nursing the wounded in the town of Waterloo after the battle in an 1816 engraving by
Thomas Sutherland (1785–1838) foreshadow the replacement of lower class camp followers by middle-
class volunteers that transformed the relationship between women and military institutions in the later
nineteenth century (Courtesy of the Council of the National Army Museum, London).
18. Women’s military work did not change overnight. An 1835 watercolor by English painter
Cornelius Henderson (1799–1852,) shows women riding on the baggage cart that accompanies march-
ing infantry, as camp followers had done for centuries (Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown
University Library).
19. The Crimean War (1854–1856) saw the first substantial movement of middleclass women into mili-
tary nursing, as presented in this 1855 colored lithograph of Florence Nightingale in the military hospital
at Scutari (National Army Museum, London/ The Bridgeman Art Library Nationality).
20. Several female religious orders in many countries, both Catholic and Protestant, had long nurs-
ing traditions. This 1855 colored lithograph shows Sisters of Charity nursing wounded soldiers during the
Crimean War (Wellcome Library, London).
21. The Crimean War was the first great war to be photographed, most notably by Roger Fenton (1819–
1869). Women figured in several of his 1855 photos. In one, the wife of Trooper Rogers serves French
zouaves visiting the camp of the 4th Dragoon Guards (Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. Library of
Congress, Washington, DC).
22. In a second Roger Fenton 1855 photo from the Crimea, a French cantinière in the
uniform of a zouave regiment poses for the camera (Science & Society Picture Library,
NMSI Enterprises, Science Museum).
23. An 1863 photo shows a laundress and her family with the 31st Pennsylvania, American Civil War
(1861–1865) (Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. Library of Congress, Washington, DC).
24. This watercolor from the sketchbook of soldier-artist Charles Johnson Post (1873–1956) shows camp
followers at a Florida camp during the Spanish-American War. The women provided everything from
food and souvenirs to alcohol, gambling, and other activities. A woman in the tent in the foreground
can be seen selling drinks (Courtesy of the Army Art Collection, U.S. Army Center of Military History).
25. In 1907 a small, elite group of British women formed the First Aid Nursing
Yeomanry (FANY), a mounted unit; war in Africa had suggested the need for nurs-
es able to ride out to administer first aid in rough country and they proved their
value in the Great War. This 1909 photo shows the smart uniforms of two mounted
FANYs. (Courtesy of the Council of the National Army Museum, London).
26. The British munitions industry in the First World War relied heavily on women workers, as this illustration published
24 June 1916 in a British magazine, The Sphere, attests. The Italian-born artist, Fortunino Mantania (1881–1968), who had joined
the magazine’s staff before the war, became a widely popular illustrator and war artist (Division of Armed Forces History,
National Museum of American History, Washington, DC).
27. Even before the United States became a bel-
ligerent, American women had begun to prepare
themselves for war service by volunteering to train
in uniformed patriotic organizations. In this 1916
photo, a “wig wag girl” in the US Women’s Defense
League practices signaling at a camp near Wash-
ington, DC (Prints and Photographs Division, U.S.
Library of Congress, Washington DC).
28. France did not allow women in military ser-

vice until very near the end of the First World War,
but French women donned uniforms, as did wom-
en in every belligerent country, to keep the home
front functioning. This photo shows two female
streetcar conductors standing alongside a trolley
heading to Montparnasse from Paris, undated.
(© Bettmann/CORBIS).
29. Like France in the Great War, Germany was reluctant to recruit women for military service
but accepted the need for uniformed women to take over the work of absent men, as evidenced
by this photo of German tram workers (Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. Library of Congress,
Washington, DC).
30. Photo of a German female street cleaner on duty in Berlin during World War I, undated.
(© Bettmann/CORBIS).
31. The spirit of woman power, color lithograph poster by Paul Hon- 32. Wake up America day, color lithograph poster by James
oré (1885–1956), 1917 (Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washing- Montgomery Flagg (1877–1960), 1917 (Prints and Photographs
ton, DC). Division, U.S. Library of Congress, Washington, DC).
33. It’s up to you, color lithograph poster by Schneck (dates 34. Gold zerschlägt Eisen, color lithograph poster by the German
unknown), c. 1917 (Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. illustrator Julius Diez (1870–1957), 1916 (Prints and Photographs
Library of Congress, Washington, DC). Division, U.S. Library of Congress, Washington, DC).
35. Remember Belgium, color lithograph poster by Ells- 36. Enlist, color rotogravure poster by Fred Spear (dates un-
worth Young (1866–1952), c. 1918 (Prints and Photographs known), 1915 or 1916 (Prints and Photographs Division, U.S.
Division, U.S. Library of Congress, Washington, DC). Library of Congress, Washington, DC).
37. Women of Britain say-“Go!”, color lithograph poster by 38. “Gee, I wish I were a MAN,” color lithograph poster by
E.V. Kealey (dates unknown), 1915 (Prints and Photographs Howard Chandler Christy (1873–1952), 1917 (Prints and Pho-
Division, U.S. Library of Congress, Washington, DC). tographs Division, U.S. Library of Congress, Washington,
DC).
39. For every fighter a woman worker, color lithograph poster 40. The greatest mother in the world, color lithograph poster
by Ernest Hamlin Baker (1889–1975), 1918 (Prints and Photo- by Alonzo Earl Foringer (1878–1948), 1917 and 1918 (Prints and
graphs Division, U.S. Library of Congress, Washington, DC). Photographs Division, U.S. Library of Congress, Washington,
DC).
41. The US Navy was the only American service to recruit women in large numbers during World War I,
more than 11,000 in all. Enlisted navy women were termed Yeoman (F). In this photo from 1918 or 1919,
the Yeoman (F) contingent at the Industrial Depot, New Orleans Naval Station, posed for the camera
(Women’s Military History Archive, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC).
42. Female nurses, both military and civilian, served with the armed forces of every county during the
Great War. Noted American photographer Lewis Wickes Hine (1870–1940) in 1918 captured this image of
a Red Cross nurse assisting a young soldier with artificial arms to learn new skills (Courtesy of George
Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film).
43. The American Expeditionary Force in France and, after the Armistice, in Germany, relied on young,
bilingual women for many of its switchboard operators. Most were recruited in the United States, but
the army also hired local help. In this 17 January 1919 Signal Corps photo, several young German women
work alongside Signal Corps soldiers on the Third Division switchboard at Andernach on Rhine in occu-
pied Germany (Women’s Military History Archive, National Museum of American History, Washington,
DC).
44. Numerous relief and welfare organizations in Britain and America employed women in large num-
bers during the First World War and after. Although they remained civilians, they usually wore uniforms
and many continued to serve well after the war. This photo shows uniformed members of the Society of
Friends War Victims Relief Committee on duty in Poland after the end of hostilities (Society of Friends,
London).
45. Some 2,000 women soldiered in the Red Army in
the first phase of the Chinese civil war from 1927 to
1937. This photo from 1937 or 1938 captures images of
four women leaders—Chen Zongying, Cai Chang, Xia
Ming, and Liu Ying—at just about the time that com-
munist and nationalist Chinese formed a united front
against the Japanese invaders (Wen Wu Chibanshe
[Cultural Relics Publishing House], Beijing).
46. As in the First World War, British women played major industrial roles during World War II. In
this 1939 photo, female factory workers assemble rifles (Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. Library
of Congress, Washington, DC).
47. Lotta Svärd was a Finnish voluntary auxiliary para-
military organization for women founded in 1920. By the
1930s it had 60,000 members who were called “Lottas.”
The success of the organization inspired similar groups in
other Scandinavian countries and Estonia. In this photo,
a mittened Finnish Lotta makes weather measurement
during the Winter War with the Soviet Union, Novem-
ber 1939–March 1940 (http://www.palassuomenhistoriaa.
net).
48. In World War II as in earlier wars, invading armies regularly found irregular forces that often in-
cluded women operating in their rear areas. The photo depicts three Soviet female guerrilla fighters
in the Great Patriotic War against German invasion (Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. Library of
49. The U.S. Women’s Army Corps (WAC) was largest of the women’s branches in the Ameri-
can armed forces in WWII. In this photo of 8 December 1942, WACs Ruth Wade and Lucille
Mayo, who had learned how to service trucks at the WAC training center, Fort Des Moines,
Iowa, put their skills into practice at Fort Huachuca, Arizona (National Archives and Records
Administration, Washington, DC).
50. American industry recruited tens of thousands of women workers in World War II. In
this October 1942 photo by Alfred Palmer (1906–1993), women workers finish the transpar-
ent nose cones of A-20 attack bombers at Douglas Aircraft’s plant in Long Beach, California.
(National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC).
51. The first members of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service arrived at the Normandy
beachhead just a week after D-Day to begin setting up a general hospital for 600 patients. This July 1944
shows a work party busily unpacking stores (Courtesy of the Council of the National Army Museum,
London).
52. Although Hitler’s Germany did not allow
women in its armed forces, it called up tens
of thousands of women as ostensibly civilian
uniformed auxiliaries. Such auxiliaries served
throughout German-occupied Europe. This photo
shows a member of an antiaircraft artillery aux-
iliary unit operating a sound locator (Prints and
Photographs Division, U.S. Library of Congress,
Washington, DC).
53. Like all the other belligerents in World War II,

the Soviet Union brought large numbers of wom-
en into its factories, often in highly skilled jobs.
This photo shows a woman operating a drill press
(Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. Library of
54. The Women of World War II Memorial in London was sculpted by John W. Mills (1933– ) and dedi-
cated by Queen Elizabeth II on 9 July 2005. An imposing 22 feet (6.7 m) high, 16 feet (4.9 m) long, and
6 feet (1.8 m) wide, it depicts 17 sets of clothing in relief, representing the many jobs women undertook
during the war (Photography by Green Lane, Wikimedia Commons).
55. Grace Hopper (1906–1992) began working with computers as a naval officer during World War II.
She remained a naval reserve officer, ultimately reaching the rank of rear admiral. Her work during the
war and after helped define computers as we know them today (© Bettmann/CORBIS).
56. France deployed armed force in its attempt to restore colonial rule in Indochina after World War
II. The female nurses who accompanied the army did not limit themselves to caring for soldiers. In this
1953 photograph, an army nurse gives a child an anti-cholera injection (Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division, Washington, DC).
57. Brig. Gen Anna Mae Hays (1920– ) was the first woman promoted general by the US Army; she
served as Chief of the Army Nurse Corps. In this photo from an inspection tour to Vietnam, she stands
to the left of four colleagues in front of a Huey medevac helicopter (Division of Armed Forces History,
National Museum of American History, Washington, DC).
58. Sergeant Patricia M. Seawalt (1947–2007), Soldier of the Year in 1982, served in the 102nd Quality
Management Unit of the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division during the Persian Gulf War (1991). She went
to the Gulf because she was the army’s sole expert on oil analysis. In this photo, Seawalt stands next
to the 102nd Headquarters sign (Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. Library of Congress, Washing-ton,
DC).
59. When Carme Chacόn Piqueras (1971– ) became Spain’s first female Minister of Defense in April 2008
at the age of 37, her youth and the fact that she was seven months pregnant drew worldwide attention.
Note that one of the troops she is reviewing is also a woman (ANP Photo B.V.).
60. In March 2007 Iranian officials seized a Royal Navy ship for intruding in Iran’s territorial waters, and
detained the crew, including sailor Faye Turney (1981– ). Media attention focused on Turney when the
Iranian government selected her to officially apologize for the alleged offense (Press Association Photos
Limited).
61. In 2009 India’s Border Security Force, which patrols the India-Pakistan border fence, inducted its first 178 female recruits, aged 19-25,
after they completed 38 weeks of training. This photo of 11 September 2009 depicts two female paramilitaries at the Attari village crossing
near Amritsar (Associated Press, Reporters / Photo: Altaf Qadri).
62. Female officers and soldiers of the three services of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army march in Beijing on 1 October 2009 to celebrate the
sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (Xinhua)
Women and War in Early Modern Russia 385
PART III
RESEARCH ESSAYS IN WOMEN’S MILITARY HISTORY
386 Carol B. Stevens
CHAPTER NINE
Women and War in Early Modern Russia

(Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries)
Carol B. Stevens
During the Smolensk War (1632–34), Russian troops attempted to regain

the border fortress of Smolensk from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
By late 1633, however, the besieging army had been hemmed in by a relief
force from the Commonwealth. A German officer commanding Russian
troops, Thomas Sacks, later testified that, at this point in the fighting, his
wife abandoned him and the Muscovite siege camp for the Polish military.
Sacks continued to serve loyally, but once the truce had been signed, he
himself headed for the Polish army encampment. Alas, he was there told
that his wife had long since departed into the Lithuanian interior with
“some foreigner.” Disconsolate, he returned alone to Russia (Sokolovskii
2004, 80–81).
Such stories, which implied that women accompanied armies during
wartime, were a not unusual product of military confrontations in Western
Europe during the early modern period. Indeed, as Mary Elizabeth Ailes
(chapter 2) and John Lynn (chapter 3) demonstrate in the first part of this
volume, army baggage trains in this era were traveling communities that
supplemented the uneven abilities of early modern states to support their
armies; they both sustained the morale and bolstered the economic condi-
tion of the armies’ men. Such baggage train communities were largely
composed of “private” and quasi-civilian individuals who had no official
military standing, but whose contributions were reluctantly acknowledged;
many of them were women. More rarely, women fought in the regiments
of West European armies. These activities shaped gender attitudes across
Western Europe as well as contributing substantially to military efforts.
By contrast, the role of women and the military in Russia during the
early modern period remains almost completely unstudied. There are few
books or articles that focus, or even touch, on the subject at all. The only
discussions of the subject at any length are P.P. Shcherbinin’s 2004 book,
Voennyi faktor v povsednevnoi zhizni russkoi zhenshchiny v XVIII–nachale
XX veka [The military factor in the daily life of the Russian women, eigh-
teenth to early twentieth centuries]; the work of Elise Kimerling-
Wirtschafter (1982, 1990, 1994, 1997a, 1997b, 2003), who examines the social
identity of the Russian military (among other groups) in her early work
and, more recently, its impact on public culture; and my recent preliminary
essay (Stevens 2009). Beyond this, there are but a few essays that mention
the topic in passing (Shchepkin 1913; Hughes 2004). Furthermore, the
emphasis in all but one of the mentioned works is overwhelmingly on the
period 1715–1800; that is, the period following military reforms introduced
by Peter I (1689–1725).
At least one reason for such inattention is not far to seek. Women were
not, for the most part, of great interest to state record keepers in Russia
prior to Peter I; they appeared in census and tax materials if they were
property-holders. Otherwise, they are predominantly, if unpredictably,
encountered in individual wills, court cases, and petitions. Further, narra-
tive and autobiographical materials are much less common in early mod-
ern Russia than in Western Europe, in part because of lower literacy, but
also because of different cultural attitudes. Anecdotes like the one opening
this essay are recorded in scattered legal documents; Officer Sacks was
accused of treason upon his return to Moscow. During the period following
the Petrine reforms (after 1715), conditions changed quite slowly.
Furthermore, any subsequent discussion of women’s roles vis-à-vis the
military in Russia coincided with an increasing inclination Europe-wide
to disregard or disavow “private” and quasi-civilian contributions to the
army on the march, especially those by women. In short, it is not at all easy
to trace women’s connections to the military in Russia’s early modern era.
This essay nevertheless begins the process of examining women’s roles in
the Russian military and during wartime, with particular emphasis on the
least studied period, before 1715.
Preliminary research suggests that, although there were some similari-
ties between women’s roles in Eastern and Western Europe, these simi-
larities may well be misleading. There are, for example, mentions of women
in direct connection with the Russian army on campaign, though very few
women actually fought. “Katia” died after fighting four battles of the
Livonian War (1558–82) on the Muscovite side (Renner 1997, 43); more
modern counterparts, Nadezhda Durova and Aleksandra Tikhomirova,
fought in the Napoleonic Wars (Shcherbinin 2004, 416–17). Durova (1988,
29–33) produced a memoir with encouragement from Alexander Pushkin,
rather in the manner of early modern women soldiers in Western Europe.
Women, who for one reason or another might cross a military frontier with
greater ease than their male counterparts, were clearly both used by the
Russian government as spies, and were equally suspected of being enemy
spies (AMG 1890–1901, 1: no. 291, 3: nos. 281, 470). Although Russia had its
own mythology of “women warriors” that dated from the fifteenth century
(Marsh-Flores 2003, 609), there are also no indications that those few
women fighters who did really exist had any impact on civilian culture and
gender issues until the nineteenth century.
In a similar fashion, there are sparse indications that women were pres-
ent in Russian military encampments, particularly during sieges and
lengthy campaigns beyond the Russian borders. For example, there were
groups of noncombatants who supported the army in an unofficial, but
acknowledged, capacity. Military contractors (markatanty, podriadchiki),
who delivered and sold food and other supplies to the army, were among
these. Although relatively rare in Russia’s less commercial economy, their
presence is documented near the army before 1700 and well into the Petrine
era. It seems unlikely, however, that many of these sutlers and contractors
were women (Shcherbinin 2004, 411).
Prohibitions on other activity in and near Russian army camps suggest
that the Russian forces had less welcome hangers-on, both male and female.
For example, guards were placed on seventeenth-century baggage trains
in order to eliminate spying; other decrees forbade the presence of prosti-
tutes and unauthorized vendors of alcohol, tobacco, and grain among the
troops (AMG 1890–1901, 2: nos. 534–37, 633, 706, 739; PSZ 1830–1916, nos.
165–66; Kuznetsov 1871, 56–58). Given the dates and locations specified in
such prohibitions, they appear to be directed at women (and men) who
lived beyond the Russian borders and attached themselves temporarily to
Russian forces while they were nearby.
Others were involuntarily attached to the army on the march. The
Russian army customarily took prisoners and captives in the early modern
period; these included women and children. Some might be sent back from
the front at once; among other things, they became servants in urban
households (Kosheleva 2003, 244–45). But under some circumstances the
Russian army traveled with its prisoners and captives held for ransom.
Although there were repeated wartime prohibitions against stealing
women (and children) or forcing them in any way (AMG 1890–1901 2: nos.
508, 660; PSZ 1830–1916, no. 181), very little is known about the activities of
such captives with the army. In at least one early eighteenth-century case,
a laundress captured by the Russians continued to serve that function after
her capture (Anisimov 2004, 11). Moreover, while such prisoners could be
useful to the army when it was encamped, they burdened the army on the
move and occasionally aroused the ire of military command.
Finally, there are occasional reports of military wives who attached
themselves to the professional troops, women who did not remain at home
but were present with their spouses at army encampments. In particular,
the wives of several foreign officers lived for an extended period in the
Russian siege camp at Smolensk in the 1630s, even crossing over to the
Polish side in the immediate aftermath of the siege (Sokolovskii 2004,
79–81). The record also suggests that at least one ordinary soldier’s wife
was sent home from the Livonian front (RGADA f. 371 opis 2 delo 153/I;
Shcherbinin 2004, 410, citing Shchepkin, “Zhenskaia lichnost’,” 163–65.) It
is not known whether these women had followed the army as it departed
or joined their spouses later at the siege camp.
In each of these cases, however, there is only very sparse evidence about
women’s presence with the Russian army on campaign. Furthermore, there
is no way of judging what the few examples discovered might represent in
terms of numbers and typicality. Until further evidence becomes available,
it seems likely that women who accompanied the Russian army on cam-
paign were a relative rarity before the 1700s. Many of those whose presence
is recorded seem to have been captured or to have gathered around par-
ticular army encampments, and that traveling with the troops was reason-
ably uncommon. This deduction carries with it the strong implication that,
on the march, shortfalls in supply and services for the Russian army were
differently compensated for than further west in Europe.
Nevertheless, it is clear that certain contributions from women were
valued by the Russian military during the same period. This was particularly
true for remote garrison communities. In addition to its mobile campaign
troops, the growing Russian Empire also supported numerous fortress
outposts. The more important of these were dotted along its frontiers as
defenses—to the west and south and at intervals across the expanses of
Siberia, with some in internal Russian towns. Women were important ele-
ments in these military outposts (see, Mayer 1996, 18–22), but their contri-
butions were neither on nor near the battlefield.
Most border fortresses were located in towns deliberately and over-
whelmingly populated by military forces. Landholders who lived nearby
were assigned to serve in the fortress, if they were deemed too poor to go
on campaign. Border fortress-towns had sizeable contingents of military
men who were commoners—musketeers, gunners, guards, and so on. They
were settled troops who lived against or near the fortress walls in military
suburbs (which were specially designated quarters of town) or occupied
agricultural land that was held collectively by the local Cossack troop, for
example. The southern town of Belgorod is a case in point. It was founded
in the late sixteenth century to defend the southward move of Russian
agricultural populations against Tatar incursions from Crimea. Early in the
seventeenth century, it had a population of 888 servicemen who settled
their families in and around the town. Both the total population and the
military population grew through the seventeenth century. Although
Belgorod became the administrative center for a large southern region in
the second half of the century, its population of administrators and towns-
people nonetheless remained negligible. Military households here were
four times the number of peasant and serf households, usually the largest
census category (Stevens 1996, 170; Zagorovskii 1969, 27; Vodarskii 1977,
225). Those of Belgorod’s military men who were members of the garrison
would be alerted at any threat of Crimean attack, but otherwise engaged
in agricultural and commercial pursuits. Overwhelmingly military popula-
tions of this kind dominated southern fortress towns like Belgorod into the
eighteenth century despite the receding threat from Crimea. The military
presence in Siberian towns was, if anything, more pronounced.
At such outposts especially, the Russian government itself usually advo-
cated the presence of women, children, and accustomed community as an
anchor to loyal and effective military service from resident troops. Even in
the remote steppe, a serviceman who settled into a garrison post with his
family put down new roots and formed new attachments; his old location
and connections declined in significance (Sokolovskii 2004, 97, 105–106).
Those being sent to staff a newly captured fortress or to settle distant ter-
ritories were instructed to take their wives and children with them (PSZ
1830–1916, nos. 1690, 170, 1712, 1716, 1746). When mutinous musketeers
(strel’tsy) were banished from the capital and sent to live as permanent
garrison troops in southern cities in 1683 and to Azov after 1698, they did
not go alone; not only their immediate families, but in the latter case retir-
ees, widows, and other members of their Moscow suburb were sent with
them (PSZ 1830–1916, nos.1690, 1746, 1979). Russian girls (devki) were sent
to remote Siberian outposts to marry single servicemen (Gentes 2003, 4).
Of course, when border towns were attacked, the garrison took wives and
children into the shelter of the city fortress (PSZ 1830–1916, nos. 87, 320 and
others). The marital status even of enemy combatants mattered. Well into
the eighteenth century, Russians were ordered to repatriate those captured
in wartime if they were married and had children; single prisoners of war,
especially those who had since married Russians, remained (PSZ 1830–1916,
no. 461).
In other ways, too, the Russian government was solicitous of the role
played by the wives and families of the settled garrison troops. For example,
Siberian Cossacks (the predominant military category in the east) received
government grain rations in return for their service in the garrison; the
isolation and weather conditions around Siberian towns meant that some
of them had little locally-produced grain, and supplies were shipped in
from peasant communities further west. Food rations were most emphat-
ically not a usual appurtenance to garrison service in the grain-rich south.
There were different rations for married men and bachelors. But these
Cossacks frequently left their garrisons—to collect fur taxes from the indig-
enous population or to escort commercial or diplomatic caravans. This
separation of family members could easily cause hardship in families reli-
ant on military grain supply. Cossack men on distant missions received
some food payments directly, and they also made certain (by force if nec-
essary) that they had access to local markets wherever they found them-
selves. But the Siberian Chancellery briefly tried to ensure that Cossack
wives and families, left behind in garrison towns, were also appropriately
fed. For a brief period, it held back one-third of the food payments due the
men and turned this amount over to immediate family members left
behind (Witzenrath 2007, 68). While this effort proved highly susceptible
to abuse and was discontinued, the attempt demonstrates clearly that wives
and families were highly valued in Moscow as the anchors of successful
garrison service. In the event, in Siberia, the relative absence of Russian
women in the population meant that the government permitted Siberian
garrison servicemen to establish networks that included not only (Russian)
family, but also native concubines and slaves (iasyri) (Witzenrath 2007, 69;
Sokolovskii 2004, 97; RGADA f. 214, stolbets 102; Oglobin 1890, 199ff.).
Indeed, it is the distant contributions of women, as signifiers of family,
local community, and stability that are by far the best documented for the
Russian army of this period. In part, this is due to the character of the
Russian campaign forces prior to the reforms of the Great Northern War
(1700–1725). These were numerically large and surprisingly socially diverse.
A large if variable percentage served in the campaign forces on a highly
irregular basis. For example, from the sixteenth century well into the eigh-
teenth, landholders—reminiscent of a gentry class—had a lifelong com-
mitment to military service. Prior to the Petrine reforms, such men were
periodically called to muster, where some would be selected to serve in
the cavalry for the next months’ campaign. Those selected would depart
for the front, ideally accompanied by their own supplies, mounts, and
matériel. When the short campaign season was over, they would return to
home and family. Once they had returned from the front, they returned to
cavalry units only when next selected—often after a relatively protracted
period. In between such events, they led an increasingly civilian life as the
period wore on (Stevens 2007, 151, 160–68, 170–74; Stevens 1996, 21–22). In
the latter part of the seventeenth century, the gentry was obliged to serve
in more West-European-style regiments as reitary (heavy cavalry) and even
as soldiers; then, longer sieges, the need to garrison newly conquered for-
tresses, military training, or longer campaigns might prolong their absence
beyond a single season. Nonetheless, their service obligations remained
intermittent into the early eighteenth century. In a quite similar fashion,
conscripts into the Russian army in the seventeenth century—serfs, free
peasants, and townspeople destined for infantry troops—were chosen for
service, served for one season or a more prolonged single campaign, and
returned to their fields (Vazhinskii 1976, 60–68). These categories of ser-
vice—the gentry cavalry and conscripted infantry—encompassed the
majority of the campaign army.
While it is nearly impossible to discover much about the relationships
of peasant soldiers absent in the army with the women of their families at
home, the attitudes and activities of the gentry are somewhat more acces-
sible. The interconnectedness of family, provincial society, and men on the
march is not difficult to discover in infrequent surviving examples of fam-
ily correspondence. These letters were written by relatively prosperous
gentry families of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; they can
hardly be described as a representative sample (Gramotki 1969; Pamiatniki
1965; Istochniki 1964). In the particular families represented, however,
despite the distances involved, the men found it important to maintain
considerable contact with their households, and through them with local
community, as they moved around the countryside. Men corresponded
with the female members of their families throughout the year, whether
they were in the army or doing other things; military service was only one
of the activities that took men from home. The preparation of supplies for
sale, their dispatch to market, the payment of taxes, fulfillment of an
estate’s labor contribution, advice about agricultural management, and
family matters all form the stuff of such correspondence between men and
their wives, as well as with other relatives and employees (Pamiatniki 1965,
15, 16, 95; Istochniki 1964, 32–33, 48, 65, 112–16, 141; Gramotki 1969, 20, 32, 155,
236, inter alia). Domestic and family matters taking place while men were
away had an immediate impact on their later return (and winter suste-
nance). Petitions from servicemen elsewhere claim piteously that service
impoverished them and their families, but here such problems are not
routine. The letters reveal the exchange of advice on how to control peas-
ant and other labor in the absence of a serviceman; when financial prob-
lems arise, quite extensive help from extended family is expected. In
outrage, the occasional woman complains of being neglected by her rela-
tions (Istochniki 1964,116, 127, 129, 140, 141, 143, 147, 164, 168–69; Gramotki
1969, 28, 51, 67, 75, 133, 155). In short, these prosperous gentry women,
expecting and generally able to call on quite extensive local networks, were
neither isolated nor left to fend for themselves in the absence of spouses
on seasonal service.
Other letters deal more directly with military service and its experience.
Men request additional supplies, recount their travel and duties; from
home, women report that others were called to serve, paid their taxes, and
delivered their recruits (Pamiatniki 1965, 15–16; Istochniki 1964, 32–33,
53–54, 58, 115, 141–43, 178; Gramotki 1969, 37–38, 64, 170, 237). A foreign
officer pleads with his patron and his wife to get him out of the fortress-city
of Chigirin, using whatever means necessary to get him transferred. It was
too poorly defended for his liking, and subsequent events would prove how
right he was. Another discusses the construction of boats for the siege of
Azov in 1696 (Gramotki 1969, 148, 237; Istochniki 1964, 65–67).
Emotional attachment to home and family is surprisingly clearly
expressed, given the emotional reticence and formality of contemporary
Russian prose. The occasional letter is addressed to “my light” or “heart’s
friend”; inquiries about health and greetings to family members abound;
personal gifts are exchanged. One wife is advised to moderate her grief—
her husband has been away on service before (Gramotki 1969, 35, 60, 63,
84, 118; Istochniki 1964, 65–67, and others). Men who served significantly
longer than expected were not slow to complain. Others requested leave
from their military posts to deal with family emergencies at home. Wives
implored help in sustaining family connections. The wives of landholders
even occasionally visited the troops during the campaign season, some-
times bringing their families with them (Shcherbinin 2004, 409–10; DAI
1846–72, 4: no. 146). And military men in command apparently had little
compunction about briefly diverting troop movements in order to meet
them (AMG 1890–1901 1: no. 477, 3: no. 1152; see also Keep 1985, 85).
These letters offer a glimpse of women as a focus of family and com-
munity life for men away from their estates for military and other reasons.
Links between absent men and their landholding families and communi-
ties were carefully maintained, even over considerable distances. The con-
nections and support were economic as well as emotional, sustaining both
the men and their families at home during seasonal absences due to mili-
tary service. At the same time, the arrangement minimized the economic
problems that women might have been expected to face due to an absent
domestic partner. Women’s role in this small sample, as a keystone of fam-
ily and community to men away on military service, echoes Valerie
Kivelson’s more detailed findings in her discussion of the political culture
of the gentry (Kivelson 1996, esp. 97–100).
In addition to the gentry and conscripts, however, the pre-Petrine army
included several other significant groups. In particular, there were free
men, commoners, enlisted in the more regular of the infantry units. Most
served in the campaign army, but some also manned the defensive garri-
sons described above; in fact, these troops could easily be shifted from one
to the other. The more elite regiments also served as palace guards in
Moscow. These included, primarily, musketeers (strel’tsy), founded in the
mid-sixteenth century, some settled infantry regiments and the select
infantry units (vybornye soldaty), established about a century later. The
select infantry and musketeer regiments, in particular, were distinguished
by their claim to be year-round salaried troops, a minority in the army prior
to Peter I. In practice, many of these units were likely to be paid for the
time they spent on campaign; when closer to home, it was assumed that
they could support themselves from trade or other sources. These troops
were also unusual in that military service was the primary social identifica-
tion for the men and their wives. Thus, for example, terms for the wives of
infantrymen (soldatka, soldatskie zheny) came into use with the introduc-
tion of those troops in the 1630s. Such things carried a growing significance.
Following the Law Code of 1649, as Russian society became increasingly
stratified in law and practice, social mobility was more limited. Even geo-
graphic mobility was often linked to social category, as serfs and urban
dwellers were formally tied to their particular estate or town. For common-
ers, military identification thus carried increasingly specific privileges and
limitations toward the end of the seventeenth and into the eighteenth
century (Shcherbinin 2004, 26–27).
The off-duty and residential organization of these troops broadly resem-
bled one another. The musketeers lived in assigned neighborhoods in
towns and near garrison fortresses (sloboda) whether they fought in the
campaign army or in a garrison force; the name for such neighborhoods,
streletskaia sloboda (musketeers’ quarter), remains attached to a number
of settlements on the outskirts of cities in European Russia to this day. The
settled infantry units and Cossacks held land collectively, and the select
infantry regiments were also assigned living space in Moscow toward the
end of the seventeenth century; all were treated by Russian administrations
as unified military communities (Malov 2006, 101–105). Even foreign officers
in Moscow formed a part of the “Foreigners Quarter” (nemetskaia sloboda).
Occasionally, such military families were billeted on civilians, but this was
a temporary alternative (Karpushchenko 1999, 16–17).
These troops engaged in active service more frequently than the gentry
or conscripts and were more heavily identified with their military occupa-
tions. Given the overall organization of the army, they served in campaigns
that were seasonal and were accustomed to return to home and family
after several months’ service. One of the objections proffered by Moscow-
based musketeers in 1697, as they were dispatched straight from one mili-
tary assignment to another, was that they would be unable to return to
their families and neighborhoods in their accustomed way (PSZ 1830–1916,
nos. 1690, 1746, 1836; AAE 1858, 4: no. 280, esp. sections 7–10, 23; Keep 1985,
99). When not on campaign, however, they also did local or garrison service
within easy distance of their homes in urban neighborhoods. Musketeers
(strel’tsy), in particular, served as police, sentries, honor guards, and in
other local offices. Furthermore, troops like the select infantry regiments
were frequently called upon to occupy distant and recently captured for-
tresses, or bolster siege troops, so their assignments might more frequently
result in prolonged absences of a year and more (Stevens 1996, 104–105;
Malov 2006, part 4).
Women’s roles in these communities and in support of the military
nonetheless bore some resemblances to those of their gentry counterparts.
Female residents of military suburbs rarely followed men into service, for
example. Instead they remained in the suburbs, sustaining themselves and
maintaining their accustomed places, as they awaited the return of absent
servicemen. The narrowing of other options, with Russia’s increasingly
rigid definition of social categories and legally mandated immobility for
certain groups, broadly reinforced this behavior. On the other hand, such
women were involved in Russia’s limited commercial economy, supported
by less wealth and fewer patronage connections, than their counterparts
of the landholding class.
The lives and activities of such women can be surprisingly well docu-
mented. One particular branch of the Russian administration containing
the Preobrazhenskii Chancellery and the Secret Affairs Chancellery is well
known to Russian historians for its special investigatory activities. These
chancelleries also supervised the select infantry suburbs and the newer
guards regiments. As a result, the treason investigations they contain are
housed alongside a profusion of more prosaic complaints filed by soldiers
and their wives. A sampling of the latter offers a close look at the roles that
ordinary free women played in the military life of the time. While this
source is less revealing about domestic emotional ties than the landholders’
correspondence, it is perhaps even more revealing about the economic
and social linkages within military communities (particularly, RGADA fond
7 opus. 1 (hereafter 7/1); fond 22, opus 1 (hereafter 22/1), and fond 371; see
also Stevens 2009, 481–90).
These regimental neighborhoods or suburbs were populated by a rela-
tively stable and interlocking group of military families into the early eigh-
teenth century, according to a sampling from the archives mentioned
above. The men living in any particular suburb were predictably more
mobile than the women. Soldiers departed on active service assignments
and returned when their tours of duty were complete (RGADA 371/2, 743,
4903; Novombergskii 2004, 2: no. 3). They not only served on distant cam-
paigns but also undertook a variety of local military duties—guarding
prisoners, discharging sentry and guard duties, and, in a later case, super-
vising local postal transport (RGADA 7/1, 173; 22/1, 17; 371/2, 2312). When
servicemen and their families temporarily left the suburb, they expected
to return to accustomed and loyal members of the community. A neighbor,
a fellow resident of the military suburb, was often charged with the care
of belongings for an absent member of the regiment (RGADA 371/1, 14284,
14998; 173/2, 9940). In the sample examined, there were relatively few
permanent departures or new arrivals. One man was assigned to a different
regiment, although he apparently left his family at least temporarily in their
former residence. Another, already retired, took possession of his regi-
ment’s carpentry tools and then departed, leaving his unfortunate wife to
explain (RGADA 371/1, 14983; Novombergskii 2004, 1: no. 72).
Women in these settlements were imbedded in a tightly knit and largely
supportive community, whether or not their individual spouses were pres-
ent. Given that companies of men belonging to a particular regiment
arrived and departed at irregular intervals, a neighborhood may have been
predominantly, but not exclusively, female at a given moment. Even in
their spouses’ absence, women remained in their own homes or billets.
Some wives described themselves as remaining “after him” (after a husband
had left on duty) in their own place, “in his regiment” (that is, in the suburb
communally held by his regiment) (RGADA 371/2, 743). Despite men’s
absences, the soldiers’ wives were far from isolated as long as the regimen-
tal format of these neighborhoods persisted. Well into the eighteenth cen-
tury, the social networks and daily interactions that sustained them
comprised other military men and women. Their interlocutors were usually
of their own rank or standing, often from the same regiment (See Kollmann
1999, 96). Women such as Natalia, Provtorokh’s daughter, her daughter,
and her neighbor, Matryona, all married men of the same local regiment.
Similarly, Semen Turganikov’s sister married a member of his regiment
(RGADA 371/2, 2312, 3797). Given the men’s frequent absences, women also
interacted with one other. Thus the wives of soldiers in the same regiment
went about town together doing errands, visiting, and undertaking daily
business. Family groups, such as a brother and sister, moved easily about
the town; there were also groups of women with a lone male escort (RGADA
371/1, 14287, 14818–19; 371/2, 4798). Women’s movements were not limited
to their suburbs. Like the men, they moved comfortably in the larger urban
world. Even so, regimental men and women both tended to interact with
other military men and women. When an infantryman filed a complaint,
for example, he supported it with witnesses from a surprising variety of
other military backgrounds. A dragoon, a military medic, a lieutenant, the
wife of a foreign colonel, and others had congregated in the streets, even
though most of them were not affiliated with the regiment that lived in
that particular suburb (RGADA 371/2, 3992). Similarly, when women quar-
relling about household belongings called on others to support their claims,
the witnesses often had military affiliations even when they did not live
nearby. In one case, these included the wife of a sailor and the wives of two
soldiers. A woman whose husband was enrolled in one regiment launched
an accusation against a woman married into a different regiment (RGADA
371/1, 14822; 371/ 2, 9940).
Although soldiers’ wives dealt predominantly with other military people,
their social networks extended beyond military suburbs. Soldatki also vis-
ited with members of the urban communities near whom they lived (posad-
skie liudi). On occasion, they stuck together against outsiders; in such cases,
their most frequent nonmilitary interlocutors were those same nearby
urban residents, for reasons described below (RGADA 371 /1, 14287; 371/2,
3792, 3997, 9705, 9884). Individual soldatki had friends and connections
outside their own towns: a mother-in-law living in Moscow was plausibly
cited as the source of dangerous political gossip; other women visited
friends from other towns (RGADA 7/1, 173; 371/ 2, 2312).
Petty disagreements escalated easily in the close quarters and persistent
interactions of a military neighborhood (see Kollmann 1999, chapter 3).
There were complaints about other military wives and widows living
nearby. Longstanding regimental feuds erupted into accusations lodged
with the authorities. A woman complained that her neighbor had stolen a
pan and her hat; the neighbor retaliated with the allegation that illegal
alcohol was manufactured and sold next door. The first then reported her
neighbor to the chancellery for harboring illegal religious books. This was
a significant escalation and led to the imprisonment of the accused who,
when last heard of, was “dying a hungry death” in prison (RGADA 371/2,
743).
Soldatki, usually of similar standing and rank, traded insults and recrim-
inations. Like their social betters, the residents of military suburbs, male
and female, furiously resented verbal abuse and libelous name-calling and
frequently lodged complaints about such matters with the authorities
(Kollmann 1999, 96). There were angry exchanges in the street, mutual
recriminations between soldiers’ wives, among military men and women,
or with outsiders. While some complaints were lodged by a man on behalf
of women in his family, women also took matters into their own hands,
speaking up on their own behalf (RGADA 7/1, 357; 371/1, 14342, 14399, 14421,
14818–19, 14847, 14859, 14960; 371/2, 495, 3797, 3992, 9883). Some of the
insults leveled at men were related to their military profession and activi-
ties; one was accused of deserting his regiment, others cursed for carrying
out their duties in an inappropriate manner. Soldiers did not take kindly
to being called robbers or thieves. Men and women rejected any comment
that might impugn the honor and sexual conduct of soldiers’ wives; a girl
and her father were sent to Siberia for spreading gossip about a major’s
wife who lived with a man to whom she was not married (e.g. RGADA 7/1,
357, 427; 22/1, 17; 371/1, 14342, 14399, 14791, 14847, 14959–60; 371/2, 3797,
3992). Such exchanges, however, evince the importance of interpersonal
and military standing as a source of community support.
Physical aggression was not far from the surface. Domestic violence and
street brawls were commonplace. Despite the military environment, weap-
ons were rarely used, and firearms did not appear at all. There were reports
of women being beaten up by their husbands and women being threatened
in the street. One woman was menaced with violence for frightening a
horse; she escaped unharmed only because her brother defended her
(RGADA 371/1, 14287, 14859, 14898, 15001; 371/2, 743, 3797, 9702). Women
also fought each other (RGADA 371/1, 14951–52, 14955–59; 371/2, 3792, 9884).
In a particularly dramatic case, a sword was used, albeit in a somewhat
unconventional manner. A soldier on guard duty refused a drunken post-
man (iamshchik) the horses that the postman wanted for his postal carts.
Angrily, the postman retaliated against the guard’s wife, who was appar-
ently keeping her husband company while he was on duty. He swung at
her with a long stick from the cart traces (the traces are the two sticks
connecting the cart to the horse’s harness), missed her, but dealt the infant
in her arms a good whack. The attacker then turned on the husband, first
with the stick and then with a shovel. The guard tried to defend himself
with a sword; his wife grabbed it from him and pushed the sword broadside
against the postman’s chest forcing him out of the courtyard into the street;
she testified that no blood was drawn. In the street, however, the furious
postman, bloodied perhaps by a fall outside the gates, knocked the guard’s
eleven-year-old daughter into the mud before the child was rescued by the
most effective belligerent in the mêlée—her mother (RGADA 22/1, 17).
In this brief examination, the women of the military “suburbs” settled
by Russia’s late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century troops sup-
ported their units in ways that resembled those of the gentry only in some
respects. Their lives certainly had a more military flavor; their social activ-
ities were constructed around other military families. Their lives appear
also to have been more communal. Although they quarreled and fought,
they also supported one another and protected one another’s honor; they
identified with their regiments and its activities. The men defended their
military honor and that of soldiers’ wives. On the other hand, the local
networks of family and friends that sustained the home life of the landhold-
ing elite had a close parallel in the commoners’ military suburbs. And the
Russian government of the era did little to discourage, and indeed often
encouraged, the persistence of such arrangements.
In the case of regular soldiers, the close communities in which they lived
allowed soldiers and their families to share a limited but not impoverished
existence, even when a particular spouse or father was absent. When their
men were around, women’s daily activities seem often to have revolved
around them. The soldier who guarded the postal stable, mentioned above,
as well as other guards, even prisoners, had their wives at their sides during
some of the day. A soldier on sentry duty apparently spent his free time
running errands through town in the company of his comrades’ spouses.
In addition, a number of women in the military suburb were involved in
petty sales and even small-scale manufacturing. Some allegedly made and
sold illicit alcohol; others stopped to consume a cup of wine with a friend.
Several wives sold items from their own or even a neighbor’s house, or
perhaps even ran a small stall (lavka). Trade in fruit, household goods,
individual silk items, and a variety of other objects are mentioned.
Commercial competition with townswomen probably explains the fre-
quent disputes between soldatki and their urban neighbors. Other women
sold minor services to supplement their incomes. A soldier’s widow did
laundry and cooked for prisoners in the local jail. Soldiers’ wives stored or
held personal and household belongings for later collection by other mili-
tary families. In the mid-seventeenth century, an officer’s household evi-
dently let rooms to, or at any rate housed, a retired soldier and his wife
(Novombergskii 2004, 1: no. 210; RGADA, 371/2, 743, 2312, 4903). These
activities, in and of themselves, were very different from the landholding
and agricultural pursuits of the gentry. Any one of them alone would not
have yielded much in the way of cash or goods; realistically, they probably
supplemented each other and additional sources of income. Numerous
small contributions eked out a soldier’s pay and rations (when these were
forthcoming) and supported families during a soldier’s absence.
Unsurprisingly, there were frequent disagreements about property.
Some of the disputed items were ordinary enough—clothing, such as shirts
and winter coats (shuba), and household items like cooking pots and pans
(RGADA 7/1, 372, 435; 371/2, 743; 371/1, 14284, 14822, 14916, 14973, 15001).
Debts and overdue taxes were persistent problems (RGADA 173/1, 14320,
14421, 14999). Yet fairly substantial sums were also occasionally available
to these soldiers’ households. Soldiers’ wives described items that they had
allegedly left with friends for safekeeping (and lost). The occasional piece
has the ring of somewhat greater prosperity: caftans with taffeta trim and
special buttons, silk and black velvet items, small gems, or golden clasps
for clothing, for example (RGADA 7//1, 435; 173/1, 3790, 9940, etc. ). More
virulent property disputes focused on living space and real estate owner-
ship. That housing was highly prized is hardly surprising, since soldiers and
other military personnel might otherwise be billeted on someone else. In
one military suburb, for example, a soldier then languishing in Turkish
captivity still possessed a house. As long as his wife was in residence, all
was well. When she died, the house became hotly contested property. A
clerk in the supervisory chancellery claimed it; so did the captive’s brother.
Another such case seems to reveal clearly some of the normal limits of
soldiers’ prosperity. A woman, whose husband had recently purchased a
house, returned from a brief trip only to be confronted with another sol-
dier’s wife, who had just been billeted in the first woman’s brand new
house. An altercation arose, and the new owner threw the billetee and her
belongings into the street. As a result, she was excoriated as “a rich woman”
and accused of improper behavior toward soldiers’ wives. Any significant
rural holding was the focus of immense interest and machinations, many
of them very unpleasant (Novombergskii 2004, 2: no. 43).
The economic lives of these soldiers’ wives were deeply intertwined with
other members of their town and suburb. Even as men departed on service
assignments, the women themselves were supported (economically and
socially) by an extensive and quite stable network of family, fellow soldiers,
and their wives. The neighborhoods were structured in such a way that the
departure of particular companies or battalions did not denude the settle-
ments of men. Some were left behind, not only members of other compa-
nies, but also retirees and those with local military assignments. These
soldiers’ wives clearly suffered neither from the rejection and isolation that
plagued the wives of serf conscripts later in the century, nor apparently
from extremes of poverty. Women augmented military salaries with petty
sales and service, often from their homes. These activities suggest marginal,
but on the whole durable, domestic economies. Some of their belongings
even suggest occasional windfalls. There are, of course, some broad resem-
blances here to the kind of community social organization that also sup-
ported landholding families while men were away on service. Here,
however, the increasing social stratification of early modern Russia also
made it increasingly unlikely that soldiers’ women, lacking other opportu-
nities, would abandon the security of their households and community
(See Kivelson 1990, 93).
Even more than the wives of the gentry, these soldiers’ wives supported
military life at the front only indirectly. When campaigns were seasonal
and relatively short, it is not implausible to assume that they had frequent
contact with the troops. However, without additional information, it is
hard to say. Into the eighteenth century, such ordinary folk might well have
continued to expect to see their men serve only occasionally and then
return home, leaving women’s roles in military endeavors rooted primarily
in their actions within their own communities.
During the course of the Great Northern War, however, Peter I attempted
to put the entire campaign army on a regular, permanent military service
footing. As the military establishment moved gradually toward such
arrangements, those events should have transformed women’s roles in any
military activity. That is, it should have become increasingly difficult to
sustain close connections between men in service and the women in their
communities, and women’s contribution, if any, should then have taken
different forms. In fact, there was initially considerable confusion about
the implications of reform for wives, families, and women’s roles in the
new military configurations. During the first Petrine levies, some service-
men took an optimistic view, turning up at their place of service with their
wives, as well as their servants (Shcherbinin 2004, 36). More generally,
however, events conspired to separate men in the army from their wives
and families as the term of service lengthened.
As landholders realized that conscription now meant losing the labor
of their serf recruits permanently, they attempted to limit the associated
losses to their labor force by petitioning, with some initial success, to retain
control over the departing soldiers’ wives and children (PSZ 1830–1916, no.
1820; Shcherbinin 2004, 36). Landholders’ initial successes were later over-
turned. On the other hand, slaves enrolling in the army under Peter could
claim their wives and children as early as 1700 (Hellie 1971, 702).
Furthermore, the early Petrine military establishment was barely able to
keep pace with the demands of raising, training, and supplying an increas-
ingly permanent military. Any informal military support for armies on the
march that had formerly been provided by wives and families was simply
disregarded. Finding quarters—even on the way to the front—for the
thousands upon thousands of conscripts alone posed immense difficulties.
By 1705 state decrees urged recruiters to take only 15- to 20-year-old bach-
elors. They were to be quartered in groups in existing (civilian) housing
and carefully supervised by their sergeants; later, the suggested norm was
three men to a bed. Given the army’s constant need for recruits as the
Northern War dragged on, however, the prohibition on conscripting mar-
ried men was soon disregarded (PSZ 1830–1916, nos. 2036, 2049, 3006 chap-
ter 46).
Nevertheless, as year-round service and longer campaigns increasingly
became the norm, the probability of seasonal or occasional involvement
in military life by wives of most social classes decreased rapidly. Even home
leaves were rare. Consequently, military men of all sorts rarely saw their
wives and families. The bombardiers of Schlusselberg, for example, peti-
tioned to see their families after eight years’ absence. Officers reported that
they had not been home in five years or more (e.g. RGVIA 490/2 delo 32
list 33ob; delo 49, list 113ob; Shcherbinin 2004, 37; Karpushchenko 1999,
17–27). For those on the battlefront, military support directly from home
and family had clearly diminished.
Little is yet known about alternatives that may have developed or how
many women were involved. First of all, Petrine campaign troops were only
gradually shifted to a more regular status. Further, not all of Peter’s armed
forces were campaign troops. Garrison forces and some military suburbs
persisted in the seventeenth-century fashion. And gradually, the Russian
government acknowledged campaign soldiers’ families and new more
formal military contributions. When conscripts became soldiers (soldaty),
those dependent upon them (their wives and children) were eventually
recognized as free and nontaxpaying (e.g. Kimerling-Wirtschafter 1982, 61ff;
Kimerling-Wirtschafter 1997a, 227–32; Shcherbinin 2004, 26–29). This
change in status freed them from their former landlords to move to the
city, where they lacked connections or support; they could also follow the
army, an ambiguous condition at best. For example, regular soldiers from
newer regiments came gradually to be housed in new barracks and billets.
While wives and families were formally permitted to share that accom-
modation in peacetime, they were hardly well or humanely treated when
they did. In one case, commercial winter quarters were commandeered as
separate housing for soldiers’ wives; even when barracks were available
much later in the eighteenth century, descriptions of conditions there were
somewhat unsavory (Gramotki 1969, no. 400; Karpushchenko 1997, 22–23;
Shcherbinin 2004, 38). Despite this questionable treatment, those women
who lived with the troops in peacetime were acknowledged in the payment
of soldiers’ food allowances and in the norms for their allocation of living
space. By the middle of the eighteenth century, wives who did live with the
troops were actively urged to work as regimental laundresses, seamstresses
and even food sellers (Kimerling-Wirtschafter 1990, 35–40; Karpushchenko
1999, 29; Shcherbinin 2004, 36–37; PSZ 1830–1916, nos. 2034, 2036). Except
in the case of settled garrison troops, however, these contributions to reg-
imental life must be assumed to have been more infrequent than previ-
ously, since regiments on active duty could be absent for prolonged periods.
Those who comment on it at all assume that the wives of ordinary soldiers
did not follow active-duty troops, and other women were prevented from
doing so by the constraints of enserfment, among other things.
Women who did not follow their spouses to the barracks clearly made
no contribution whatsoever to the support of the regiments and received
none. Indeed, the separation between these wives and their soldier hus-
bands was so total that they might not even know of a spouse’s death
(Shcherbinin 2004, 37; RGADA 22 /1, 20). The isolation and impoverishment
that could characterize the lives of rural soldatki, whether they remained
in the countryside or eked out a precarious existence in the towns, have
been ably documented; information about their status and experience is
more generally available for the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
(See Kimerling-Wirshchafter1990 ff; Shcherbinin 2004; Farnsworth 1990,
58–73).
The landholding servicemen of the eighteenth century, on the other
hand, were increasingly molded into an officer class. The kind of social and
morale-building visits to the troops by elite women that had existed in the
seventeenth century continued into the Petrine period and beyond, even
as the army became more permanent and its campaigns much longer and
more drawn out. Catherine I, the Latvian laundress who became Peter I’s
consort and then Empress in her own right (1725–27), is one of the more
spectacular early examples. She not only accompanied her imperial spouse
on the campaign against the Ottomans at Pruth (1711) but thereafter she
frequently traveled with him and the troops, up to and including the
Persian campaigns at the end of his reign. Peter borrowed her relatively
richly provided entourage to provide a suitable setting for his meetings
with foreign dignitaries (Hughes 2004, 144; Bisha et al. 2002, 216; 2004, 19;
Zakonodatel’nye akty 1945, I: 179–80; Shcherbinin 2004, 410). Although she
was certainly not typical, Catherine was also not alone on such military
expeditions. Images from the Napoleonic period and memoirs from the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries suggest that other women followed
the troops or attended them locally (Durova 1988, 83; von Manstein 1968,
137–38), but it is still difficult to judge the frequency of such behavior. Also
typical, however, were those officers who reported so few home leaves over
the course of the Northern War that they did not see family or estates for
years on end (e.g. RGVIA 490/2 delo 49 list 114; delo 59 list 60).
This brief survey has been intended to bring to the fore the role women
played in the Russian army in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Given the current state of research, women’s attendance near (and even
among) Muscovy’s troops does not appear to have been their dominant
contribution in the pre-Petrine era. Instead, women preserved the family
economy, offered moral support, and worked to retain their family’s status
in distant communities; these activities sustained the military from afar,
an arrangement possible in part because of the infrequency and seasonal
nature of most military service. But it was reinforced by, among other
things, the increasingly rigid nature of Russian society, which sustained
communal life and limited other possibilities. Russia’s early eighteenth-
century military reforms, whatever they did for the troops in action, did
not exactly replicate west European conditions with respect to women’s
contributions. Given the complications of rapid change, new places for
women remained unclear and ill-defined for some time. The seasonal
nature of family and community support was undermined, much to the
apparent detriment of ordinary soldiers’ wives. Once they were identified
as soldiers’ wives, some women could and did share peacetime barracks
with the soldiers. The more prosperous landholders visited and followed
the troops on the march. Much work remains to clarify both their numbers
and the nature of their participation, but as during the pre-Petrine era,
resemblances to western European conditions seem to have been occa-
sional.
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Sisters in Arms 409
CHAPTER TEN
Sisters in Arms: Quebec Convents at the Crossroads

of Empire
Jan Noel
“Go teach all nations.”

“Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
“Onward, Christian Soldiers.”
These are three Christian mottos, the first two taken from the Gospels, the
third an old hymn that was popular until the 1960s, but often seen there-
after as politically incorrect. In this volume about women’s military history,
we consider countless groups that range from army and nursing corps and
assorted camp followers found in war zones to munitions workers and
patriotic organizations on home fronts. To add to the tally, some surprising
activity has appeared in a quarter one might expect to be removed from
action: the convent. Joining a cloistered order that extricated her from the
world, the nun is the last person one might expect to participate in war.
Since a convent is an unfortified institution full of single women, it can be
a red flag to enemy troops; sisters seem likely to appear as victims in the
annals of war if they appear at all.
My theme, however, is just the opposite: convents have been islands of
feminine strength and solidarity in a patriarchal world, and their denizens
have provided a creative range of responses to warfare. From behind the
veil of the “angel of mercy” might emerge a spy, a resistance fighter, or an
unblinking imperialist. In studying convents along the St. Lawrence River
standing at a crossroads of conflict three centuries ago, I do not intend to
whitewash the sisters met there. Clear analysis of how religious women
became an integral part of military history can throw light on the topic of
women’s military history in general. A group on the front lines, whether a
battalion, an air squadron, or a nursing corps, earns its keep if the high
command can look to it for sustainable services. Its viability is increased if
it also has reliable connections, particularly with those in charge of state
decisions. My study examines the responses of religious women in Canada
to attacks by three different enemy forces between 1640 and 1775. It shows
410 Jan Noel
how their solid base allowed them to assume Christian guises that could
range from loving neighbor all the way to unscrupulous partisan.
“Holy War” and the Haudenousaunee
When historians before 1960 recounted Canada’s founding, they told of a

brave band of colonists cruelly tormented by cunning savages lurking in
the woods. In the decades that followed, the combined impact of aborigi-
nal rights movements and the evolution of scholarly horizons beyond the
European standpoint transformed the narrative. It became understood
that the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) were fighting for their survival; that
their methods of torture, while not pretty, had cultural significance; that
in terms of casualties, forest warfare was less lethal than European equiv-
alents. Proselytizing by Jesuit missionaries was recast from heroic altruism
to the deadly sowing of internal dissension among their Huron (Wendat)
allies. Blackrobes were also pilloried as purveyors of European obsessions
with female chastity and wifely submission (Trigger 2007; Anderson 1991).
Following this revisionism came another wave of more nuanced scholar-
ship that explored religious syncretism and other creative strategies that
First Nations developed to deal with new colonial realities (Greer 2004;
Sleeper-Smith 2001). Scholars, including a growing number of aboriginal
ones (Dickason 2002; Mann 2000, Sioui 1999) continue to reassess the
meaning of aboriginal race and gender in colonial history.
It is time to revisit the female missionaries who marched with the other
“Christian soldiers.” Accounts of devout female founders have begun to
incorporate questions about the value of their work among aboriginal girls
and women, and to examine post-Tridentine Catholic attitudes to feminine
activism (Gourdeau 1994; Davis 1995; Rapley 1995; Deslandres 2003). The
present study provides fresh perspective by positioning religious women
within a military framework. Among the “Church Militant” were Ursuline
and Augustinian Hospital sisters who were the first nuns to arrive in New
France in 1639; three years later, other women ventured deep into the
woods, the very heart of enemy territory, where they founded a controver-
sial settlement to convert First Nations. Initially named Ville Marie after
the Virgin Mary, Montreal (today the second largest predominantly French-
speaking city in the world) has been singled out as a rare example of a city
founded for religious purposes. Two of the best-known founders started
projects that gave rise to convents. Jeanne Mance is regarded, along with
Sisters in Arms 411
Governor de Maisonneuve, as cofounder of the town; Marguerite Bourgeoys
is associated with the first system of popular education in Canada
(Magnuson 1992, 135). Both made their mark while withstanding an enemy
siege that lasted from 1643 until 1665, when the French government finally
sent a regiment for colonial protection.
While various nations have archaic traditions of amazons or female
warriors, the exploits of Joan of Arc in the fifteenth century kept the tradi-
tion alive in France. In a country where elite women had an unusually
strong role in public life, the occasional female warrior still rode across the
historical stage. The Princess of Condé, Charlotte Marguerite de
Montmorency, from one of France’s leading families and a member of the
society for religious colonization of Montreal, was also mother of the
famous Madame de Longueville who rallied rebel forces during the
French civil wars of the 1640s. Further back from the front lines, religious
imperialists such as Anne of Austria and other court ladies helped launch
post-Reformation missionary campaigns to China, Brazil, and Canada.
Seventeenth-century Canada had such amazons of its own as Madame de
la Tour and fourteen-year-old Madeleine de Verchères, who took command
of fortresses when husband or father were absent. Jeanne Mance also acted
in the tradition of forceful Frenchwomen when she assumed political lead-
ership of a colonizing group that was mainly masculine.
For some, colonial conquests were suffused with mysticism. Both Marie
de l’Incarnation, the first Ursuline superior at Quebec, and Marguerite
Bourgeoys, who migrated to the front lines in Montreal, were convinced
that the Blessed Virgin personally summoned them. Bourgeoys (as quoted
in Cotter 1976, 165–66), teaching in France at the age of 33, described the
experience:
One morning when I was fully awake I saw a tall woman dressed in a white,
serge-like robe, who said to me distinctly, “Go, I will not abandon you,” and
I knew it was the Blessed Virgin even though I couldn’t make out her face.
That reassured me for the trip and gave me ample courage, and I found no
further difficulty.
The warrior tradition and the mystical one converged to thrust single
women into the danger zones of French colonization in the New World.
412 Jan Noel
Jeanne Mance and the Sisters of the Montreal Hôtel-Dieu
Those living in the small settlement of Quebec, founded by Samuel de

Champlain in 1608, were appalled when they heard of the plan of some
zealots in France to penetrate over a hundred miles into the wilderness
and set up a new mission astride the trade routes of the dreaded Iroquois.
La folle entreprise, the foolish enterprise, was what Quebeckers called the
project of the Company of Notre Dame. The site would be a base for those
whose dreams of converting aboriginal peoples were as boundless as the
continent itself. A famous portrait of Jeanne Mance, an attorney’s daughter,
shows a beautiful young woman with doe-like eyes and flowing hair.
Whether or not she looked the part, certainly within that breast beat the
heart of a romantic. In May 1642 she and the other foolish enterprisers
arrived in two boats at the Montreal island, pitched tents, and began living
in the woods. Enthralled by the spring wildflowers, Mance and friends
decked out a rustic altar on Montreal’s mountain slope, capturing fireflies
in containers to light the service, and singing hosannas for the enemy
people who, for all they knew, might be rustling in the woods around them.
Fifty-five colonists (including ten women) remained on the island as scar-
let and golden leaves drifted down and winter blanketed the island. Jeanne
Mance stayed because she was one of the leaders, both the company’s
financial manager and its medical practitioner. At first she worked within
the walls of the company fort, administering catechism lessons and health
care to ailing Huron allies of the French. When spring came, Iroquois ene-
mies of the Huron discovered the new settlement. Wishing to protect their
trade routes, they began lying in wait and cutting down settlers who strayed
too far from their companions. Despite the siege, in 1645 Mance moved
from the fort into a stone hospital situated on four acres of land behind a
frail wooden palisade. Immediately some of its ten beds were pressed into
service for French settlers wounded by tomahawks.
Is it an exaggeration to place Jeanne Mance beside Governor Maison
neuve as cofounder of this fortified outpost? Montreal’s founding docu-
ments are unusual in their explicit references to women. The Company of
Notre Dame’s 1643 document Les Véritables Motifs de Messieurs et Dames
de la Société de Nostre Dame de Montréal pour la Conversion des Sauvages
de la Nouvelle France goes to some lengths to note that Christ had accepted
help from women in his travels on earth, legitimizing the prominence of
women in this new work to establish the Church “in a country hitherto
abandoned to demons.” The document notes that the French founders of
Sisters in Arms 413
the Company “had often begged God for people to direct and lead this, His
new family they were sending to the … island, and God sent them two
leaders at different times and of different sex, station and place of origin.”
Montreal’s first historian, Father François Dollier de Casson, likewise
described a woman and a man, Jeanne Mance and Paul Chomeday de
Maisonneuve, as cofounders of Montreal. The founders described the mis-
sion fortress to the Pope as the creation of “high-ranking people of both
sexes” (Daveluy 1962, 113).
Mance qualified as one of the leading organizers of Montreal’s Christian
soldiers. It was she who sailed back across the Atlantic and revived French
support when it flagged in 1649. It was her idea to use her hospital’s endow-
ment to recruit more men to protect the town when Montreal suddenly
became the front line of conflict after destruction of Huron settlements
farther west. After more than a third of the colonists were slain, fear drove
the survivors to abandon their houses and live in the fort. By mid-1651 there
were only 17 militia to face the onslaught of 200 enemy warriors. Alone at
the hospital one day, Mance narrowly escaped an ambush by 40 warriors
lying in wait, three settlers who were being chased reaching safety there
and closing the doors just in time. “Everyone was reduced to extremities,”
she wrote, “one spoke of nothing but leaving the country.” Reflecting on
this, she decided it was “better to sacrifice part lest the whole perish.”
Seventeenth-century historian Dollier de Casson (1992, 132) wrote:
Finally, as we were diminishing each day and our enemies encouraged by
their great numbers; everyone saw quite clearly that if powerful help did
not arrive soon from France, all would be lost. Mademoiselle Mance, con-
sidering and weighing this, told Monsieur de Maisonneuve that she advised
him to go to France, that the benefactress having given her 22,000 livres for
the hospital … she would give it to him in order to get help.
Governor Maisonneuve agreed, and he went off to France on this errand,
confiding to Mance that he would not come back at all if he failed to get
reinforcements. In France he took her advice and applied to her friend, the
French benefactor of her hospital, who approved the suggested diversion
of hospital funds to raise troops, and increased her gift. Maisonneuve used
the funds to induce what armed men he could to sail for the beleaguered
settlement. The year 1653 emerged in Montreal’s history as “the year of the
hundred men.” Dollier de Casson (1992) said Mance’s actions to secure
reinforcements had saved the town. Other seventeenth-century Canadians
shared this view; in 1687 Governor Denonville (as quoted in Daveluy 1962,
143–44) looked back upon the raising of those troops as crucial:
414 Jan Noel
with the consent of the founder [Madame de Bullion], 22,000 livres were
borrowed from the Company of Montreal to raise a hundred men to protect
the Island from Iroquois attacks. These men saved it, in effect, as well as all
of Canada.
Dollier de Casson (1992) referred several times to the three elements sup-
plied by Providence that permitted the founding of Montreal: the wealthy
members of the Company of Notre Dame in France, Governor Maisonneuve,
and Jeanne Mance, indeed speaking at greater length about her contribu-
tion than about the Governor’s. He referred to them as “the two people
that heaven has elected” and adds that one person of each sex was needed
to fulfill the varied tasks.” (Claire Daveluy 1965 123–44). Micheline Dumont
and her colleagues (1982, 41), go further, asserting that that “les historiens
s’accordent a dire que le rôle de Jeanne Mance a été plus determinant dans
ce projet que celui de Maisonneuve.” Gustave Lanctot (1969), following
nineteenth-century Montreal historian Etienne Faillon (1853–54), supports
the interpretation that Montreal had dual founders, writing that the Society
of Montreal set sail “under the two leaders Maisonneuve and Jeanne
Mance.” (In his annotated version of Dollier de Casson’s account (1992, 155,
42n), Marcel Trudel questions whether Dollier exaggerated the significance
of the reinforcements of 1653 because a peace had been negotiated with
the Iroquois just before their arrival; but that peace was quite temporary,
attacks resuming in 1654, and contracts of that year dispensing settlers from
obligations if the island of Montreal were to be abandoned by the French).
Later, when the French company that had founded Montreal dissolved,
Jeanne Mance once more took the lead by sailing to France to arrange the
transfer to the order of Sulpician priests that would henceforth run the
seigneurie of Montreal.
The Quebec settlement might well have survived without Mance’s
action, leaving a French foothold in Canada. As for Montreal, without the
donors Mance secured and the funds she transferred at the critical time,
it is quite possible that the folle project of a settlement in enemy territory
would have collapsed. In 1659 Mance made a return trip to France and
recruited three hospital sisters of St. Joseph to help her. The Hôtel-Dieu of
Montreal soon grew to three stories and was able to welcome the coming
of peace and a growing populace. Yet warfare frequently recurred, and
commanders relied on hospital sisters to care for wounded members of
both colonial militia and French troops.
Sisters in Arms 415
Marguerite Bourgeoys and the Congregation of Notre Dame
The second Canadian “Founding Mother” who headed to the front lines of
embattled Montreal was its first schoolmistress, Marguerite Bourgeoys. In
her own day, she was an oddity. Enticed by her vision of a Woman in White,
Bourgeoys not only lacked Court ties but several times turned down offers
from colonial patrons willing to finance her work. Canonized in 1982, she
was considered a saint even in her lifetime because she was so unworldly.
Did Heaven tell her to carry the Gospel to the Indians? Well then, she would
put herself in Heaven’s hands. In France she set out on her own for the port
of Saint-Nazaire at a time when it was so unconventional for a respectable
woman to travel alone that people assumed she was anything but pious.
She was refused lodgings by a respectable landlady, and had to barricade
herself in the coach to protect herself from men who also had the wrong
idea (Poissant 1993, 25; Simpson 1997, 57–61). Besides sailing off to a place
well known for massacres, Bourgeoys packed for this new life as though
she were going on an overnight trip, with just one bag that she carried
herself.
Marguerite Bourgeoys arrived in 1653, along with the hundred-man
reinforcement Jeanne Mance financed with her hospital’s endowment.
Offered a stable in which to start a school, Bourgeoys taught both Indian
and French children, initially taking boys as well as girls. She also housed
and helped newly arrived brides-to-be sent from France to increase the
population. Later Bourgeoys went back to France to recruit other teachers.
Likely clad in simple black dresses with woolen belts and headdresses, they
opened a cabin school for native girls on Montreal mountain that soon had
some forty students who dressed, spoke, and did needlework in the manner
of French girls (Lemire-Marsolais 1941, 270). Thérèse Gannensagouas and
Marie-Barbe Atontinon, the first two aboriginal members of female reli-
gious orders in North America, joined Bourgeoys’s Congregation of Notre
Dame. With tasks that combined those of an educator and early social
worker, Bourgeoys helped create a semblance of normalcy for settlers in
the embattled mission.
The Nuns at Quebec during the “Holy War”
A little farther back from the front lines, in Quebec, the work of Ursuline
superior and renowned mystic Marie de l’Incarnation and a handful of
416 Jan Noel
other Ursuline and Augustinian hospital nuns helped sustain the tiny
French outpost when the “Holy War” reached even their eastern bastion
in the 1650s. The first three young women in their twenties who nursed
First Nations patients at the Sillery mission outside Quebec would later
balk at leaving the mission even when settlers were being killed only 20
kilometers away and reports arrived of enemy plans to abduct the sisters.
After all, there were pressing duties in their cabin hospital. Over one hun-
dred native patients had arrived in the first year, many with smallpox. It
was too early, everything still too new, for them to realize that the plagues
were due to North American lack of immunity to European microbes. They
only left the front lines when the Governor persuaded them that being
there was selfish, since their guards could better protect townspeople if
not diverted to the lonely hospital.
Nearby at the Quebec Ursuline convent, Marie de l’Incarnation furthered
the French cause by boarding Iroquois girls. Exchange of children was a
diplomatic initiative helping seal truces, and girls were essential since boys
refused to stay with the French (Marshall 1967, 233). Compiling catechisms
and dictionaries in Algonquin and Iroquoian languages, the Ursuline supe-
rior was initially convinced that enemy nations could be converted. But
after Jesuit missionaries and Indian converts she knew were tortured and
killed, she could not suppress an angry reaction that “After so many useless
efforts and so much experience of the perfidy of these infidels … these
barbarians must be exterminated” (Marshall 1967, 257), words that do not
resonate well. Avowing “no fear” during a 1660 alarm that left other Quebec
women utterly terrified, she did not draw back from the bloodiest implica-
tions of religious imperialism.
The records of seventeenth-century conflict allow us to see how, in time
of war, religious women were able, as one historian (Crowley 1997, 111) said,
“to make a vital contribution to colonial development.” It was a question
of connections, service, and economic support. Although she had been a
late addition to the group that was preparing to sail from La Rochelle for
la folle enterprise when she joined them in 1641, Jeanne Mance was, as a
contemporary wrote, an eloquent woman, and she knew how to make
connections. It was she who convinced the Company of Notre Dame to
publish a prospectus of their project and send it to wealthy Parisian ladies
and gentlemen of her acquaintance. The result? Donations doubled, and
the Company of Montreal immediately expanded from 8 members to 38,
including 9 women (Daveluy 1962, 96n). Moreover, after Mance (an ascetic
consuming only bread and water) paid four visits to the lavish mansion of
Sisters in Arms 417
Duchess Angelique de Bullion, the latter had decided to trust her with
founding a faraway medical mission. Madame de Buillon would contribute
74,000 livres over the ensuing decades.
Marguerite Bourgeoys likewise connected with others to finance her
service. Not long after she arrived penniless in Montreal, her friend Gover
nor Maisonneuve gave her several land concessions, and her companion
sister Marie Barbier toiled at herding, dairying, and hauling grain to mills.
By 1681 the Congregation of Notre Dame had 150 cultivated arpents and
sheep, cattle, and horses and employed 13 male workers (Simpson 2005,
70, 102). Formed in siege conditions during Montreal’s Holy War, the
Congregation would become the largest and most popular Canadian reli-
gious order. Its members conducted schools for First Nations allies in the
vicinity of Montreal and went out in pairs to set up the first free schools all
across New France.
For better or for worse, religious women marched along with men in
the front ranks when France launched her imperial project in the first half
of the seventeenth century. Marie de l’Incarnation, who sent hundreds of
letters to France, and Marie Morin, annalist at Jeanne Mance’s Hôtel-Dieu,
wrote some of the key primary accounts of the time of siege. Religious
women conversed with French royalty and colonial governors, with bish-
ops and aboriginal chiefs. Particularly remarkable is Jeanne Mance’s initia-
tive to raise troops to defend Montreal. This helped the colony survive
decades of royal neglect until at last in the 1660s France made Canada a
royal colony and organized a regiment for its protection. The crusading
zeal of the first decades eventually cooled, but it left behind those female-
run hospitals and schools, as well as a recorded history of female founders
who had supplied leadership at a crucial time. In contrast to the usual
anonymous “founding mothers” of nations who made the essential contri-
bution of producing babies and rocking cradles, these single women made
a different kind of mark as public figures at the heart of the war effort.
The Spoils of War
Convents further integrated themselves into the military mission by mak-

ing use of the spoils of war. Often their members were diverted from teach-
ing or nursing by the need to work their farms, sew, or launder for income.
In search of cheap labor, they followed with interest the exploits of military
relatives who accompanied native allies on raids on the New England
418 Jan Noel
frontier from the 1670s onward. Often the men came back with captives
who were indentured to Canadians while awaiting their ransom. The
Congregation of Notre Dame used one such captive for farm labor, while
the hospitals employed others. The largest known group worked for
Montreal’s Grey Nuns who ran a General Hospice in the last years of the
French regime and set thirty captives to work, mostly in farm labor and
construction. (Foster 2003, 87–91).
Some captives converted (about 20 percent of women and 10 percent of
men) and made a new life for themselves in the French colony. Convents
did much to assimilate young captives by enrolling them in their boarding
schools, more than twenty at the Quebec Ursulines alone. Several such
graduates decided to become nuns. The most famous of these was Esther
Wheelwright. Captured in 1703 at age 7 in Wells, Massachusetts (now
Maine), the little girl was marched north. She lived for a while with Abenaki
captors in a wigwam. A missionary found her there and brought her to the
Quebec Ursulines. She converted to the new faith so ardently that she
joined the order, staunchly resisting all her family’s attempts to rescue her.
Wheelwright made a real contribution to the Ursulines as their mother
superior during the period of transition to British rule in the 1760s. Another
New England family, the Risings, became known as the Raizennes, the
surname of an early Congregational sister. This was fitting, for one zealous
member of the family took the veil and taught Indian girls for 54 years at
the Congregation’s Lake of Two Mountains mission; for three generations
the family continued to contribute sisters and priests to the religious life.
The attacks that struck fear in the heart of peaceful New England villages
contributed to the prosperity of convents north of the St. Lawrence
(Coleman 1925, 388–91; Little 2007, 76, 127–8, 145–58).
Mobilizing for Continental War, 1744–59
New France experienced warfare for approximately a hundred years of its

century-and-a-half existence. There was no permanent peace with the
Iroquois until 1701. Thereafter there were flare-ups with First Nations far-
ther west, as well as intermittent conflict with American colonies to the
south. When the War of Austrian Succession broke out in 1744, it quickly
spread to North America. A truce in 1748 was only a hiatus before the final,
definitive contest between France and Britain for hegemony there. When
the French and Indian War broke out in 1754, it was part of a larger Seven
Years’ War that spanned three continents.
Sisters in Arms 419
While these years of strife were unfolding, all seven Canadian con-
vents—the Ursulines at Quebec and Trois-Rivières, the Congregation of
Notre-Dame itinerant teaching order with its mother house in Montreal,
the Hôtels-Dieu of Quebec and Montreal, and the General Hospices of
Quebec and Montreal—developed impressive assets that allowed them to
serve as cogs in the French war machine. In the 1740s they appeared regu-
larly in the crown accounts as suppliers of essential war services. The hos-
pitals and hospices received reimbursement for care of sick and disabled
soldiers and sailors in their wards. They supplied food and medicine to
crown shipyards and to the chain of war operations that extended past the
Great Lakes into the interior of the continent. Sisters with pharmaceutical
training shipped their medicines to combatants as far away as Forts
Chambly, Frontenac, Niagara and Detroit. The Quebec Hôtel-Dieu sold
surplus hay to the army. Working alongside the unwed mothers, sex trade
workers, orphans, disabled and elderly folks within their walls, sisters in a
new hospice in Montreal in the 1740s made uniforms and tents for the
troops (NALC 1719–1749, 1719 vol. 40, folio 265; 1731, vol. 56, f. 178–79v; 1732,
vol. 58, f. 38–41;1740, vol. 114, f. 288; 1745, vol. 115, f .207; 1745, vol. 117, f. 87v).
By that time, generations of service had consolidated the position of
convents in the colony. Donations arrived, including sizable legacies from
widows receiving eldercare from nuns. When the Montreal Hôtel-Dieu
burned down in the winter of 1734, officials reported “a special affection
for that community,” which commonly treated some forty patients, usually
without charge. People came forward in great numbers to help with
rebuilding, farm families sending wood and wheat, townspeople donating
money and labor. Donations never lay fallow. Convents purchased tools
and equipment and trained one generation after another in artisanal skills.
Products included clothing for the fur trade, altar cloths, statues and decor
for churches, handcrafted boxes and embroidery. A large place such as the
Montreal Hôtel-Dieu could be a center of light manufacturing, its inventory
including heavy equipment in bakery and laundry plus a shoemaking shop
with tools and six hundred pairs of shoes (NALC 1719–1749, 1734, vol. 61, f.
159). Another skill, farming, drew even cloistered nuns outside the walls.
Mothers superior travelled to inspect the convent’s seigniorial lands, and
members worked the fields when funds were lacking to pay laborers.
All these assets gave convents a profile that some lay and clerical author-
ities found objectionable. Eighteenth-century officials looked covetously
at properties such as the Quebec hospital sisters’ fourteen rental lots and
their walled gardens full of fruit and flowers, and fumed that “the greater
420 Jan Noel
part of Quebec lots belong to religious orders” (NALC 1719–1749, 1748, vol.
91, f. 34–35; 1749, vol. 93, f. 17–18). Despite some grumbling that such walls
hindered military operations by making it harder to build fortifications,
many Canadian-born officers in the professional troops, as well as militia-
men, had relatives inside convents, and they readily tolerated institutions
that nursed their wounded.
An Elite Convent in Wartime
Due to a crown strategy of developing an officer class to defend France’s

vast territorial claims in North America, there were soon 181 noble families
in the colony. They intermarried extensively. Many of their sons trained
abroad and others served in French battalions in the far reaches of North
America, Europe, even India. With so many men abroad (or lost to war),
there was a surplus of daughters. To prevent them from losing caste by
marrying non-nobles, family strategies often involved sending willing ones
to the convent. One in every five noblewomen, almost all daughters of
officers, became a nun (Gadoury 1991, 86). Because it epitomizes sustain-
able service and connections in wartime, Quebec’s General Hospice
(Hôpital Général) will be the focus of most of the rest of this discussion,
with occasional mention of other convents. The hospice was an institution
founded by the aristocratic Quebec Bishop Saint-Vallier, former chaplain
at Louis XIV’s court. He actively recruited noblewomen, who at times com-
prised up to half of the choir sisters there. Visiting the colony in 1720, the
French historian Charlevoix (1744, 77) pronounced the hospice “the most
beautiful house in Canada.” Its church, in particular, was magnificently
adorned with gold and silver fixtures, oak wainscoting, grand portraits and
landscapes, and handsome tapestries. When Swedish botanist Peter Kalm
visited thirty years later, a large flock of nuns from the officer class showed
him around their buildings then served up a banquet with dishes “as
numerous and various as on the tables of great men.” (Kalm 1937, 454–55).
A general hospice was not a hospital; rather, it combined the functions of
a workhouse for the dissolute or disorderly, and a refuge for disabled veterans
as well as others who were handicapped, orphaned, elderly, convalescent, or
under quarantine. At times when the Hôtel Dieu hospital was full or inca-
pacitated, the hospice also accepted the sick and wounded. This the Quebec
General Hospice did in wartime, and during epidemics of 1756–57, when ten
nuns lost their lives caring for stricken soldiers and sailors.
Sisters in Arms 421
Like the society around it, the hospice was sharply hierarchical.
Noblewomen usually held the highest administrative offices, supervising
wards, finances, novices, and a host of underlings. The literate choir nuns
passed much of their day in prayer, meditation, and song, but spent other
hours in the wards and teaching the poor. The lay sisters known as converses
were illiterates from humble families. They slept on coarser linen and wore
clogs. Required to be healthy, robust, and docile, these “Cinderellas of the
convents” took care of the barnyard and did the heavy work in the garden,
laundry, and stable. The choir nuns directed them and as many as thirteen
domestic servants, plus carpenters, builders, harvest crews, seigniorial ten-
ants, and male nurses.
A key figure in the hospice’s wartime history was Mother St. Claude de
la Croix de Ramezay. Her father had been military governor of Montreal.
Her brothers, brothers-in-law, cousins, and nephews were all officers. Three
of her male siblings died on battlefields or in shipwrecks. Her surviving
brother, Nicolas-Roch, after decades of illustrious service was given charge
of defending the upper town of Quebec during the British invasion of 1759.
Mother St. Claude served the crown in her own way, acting as the convent’s
Financial Director (Depository) for 26 years, its superior for six. She impressed
a foreign visitor with her “very grand air” (Kalm 1937, 2: 455).
What kind of institution did she run? In the decade the colony fell, the
nuns were described as very worldly, their conversation “so polite and
animated that one forgot the nun and saw only the lady of distinction.”
One bishop fumed against “the abuse of having one’s own money at her
disposition [this applying to Mother St. Claude] … buying her own food …
liquors … clothes” (Trudel 1957, 2: 302–307). The nuns were said to talk
indiscreetly about sexual scandals, rise late, neglect prayers and rules of
silence. Perhaps influenced by a number who had joined the order as a
safety measure when war broke out in the 1750s, these ladies did not let
the veil interfere with a cultured, sociable lifestyle.
Since the crown exerted control over dowries and subsidies, convents
needed powerful friends who would represent them in court circles. They
found a friend in Madame Vaudreuil, convent school graduate, who married
an early eighteenth-century military governor. She brought medicines to the
bedside of one superior and sought crown contributions to noble dowries.
The gubernatorial couple outraged the bishop but probably pleased the nuns
by dropping in with military officers to visit, oblivious to the rules of cloister.
The nuns even hobnobbed with the warrior elite at dinner parties held at the
chateaux of governor and intendant. By 1737, with friendly advocates in the
422 Jan Noel
government, the General Hospice had grown to 34 choir nuns and six con-
verses; two decades later, they totalled 55.
Occupation by the British, 1759
The French and Indian War represented the final clash of arms for New
France. The American colonies had not only twenty times more settlers
but a determined British war effort to back them up. After years of bitter
engagement, the French colony was in hungry and exhausted condition
when British-American forces converged along invasion routes into the
colony in 1759. In midsummer, Gen. James Wolfe’s army, well supported by
the British navy, sailed up the St. Lawrence to Quebec. One of the young
hospice nobles, Mother Sainte-Elizabeth Adhémar de Lantagnac, set up a
field hospital right at the scene of an early skirmish, where a brief encounter
with an enemy soldier who held a sword to her throat “seemed to inspire her
with fresh zeal” (Roy 1908, 21). While General Wolfe studied ways to capture
the walled city on its towering cliff, his forces shelled it until most of its build-
ings were in ruins.
Since the General Hospice was located some distance outside town, peo-
ple turned there for refuge. Kin and townspeople came pouring into the
building with their belongings. The Ursuline and Hôtel-Dieu nuns also fled
their crumbling convents and came streaming over the fields, carrying their
bedding. Soon the hospice and all its outbuildings were crammed with refu-
gees, patients, inmates, and nuns; 800 people in buildings designed for 120.
During that desperate time, the sisters even found a corner for the enemy,
Mother St. Claude herself nursing a wounded British officer and reportedly
weeping when he died.
With France concentrating its efforts on European fronts, Quebec could
not hold out forever. On the fateful night of 12 September 1759, Wolfe’s troops
slipped past French sentries and crept up a path leading to the Plains of
Abraham. The sisters, who customarily rose at four, were among the first to
learn of the landing. Taken by surprise, General Montcalm rushed out to meet
the invader, failing to wait for reinforcements. One of history’s most famous
battles was over in less than half an hour, as French forces broke ranks and
ran back into the walled town. The nuns watched in horror from their win-
dows, and soon hundreds of French wounded were carried inside.
Amid all the bloodshed Mother St. Claude continued to ply the path of
aristocratic courteoisie she had learned from childhood in the governor’s
Sisters in Arms 423
mansion. Only a week after her officer brother yielded the starving town to
the British, she sent to General Amherst a gift of preserves the nuns had made,
with a fawning note. They were “eager to present their respects to his excel-
lency, to express their deep appreciation for his protection, wishing him
health” (Trudel 1957, 2: 311–12). The British command responded with the
customary courtesy a well-bred gentleman would show to a lady. General
Wolfe had promised protection to her and the hospice. After Wolfe’s death
on the battlefield, his successor, Gen. James Murray, kept the pledge. The
very night of the battle, the nuns carrying soup to patients were frightened
by the loud knock of a British officer at the door. Although British forces
occupied the institution, they offered the nuns both respect and remu-
neration.
A certain Capt. John Knox was sent to guard the hospice and insure no
aid was given to French forces still lurking in the neighborhood. Captain
Knox had an uneven relationship with Mother St. Claude de la Croix. There
were several things he admired about her hospice: the identical care meted
out to French and English; the clean and airy wards where each patient
had a curtained bed; the many attractive young nuns (Knox, 1914, 213, 237).
Mother St. Claude even invited Captain Knox to join her in a private room
for English tea and pleasant, leisurely conversation.
The French and British were not ready to make friends just yet, though.
There was a second clash of French and British forces at nearby Sainte-Foy
in April 1760. The boom of cannons shook the hospice and nuns saw their
brothers, fathers, uncles, and nephews fall and be carried in, nearly five
hundred men in all. The annalist (as quoted in O’Reilly 1882, 360) described
the horrors [we saw] … the cries of the dying and the sorrows of the watch-
ers. Those moments required a force above nature to bear it without dying.
… We had in our infirmaries seventy-two officers; thirty-three died. One saw
nothing but severed arms and legs.”
It is impossible to read this account, or the annals of any of the town’s three
convents, without recognizing the nuns’ passionate attachment to the French
cause. They chronicled battle after battle, the Ursulines incorporating dis-
patches General Montcalm sent them from the front. The hospice, where a
full 40 per cent of the choir sisters were daughters of war heroes decorated
with the St. Louis Cross, was no less patriotic. They protested when there
were thefts by the British guard but kept quiet when French forces purloined
cattle and grain they needed to feed their own patients. They maintained
secret communications with the French General Lévis and helped recovered
soldiers rejoin his ranks (O’Reilly 1882, 355–58).
424 Jan Noel
Both sides knew this was a fight to the finish. Even though he accepted
Mother St. Claude’s hospitality, Captain Knox suspected the courteous nun
of scheming to demoralize the British officers under her care. “Madame de
St. Claude,” Knox (1914, 368) wrote, “is reputed the industrious inventress
of many groundless rumours” about a defeat of Amherst’s invading army
and other British losses. Knox claimed that General Murray himself had
reproached her, “a woman who had shut herself up in a convent and retired
from the world, [who] has no right to intermeddle with what passes in it.”
Knox said that General Murray taunted Mother St. Claude that “if she is
tired of living out of the world, and will change her habit for that of a man,
she being of a proper stature, his Excellency will inroll [sic] her as a grena-
dier.” If Mother St. Claude did spread false rumors of French victories, it was
in keeping with the obvious patriotism of the nuns.
The French regime came to a close with the capitulation of Montreal in
September 1760. Fortunately for the nuns, the colony fell into the hands of
gentlemanly British officers. In Montreal, the Hôtel-Dieu resisted an offer
of transfer back to France, though two sisters did break ranks and sail for
France. Though hard years followed, all the convents limped into the new
order under Protestant rulers.
Invasion by the Continental Army, 1775
For the Quebec General Hospice, there was one more trauma to come. For
fifteen years after 1760, several thousand English-speaking settlers lived along-
side the more than 70,000 French Canadians in the St. Lawrence valley. When
the American Revolution broke out in 1775, Patriots believed the conquered
French Canadians would be only too happy to have them invade and rescue
them from their British overlords. The aristocratic sisters at the hospice,
however, perceived the revolutionaries as Protestants if not infidels, and
found their democratic tendencies unfamiliar and unsettling. Mother Marie-
Catherine de Noyal de St. Alexis was superior in the autumn of 1775 when the
southerners arrived and commandeered their elegant building. The nuns
were forced to house four hundred soldiers “toutes gens d’une grossièreté et
d’une hardiesse détestables,” (O’Reilly 1882, 407 ff; Coffin 1896, 527), whose
misconduct was later decried by General Washington and the Continental
Congress. During that time one of the officers demanded to see the Superior.
He warned her indignantly that not enough was being done for his sick sol-
diers there. Evidently thinking it would bring the royalist nun around, he
Sisters in Arms 425
added that the king ordered that beds be prepared for his men. That riled
Sister St. Alexis. “What King is that?” she enquired, fully aware that the patri-
ots rejected monarchy. “If it isn’t the King, it’s the Congress,” he retorted. “Well
then!” declared that daughter of a Canadian war hero, “Not for one nor the
other, can we provide beds, because we don’t have any, and besides we have
no obligation to care for your sick” (O’Reilly 1882, 407ff). The angry officer
turned on his heels and proceeded to brandish his sword threateningly at the
chaplain and the physician. The Hospice Annals suggest that Mother St. Alexis
may in fact have taken his complaint to heart, for not long afterwards she
issued bandages and blankets and began ministering to the enemy wounded.
Looking at this superior’s life helps us understand a pre-revolutionary
worldview that lived on in the convents as the world changed around them.
Aristocratic hauteur and martial courage were part of the code of honor of
her class, of gentlemen and sometimes ladies too. Mother St. Alexis had no
intention of being submissive to an ill-mannered officer just because his army
was spread out around her. One might find her regal quality surprising given
the circumstances of her own birth. Her mother was widowed in 1728 and
remarried in November 1731. The future nun was born in 1730 and sent to the
convent as a baby. Though a late nineteenth-century convent annalist
(O’Reilly 1882, 407) averred “we do not know why a child so young would have
been entrusted to the nuns,” it seems probable that cooperative hands at the
convent (where several relatives were nuns) agreed to care for an infant
whose presence at home was embarrassing and inconvenient. The nuns
apparently showered her with love and a good education. She was one of a
number of administrators that the annals of Quebec convents describe as
femmes fortes, strong womanly characters. Coming from a family where
women were active in trade, she also possessed her share of business acumen.
Mother St. Alexis’s kinship with leading members of the colony’s mili-
tary noblesse also shaped her destiny. Her Lanaudière, Rigauville, and de
Salaberry kinsmen, all decorated war heroes, were among the minority of
colonists who answered the 1775 call of the British governor and the
Catholic bishop to take arms against the rebel invasion. The governor
expressed his appreciation by promising he would not fire on the hospice,
even though the enemy was lodged there. It was not the governor’s cannons
but their own illness and inability to breech the town walls that led to
American withdrawal in 1776.
Stepping back to analyse the nuns’ conduct during the successive occu-
pations by British and American troops, who can say what proportion of
their conduct was calculation, what proportion charity? In 1759–60 they
426 Jan Noel
lavished kindness on the formidable British invader; the following decade
they begrudged the sickly American one. Were they laying bets on winners?
Was it a question of preferring royalists to revolutionaries? Or was the
operant difference that of manners, hospitality faltering in the face of the
unspecified grossness and dissipation of the Americans? Did they act out
of genteel ideas of courtesy, Christian vows of hospitality, Realpolitik, or all
three? As noted, Mother St. Alexis evidently did take it to heart when
accused of neglecting the Americans, and changed her ways. The motives,
and the conduct, seem complex. The sisters themselves may have been
unsure of how to react in times of rapid change.
When peace returned, services at the hospice and other convents con-
tinued to win praise from Protestant governors and politicians as well as
townspeople and visitors. In terms of numbers, the hospice had more
professed nuns in the 1790s than during pre-Conquest peacetime in the
1730s. Public service, assets, and ability to attach themselves to ruling mil-
itary clienteles preserved the sisters and their work at a time when invasion
and conquest could have submerged their way of life.
Community and Two Key Vows
Having noted the general importance of sustainable service and good con-
nections for nuns and other groups in battle zones, it is useful to draw
attention to certain special characteristics of the group studied here.
Devout people living as a unit could count on certain unusual sources of
strength relating to their faith: their staunch community, and their vows
of poverty and Christian hospitality. Perhaps there was an eighteenth-
century approximation in the all-female households of some intellectual
Quakers that are described by Karin Wulf (2000, chapter 2), but those
households were idiosyncratic and impermanent. Some nineteenth-cen-
tury colleges also became meaningful female communities, but they did
not have the same pooling of property or lifelong commitment of members
that convents did. Let us look more closely at the salient characteristics of
convents.
Picture a group of some fifty women living together in wartime, in charge
of their own establishment, with servants and employees to assist them.
They have well articulated traditions and rules to guide them. They have
close connections with the government and the leading families of the
land, as well as with other classes in a country where nearly everyone
Sisters in Arms 427
belongs to the same faith. They have manufactories and sizable landhold-
ings, dowries and many other kinds of revenue to cover living expenses.
All these things add up to a very unusual situation in a patriarchal society
wracked with military conflicts. While convent life had its stresses and
strains, it offered well-defined occupations and lifelong security for even
the humblest lay sisters who, outside the walls, might face outrages or a
hungry old age. There were positions of leadership for the upper classes
and outlets for all kinds of talents including gardening, cooking, needle-
work, fine arts, carpentry, writing and bookkeeping, skilled medical service,
teaching, and administration. There was opportunity for companionship,
personal development, service, and solitary contemplation.
In time of war convents offered single women unusual security. Notarized
legal documents confirmed their independent legal existence: Quebec nuns
signed their names to land purchases, noting alongside their names their
official functions such as superior, assistant superior, director of novices,
discrette, depositaire. Members who gathered below the convent bell signed
their names to formal agreements to invest a newcomer’s dowry in some
specific project such as a mill. In wartime, such legal arrangements and insti-
tutional stability helped safeguard the sisters’ independence, just as friends
and relatives under arms helped safeguard their lives. Convents extended
their security to the elderly and student pensioners, the patients and ser-
vants who found safety within their walled bastion. In short, a convent that
functioned well could be a feminine fortress in a patriarchal world. These
were impressive assets, especially when one considers the straightened situ-
ation and unappetizing employment prospects of single women in eigh-
teenth-century Europe. Surveying that group in Britain, Bridget Hill (2001)
concluded that scorn, dependence and penury frequently dogged their
lives. Such bleak prospects affected not only Protestant countries but much
of Catholic Europe too, after the French Revolution and the march of
Napoleon’s armies caused widespread dissolution of convents.
A second distinguishing characteristic of these religious women were
two vows that were especially salient in wartime. Having taken a vow of
poverty, they were willing to work whether or not they were paid and to
live, if necessary, on very little. This can be seen as an extreme case of the
classic low-waged work of women, but it made their services quite cost-
effective to the state. Also supplementing the standard vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience was an important fourth vow. Hospitality to all who
entered their portals was a promise made by the Augustinians of the General
Hospice and the Hôtel-Dieu. This was honored to the extent that superiors
428 Jan Noel
were known to dispense the nuns’ personal linen to bandage wounded sol-
diers, or give their last loaves to beggars at the door. By tradition, Christian
hospitality was universal; it was to be dispensed irrespective of class, race,
nationality, or creed. As we have seen, such hospitality brought them div-
idends in their own times of peril.
Conclusion
During the mid-seventeenth-century “Holy War” and the clash of French and
British empires a hundred years later, religious women, like the men on the
battlefields, gave their all to the cause, including death in line of duty. In the
centuries that predated our modern, binary notions of public and private,
sacred and secular, Jeanne Mance, Mother St. Claude, and their colleagues
did not shed the persona of authoritative and well-connected elites when
they dedicated their lives to God. The government of New France was deeply
elitist; but it managed to incorporate powerful women in executive ranks of
its war machine in a way that modern democracies have perhaps not quite
managed even today. Nuns assumed many guises during wartime. They could
be essential suppliers of materiel, directors of medical operations, tender
nurses, yet also, like Mother St. Claude, fierce partisans whose smile the other
side could not trust.
Convents in colonial Quebec and Montreal used their connections,
resources, and skills to absorb the shock of enemy assaults, occupation of
their buildings by successive British and Continental armies, and perma-
nent severance from their mother country. We have seen a sometimes
uncomfortable coexistence of vows of universal charity with a narrower
imperialism that was Catholic and French. It is clear that religious women
in these situations had options and made choices. When we consider
Jeanne Mance, who cofounded Montreal, humble lay sisters in clogs, a
superior accused of lying to demoralize the enemy, ward sisters killed by
troop-borne epidemics, and others who fled to France, we see responses
to warfare that ranged from cowardice to courage, dogmatism to uncer-
tainty, prayerful service to duplicitous resistance. In some ways, those
sisters-in-arms might be compared to the array of male commanders,
heroes, foot soldiers, spies, casualties, deserters: the many niches that com-
batants find when danger comes calling. How was such a range of action
possible? Here were frontline groups that were politically connected and
at-the-ready with sustainable service. They also benefited from an institu-
Sisters in Arms 429
tional cohesiveness that was quite unusual for women and quite special
to convents.
Each of the convents founded in New France continues to serve the pop-
ulace of Canada. After 1776 they were never again forced to house an invad-
ing army. While today’s French Canadian nuns are quite elderly and work
alongside lay professionals, their orders now attract young postulants at
missionary outposts they have established in Africa and Latin America. Back
in Montreal, although the seventeenth-century wooden palisades are long
gone, patients still turn to the Hôtel-Dieu for timely medical care. They now
arrive in ambulances, and the ambulances swirl around a massive statue of
Jeanne Mance, who holds a dying patient in her big metal arms.
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U.S. Military Wives in the Philippines 431
chapter eleven
U.S. Military Wives in the Philippines,

from the Philippine War to World War II
Donna Alvah1
Although hundreds of thousands of relatives of U.S. military personnel have

resided in U.S. territories and other overseas locations for over a hundred
years, there is still surprisingly little historical scholarship on this popula-
tion affiliated with the armed forces. After the brief Spanish-American War
(April to August 1898), the United States annexed the Philippines in 1899,
and fought another war to establish control of the islands. U.S. military
“dependents” arrived in the Philippines even before the fighting ended in
1902 (Anderson 1899, 1103; Shunk 1914, 26; Alt and Stone 1991, 63, 67–68).
The fundamental questions examined in this chapter are: Why were sol-
diers’ wives in the Philippines from the Philippine-American War to the
onset of World War II? What did they do there? How did they describe
military life, and people they encountered in the islands? What did they
believe about their roles as military wives, and as Americans?
The answers to these questions often are more implicit than explicit in
the sources examined here. This study focuses on accounts and other
sources mainly from and about U.S. Army officers’ wives. Army personnel
in the Philippines were more numerous than navy and marine personnel,
and it appears that more army officers had their wives with them than did
officers from other military branches. Moreover, documents by and about
officers’ families are more numerous than those that exist concerning the
families of enlisted men. As Edward Coffman (1986, 105), a social historian
of the U.S. Army, has observed, officers and their wives were more literate
than their enlisted counterparts, and left more writings (such as letters and
memoirs) about their lives and those of the other officers’ families with
whom they socialized than did lower-ranking soldiers and their wives.
1 I am grateful to my student research assistant, Claire Plagge of St. Lawrence University,
for obtaining numerous sources for me. I also greatly appreciate feedback on drafts of this
chapter from Bart Hacker, Margaret Vining, those who attended the June 2008 workshop
for this volume, and an anonymous reviewer.
432 Donna Alvah
Official Attitudes toward Military Wives
Military officials and policy statements rarely explained directly why they
allowed or tolerated military wives joining their husbands in U.S. territories
in North America or overseas; the historian must try to tease out the reasons
from the available sources. Armies in various eras and places have relied
heavily on women’s work, moral support, and self-sacrifice, but their ambiv-
alence about feminine assistance diminished women’s importance and
visibility in historical sources. Compounding this, before the feminist move-
ment of the 1960s and 1970s, most military scholars focused almost exclu-
sively on men’s experiences and their roles in soldiering, thus reinforcing
women’s invisibility (Enloe 2000, 35–38). Since the American Revolution,
the U.S. military used women’s services as “laundresses, cooks, nurses,
foragers, water carriers, and correspondence copiers, among other capac-
ities” (including sexual), but diminished their importance by designating
civilian women as “camp followers,” which connotes a “parasitic” relation-
ship that positions women as separate from and dependent on the armed
forces rather than essential contributors (Shinseki 2003, 1; Enloe 2000, 37;
see also Hacker, chapter 4, this volume).
Wives and children accompanied military men in their travels, and lived
with them at encampments at or near posts. According to Patricia Stallard’s
(1992, 15) history of women and children with the U.S. Army in the trans-
Mississippi West before the U.S. wars in the Philippines, “Officers’ wives
accompanied their husbands for the same reasons women have ventured
forth on any new frontier: love, a sense of duty, the need to provide comfort
and cheerful surroundings, and the desire to be where they felt most
needed.” Stallard’s explanation for why wives went west with their hus-
bands seems to accept a somewhat romantic idea of women following their
husbands. Yet that husbands valued their wives’ companionship at outposts
is indicated in a drinking song of West Point cadets in the 1850s, describing
“ladies of the Army” (the term “ladies” usually referred to officers’ wives)
as “companions of our exile” (Coffman 1986, 104–105). Moreover, Coffman
(1986, 111) notes that women from civilian families in the eastern United
States who married officers were initially bedazzled by the men’s military
status and the notion of “military glory,” and suggests that it took the rug-
gedness of real military life to dispel this glamorous impression. Whether
women who married military men imagined travel to U.S. territories
romantically or realistically may not have really mattered for many. Wives
without supportive kinfolk to live with or near while husbands were gone
for several months or even years at a stretch, or who lacked the financial
means to maintain a separate household, could scarcely view staying back
home as a viable option.
In joining their husbands overseas in the early 1900s, officers’ wives fol-
lowed in the steps of women who had accompanied the army to places
such as the trans-Mississippi West where life could be difficult, even dan-
gerous. It is not surprising to find that American officers in the Philippines
wanted their wives with them for their homemaking abilities; they also
wanted the companionship of spouses and children. But there were addi-
tional reasons for wives joining military husbands, whether in remote
western U.S. territories or across the ocean. One is that wives performed
tasks that aided military functioning. U.S. military culture expected all
wives to aid the armed forces by taking care of husbands and homes, and
by engaging in military community activities. Cynthia Enloe (1983, 48) has
shown how in various times and places, “military commanders and their
civilian political superiors … try to make use of those women who have
married soldiers. If those women can be socialised to become ‘military
wives,’ they can perhaps further some of the military’s own goals.”
Ethel “Bunny” Butler, the wife of marine officer Smedley Darlington
Butler, exemplifies a woman who performed a variety of tasks that aided
the military, and that probably helped make life more pleasant, not only
for her husband, but for his men as well. She joined her husband at posts
in “Haiti, China, the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone.” Stationed
at Olongapo, the Philippines, in 1906, Smedley Butler wrote to his mother
that “Bunny made 200 chocolate cakes, individual [for a battalion dinner],
and has rendered most valuable and efficient service in every way.” Ethel
Butler also helped her husband to write out payrolls (Venzon 1992, 48, 57,
55).
While having families with them in faraway places was important for
the morale of individual officers, some military leaders believed that the
families also helped to create a beneficial environment for all soldiers. In
testimony to the House Committee on Military Affairs in 1876, in response
to the question of whether to continue the practice of employing laun-
dresses (the only “camp followers” explicitly recognized by U.S. Army
regulations and receiving official military status), Gen. J.C. Kelton stated
that if the institution of the laundress were eliminated,
it must follow … [that] the wives and families of the officers must leave
most of our garrisons [presumably because the expulsion of laundresses
would signify the U.S. Army’s intention to reduce the presence of all civilians
434 Donna Alvah
in the camps], and it is very certain in their stead will come immorality,
dishonor, and dishonesty. (Stallard 1992, 61)
Kelton thus suggested that the presence of families on posts helped discour-
age men from engaging in extramarital sexual relationships and consorting
with prostitutes. Although men persisted in engaging in sexual relation-
ships deemed illicit even in places where officers’ wives and children lived,
the assumption that families helped to foster a climate promoting sexual
decency and other respectable behavior, and by extension military disci-
pline, persisted into the twentieth century and beyond (Alvah 2007, 29;
Robson 2005).
Whether or not the presence of officers’ wives dampened military men’s
inclinations to indulge in dissolute activities, these women certainly helped
to maintain a distinct officer class at posts in the United States and its North
American territories as well as overseas. Officers and their families social-
ized with other officers and their families, reinforcing hierarchies between
officers and the elevation of officers over enlisted men, a hierarchy consid-
ered crucial for maintaining order among all ranks, and the authority of
officers, in all activities. Officers, with their wives, also enjoyed the privilege
of participating in elite social events. The responsibility of planning and
executing formal luncheons, dinners, and parties largely belonged to offi-
cers’ wives, who also were expected to observe and help reinforce hierarchy
among not only soldiers but their families as well. Although the quality of
family quarters ranged dramatically depending on the post, and officers’
families often lost comfortable housing to newcomers who outranked them
(Stallard 1992, 23–27), wives helped make life more comfortable, especially
at remote posts, for the career men who enjoyed the perquisites of rank.
Wives kept house, supervised servants, procured supplies, planned and
fixed meals, and provided for other needs for their husbands.
Enlisted Men and Their Wives
The army discouraged the enlistment of married men, although many

enlisted men did marry, and even had families with them in the Philippines.
The 1913 War Department Regulations for the Army of the United States
stated that “The enlistment or reenlistment of married men for the line of
the Army is to be discouraged, and will be permitted only for some good
reason in the public interest, the efficiency of the service to be the first
consideration” (War Department 1913, 164, paragraph 852). Historian
Richard Meixsel (2002, 83) found correspondence from 1905 that directed
commanding officers “to do all you properly can to limit the number of
enlisted men’s families accompanying your regiment to the Philippine
Islands.” Many officials considered these families a drag on military oper-
ations. They also took up space on ships traveling to and from the islands,
and required living quarters and rations that the armed forces might not
be able to supply.
Numerous enlisted men established households with Filipinas, in as
well as outside of marriage. A reported “200 men of the 9th Cavalry [an
African-American unit of the segregated army, the famous “Buffalo
Soldiers”] were married to Filipinas, while another 187 had common-law
wives” (Meixsel 2002, iii, 83–84). African-American men had formed rela-
tionships with Filipinas since early in the U.S. occupation. A woman born
in the Philippines interviewed in 1972 recounted that “I first met my hus-
band … when he began bringing food to our house during the [Philippine-
American] war. He was good to us” (Ngozi-Brown 1997, 48–49; Thompson
1972, 106).
Some U.S. officials condoned military-supervised prostitution of
Filipinas in the belief that this would reduce the high rates of venereal
disease among unmarried American soldiers but “to army authorities,
marriage between American soldiers and native women was a cure worse
than the disease” (Meixsel 2002, 85). In the early 1920s, a general wanted
to prohibit marriages between U.S. soldiers and Filipinas, and “to discharge,
‘immediately … white men who marry native women.’” Such marriages
disturbed American officials who believed that they diminished “the white
man’s prestige among subordinate people.” Many American men with
Philippine families reenlisted multiple times, maintaining long-term rela-
tionships, while others returned to the United States leaving wives and
children behind (Meixsel 2002, 82–85). Those who wanted to bring their
families to the United States risked encountering laws against interracial
marriage in several states.
Charles Ivins, stationed in the Philippines in the early 1930s, told of U.S.
military veterans who had stayed in the islands after being discharged, and
who had married Filipinas and fathered children by them. One such
American man, who had served during the Philippine-American war, was
“not accepted socially by white Zamboanga society [consisting of American
and European whites],” yet did attend the “Commanding Officer’s New
Year receptions and certain types of official functions to which all
Americans were invited” (Ivins c. 1974, 61–62). Ivins portrayed such men
436 Donna Alvah
and their families as otherwise existing far outside the circle of other white
Americans affiliated with the U.S. military. Known as “Sunshiners,” the
American men “were usually soldiers who had been retired in the lower
grades, took their final discharges in Manila and proceeded to ‘go native’
in a big way … . [E]ach Filipino town had one or two while many went back
to isolated areas in the ‘bush’” (Ivins c. 1974, 168–70). According to Ivins,
many of these American expatriates lived with one or more Filipinas (he
did not seem to consider them legally married), had numerous children
with them, and took to heavy drinking due to their alleged “loss of social
status” among Americans.
At least one marriage between an American enlisted man and a Filipina
did not fit with Ivins’s characterization of such relationships. Alvah Eugene
Johnson, born in Michigan, married Maria Rosario Lagasca in March 1901
at Iloilo (Hibbard 1946).2 In January of that year, when Johnson was 20 years
old, Maj. J.F. Huston of the 19th Infantry informed the commanding officer
of Dao that Johnson “has contracted a civil marriage with a young lady now
living with him,” and requested that “You will inform the Padre to marry
them in accordance with the rites of their religion,” to “satisfy her family”
(Huston 1901). Johnson had served in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-
American War, and then in the Philippines during the Philippine-American
War. In April 1902, Johnson was discharged from the U.S. Army but con-
tinued working as a civilian clerk. Maria Rosario Lagasca Johnson gave
birth to three children in Manila between 1905 and 1913. After moving to
the United States (first San Francisco, then New York City), the couple had
another five children. The family moved to Manila in the 1920s, where two
more children were born and where Johnson worked as a clerk for the U.S.
Civil Service (Bennett 1926; Johnson 1942). Johnson and Lagasca remained
married until 1945, when Johnson died as an internee at Santo Tomas.
Experiences of Officers’ Wives
How did wives themselves depict their experiences in the Philippines?

What did they believe was their purpose there? While I have not located
accounts by the wives of enlisted men, there are several accounts by and
2 Correspondence of David S. Hibbard to Veterans Administration, 30 April 1946. Hib-

bard swore that as a “Foreign Missionary of the Presbyterian Church” he had performed
the marriage rites for Johnson and Lagasca on 23 March 1901, and stated that he was for-
warding his own copy of their marriage certificate to the Veterans Administration. He said
that their copy of the marriage certificate “was lost in the Japanese occupation.”
about officers’ wives during various phases of the U.S. military presence
there which provide descriptions of their activities and insight into their
thoughts. Analysis of these sources aids in understanding what was
expected of officers’ wives in particular, as well as what they considered to
be their purposes for being in the Philippines, and how they bolstered the
U.S. military presence and hierarchies between white Americans and the
peoples of the Philippines.
American officers’ wives began publishing their views of the Philippines
even as the Philippine-American War raged. Cosmopolitan, a popular mag-
azine intended for a national audience of both men and women, published
an article by the wife of a colonel, Eda Blankart Funston, who arrived in
Manila in December 1898 along with thirteen other “ladies.” She recounted
what it was like to share quarters with other wives, and to experience the
start of the insurgency in February 1899. At one point, a woman in her
traveling party gave Funston a “small pistol” to defend herself. Despite the
continuation of the war, Funston remained in Manila for nine months, she
claimed, “without the slightest danger,” and visited “our boys in the hospi-
tals” (Schneirov 1994, 4–5; Funston 1900, 65, 68, 70, 71–72).
Harper’s Bazaar, a New York City-based fashion magazine for middle- to
upper-class women, in August 1899 published an account titled “Manila
from a Woman’s Point of View,” by Mrs. William Hart Anderson, evidently
the wife of an Army officer.3 Although Mrs. Anderson arrived in the
Philippines in February 1899, at the start of the uprising of Filipinos against
U.S. annexation, she barely mentioned the fighting. Rather, her article
provided detailed descriptions of foods that were (and were not) available
in Manila, servants, shoes and elaborate dresses worn by “Spanish and
mestiza women,” furnishings, and insects. Her assessment of domestic
employees was mixed: Chinese cooks she rated as “excellent,” but prone
to stealing groceries; one “Filipino houseboy” was “superior,” while the
other was “stupid and unteachable,” and another was “light-fingered.”
“Servants are cheap,” she wrote, “but it takes six of them to equal two of
ours at home,” even though she claimed that they received far better wages
from the Americans than the Spanish: “It is a great pity, for we get no bet-
3 Maj. Wm. H. Anderson (1939, 337) claimed “forty years’ experience in the Philippines
as an American business man.” I speculate that William Hart Anderson (b. 1872) was the
husband of the Mrs. William Hart Anderson, who authored the 1899 Harper’s Bazar article
discussed here. Perhaps he came to the Philippines in 1898 or 1899 as an Army officer, and
after his military service, remained as a businessman.
438 Donna Alvah
ter service, and the Filipino servant’s respect for his master diminishes as
his wages are increased” (Anderson 1899, 1103).
While much of the article’s purpose was to describe the dresses and
lingerie of women in the Philippines (which seamstresses could make for
American women as well), it also tacitly offered advice to other American
women who would be coming to the Philippines, so that they would know
what items to bring and leave at home, and what to expect. “In many ways,
life in Manila is very easy,” she reassured them (Anderson 1899, 1103). As a
travel narrative, her article also gave readers a glimpse of a place that she
portrayed as peculiar, yet mostly pleasant. In doing this, the account might
have assured those who doubted the wisdom of the annexation that the
Philippines were not so foreign and unwelcoming that the U.S. takeover
would fail. In its depictions of various ethnic groups in the Philippines,
Anderson also was early in the military occupation revealing how white
American women helped to establish and promote a racial hierarchy that
attempted to justify U.S. rule.
Most of the fighting against the U.S. occupiers ended by 1902, and the
number of U.S. soldiers in the Philippines decreased from approximately
72,000 in mid-1900, to fewer than 13,000 by 1904, where it would remain for
a decade (Golay 1998, 93). In 1901, despite the ongoing insurgency, the
McKinley administration transferred rule of the islands from the U.S. mil-
itary to the civilian Philippine Commission, and appointed William Howard
Taft as civil governor (Kramer 2006, 151–52). In 1902, Congress passed the
Philippine Organic Act which established that peoples of the Philippines
who chose not to remain citizens of Spain would not become U.S. citizens
(which many Americans had feared would result from annexation), but
rather “citizens of the Philippine Islands.” According to the act, at some
point Filipinos would share governance with the United States’ Philippine
Commission as elected members of a legislature (Kramer 2006, 165–66).
The United States, in short, maintained control over the Philippines while
drawing boundaries that excluded its peoples from becoming a part of the
nation that had annexed it. Even among Filipinos and Filipinas who coop-
erated with U.S. rule, however, the desire for a nation not ruled by an
imperial power persevered.
Army wives continued to come to the islands. Accounts such as that of
Caroline Shunk (1914) reflect the ambivalence that many white Americans
felt about their nation’s rule of the islands. Many Americans supported it
on the grounds that the territory offered strategic as well as economic
benefits for the United States. Americans also assumed that the peoples of
the Philippines were incapable of self-government and required U.S. pro-
tection from other nations, guidance in developing political and economic
institutions, and help in improving living standards. Still other Americans,
who also viewed the peoples of the Philippines as racially inferior, thought
them incapable of benefiting from the tutelage of the United States, and
considered the retention of the territory detrimental to U.S. interests. Anti-
imperialist Americans believed that the United States should not control
another country, and should allow the citizens of the Philippines to rule
themselves.
Caroline Shunk’s husband was a colonel in the army. She joined him in
the Philippines in March 1909; during a ten-month stay, she also managed
visits to Japan and China. Her book (Shunk 1914) on “the daily life of an
Army officer’s wife,” according to the publisher’s preface, derived from
letters that expressed “the thoughts of one woman conveyed to another
without expectation that the letters were finally to be put in book form.”
They offered “a home insight, such as only a woman can give, to the life in
the Orient,” and an “intimate personal touch” lacking in other books (pre-
sumably those authored by men). Shunk described Spanish architecture,
Camp Stotsenburg (which later became Clark Field and then Clark Air
Base), and various peoples of the Philippines—not only ethnic groups
indigenous to the islands, but also Chinese, Japanese, and Indian workers.
She portrayed a place that was exotic as well as backwards. Her recounting
of her husband’s effort to amuse her upon their arrival at their lavishly
furnished hotel in Manila by “salaaming low and inquiring ‘what my royal
highness desires’” suggests the new colonial-style role of white Americans
there, hierarchically positioned as a kind of royalty among the presumably
lesser peoples (Shunk 1914, 20).
A prevalent interpretation of how racism influenced white Americans’
attitudes toward the Philippines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries is that it served to justify the United States’ takeover of the islands.
Yet racism also caused many whites to feel ambivalent about, and even
hostile to, annexation (Love 2004, 5, 181–86). Shunk’s account supports the
historical interpretation that some white Americans’ assumptions of the
racial inferiority of the peoples of the Philippines caused them to doubt
the wisdom of the imperialist venture. In describing “the ‘little brown
sister’” (alluding to now former civil governor Taft’s paternalistic declara-
tion that U.S. rule of the Philippines would uplift the Americans’ “little
brown brothers” there), Shunk assessed Filipinas as enjoying a higher sta-
tus in relation to men than women in other Asian societies, but her tone,
440 Donna Alvah
often imbued with sarcasm and disdain, betrayed her feeling that even
with the alleged civilizing influence of elite white American women, prog-
ress remained a distant goal (Shunk 1914, 73). Her reports of attempts to
educate the nonwhite peoples of the Philippines about the “proper” way
to do housework, cook, and iron, as well as reduce child mortality, indicated
that these efforts often failed, and were perhaps pointless (Shunk 1914, 61).
She criticized and mocked her domestic employees, but acknowledged
appreciation for some of them, particularly a Japanese seamstress whom
she found “the most pleasing” of “all the nations represented in the camp,”
disclosing an imagined racial-national hierarchy in which Filipinos and
Filipinas were not at the top (Shunk 1914, 34, 40–41, 64).
In contrast to Anderson’s article, Shunk (1914, 20) depicted a place that
she assumed most American readers would find unbearable to live in. “One
could be bewitched of Manila,” she wrote of her arrival there, but the
Shunks were to be stationed “farther north, up in the real jungle” (although
after revisiting Manila later she indicated that she was less enchanted with
it than she initially was). Writing of their new home in Luzon, where Camp
Stotsenburg was located, Shunk (1914, 27, 87, 96) made abundant references
to strange insects, contagious diseases, illness, and hot weather. She men-
tioned (1914, 28, 32) having lived on the “Indian frontier” for 20 years, but
said that trying to establish a household at Camp Stotsenburg “is the hard-
est problem in home-making I have ever tried to solve,” and declared that
living in tents in the Dakotas in 1894 was less difficult. Shunk (1914, 175) was
overjoyed to receive the news in late 1909 that she and her husband would
soon leave the Philippines.
Although Shunk seemed on the whole to find it immensely unpleasant
(if undeniably interesting) to reside in the Philippines, an implicit message
of her book was that the United States would help to improve the place
through modernization, although it had a long way to go. The publisher
asserted (Shunk 1914, Publisher’s Preface, 21) that Shunk’s frank testimonial,
in letters never intended for publication, would serve to educate American
readers about the task of the U.S. military in the work of improving the
Philippines under its governance. An Army Woman in the Philippines reads
like a travel narrative that gives pictures of local settings and various
“exotic” Asian “others,” juxtaposed with scenes of domesticity. The contrast
between Filipino “wild men” (as Shunk called many of the ethnic groups
she encountered) with the domestic American scenes marked the
Americans as a civilized, superior people whose presence in the Philippines
might tame and refine the peoples of the islands. In describing the
Philippines to her readers, Shunk positioned herself as an authority on the
islands. Her observations may not have accurately represented Philippine
culture and society, and served to exoticize and objectivize Asia for
Westerners. Yet in the role of authority on the Philippines, Shunk acquired
a degree of power and status not readily available to American women in
this period (Yoshihara 2003, 6–7, 95–100, 194–95; see also Alvah 2007, chap-
ter 5).
In the years following Shunk’s stay in the Philippines, Filipinos partici-
pated in governance through election to a Philippine legislature, through
serving on the Philippine Commission with Americans, and through
employment in the colonial government. President-elect Woodrow Wilson,
and then Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison, spoke in 1912 and 1913
of eventual independence for the Philippines, advocated by nationalists
such as Manuel Quezon. Still, Americans debated with one another over
whether to allow independence to the Philippines or retain control. Anti-
imperialism and the fear that the United States would not be able to defend
the Philippines should the Japanese decide to take over the islands
informed the views of those Americans supporting independence.
Arguments of the “retentionists,” however, included claims that Filipinos
were still unready for self-government and advocated continued U.S. con-
trol of the islands for the benefit of American business interests. In 1917,
Congress passed the Jones Act, which mentioned independence for the
Philippines at some indeterminate time but in the meantime preserved
U.S. rule (Kramer 2006, 352–63).
Whereas Caroline Shunk portrayed life for a white American woman in
the Philippines in 1909 as predominantly difficult and disagreeable, Mary
Holder (1978, 1, 10, 17, 21), who went there first in 1927 and then again in
1937, recalled a much more habitable environment for U.S. military families
(some of whom brought their automobiles with them). Housing for
“American officers and their families” was “similar to suburban homes” in
the United States, Holder (1978, 4–5) claimed, although she also had
enjoyed living in a Spanish-Filipina style home before moving into Army
housing. Commanding generals at Camp Stotsenburg, for example, recog-
nized the importance of bettering living conditions to boost morale and
had made efforts to upgrade family housing between the 1910s and 1930s,
with some success, despite persistent shortages of supplies, although there
were never enough quarters for married officers’ families, let alone for the
families of noncommissioned officers or other enlisted men, (Meixsel 2002,
45–48).
442 Donna Alvah
In contrast to Shunk’s complaining about her Filipino and Chinese
domestic employees, Holder (1978, 7–8) described her and her husband’s
five employees (“three houseboys and the lavandero4 and a Chinese cook”)
as “good servants.” She likened her view of race relations between blacks
and whites in the United States to relations between U.S. military families
and nonwhite domestic employees in the Philippines: “In the olden days
[in the United States], we had colored people and we treated the Filipinos
pretty much as we did the colored. In other words, they were part of the
family. And anything they needed was supplied. If they were sick … they
were taken care of and we had no difficulty.” When asked by the interviewer
whether “among the Filipino natives … it was considered a good type of
employment to be working for the Americans,” Holder replied, “Oh, yes,
very much so, as compared to the Filipinos or Spanish, what few there were.
Because they were far more demanding, I suppose, than we were” (Holder
1978, 9). These recollections reveal white Americans’ assumptions that the
relationship between whites with the U.S. military and Asians in the
Philippines was a paternalistic one, and mutually advantageous, with the
American families benefiting from the capable work of the servants, and
the servants benefiting from the good pay provided by the Americans, and
their employment by a people who were allegedly easier to work for than
the colonial Spanish and even other Filipinos (Holder 1978, 7, 9).
Although American officers’ families interacted with Asians, including
Filipinos and Filipinas in the domestic sphere, they usually socialized with
other Americans. Mary Holder said that “we [military wives] had no frat-
ernization with the Filipinos at all,” except for occasional dinners at “the
Palace” (the residence of the Filipino head of government), although she
noted that “the American officers who were connected with the Philippine
Army had to fraternize a little bit more than we did. But we [wives] just
simply didn’t, it wasn’t necessary and we didn’t need it, it wasn’t required.”
Instead, many U.S. officers’ wives spent their leisure time playing bridge
together, golfing, going to “the Chinese stores” and “the various markets
where they sold not only food, but weavings and carvings.” On the week-
ends, U.S. military couples got together for cocktails at the Army-Navy club,
dancing, listening to jazz, and attending polo games (Holder 1978, 14, 16,
24).
Holder’s interviewer in 1978, who also was Holder’s niece as well as a
military wife herself, pointedly asked Mary Holder whether there were any
4 A lavandero is a laundryman; a lavandera is a laundress.

“friendship clubs” where Americans and local peoples interacted socially,
presumably to learn about one another’s cultures. Mary Holder replied that
there was nothing like this (Holder 1978, 14–15). It is possible that before
World War II there were “friendship clubs” in other places abroad where
U.S. military wives were located, though I have not found evidence of this.
For a different project I found that military wives’ efforts to foster friend-
ships with local peoples and mutual understanding of cultures and customs
in other countries burgeoned during the post-World War II/early Cold War
era, stemming from the occupations of Germany and Japan and from
Americans’ convictions that they needed to win over local peoples to sup-
port the U.S. military presence and U.S. Cold War aims (Alvah 2007, 128–29).
The Filipinos and Filipinas with whom American military wives were
most likely to interact were servants and vendors. American women occa-
sionally met with Filipinos and Filipinas at social events, for example, at
dinners for representatives of the United States and Philippines govern-
ments (Meixsel 2002, 69–70). James LeRoy, who served in the Philippine
Commission and as William Taft’s secretary during Taft’s governorship of
the islands in the early 1900s, believed that American military officers and
their wives were more racist toward Filipinos, elites included, than civilian
Americans were (Kramer 2006, 188). Meixsel (2002, 69) surmises that social-
izing with other Americans, traveling in the islands, and visiting other Asian
countries kept Americans busy for their two-year tours of duty in the
Philippines, and that “the army tended to insularity even in the United
States.” Still, Americans affiliated with the U.S. military in the Camp
Stotsenberg area encountered Filipinos and Filipinas in other types of
venues, such as sports events and at the post school for children of both
nations (Meixsel 2002, 54–55).
Charles Ivins, who arrived in Manila with his wife in December 1932 and
soon became quartermaster at Pettit Barracks in Zamboanga, on Mindanao
island in the southern Philippines, wrote an unpublished memoir that
includes descriptions of army officers’ wives’ activities there (Ivins c. 1974,
29, 52). Upon arriving at the barracks, his wife Vivian and another newly
arrived wife “were attended by most of the ladies of the post who assisted
them in hiring servants and in teaching them the basic tricks of housekeep-
ing in Zamboanga” (Ivins c. 1974, 42). Next, Vivian Ivins purchased cleaning
supplies for the new residence, and “soon assumed control and had the
servants hustling in all directions.” Charles Ivins (c. 1974, 44) noted that
“Since she had previous experience in running a home in Puerto Rico and
Panama, this tropical stuff was old hat to her.” Yet in his view (1974, 158),
444 Donna Alvah
“The wives generally had a pretty easy time of it in Zamboanga. Their main
difficulty was finding something to do. Housework was completely limited
to supervising the cook, houseboy, and lavandera, who in nearly all cases
were well trained and needed little supervision.” According to Ivins (c. 1974,
158, 159, 161), wives began the day seeking fresh “Stateside” produce from
the commissary, then determined the day’s menu with the cook. Then, in
the late morning, while servants cleaned the house,
Mrs. Officer was out playing bridge, maybe getting in a few licks on the golf
course, possibly gone shopping in Zamboanga or out exploring with the
other girls. In the afternoon she might play golf with her husband, but gen-
erally the heat was too much for her, so she stayed home and read until the
cocktail hour.
Ivins and his wife, and other American couples, also made extended excur-
sions, such as to the island of Borneo (Ivins c. 1974, 107).
Ivins’s perception of wives enjoying a life of leisure in the Philippines
perhaps reflects the professionalization of militaries in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, which shifted much of the labor previously done by
women camp followers to soldiers (see Hacker, chapter 4, this volume).
However, it is also possible that attendance at bridge games, polo games,
luncheons, dances, and other social events was not merely recreational but
among the obligations, happily undertaken or not, of officers’ wives.
While Ivins depicted officers’ wives as spending most of their time
shopping, socializing, and relaxing, Mary Holder (1978, 18) alluded to hav-
ing to work, but it is not clear whether she was referring to labor in the
home, or to paid employment, or volunteer work outside the home. Besides
performing the unpaid labor that continued to be expected of officers’
wives in military communities, such as arranging and attending social
activities that reinforced military hierarchies and aided husbands’ careers,
some wives in the Philippines also worked as teachers and principals at
schools for American children (Meixsel 2002, 55).
Writing his memoir in the 1970s, in the aftermath of the civil rights
movement in the United States, Charles Ivins (c. 1974, Preface iii; 30–31)
expressed awareness of how white Americans’ racism influenced attitudes
toward and relationships with peoples of the Philippines. Although he
stated that he and his wife disapproved of the exclusion of Filipinos who
were not Philippine Scouts5 from Manila’s Army-Navy club (“having made
5 The United States Congress had established the Philippine Scouts, Filipinos in the
service of the United States Army, in 1902 (Kramer 2006, 113–14).
it a point to meet and mingle with local people when stationed previously
in Puerto Rico and Panama”), most whites, American as well as European,
did not socialize with the men and women of the Philippines.
In 1934, Congress passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act which created the
Philippine Commonwealth and stipulated that the Philippines would attain
independence in 1946. It was uncertain whether the U.S. military would
remain in the islands after that (Kramer 2006, 392; Brands 1992, 156–58).
In mid-1935, in the midst of the Great Depression and Americans’ deep
isolationist sentiment, the Philippine Department of the U.S. Army con-
tained just over 11,000 soldiers, well over half of them Philippine Scouts
(James 1970, 473–74).
Wives and children joined prominent military figures in the Philippines
in the 1920s and 1930s. Douglas MacArthur served in the Philippines in
1903–1904 and again in the 1920s, then left his position as army chief of staff
in 1935 to return to the Philippines as head of the American mission and
chief military adviser to the new commonwealth as requested by president
Manuel Quezon, and to train the Philippine Army (Brands 1992, 161, 163–67;
James 1970, 482–85).6 Maj. Dwight Eisenhower came to the Philippines as
MacArthur’s chief of staff, remaining until 1939 (James 1970, 485–86; Holt
2007, 30). Eisenhower’s wife Mamie and son John joined him in the
Philippines in 1936. Although Mamie Eisenhower had previously lived with
her husband in Paris and Panama, she was reluctant to go to the Philippines,
having disliked living in Panama, and not wanting to give up her home and
her social life in Washington. But her husband very much wanted her and
their son in the Philippines with him, stating that “the idea of being sepa-
rated from my family has nothing for me but grief” (Eisenhower 1935). He
later recalled “that it was ‘[hell] to be separated so long from families. I was
out there [in the Philippines] a year alone, and I did not like it” (Holt 2007,
24–25). In May 1945, just days after the surrender of Germany in World War
II, Eisenhower expressed the conviction that the armed forces would have
to arrange for spouses to join soldiers overseas; he also asked George
Marshall if Mamie could join him in France, but Marshall turned down this
request. Eisenhower knew from personal experience that having family
members with them was crucial to the morale of soldiers (Alvah 2007,
22–24).
6 Congress passed “special legislation, to wit, an amendment to an existing law allow-

ing American officers to serve as military advisers to specified foreign governments without
resigning their commissions” (Brands 1992, 166).
446 Donna Alvah
In Manila, Mamie Eisenhower, like many other officers’ wives, spent
much of her time playing bridge and golf and engaging in other social
activities with U.S. military officers and their wives. She made excursions
to Baguio to visit her son, who was enrolled in a boarding school there (Holt
2007, 25–28). One of her biographers notes that while living overseas,
Mamie Eisenhower “not only met, but [was] on familiar terms with, numer-
ous heads of foreign governments,” and that “the Eisenhowers mixed with
the upper echelon of Filipino society,” including President Quezon
(although “Mamie’s closest friends were other military wives”) (Holt 2007,
xii, 27). This points to another significant role of U.S. officers’ wives abroad:
by hosting and attending social events with local government officials,
these women were in effect engaging in diplomacy and representing their
own nation.
Nancy Shea (1941, xvi–xvii ), a U.S. Army wife who authored advice books
for army, navy, and air force wives in the 1940s and 1950s, informed readers
that officers’ wives were judged by an “unwritten efficiency report, unfiled
but known, labeled and catalogued throughout the Service,” and that their
activities and deportment could help or hinder their husbands’ careers.
She claimed that:
the War Department considers an officer’s qualifications, and also those of
his wife, before making appointments of Military Attachés to foreign coun-
tries. An Attaché’s wife is expected to entertain, and to be able to take her
place in diplomatic circles. It is also well if she speaks one or more foreign
languages, and an outside income is always helpful, though not exactly a
requirement. She must be a woman of charm and tact, and well versed in
all social requirements. There are a few sad examples of officers in the Army
today (and also in the Navy) who should be holding key commands but who
have been “passed over.” Sometimes the fault lies at the wife’s door! If she
is the stormy petrel type, or the too ambitious type, she may have hurt her
husband’s career permanently.
It is unclear what Shea meant by a wife’s “outside income.” Perhaps she
was referring to paid employment. Yet it seems that while officers’ wives
did a great deal of unpaid labor in the home, in activities aiding the military
community, and in charitable work, many did not earn separate incomes.
Alternatively, it is possible that by “outside income,” Shea meant the wealth
that a wife brought to a marriage—especially when one considers that
wives who spoke foreign languages and could effortlessly practice social
etiquette probably came from the upper classes.
Shea’s book (1941, 239–43) also advised wives of what household items
and articles of clothing to bring to the Philippines (and what to leave in
the United States, such as “everything that suffers from mildew and mold”),
and gave them some ideas of the weather and living situations for military
families there, and activities they might engage in. She described “Army
life in the Philippines” as “extremely pleasant, despite the heat,” but admon-
ished readers that “Due to Oriental methods of horticulture, vegetables
may carry such diseases as dysentery, cholera, and typhoid.” Evidently
officers’ households continued to rely on the “mystic three servants” of
“cook, houseboy, and lavandera,” as the Shunks had when they came to
the Philippines nearly three decades earlier. Shea considered a car “almost
a necessity at every post,” but said that many wives hired horse-drawn
conveyances for their shopping. She urged readers to go to the local markets
“if you want to know the people of a country,” although unlike post-World
War II advice books for military wives, Shea’s guide did not discuss the
potential significance of social interactions between Americans and host
nationals. As for the best purchases to make in Manila, Shea extolled the
city’s “really good dress shops,” observing that “Despite the heat, the women
in Manila really are very smartly dressed at the polo games, and in the
evening they are at their loveliest.”
Many American women who lived in the Philippines found occasion to
don an elegant style of dress worn by Filipinas (characterized by puffed
sleeves). What did wearing the clothing of elite Filipinas mean to American
women? Whereas U.S. military wives in the first decades of the Cold War
thought of wearing the clothes of local women as a way to express admira-
tion for and to better understand their culture, that does not seem to be
the case before World War II. Rather, wearing Filipina dress seemed to
signify that elite American women “on a global scale of things … occupied
a position of privilege” (Hoganson 2007, 12).
Douglas MacArthur resided in the Philippines with different wives, at
two different points in his career. The elite backgrounds of these two
women, and their marriage to an upper-echelon serviceman, make them
unrepresentative of the majority of U.S. military spouses. Still, their stories
are intriguing, and shed some light on particular aspects of U.S. military
family members’ presence in the Philippines. MacArthur’s first wife, Louise
Cromwell Brooks, was with him in the Philippines between 1922 and 1925,
along with her two children from a first marriage. A Baltimore socialite,
she came from a wealthy family. They divorced in 1929. MacArthur biog-
rapher D. Clayton James (1970, 319–20) wrote that while in the Philippines,
“When [MacArthur] had some leisure, he preferred to spend it with Quezon
448 Donna Alvah
and his other Filipino friends, who were socially unacceptable to the high-
society whites, with whom Louise was soon associated.”
Although James’s characterization of Louise MacArthur suggests that
she did not care to befriend the people of the Philippines, two things she
did while there reveal something about her conception of her role there,
possibly as an American, and possibly as a white woman. One is that she
was “commissioned as a policewoman in Manila” so that she could more
effectively “‘carry on the work of prevention of cruelty to animals.’” In this
capacity she arrested the “driver of a caromata, or native conveyance,
charging him with abusing his horse” (James 1970, 320). In earlier years,
Helen Herron Taft (with her husband William Taft during his governorship
in the early 1900s) and Caroline Shunk had noted maltreatment of animals
in the Philippines (Taft 1914, 121–22). Shunk (1914, 51) wrote that Filipino
boys were cruel to birds. In the mid-nineteenth century, white middle-class
and elite American women had taken public roles in attempting to remedy
the suffering of domestic animals such as dogs, cats, and horses, and to
counter cruelty toward such animals (Grier 2006, 132, 153). In taking it upon
herself to stop the infliction of pain on animals by people of the Philippines,
Louise MacArthur might have been acting on the assumption that treating
certain animals humanely was characteristic of an advanced society, and
that one of the tasks of white Americans in the Philippines was to teach
this to unenlightened peoples.
Louise MacArthur also involved herself in “charitable endeavors” in the
Philippines, such as helping to “organize and maintain an orphanage” for
children fathered by U.S. servicemen (James 1970, 340; Petillo 1981, 126).
After World War II, many military wives also sought to aid children fathered
by American soldiers and born to local women in occupied and host
nations. In their view, it was their responsibility as Americans, and as
women, to help these children (and often their mothers as well). In fact,
after the war, many military couples adopted such children (Alvah 2007,
106, 145).
After his divorce from Louise Cromwell Brooks, Douglas MacArthur
entered a relationship with a Philippine-Scottish woman, Isabel Rosario
Cooper, who left the Philippines to live near him in Washington, DC until
their break-up in 1934 (Petillo 1981, 151–53, 164–65). He met the woman who
would become his second wife, Jean Faircloth, in 1935 on a ship en route
to China and the Philippines. After her trip to China, Faircloth, a banker’s
daughter who had inherited a fortune, set up a residence in Manila to be
near her future husband. In 1938 she gave birth to their son there (Petillo
1981, 175, 176–77, 186–87; Nemy 2000, B8). Most of the letters that she wrote
to her friend Sara Elizabeth King dwelled on what was going on back in
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, her hometown. Her letters also describe in exten-
sive detail items of used clothing that she was sending back to Tennessee
for various recipients. There is some discussion of son Arthur MacArthur
IV’s early childhood development, and some mention of General MacArthur
and the social gatherings attended by the couple.
It is striking that these letters contain hardly any discussion of the
Philippines’ locale and people. Perhaps Jean MacArthur wrote about this
in letters to other people, or perhaps she simply was not interested. Another
possibility is suggested by an explanation she gave to Sara King for why
she was unwilling to compose articles about the Philippines for a Tennessee
publication. She claimed (1941b) that not only was she incapable of writing
well (which seems unlikely), but also that even
if I could with the General in the position that he is I couldn’t think of it.
I have always declined to even give any little interviews and I have been
asked so often and am asked constantly to talk or say something [about]
this and that but I have always refused.
Apparently, Jean MacArthur seemed concerned that anything she
expressed about the Philippines, and the U.S. military there, even in private
letters, could have undesired political consequences.
Jean MacArthur (1941a) had little to say about Japanese expansion in
Asia before the attack on Pearl Harbor in her letters to King. She did men-
tion refugees from Hong Kong being in Manila, and that she was doing
volunteer work for the Red Cross, another kind of activity that military
wives were accustomed to taking up. In late July 1941, as the prospect of a
war with Japan loomed, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Douglas
MacArthur commanding general of U.S. Army Forces in the Far East, which
now included the Philippine Army that he had helped to build as President
Quezon’s adviser (Petillo 1981, 198). Earlier in 1941, U.S. Army and Navy
wives and children had departed from the Philippines (Porter 1941, 64).
Jean MacArthur and her son Arthur, along with the boy’s amah Ah Cheu,
stayed with Douglas in the Philippines well into the initial Japanese assault
on the island, living underground in a bunker on Corregidor until they were
all evacuated to Australia in March 1942 (Nemy 2000).
Between the Philippine War and World War II, American wives of officers
in the Philippines kept households, raised children, provided companion-
ship for their husbands, and supported the U.S. military with unpaid labor
450 Donna Alvah
that could range from cooking for soldiers to helping a spouse with book-
keeping to organizing social functions to volunteering in the military and
wider American communities. Although between the 1910s and 1930s it
appears that officers’ wives enjoyed more leisure time than their predeces-
sors had, extensive socializing in military circles and with Philippine elites
was likely required of them. These social interactions helped to maintain
class and racial boundaries that reinforced the U.S. military chain of com-
mand as well as racial hierarchies. Some officers wives’ believed it their
duty to help improve local peoples’ behavior and conditions (for example,
in housekeeping and child care).
U.S. military officials discouraged enlisted men from marrying or from
bringing wives and children to the Philippines. Nevertheless, an unknown
but significant number of white and African-American soldiers married
Filipinas, who, despite the disapproval of their husbands’ commanders and
the racism of white Americans in general, must have provided household
comforts and companionship of the sort enjoyed by officers whose wives
accompanied them in the islands. Yet Filipina wives evidently did not
participate in the U.S. military community in the ways that white officers’
wives did.
There is more work to be done to learn about wives of U.S. soldiers in
the Philippines, especially American-Filipina marriages and also the fam-
ilies of enlisted soldiers. This chapter does not claim that the high-ranking
officers’ families discussed here are representative of all military families’
experiences, although they do give an impression of how Americans in this
period viewed themselves and their nation in relation to this country that
that they had taken over by military force at the turn of the century. Still
another task is to find out more about relations between Americans and
the peoples of the Philippines more generally, as well as the latter’s perspec-
tives on the U.S. military in their country, including military families.
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“The Spirit of Woman-Power” 453
chapter twelve
“The Spirit of Woman-Power”: Representation of Women

in World War I Posters
Elizabeth Prelinger with Barton C. Hacker
I stand by a fence on a peaceable street

And gaze on the posters in colors of flame,
Historical documents, sheet upon sheet,
Of our share in the war ere the armistice came.
Wallace Irwin, “Thoughts inspired by a war-time billboard,” 1919
(as quoted in Rawls 1988, 168)
The most cursory glance at the visual culture of World War I reveals the
abundance and omnipresence of images of women. Although all nations
frankly conflated enlistment and combat with masculinity, identifying
“virility with war” (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 50), women’s indispensable
contribution to the war effort was nevertheless immediately and generally
appreciated; every contemporary artistic medium recorded their involve-
ment in an extensive range of war-related activities. The coteries of pre-
dominantly male artists and illustrators in all combatant countries astutely
grasped the propaganda value of female participation, and, as a comple-
ment to their portrayals of men, highlighted women’s essential role in
promoting, sustaining, mourning, and commemorating the war. Poster
artists in particular not only depicted actual tasks carried out by female
participants, but embedded in their images commentary on such pro-
vocative issues as society’s deep-seated ambivalence toward women’s pur-
suit of greater social and political equality under the new conditions posed
by the war. This essay explores a small representative selection of thou-
sands of wartime propaganda posters featuring women from a variety of
combatant nations, and examines some of the complex meanings con-
cealed within their simple and direct designs.
454 Elizabeth Prelinger with Barton C. Hacker
Posters
Derived from turn-of-the-century advertising, poster images served two

principal functions: to convey information and to influence behavior. As
the war began, the genre of the poster was already well entrenched; govern-
ments and war-related organizations of all nations understood its power
to reach and sway large audiences. The deployment of commercial art in
the cause of war (Vogt 2000–2001) was predicated on the newly understood
value of propaganda, which itself emerged from the expanded role of the
general population in the war, that is, “total war.” David Welch (2000, 1)
argued that:
One of the most significant lessons to be learnt from the experience of the
First World War was that public opinion could no longer be ignored as a
determining factor in the formulation of government policies. … The gap
between the soldiers at the front and the civilians at home was narrowed
substantially in that the entire resources of the state—military, economic
and psychological—had to be mobilized. In “total war,” which requires
civilians to participate in the war effort, morale came to be recognized as
a significant military factor, and propaganda began to emerge as the prin-
cipal instrument of control over public opinion and an essential weapon in
the national arsenal.
Posters became integral to the rich material culture that was evolving in
response to events. They joined the spectrum of visual media—magazine
illustrations, product advertisements, photographs, sheet music covers,
postcards, toys, caricatures, cinema, camouflage, including “baffle” or
“dazzle” painting for marine warfare, decoration medals, target practice
images, uniforms, and store window displays (Gallatin 1919; Carmichael
1989 Watkins 2003; Booth 1996; Gosling 2008; Paris 1999; Behrens 1999;
Cornelius 1918)—as promotional objects that affirmed and celebrated war
aims (Vogt 2000–2001). In the United States, President Wilson created the
Committee on Public Information (CPI) in April 1917. Directed by George
Creel, the committee would strengthen the case for war aims by a proven
visual method, the poster. “I had the conviction,” Creel (as quoted in Van
Schaack 2006, 33) affirmed, “that the poster must play a great role in the
fight for public opinion. The printed word might not be read; people might
choose not to attend meetings or to watch motion pictures, but the bill-
board was something that caught even the most indifferent eye.”
If the propaganda role of the poster was not in dispute, nevertheless its
artistic quality was at issue. American critic and aesthetician Albert Eugene
Gallatin (1919, 35) deplored the American posters made at the beginning
of the war, calling them “crude and inartistic,” while conceding that they
were necessary to the war effort: “innumerable posters were required by
the government for Liberty Loan, War Savings Stamp, Red Cross and other
‘drives’ for recruiting purposes, to urge the conservation of certain foods,
as well as coal, to speed up shipbuilding and for dozens of other purposes.”
Gallatin (1919, 35–36) also quoted an anonymous author, who observed
that, “to build morale, to spiritually awaken the nation, to stimulate con-
centrated effort, to quicken every war activity, the government employed
art in the form of pictorial publicity for the first time and on a grand scale.”
Pro-war propaganda separates illustrators’ work from what is conven-
tionally termed “war art” and from the “fine” artists who made it. In the
literature (Cork 1994; Malvern 2004; Gough 2010; Silver 1989; Dagen 1996;
Eberle 1985; Cohen 2008), the phrase usually, though not always, refers to
images of resistance, particularly in oil paintings, sculpture, and prints.
“War artists,” as art historian and critic Richard Cork (1994, 8) stipulates,
having witnessed the war at first hand, felt impelled to define their experi-
ences … they were engaged in an urgent task. Angered by the gap between
the propagandist view of the struggle and the degradation of the trenches,
they were driven by a desire to offer a corrective. … But even when they
emerged unscathed, in physical terms at least, the slaughter of so many
compatriots ensured that their view of the conflict was radically removed
from the enlistment posters sanctioned in their millions by governments
and generals alike.
Unlike the “war artists,” who recorded their first-hand encounters with the
horror of the trenches, mud, and death—the real war (Lacaille 1998; Harries
and Harries 1983; Cornebise 1991)—poster artists were no more likely than
women to be found on the battlefields. Instead of direct observation of
combat, they called upon on verbal accounts, newspaper stories, and pho-
tographs to create the kind of imaginative reconstructions that character-
ize the sophisticated illustrator (Beurier 2007).
The success of posters depended upon several factors. The first was their
imposing dimensions; most measured several feet in height and width.
Second, posters were made by lithography, a printing process that permit-
ted vast numbers of copies to be printed cheaply. Traditionally hand-
printed from Bavarian limestone by individual master technicians,
lithographs were now produced by “huge steam-driven presses [that] were
required for the commercial poster editions” (San Diego Museum of Art
1996; Cate and Hitchings 1978). This mechanized process, in itself an
embodiment of “mass culture, mass politics and mass society,” virtually
defined “modernity” (Mackaman and Mays 2000, xviii). Third, like adver-
tisements, the images attracted attention with their vivid colors, simplified
designs, and generally terse printed messages. In the United States, the
Division of Pictorial Publicity (Van Schaack 2006), which commissioned
war posters, “worked closely with the Division of Advertising, whose mem-
bers, all leaders in the agencies, conceived publicity campaigns for the
various government branches involved with the war effort and prepared
copy for the posters” (Bogart 1995, 64). Viewers easily responded to the
familiar and comfortable language of advertising. But instead of selling
commercial goods, posters sold the goals, needs, and ideals of the war. The
World War I poster became the most effective agent of propaganda yet
known.
Images of Women
Of the many forms of visual culture that characterized World War I, the
poster most abundantly and comprehensively reflected and imagined
women’s unprecedented presence and participation both in the ranks and
on the home front. From the very beginning, women were made aware of
“their special role in sustaining the war,” explains Susan Grazyel (2002, 10).
“Wartime media in a variety of nations—whether produced by men or
women—called upon women specifically.” While such well-known “fine
artists” and illustrators as the Americans Joseph Pennell, Jessie Wilcox
Smith, Frank Branwyn, Howard Chandler Christy and J.C. Leyendecker
designed some posters, the majority came from the hands of commercial
illustrators with backgrounds in advertising and even from “[P]rinters’ art
departments…[which] had been responsible for many of the British war
posters, including some of those approved by the Parliamentary Recruiting
Committee” (Baker 1990, 29). Wartime media urged women, as Grayzel
(2002, 10) notes,
to service and sacrifice, to “appropriate” action and emphasized their impor-
tance for the war’s success or failure. This could be manifest in a variety of
actions, starting with emotional support and ranging from recruiting men
to working to aiding the wounded and the bereaved. That women were seen
as vital to the war can be found in one of the First World War’s innovations:
propaganda produced by governments specifically to shape public opinion.
Until relatively recently, however, female imagery has been largely over-
looked, obscuring the extent of women’s contributions to World War I. For
example, in a 1974 picture book of 74 selected First World War posters from
the Imperial War Museum, 12 depicted women as allegorical representa-
tions, mothers, or victims (Darracott 1974). Almost three decades later, a
much more extensive publication presented almost as many posters of
women as of men, thus redressing the imbalance (Borkan 2002). Without
acknowledging this vital aspect of the visual record, the story of the war
remains at best incomplete, for from beginning to end, in all combatant
countries, poster images of women reflected the realities, fantasies, and
political agendas of the nations and organizations that commissioned them
and the artists, illustrators, and print ateliers that designed them. Except
for a few women artists who designed poster images, men unsurprisingly
dominated the visual propaganda machine. Only in recent decades have
scholars dedicated themselves seriously to retrieving the facts of women’s
contribution to this war in official roles, challenging those who would claim
that war was exclusively a man’s business (Jensen, chapter 5, this volume).
Indeed, so varied and numerous were the roles women played that it is no
surprise to find the posters reflecting them are equally numerous and
complex.
The visual record thus confirms what is obvious to us today: that docu-
menting women’s engagement in the war is fundamental to any properly
inclusive vision of a “Myth of the War Experience.” War may traditionally
have been a male preserve, with women limited to ancillary roles (Vining
and Hacker 2001b), but total war demanded new roles for women and
provided expanded opportunities for their active participation. As G. Kurt
Piehler (1994, 171) observes,
The First World War further eroded the fiction that war remained largely
the domain of men. Since total war required the full mobilization of all
resources, the labor of women took on added importance. Women took the
place of men in scores of factories and offices. The military not only enlisted
women as nurses, but it employed them in other support functions. The
domestic sphere itself took on an added political and military significance
in this war. Federal agencies exhorted housewives to conserve food, cloth-
ing, and fuel as well as to serve as volunteers in a host of service organiza-
tions.
When the time came to promote war, the strategies for imaging women
were already firmly in place. In spite of obvious variations in indigenous
visual vernaculars, images of women in posters, both advertising and war-
related, did not in fact differ much from country to country, though in each
case artists sought a visual vocabulary that would be familiar, comprehen-
sible, and comfortable to viewers (Baburina 1992). While recent scholarship
recognizes that “fundamental” differences exist among the posters of dif-
ferent combatant countries (Kazecki and Lieblang 2009, 111), cross-national
representations of women nonetheless appear to share a far more common
language. In addition to its roots in advertising, the surprisingly generous
representation of women may relate to the fact that Art as an idea has
traditionally been a feminine construct. Wallace Irwin’s commemorative
poem, delivered on the occasion of the Victory Dinner of the American
Division of Pictorial Publicity on Valentine’s Day of 1919, coyly described
art as:
a Lady-at-Arms
She’s a studio character most people say
With a feminine trick of displaying her charms
Understanding the war’s privileging of masculinity and its simultaneous
appropriation of the intrinsic femininity of art, Irwin (in Rawls 1988, 168)
felt “satisfaction” that “Art put on Khaki and went into action.”
To launch and sustain an enterprise of the scale and import of the Great
War, governments pursued two principal, and parallel, visual strategies in
posters. The first was the deployment of images of allegorical female figures,
which represented the high ideals purportedly motivating the combatant
countries. Women were the natural conduits for patriotic and moral
abstractions, having represented such concepts through the medium of
art and poetry throughout history. Such allegorical figures reappeared in
different guises, with the consistent purpose of including the masses in an
elevated, indeed sacred, mission. Jay Winter (1995, 5) observes that “tradi-
tional forms” served as an alternate way of imagining the war. For the home
front, as opposed to the troops, trenches seemed to vanish before the
personifications of such grand abstractions as courage, sacrifice, patriotism,
succor, and victory, duty, and honor and, not incidentally, Liberty Loans
and other solicitations for war funding. Poster illustrators transformed
women into Christian angels and other winged creatures from ancient
history, as well as symbolic figures (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 59), like
the female peasant leading a group of women carrying baskets of vegetables
and sheaves of wheat to the beat of a large drum. Illustrator Paul Honoré’s
obvious reference to the women of the French Revolution in his dynamic
1917 image, The spirit of woman-power (Fig. 31), conveyed the ideals men-
tioned above, and was intended to “inspire modern American women”
(Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 59). The most celebrated and omnipresent
model for such personifications, which recurred constantly in all imagery
of the war, is the marble Hellenistic sculpture of Victory as a colossal
winged female figure (the Nike of Samothrace, c. 190 bc, Louvre). Other
frequently used motifs were appropriated from famous and easily recog-
nized nineteenth-century Romantic paintings, such as the bare-breasted
figure of Liberty in Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty leading the people of 1830. In
other words, although a cultivated audience would surely recognize the
exact source of an image, it was not necessary to do so; the general popula-
tion would respond instinctively to the high diction of the picture and both
its overt and subliminal message.
The second visual strategy emphasized the depiction of ordinary women.
As women increasingly participated in such official activities as the motor
corps, land armies, and munitions-making, posters reflected them in such
roles. As we shall see, artists also rendered these “ordinary” women as
symbolic “Everywomen,” who could inspire others to emulate their exam-
ple. This approach appears in the context of every female endeavor, though
images of mothers and nurses predominate. The allegorical and realistic
approaches achieved their goals in different ways. In general, the former
tended to address larger, more theoretical or emotional issues, while the
latter promoted and/or documented specific activities on the part of the
female population. Many images melded the two approaches: illustrators
introduced elements of allegory or historicism into realistic images, seek-
ing to soften the atrocities of the war and endow it with heroic status.
Allegorical Figures as National Symbols
Most nations, Germany and Russia less so, were commonly represented
by female figures, ideas depicted in allegorical form. These single figures
economically bore the weight of an entire national culture and aroused in
their citizens the visceral impact of immediate recognition and identifica-
tion. They also carried out their responsibility of rallying forces, encourag-
ing those on the home front, and raising funds for war loans. Well before
America’s decision to enter the war, her illustrators were calling on sym-
bolic women to motivate the population. On a 1916 sheet by artist V.
Aderante, the figure of America appears, identified explicitly as Columbia.
Clad in a toga to symbolize the links to ancient republics, and reminiscent
of the Nike of Samothrace, the personification strides across the globe.
Wielding a giant American flag and a sword, she wears a Phrygian cap, a
soft cone-shaped hat that since Antiquity has come to represent liberty,
on her idealized head. “Columbia Calls,” states the poster, its plea for enlist-
ment accompanied by artist Frances Adams Halstead’s patriotic poem
(Borkan 2002, 19).
In Wake Up, America (1917), made for the Mayor’s Committee of New
York City (Fig. 32), James Montgomery Flagg sounded a warning to the still
officially neutral United States; he pointedly depicted the classically draped
personification of America dozing in a wicker porch chair while Europe
burns in the background. Flagg’s uncharacteristic poster for “Wake Up
America Day,” 17 April 1917 (Rawls 1988, 136) adopts another style entirely.
Here he abandoned the sugary and more elaborate drawing of the previous
work in favor of a sharply patterned, portentous image of a “symbolic”
woman clad in the style of the American Revolution. She wears the omni-
present Phrygian cap. Recalling Paul Revere, she hoists a lantern and a flag;
one infers that America has now awoken to the urgency of the situation
and accepted President Wilson’s declaration of war.
A 1917 image by Mario Borgoni similarly portrays Italia, the personifica-
tion of Italy. As Thomas Row (2002, 167) points out, “She is wrapped in the
tricolor flag, which forms her wings, while she literally holds Nike (victory)
in her hands.” Left arm outstretched, the majestic figure directs a charging
Italian regiment. Here, the picture illustrates the idea, while the text, a
lengthy description of the banks involved, provides precise details. Italia
reappears in a poster for a war loan, where she staunchly fends off a cari-
catured image of a vicious German Hun (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 73).
The allegorical personification of the French Republic, Marianne, was also
deputized for such purposes as promoting war loans. In an undated poster
by Lelong, advertising the third loan for the National Defense, she stands
on a globe as the central element in a procession of flags, the French stan-
dard dominating the rest. To the left, a nude male, symbolizing the willing
soldiers, raises a torch. This image diverges from the majority of war post-
ers. It is not brightly colored nor is the style patterned and simplified in
the manner of contemporary illustration and advertising. Rather, Lelong
drew the scene in scales of gray that evoke such grand classical marble
friezes as the Pan-Athenaic procession from the Parthenon. Against the
brick-red lettering announcing the loan, the vertical figure of France, posed
directly in the center of the image above the procession, suggests dignity,
pride, and force without ever engaging the viewer directly. Such a restrained
yet elegant appeal to patriotism seems to represent the essence of the
French nation.
The female allegory herself succumbed at times to the pressure of war.
Two examples of posters that depart from the usual formula describe an
alternative. In artist Schneck’s poster for the Associated Motion Pictures
Advertisers (Fig. 33), a grim Uncle Sam watches over the recumbent
Columbia, whose fallen sword expresses despair (Borkan 2002, 184). Uncle
Sam points to the viewer; “It’s up to you. Protect the Nation’s Honor. Enlist
Now.” Unlike other images, this one combines two symbols of the United
States, male and female. Moreover, while Columbia represents the noble
symbol of America in the traditional idiom, Uncle Sam is primarily a folk
figure, sometimes seen more as a symbol of government than of nation.
His goatee and stars and stripes suit gained fame in James Montgomery
Flagg’s 1917 poster “Uncle Sam Wants You … ,” a reworking of Alfred Leete’s
famous image of Lord Kitchener from 1914. Millions of copies were printed
and it remains one of the most famous images in American popular culture.
In Schneck’s image, however, the two typical motifs have been reversed.
First, Columbia no longer stands proudly and nobly as the representation
of America. Whether or not one accepts the claim that the scene exhibits
“the blatant sexual imagery of war as retribution for the rape of Columbia”
(Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 54), she has here assumed the role of a female
victim under the protection of a powerful symbolic, if not allegorical, male.
Second, the two-figure group reads as an inversion of the Pietà motif, in
which the dead Christ lies draped across the lap of his grieving mother.
The Pietà image in fact recurs frequently in the context of nurses and moth-
ers as agents of succor to wounded and dying soldiers, as we shall see.
At the end of the war, tributes to allies found expression in posters of a
different sort. In these works, the iconic allegorical and symbolic national
representations stand together in victory and mutual appreciation. Specific
days were identified as tribute days. Flagg’s advertisement for the tribute
day for France, Bastille Day, depicts a martial version of Marianne, based
again on Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People: instead of distinguished
classical garb, she wears a bright red Phrygian cap with a red, white and
blue rosette, a skirt fashioned from a tattered French flag, and peasant
sabots (Borkan 2002, 169). Brandishing a sword, she is surrounded by allied
troops who raise flags as they sing the Marseillaise.
Images by James Montgomery Flagg continued to dominate a fair
amount of the production of American posters. In Side by Side—Britannia,
Flagg paired Uncle Sam with Britannia, the personification of Great Britain
(Borkan 2002, 169). Not surprisingly, Uncle Sam seems to have been Flagg’s
favorite motif; it was his enduring claim on posterity. The United States
and Britain make a triumphant traditional couple, as they celebrate
Britain’s Day on December 7, 1918. A New York Times (1918, 12) article of 4
December 1918 explains what appears to be Britain’s conviction that
America did not adequately appreciate her contributions to the war and
was in her debt. Among other achievements, “the tank is due to her
[Britain’s] inventive genius. … The unyielding, unconquerable, constant,
tenacious British spirit, cheerful in disaster, unboastful in victory, has never
bent or weakened. It is the great deeds of a comrade in arms and in democ-
racy that Americans are to remember on Britain’s Day.” Yet the substitution
of Uncle Sam for Columbia subverts the usual equation of female figures.
Moreover, the American artist tellingly does not render Uncle Sam as sec-
ondary or obviously in debt to Britannia; although her right knee advances
slightly beyond that of Uncle Sam, his foot strides slightly in front of hers.
One wonders if the subtle message conveyed in “Side by Side” actually
realized Britain’s intention here. An unsigned poster publicizing the same
day (Borkan 2002, 170) concentrates this time on the stolid figure of Britan
nia alone. Seated in the pose of sculptures of ancient philosophers and
church fathers, she holds a scepter, while at her left, the figure of Poseidon,
Greek god of the seas, grasps his trident. Lions and tigers, symbols of the
Empire, provide an honor guard. In the background, ghostly crusaders in
suits of armor, who stand in for contemporary soldiers, are paired with a
destroyer. A biplane soars overhead. As a tribute to Britain, this poster is
far more celebratory, though it begins to transgress the aesthetic boundary
between a majestic congregation of symbolic characters and a kitschy
carnival of circus performers.
Artist/illustrators further employed allegorical figures in the service of
universal abstract concepts. Peace, Liberty, and Victory figured among the
most popular; they sustained morale and carried out the essential mission
of raising money. An exceptionally hard-hearted individual might resist a
mother’s call to contribute funds, but likely not that of a commanding
representation of patriotism, martyrdom, or victory. An unusual call for
funds appears in a 1916 work by the German illustrator Julius Diez (Fig. 34).
Against a pattern of zigzagged lines, a delicate woman representing Peace
holds a dove and a handful of palm fronds. Breaking away from iron ankle
shackles she hastens toward peace, while the legend reads, “Gold Zerschlägt
Eisen. Bringt Euer Gold Zur Goldankaufstelle” (Gold defeats Iron. Bring
Your Gold to the Gold-Market). Illustrator Julius Gipkens based his motif
on a well-known sculpture by Herrmann Hosaeus in yet another appeal
for the contribution of gold to the cause; it depicts the black silhouette of
a female figure within a white medallion. Kneeling before a pew, she prof-
fers a cross on a long chain while clutching her jewelry box by her side. In
translation, the legend reads: “Gold I gave for the fight—Iron I took for
Honor … Bring your jewelry to the gold purchasing shops!”
Sometimes allegories stepped down from their Olympian heights to
become human (Borkan 2002, 87): in two American appeals for the pur-
chase of Liberty Bonds, one by C.R. Macauley, the other unsigned (Borkan
2002, 91), for the Second Liberty Loan, a spiky-crowned Statue of Liberty
menacingly points her finger at us, asserting in both, “YOU, buy a Liberty
Bond lest I perish.” Liberty reappears in Joseph C. Leyendecker’s image for
the 1918 Boy Scouts’ Third Liberty Loan Campaign. Here a kneeling scout
proffers a huge sword engraved with the words “Be Prepared” to the figure
of Liberty (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 97). Her enormous shield bears the
seal of the United States of America, and her diadem encircles a red
Phrygian cap. Liberty’s monumentality recalls numerous other images,
such as the French posters by Lucien Jonas for a Liberation Loan. In these
works, courageous French soldiers surge forth, protected and propelled by
an enormous winged Victory clasping a palm of martyrdom in one hand
and a cornucopia overflowing with coins and bills in the other (Rickards
1968, 66).
Such images abound in the corpus of posters. They remain constant
across nationalities with greater or lesser degrees of gravity. Two works by
Haskell Coffin for the War Savings Stamps drives show additional valiant
women, though they betray the sentimentality that ultimately reduced
many of these poster images from the sublime to the ridiculous. The first,
which exhorts the viewer to “Share in the Victory,” depicts yet another
version of the Nike of Samothrace; this time Coffin modified her to a fresh-
faced girl with fluffy little wings, virtually a candy box illustration, which
presumably engaged the viewer at a more comfortable and sentimental
level. In the second poster, Coffin rendered a similar fashion plate model,
this time costumed in armor and billed as Joan of Arc, the greatest symbol
of France (Borkan 2002, 136). The conflation of historic sculptures with
contemporary fashion plates references the origins of war propaganda in
commercial advertising, and constituted an effective strategy for catching
public attention and relating to everyday experience.
Not all images were so straightforward. The illustrator Theodor Zasche
designed a poster for the eighth Austro-Hungarian war loan in which a
delicate maiden pours a saucer of coins into a large coffer (Darracott 1974,
70). The caption below states, “Through Victory to Peace,” though it is not
clear whether she represents either. This is an “art” poster certainly as much
as an advertisement; at bottom left is a cartouche in the art nouveau style
(Jugendstil in German-speaking countries) that identifies the work as a
product of the Viennese art workshops. Another Austrian work, by Ernst
Puchinger (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 73), also for a war loan, is equally
“artistic. ” Drawing upon Germany’s romanticized past, a knight protects
a Madonna-like mother and child from assault by enemies, a contrast to
pictures by the Allies of the Germans actively attacking. Paret, Lewis, and
Paret (1992, 73) note that, “The influence of the Vienna Secession can be
seen in the mosaic-like chips of color decorating the knight’s belt and shield
and the woman’s wrap.” A German Red Cross (Rotes Kreuz) poster some-
what awkwardly compares the artistry of the mosaic craft to the art of war.
Within a medallion with a mosaic background, two pairs of hands, clearly
those of a woman and a child, are raised in prayer. Around the medallion
curl the words “Kriegs Mosaik;” on top and bottom the German words state:
“The Red Cross Department of Mother and Child Care War Mosaic. Put
stone on stone for the wives and children of our courageous soldiers.”
Artists frequently elevated “real” women into “symbolic” figures, as
opposed to allegories. That is to say, they depicted “ordinary” women, yet
universalized them as “Everywomen” in order to set an example for poten-
tial participants in war-related activities. A poster for the cinema division
of the French army, entitled in English “The Frenchwoman in War-Time,”
depicts a trio of women in clothing that echoes the red, white and blue of
the French flag. At left, a woman in blue labors at a machine. At right, a
peasant woman in red tills the land. In the middle, a mother nurses a baby
while her daughter holds a doll in one hand and, with the other, waves a
letter that has just arrived from the front. In the background looms
Marianne, the majestic personification of France. This poster economically
captures the three principal duties of women as seen by the French author-
ities, all of which ultimately contribute to Victory.
A rare poster for the State and National Councils of Defense (Borkan
2002, 51) serves as a telling transition between the two modes of the alle-
gorical female figure and the ”Everywoman” figure. An allegorical figure of
Columbia places a sword labeled “Service” in the hand of an attractive if
commonplace young woman who stands at attention facing the viewer.
Against a vaguely outlined row of soldiers, the title reads: “Woman Your
Country Needs You!” It was a short step from this poster, which combines
an allegorical with a “symbolic” figure, to an image reflecting many artists’
concern with promoting women’s untapped capabilities.
Female Strategies for Mobilizing Men
The preceding discussion of allegorical figures suggests, among other

things, how logical it became to conflate female honor with the honor of
a country. Threats to women and children constituted a powerful incentive
to fight. The invasion of Belgium and accompanying accounts of German
atrocities generated enormous terror. Posters depicting violence against
or mistreatment of women (and children) were guaranteed to induce fear,
hate, and anger against the enemy and thus virtually to force men into
military service. An early British poster supporting the Belgian Red Cross
Fund (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 22) depicts two forlorn yet lovely young
women surrounded by wounded soldiers; the romantic aura of the maiden
in distress would disappear rapidly as war intensified. When Germany
attacked Britain directly, posters seized upon the mood of incredulity and
fury. “Men of Britain! Will You Stand This?” (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992,
29) embraced the conventions of children’s storybook illustration to con-
demn German naval shelling of Scarborough in December 1914. Above a
legend reporting the death of 78 women and children and the wounding
of 228 by “German Raiders,” stands a tiny girl holding a swaddled baby in
her arms. Behind her, a torrent of bricks, shattered glass and splintered
window frames illustrates the aftermath. Beneath, in capital letters, is the
real message: “ENLIST NOW.” Ellsworth Young’s poster for the Fourth
Liberty Loan exploits the American stereotype of the “Hun” and the danger
to women (Fig. 35): silhouetted against the flaming city of Liège, crowned
with a Pickelhaube helmet and toting a rifle, a German drags a terrified
young girl to predictable brutality (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 21).
Obviously an artistic reconstruction visually simplified for effect, a carica-
ture from the comic strip tradition, the abduction of the young girl could
hardly fail to rouse fear for one’s own womenfolk and inspire lust for
revenge. A related image, sketchily rendered as if captured on the spot,
shows a girl cradling a baby as she stands over a corpse (Borkan 2002, 110).
Looming at left is the shadowy silhouette of a bloody-handed helmeted
Hun, who appears to be robbing the body. “Hun or Home?” the poster asks.
“Buy More Liberty Bonds.” An assault on women constituted an assault on
an entire nation.
Depictions of mothers and children in grave circumstances of hunger,
medical emergency, and displacement played upon people’s compassion.
Governmental, commercial, and charitable organizations sponsored post-
ers to draw attention to the drastic situation in Europe. The Women’s
Apparel Unit of the Women’s Oversea Hospitals, USA, commissioned a
poster from M. Leone Bracker illustrating a mother in the familiar pose of
Michelangelo’s Pietà, balancing her lifeless daughter across her lap while
her son, in the traditional pose of the young John the Baptist, leans upon
her shoulder gazing in shock at his sister (Rawls 1988, 46). “Don’t Let Them
Die. You can Save Them,” states the legend. Equally, the United States Food
Administration commissioned a poster from L.C. Clinker and J. Dwyer
depicting a stunned mother, babe in arms, with two children by her side
begging. Pitifully thin, this family is surrounded by a crowd of skeletal
figures waving their arms against a backdrop of smoldering cathedral ruins.
The admonition beneath this scene of Belgium or northern France states:
“Don’t waste food while others starve!” (Rawls 1988, 47). A similar work by
illustrator Harry Townsend, one of America’s “official” war artists, similarly
represents desperate refugees near a ruined cathedral. Piloted by a nun,
the group of women, children, and men beyond fighting age seeks refuge
from the shelling. “War Rages in France,” one reads. “They cannot fight &
raise food at the same time/Denying ourselves only a little means Life to
them. We Must Feed Them” (Rawls 1998, 49). The imaging of women and
children in distress persisted as conditions during and soon after the war
worsened. The prolific illustrator Wladyslaw T. Benda made a poster for
the American Committee for Relief in the Near East around 1917, with the
legend, “Lest They Perish, Campaign for $30,000,000.” Here, a desolate
young mother with a generic Middle Eastern headdress and torn garments,
a baby in a sling around her waist, mulls over the disaster as she stands
within a ravaged landscape cluttered with ruins. The tragic impact of war
on mothers and children did not cease; in a German poster from about
1919, rendered in a detailed, realistic and documentary style, a despairing
mother, now clearly head of the family, shields her face while her five starv-
ing children gather around her. In Gothic script the text cries out: “Farmers
do your duty! The cities are starving.” In a poster by the famous Dutch
cartoonist Louis Raemaekers (Rawls 1988, 157) who was roundly hated by
the Germans for his piercing caricatures, a girl leans over her mourning
father, her mother clearly dead in the hospital bed behind them. Captioned
“After a Zeppelin Raid in London,” Raemaekers has added, “But mother
had done nothing wrong, had she, daddy?”
Even before the United States declared war on Germany, illustrators
were called upon to alert the public to contemporary events. Fred Spear
captured the vision of female collateral damage in his evocative rendering
of a mother and child slipping into the depths off the coast of Ireland (Fig.
36) after a German U-boat torpedoed the British ocean liner Lusitania in
May 1916. Spear referred here to an uncanny event; among more than a
thousand passengers who perished was a woman who later washed ashore
clasping a dead child. This scene, rendered in the muted hues of a glacial
sea, aimed to inspire pity, horror, fury, and desire for revenge in honorable
males. It bears one word: “Enlist.” So notorious was this event that Spear
did not need to depict the ship; the figures, and a fish, sufficed. Yet as spe-
cific as the reference was, its lack of descriptive detail made of the tragic
female victim a universal symbol. A later American Liberty Loan poster
condemned the German act further; accompanying the image of a beauti-
ful drowning mother clutching two children (Borkan 2002, 111) is a picture
of the German medal proudly commemorating the attack. The outraged
caption reads, “. . . and they Struck off a Medal for THIS.”
Women Sacrificing Men
Artists understood clearly how insistently women could propel men into
war through such varied devices as shaming and patriotic pressure.
Although they were understandably ambivalent about their men’s depar-
ture for war, women were expected nonetheless to encourage enlistment,
to be stoic and supportive. A U.S. Navy enlistment poster by the famous
magazine illustrator Charles Dana Gibson (Rawls 1988, 151) portrayed a sad
but determined young wife, or perhaps mother, from a modest background
entrusting her man to a sober and understanding Uncle Sam. Significantly,
in response to her declaration, “Here he is, Sir,” Uncle Sam replies, ”We
need him and you too!” Although he does not specify how, Uncle Sam’s
obvious expectation is that the woman will contribute as well. Posters also
showed the patriotic way to immigrants, male as well as female, pointedly
reminding them of their “first thrill of American liberty” (Borkan 2002, 92).
And responding to the reluctance among some men to join up, an anony-
mous British sheet entitled “For the Glory of Ireland” pictures a rifle-wield-
ing Irish lass pointing to the burning town of Liège and launching a
challenge to the apathetic, ashamed country gentleman standing beside
her: “Will you go or must I?” (Rickards 1968, 39). Other images insist on the
duty of women to support their menfolk in fulfilling their sacred obliga-
tions. In E.V. Kealey’s (Rawls 1988, 32) famous scene (Fig. 37), two affluent
women in a country house interior, a child at their side, courageously mask
their grief and apprehension in deference to patriotic duty as they observe
a passing regiment. The legend rings loudly, “Women of Britain say—GO!”
Posters reflect the peer pressure to which British men were subjected;
Savile Lumley’s “Daddy, What did YOU do in the Great War?” (Rawls 1988,
32) foretells the future day of reckoning for a noncombatant. Thumbing
through a history book, his young daughter poses the weighted question
to her guilt-ridden middle-class father. At his feet, his son pointedly plays
with toy soldiers.
American illustrator Laura Brey (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 56) under-
stood the force of gender pressure on men in the process of enlistment. In
her provocative 1917 image On Which Side of the Window Are You? Enlist,
she portrayed an elegant young man gazing through a large window while
a regiment of robust doughboys marches past. A huge American flag ripples
in the background. Brey’s figure observes them timidly and ambivalently;
his over-refined mien contrasts starkly with the manliness of the recruits.
In effect, the artist conflated the qualities of courage, action, and patriotism
with masculinity, an intuition that reflected the times as much as it pre-
dicted the postwar backlash in social and political relations between
women and men. Brey also referenced here the languid preciousness asso-
ciated with the old century, especially in Europe (Mosse 1990, 63). Certain
conservative critics of the time fervently hoped that such “decadent” crea-
tures as this young man would be exterminated by the cleansing activity
of war, which would restore to health a degenerate Europe. This theme
would recur with deadly consequences in World War II.
While a sampling of German, Austrian, Italian, and Russian posters sug-
gests that these countries mainly depicted men recruiting male comrades
(Rickards 1968, images 1–25), the United States and Britain by contrast
exploited female potential for aiding the successful waging of modern
warfare. American posters, more than those of any other nationality,
emphasized women’s sexuality to entice male recruits. Arguably, the more
fluid American society accounted for the depiction of edgier interactions
between men and women. Images of seductive, modern young women
injected a different tone into the recruiting process from the posters featur-
ing men. Some male artists tended to retain their prewar concept of women.
An American Navy recruitment poster, for example, called upon an alle-
gorical figure, presumably Columbia, to encourage enlistment in the Navy
(Borkan 2002, 30). Right fist clenched, left hand clutching a sword, clad in
the usual patriotic robes, she literally walks on water, while behind her a
ship sinks and doomed passengers flail about in the sea. More like an erotic
version of the love goddess Venus rising from the foam than a dignified
personification of the nation, she embodies the weakest and most clichéd
kind of female representation.
Other illustrators updated their renderings of women to fit the new
circumstances. Two vivid posters by the well-known American illustrator
Howard Chandler Christy feature the “Christy girl,” the idealized American
woman of the time, both individual yet symbolic of a new female order,
independent and modern (Grayzel 2002, 21). At the same time, however,
Christy undermined the newfound importance of women’s role in the war
by portraying them as pin-up girls. Bogart (1995, 64) suggests, “From one
perspective … [posters] … are expressions of the general masculine atti-
tudes and outlooks of the time, highlighting the glamorous female to
express her subordination to men.” In the first poster, from 1917, Christy
replaced Uncle Sam with a provocative young woman wearing a sailor’s
uniform. The simple inscription, “I want you … for The Navy,” virtually
seduces men to enlist (Rawls 1988, 78). In the second image (Fig. 38), pub-
lished in 1918, a saucy creature coyly challenges the male viewer: “Gee!! I
Wish I were A MAN. I’d Join the NAVY.” Yet although the artist’s seductive
posters, which figure among the best-known images of World War I, have
always been discussed as sexist appeals to male recruits, Barton C. Hacker,
in conversation with the author, has posited that the former image might
in fact represent a yeoman (F), a female member of the navy. This would
lend an alternate interpretation to the image, though available photographs
of the yeomen (F) (Patch 2006) actually portray them in modest jackets
and skirts and stiff-brimmed flat hats. Validated recruiting posters for yeo-
men (F) remain to be located.
Children and Women Mobilized on the Home Front
Governments and private enterprise identified numerous ways in which

the home-front population could aid in the war effort. The depiction of
children forms a discrete category; these images were specifically aimed
at the younger generation to live up to the ideals of patriotism and duty,
and to challenge their parents to serve as role models. Young girls especially
appeared frequently in home-front activities. In American posters in par-
ticular, for obvious reasons, children appear as enthusiastic young folk
pulling for Dad and country. These young people have no concept of the
horrors of war, unlike the girls whom we saw as European victims of
German predation. For the second Liberty Loan of 1917, a beaming little
middle-class brother and sister in sailor suits proudly state, “Our Daddy is
fighting at the Front for You . . .” (Borkan 2002, 89). A similar pair gazes
adoringly at General Pershing; the girl grasps the general’s hand with both
of her own (Borkan 2002, 137). A particularly saccharine picture by Sampson
(Borkan 2002, 192) portrays a little blonde girl with curly hair of the sort
that would later make Shirley Temple legendary. Clasping her hands, she
looks upward; “Oh please do! Daddy,” says the caption. Below, spelled out
in letter blocks, she begs him to buy her a liberty bond. Her little white
dress is caught up a bit between her legs, adding a touch of the subtle
sexuality that compromises many of these images. Consistent with his
frequently ambiguous imagery, Montgomery Flagg introduced a strange
note into an appeal to boys and girls to buy war savings stamps (Borkan
2002, 135). Here, Uncle Sam grasps the beautiful sultry sister in his right
arm as he stares downwards at the little brother. The statement “You can
Help your Uncle Sam Win the War” seems frankly unsettling within the
context; innocence and patriotism collide with eroticism.
In order to mobilize women for home-front opportunities, poster illus-
trators turned again to representations of both allegorical and symbolic
female figures to sell Liberty and Victory bonds and to join such organiza-
tions as the Red Cross and land armies. Yet again, Arnold Binger’s Winged
Victory in a Roman toga (Borkan 2002, 119) promotes the American Victory
Loan, noting that its symbol is the “most popular button in America.”
Sponsored by the Button Merchants Association of America, the poster
reflects the wit of a New York advertising executive. Christy’s characteris-
tic version of the Victory Liberty Loan from 1919 (Borkan 2002, 119) depicts
a symbolic figure, wearing what looks to be an expensive form-fitting piece
of lingerie, posing like a ship’s figurehead in front of an enormous American
flag. “Americans All!” the tagline reads, followed by an Honor Roll of last
names that represent all the ethnic and national diversity that comprises
the population of the United States. Indeed, in her study of American
immigrant participation in the War, entitled, after the poster, Americans
All!, Nancy Gentile Ford (2001, 3) notes that, “the U.S. government drafted
into military service nearly half a million immigrants of forty-six different
nationalities, creating an army with over 18 percent of its soldiers born in
foreign countries.”
But posters encouraging contribution to home-front activities tended
overall to minimize the use of allegorical figures in favor of the representa-
tion of ordinary females, and young girls in particular. These were not
portraits of individuals and in that sense serve as symbolic depictions, but
the figures were obviously common people like the viewers of the posters
themselves. Artists deployed these ordinary women to endorse a range of
possibilities. A Liberty Bond appeal sponsored by the United Cigar Stores
Company depicted women joining men seemingly as equals in investing
their funds in the “safest investment in the world” (Borkan 2002, 122). A
clever British advertiser appropriated James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s
famous painting of his mother, in the collection of the Louvre, with the
legend, “Old Age must come. So prepare for it by investing in War Savings
Certificates.” The same image was reused for the Irish Canadian Rangers
Overseas Battalion of Montreal: “Fight for her,” it proclaims.
Volunteer help from women came in myriad forms. A genteel young
volunteer for the Red Cross quietly knits a warm garment for a soldier
(Borkan 2002, 153). Another glances shamefacedly at the viewer as she
scrapes fruit pits into a garbage can (Borkan 2002, 80). “Stop,” screams the
text, explaining at some length how the carbon extracted from pits and
nuts can save soldiers’ lives by absorbing German poison gas. The American
War Camp Community Service (Borkan 2002, 142) provided home hospital-
ity for soldiers; a particularly homey scene invites the viewer to join a group
of navy men around the piano as an elegant volunteer of advanced age
plays “songs of yesterday and today.” Quite different from these cheerful
examples of volunteer options is a German poster of 1918 by Jupp Wiertz
(Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 83). The German Red Cross urged women to
collect their combed-out hair, which would be substituted for such indus-
trial materials as “leather and hemp in drive belts and insulation.” A ghostly
female figure posed against a red cross presents her long hair as a kind of
holy offering to the war effort. An entire division of the German Red Cross
was devoted to the collection of female hair, a terrifying premonition of
World War II.
Women and War Work
Certain activities, such as nursing, depended on the opportunity for

advanced education, and represented class differences among women. But
regardless of class and economic status, jobs of all sorts awaited. Willing,
eager, and capable women of every background served as telephone oper-
ators, motor corps drivers, cultivators of the land, knitters of socks, and
munitions workers. Piehler (1994, 170) argues that World War I “combined
with the momentum of the women’s suffrage movement, impelled
American society, and women themselves, to define an identity for women
as citizens.” Yet while these posters often presented a progressive view of
the participation of every member of society in the conflict, many of the
sheets simultaneously perpetuated the traditional roles of women.
As the war continued and women’s participation became crucial to
success, posters illustrated serious jobs in manufacturing industries such
as munitions in a more literal style in order to set a direct and persuasive
example for emulation by others. A characteristic poster (Paret, Lewis, and
Paret 1992, 85) exhorting British women to work in munitions factories
vividly portrays a “modern” young woman slinging off her coat to join the
production line. A utilitarian bonnet, which protects her from the lethal
ingredients of explosives, replaces the Phrygian liberty hat. She rushes
enthusiastically towards the viewer, implying that we too, outside the
picture frame, are already at work. Directed at other women, this image
entices through the charm of the girl and through the presence of the
admiring young soldier in the doorway. He and she each have a job to do.
While artist Septimus E. Scott conjures a feminine environment in his
choice of a pale mauve color scheme (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 62), the
yellow background may refer to the gunpowder chemicals that stained the
skin of the munitions workers. Even a propaganda poster of this sort could
not entirely sugarcoat reality. This byproduct, yellow skin, served as a badge
of honor. The respect for women’s labor appears as well in a United War
Work Campaign poster (Borkan 2002, 143), in which Americans paid hom-
age to the four years during which French women labored to support the
war effort. Illuminated by the forge, they carry out their duties with dedica-
tion, wearing with style the sabots that identify their nationality.
As Paret, Lewis, and Paret (1992, 63) point out, Russian and German
posters depicting women workers did not celebrate their war work so much
as place value on their roles as mothers, wives, and victims. There are,
however, examples of Russian and German posters in which women con-
fidently operate complex pieces of heavy machinery. The Russian poster
advertises a war loan but “does not reveal the disastrous economic and
military condition of 1916 in Russia that necessitated female labor.” The
incipient revolution would soon entirely alter the status of Russian women;
participation in the labor force would not be a volunteer pastime but a fact
of Soviet life. In a German poster of the same subject by Ferdy Hornmeyer,
dating from 1918 (Welch 2000, 234), a dejected woman appears to be held
captive by her machine against a depressing monochromatic background.
Welch (2000, 233) observes that this image, captioned “German Women,
Work for Victory,” “revealed the bleakness of women munitions workers
in Germany after the January strikes.” The knowledge of impending defeat
contrasts vividly with the fervent commitment exhibited by poster women
of the allied forces.
Among the vast numbers of posters one finds similar scenarios of
females acting on their sense of duty, and finding liberation, in varied
capacities: driving cars, assembling bombs in munitions factories, knitting
warm socks for soldiers, doing farm work for the Women’s Land Army of
America (Borkan 2002, 82), and conserving foodstuffs needed for the troops.
Nor was women’s participation merely informal; numerous official orga-
nizations sprang into being to take advantage of the invaluable resource
represented by half of the human population. These organizations, and the
vital corollary of such outward signs of involvement as uniforms, were
central to the acceptance of female usefulness and commitment.
Women Workers and Volunteers in Uniform
Smithsonian curators Margaret Vining and Barton C. Hacker (2001a; 2005)

argue that the creation of women’s uniforms was crucial for asserting the
legitimacy and status of women’s war work. These elegant outfits appear-
ing in poster format certainly contributed directly to women’s enlistment,
to their perception of camaraderie and shared purpose, and to their hope
of approaching parity with men. Vining and Hacker (2001b, 373) have also
linked the phenomenon of uniforms to broader social issues, arguing that
the status they conveyed related to the replacement of traditional lower-
class camp followers by middle-class women in military affairs, noting in
particular that “wearing uniforms in voluntary organizations gave women
agency in the military as an institution by identifying them with principles
of military order and discipline.”
Elaine F. Weiss (2008, 14) describes the women of the American League
for Self-Defense, noting that, “each woman felt obliged to express her mar-
tial spirit in a personal fashion statement.” She quotes from a New York
Times article of 1916 (Weiss 2008, 14, 276), which documented League
Secretary Ida Vera Simonton’s outfit:
tight-fitting knickerbockers, puttees, and a skirt that came to the knees and
rippled out in up-to-date fullness. She wore a white silk shirtwaist [and] the
uniform was completed by a short, snug coat and a campaign hat. To show
she did not lose her femininity in uniform, she wore small, high-heeled
boots and big pearl earrings.
In the posters that advertise organized work, from Great Britain’s National
Service-sponsored Women’s Land Army (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 62),
to the switchboard operators of America’s YWCA United War Work
Campaign (Borkan 2002, 168), and to the all-important nurses, uniforms
elevated women and their work to a level commensurate with their
achievements. In YWCA-sponsored posters for such divisions as the United
War Work Campaign, the War Work Council, and the Land Service
Committee, the uniform became congruent with female identity. Ernest
Hamlin Baker’s poster for the same campaign (Fig. 39) describes a vast
regiment of women in the uniforms of their war trades, all marching as
equal participants toward a higher goal. Issues of class dissolve in the united
front expressed by the vast female army. The military aspect of their work
emerges from the caption, “Back Our Second Line of Defense.”
The YWCA commissioned numerous posters in a range of styles to
encourage women to serve as volunteers in many organizations. One set
focuses on appeals to women through identification with the lovely young
women depicted. Neysa McMein’s simple and bold bust-length image of a
fresh young girl posed against the YWCA insignia speaks for the interna-
tionalism of the project. Her image of the uniformed female YWCA volun-
teer offering hot chocolate and books follows the same formula of a
helpmate carrying to the soldiers nourishment and comfort for mind and
body. W.T. Benda used the face of the same elegant girl in at least two
posters to connect the essence of girlhood with war training (Borkan 2002,
165 and 166). These images reached out to quite a different class of women
from such YWCA posters as Adolph Triedler’s For Every Fighter a Woman
Worker, in which he spelled out the reciprocal relationship between male
combatants and female labor. Here, a young woman in worker’s overalls
poses against the blue triangle symbol of the YWCA, solemnly flaunting
the fruits of her labor: a biplane and a shell. Illustrator Clarence Underwood
portrayed a switchboard girl in Europe, concentrating on her task as a
regiment passes by behind her. A stylized image of a young woman burst-
ing through the blue triangle of the organization echoes this sentiment as
she opens her arms to the viewer; the illustrator, M.B., reminds us to
“Remember the girl behind the man with the gun.” For the Girl Reserves
(Borkan 2002, 168), a girl in gym bloomers shoots a basketball into a hoop
in the interest of helping to “put the Blue Triangle over the top!”
According to Krisztina Robert (2008, 116–17), a “new category of feminin-
ity, the servicewoman” evolved from the visibility of women’s roles in
auxiliaries and other agencies; the sensibly clad young woman appears in
a recruiting poster for Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps as “The GIRL
behind the man behind the gun.” The same slogan would reappear in a
YWCA War Work Council Poster and no doubt in other images as well
(Borkan 2002, 168). Yet as Robert (2008, 117) observes, the images them-
selves had specifically “feminine” roots:
Images of auxiliaries in military uniforms, showing the way or beckoning
to the viewer, were inspired by the recruiting posters of the army. However,
their portrayal as smartly-dressed, attractive women, depicted in bright
colours near their camp, the seafront and aerodromes with woods, steamers
and biplanes in the background, drew on the style of commercial advertis-
ing and alluded to fashion, adventure, and travelling.
For now, the relationship between femininity, militarism, and modernity
remained unstable. The women in men’s uniforms, whom artists like
Christy or Charles Dana Gibson drew as titillating come-ons aimed at male
recruits (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 56), have little to do with the earnest
purpose of war-work posters depicting women in their own uniforms. An
advertisement for the Motor Corps of America, formed in 1918 to supervise
every aspect of motor vehicle transport, pictured a fully uniformed, if doll-
faced, young woman proudly and confidently saluting. “Yes sir—I am here!”
(Rawls 1998, 25; Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 64). In one sense she embod-
ies the modern female. Athletic, independent, and in charge of their own
sexuality, these savvy young women appear to herald the flappers of the
next generation. For all its show of feminine patriotism and competence
however, this image embodies ambivalence. Within its ostensible celebra-
tion of independence, the scene subtly alludes to the young woman’s obe-
dience to her [male] superiors. It might be argued that even as she fulfills
an important role, she knows her place. Other Motor Corps posters empha-
size female independence more obviously: Helene Jones’s and Chandler
Christy’s images depict uniformed women with just the identification of
The Motor Corps of America (Borkan 2002, 49). Jones’s stylistically simpli-
fied rendering suggests that the Corps members earnestly and actively
participated in their work, while Christy’s figure gazes out from under her
chic cap, bringing her face and uniform to our attention more than her
role. In an understated manner, such images posed the problem that lingers
today: in gaining access to “masculine” activities, can women retain their
“femininity?” Male poster artists and society in general persisted, however
subtly, in preserving the fiction that war work and womanhood were mutu-
ally exclusive.
Nurses
Nurses were the women most frequently represented in posters. These

images are distinguished for their pathos and reverential quality. As with
all the images of women discussed here, nurses were also represented in
the two modes of allegorical figures and ordinary women raised to the level
of more universal symbols. Numerous portrayals transformed images of
nurses into such motifs as angels, the Eternal Mother, and the Madonna
with Child. The horrifying 1915 execution of British nurse Edith Cavell by
the Germans for helping Allied soldiers to flee occupied Belgium for the
Netherlands increased respect and admiration for the profession and for
the women practitioners.
Most of the nurses were associated with military nurse corps and the
Red Cross organizations of the different nations, which were determined
to react immediately to the crisis in Europe; the American Red Cross began
to send supplies and aid to Europe as soon as the war began (Rawls 1988;
Sarnecky 1999, 80–132). By the time the United States Congress declared
war on Germany in April 1917, the army, in collaboration with the Red Cross,
had already created 33 base hospitals in the United States, which “eventu-
ally formed the backbone of U.S. Army medical support in France”
(Sarnecky 1999, 81). They also gained sympathy and a certain mystique
through the dangers they underwent making the Atlantic crossing. Sarnecky
(1999, 424, n. 16) references an accidental misfiring of guns on a transport
ship during which two nurses were killed and another wounded, noting
that “these women were the first Americans to die in service in World War
I, although their deaths were not caused by enemy action.” Ultimately, by
Sarnecky’s (1999, 116) calculation, almost 22,000 nurses served in the war.
Poster artists rendered nurses realistically as well as allegorically. A
Russian version portrays two Red Cross women swaddled in warm uniforms
observing a battle from a distance; their faces are reverential but unideal-
ized (Baburina 1992, 29). More frequently, nurses were portrayed as capa-
ble and compassionate “angels.” A British poster by Charles Buchel in
support of the Belgian Red Cross depicts a wounded soldier tended to by
a uniformed nurse with actual angel wings sprouting from her pinafore
(Paret, Lewis, and Paret, 1992, 80). An image of about 1917 advertising “War
Fund Week for One Hundred Million Dollars” depicts an oversized nurse
surrounded by children, of whom a few at left are waving the French tri-
couleur. In the background a city smolders and at lower left is the emblem
of the Red Cross. “Motherless Fatherless Starving” reads the text. “How
Much To Save These Little Lives?” The nurse appeared in all her roles, sup-
porting families, grasping a stretcher as she exhorts the viewer to “Hold up
your end!” (Borkan 2002, 153). On the French battlefield, she fearfully but
bravely appears as “The Comforter,” grasping a child as she consoles the
despairing mother (Borkan 2002, 154). Sentimental images like Haskell
Coffin’s candy-box picture of a young Red Cross nurse (Borkan 2002, 159)
rendered even more repellent and unusual the famous British poster by
David Wilson of the sadistic German nurse who withholds water from a
wounded soldier (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 28). “Red Cross or Iron
Cross?” asks the text. Below the image the legend reads, “Wounded And A
Prisoner Our Soldier Cries for Water. The German “Sister” Pours It On The
Ground Before His Eyes. There Is No Woman in Britain Who Would Do It.
There Is No Woman In Britain Who Will Forget It.” The presence of leering
army officers in the background reminds the viewer that the Red Cross was
a formal division of the German army. Like all the posters of women over
the course of the war, representation of nurses did not escape the occa-
sional taint of over-dramatization. A literal example comes in Flagg’s his-
trionic picture of a nurse for the Stage Women’s War Relief (Borkan 2002,
171). Posing on a stage, an operatic figure flings away her fur-trimmed red
cloak to reveal a nurse’s uniform and high-heeled black patent leather
shoes. More a striptease than a recruitment poster, it veers close to satire.
Mothers
If nurses figured among the most revered women of the war, mothers
shared their role as caring, encouraging beings. Illustrators emphasized
their parity by frequently conflating their roles and representation. Poster
artists of all nationalities depicted nurses as mothers, and both as Christian
Madonnas, aiding and protecting their male children. Among the alle-
gorical images of women, the motif of Mother (Madonna) and Child stands
out for its varied modes of representation and for the elasticity of its sym-
bolism. This polyvalent image was deployed to signify concepts like nation-
hood, care and comfort (through nurses), regeneration, religious faith, and
mourning. The most famous, and curious, rendering is Alonzo Earl
Foringer’s The Greatest Mother in the World, dating from 1918 (Fig. 40). Made
for the Red Cross Christmas Roll Call, December 16–23, it was so successful
that it was recycled in World War II (Rawls 1988, 124). Against a red cross
at upper left sits a magisterial Red Cross nurse cradling in her arms a baby-
sized wounded soldier on a stretcher. Foringer based the picture on
Michelangelo’s sculpture of the Pietà from the Vatican, the ultimate sym-
bol of maternal mourning. He rendered the nurse’s draperies with classical
realism; the grisaille palette elevates the scene to an ethereal and concep-
tual plane. Unlike Michelangelo’s Mother of God, the nurse does not display
an attitude of mourning. Instead, her upturned head and her strong arms
convey optimism, caring, and competence. This is not an individual, but
the symbol of the Red Cross organization, standing for all mothers and
nurses. The elevated allusion to high art was satirized to ghastly effect in
a German version of about 1919. Unlike the Americans, the Germans were
starving in the wake of a war that many civilians were not even aware they
had lost. There the illustrator transformed the serene Madonna figure into
an emaciated hag with both arms raised in agony as her dead child, also in
imitation of the Lamentation, lies draped across her lap. Three other starv-
ing children surround their despairing mother. Yet the image alone did not
suffice. A fairly extensive text occupies fully the bottom half of the scene,
exhorting local militias to protect the eastern provinces of Germany that
produce bread and coal.
Similarly, a large sheet for the Emprunt de la Défense nationale places a
generic Madonna-like mother and child in the foreground while a winged
avenging angel, androgynous in appearance, protects them with a sharp
sword (Borkan 2002, 231). The famous French painter Albert Besnard
designed this work and its sketchiness differs from the usual legible quality
of most of the other posters. Besnard’s use of a horizontal rather than
vertical orientation also sets it apart from the usual format. By contrast,
R.H. Porteous conjures the typical American mother, white-haired with a
cameo pinned at her throat, arms opened wide, posed against an American
flag with views of marine and land combat in the distance (Paret, Lewis,
and Paret 1992, 70). “Women! Help America’s Sons Win the War,” she calls.
These mothers whom illustrators once portrayed as patriotically sending
their men to battle now had to support them on the home front. When the
time came for women to mourn, it was easier to hand the task to an angel
as in Harry S. Mueller’s Memorial Day poster. Here a winged creature
broods in a cemetery filled with wreathed American graves. A duty lies
ahead, as suggested by the inclusion of Abraham Lincoln’s words from the
Gettysburg Address in the caption below: “The world will never forget what
they did—It is for the living to consecrate themselves to the unfinished
task.”
Aftermath
As we have seen, poster artists portrayed women both as allegories and as

contemporary flesh and blood figures. Along with the modern women who
march through these posters in their new roles as drivers, nurses, and war
cheerleaders glide the statuesque symbols. One wonders though, for exam-
ple, how posters of both types affected people’s conscious and unconscious
reaction to women’s changing aspirations, concealed to greater or lesser
degrees beneath the surface representations. Sherwin Simmons (1998, 18)
shows how the visual language of the poster, much of which derived from
advertising, in turn relied on alluring images of women. He explores this
fact from the perspective of the German debate about poster art and kitsch
(essentially sentimental popular illustrations intended for uncultivated
audiences), which began in the 1870s and lasted through the early years of
the Weimar Republic. Like the American Albert Gallatin, conservative
German writers denounced what they viewed as the misappropriation of
commercial artists to make war posters. The result was the “production of
‘hurrah-kitsch’ … [which was] unable to find the balance of aesthetic qual-
ity and strong propagandistic impact that was judged desirable.” Regarding
an exhibition of English recruitment posters that took place in Berlin in
the fall of 1915, Simmons (1998, 19) notes that the sheets were viewed as
“enlarged kitschy illustrations,” though with “powerful appeal.”
Simmons (1998, 20) further records the remarks of German critic Hans
Sachs on the occasion of the exhibition; they merit reproducing in full:
It is well known that the most extreme kitsch and false sentimentality are
most effective when joined with realistic representation not only in England,
not only in Latin countries, but also even with our own masses. The English
recruitment posters very consciously turn to these popular sentiments, they
represent mawkish scenes, they gossip with the viewer in a homey popular
tone or with earthy humor, in short they contain plenty of emotionalism
which the expert poster artist, of whom Germans are so proud (not always
wisely), completely repudiates.
Cultivated German critics had to acknowledge that in terms of reaching
the under- or uneducated populace, such “kitsch” pictures would be most
successful. Foringer’s picture of The greatest mother represents a case in
point. In this work Foringer rejected the breezy, shorthand touch and bright
colors of Christy’s recruitment images in favor of a photographically
detailed reference to one of the greatest works of Renaissance art. His
appropriation of Michelangelo’s Pietà as the model for his Red Cross poster
was rich with resonance and talismanic authority. The motif of the loving
Madonna cradling the wounded soldier spoke to every mother, indeed to
all women. Simultaneously, however, Foringer ultimately parodied high
culture by replacing the dead Christ by the miniature doughboy. Only the
outer shell of the original transcendent meaning remains—the very defini-
tion of kitsch. In this image, even the inviolable motif of the “Mother”
becomes comical.
Exhibiting psychological insight, as well as grounding in the aesthetics
of taste, some critics understood that “criticizing an approach to political
propaganda that looked at it through the eyes of an educated elite and
imposed values of taste,” was naïve and artistically snobbish. In fact, it was
precisely a kitschy picture that, “for hundreds of thousands of viewers is a
beautiful image, by which they are truly moved, because it releases feelings
of compassion and sentimentality” (Simmons 1998, 27). In other words,
like advertising, war propaganda was devised specifically to relate to the
widest public on the deep emotional level required to promote slaughter
on an unprecedented and incomprehensible scale.
Pictures of women were especially vulnerable to these aesthetics and
meanings. At the end of the war and in its aftermath, they were still repre-
sented in posters, but the messages of these images had changed. Now their
female tasks included caring for the soldiers who were lucky enough to
return alive, even if forever damaged physically and emotionally by the
catastrophe. Posters of men from every country dominated image produc-
tion: soldiers returning home; war prisoners (Darracott 1974, 20); men being
retrained to adjust to wounds suffered in combat and to work again; pic-
tures of loss of limbs, blindness and tuberculosis, among others (Paret,
Lewis, and Paret 1992, 92–95). A German poster from 1918 shows a survivor
with a wooden leg, glumly learning again how to use a plough while a
simply clad woman supports one of his arms and holds his crutch. In the
face of these overwhelming tragedies, laid off from the factories, no longer
required for the land armies and other home-front duties, women now had
no choice but to return home and resume their domestic roles.
Men of all nationalities understood the necessity of female participation
in total war. Yet they were also heavily invested in maintaining women’s
inferior status, even as they were reclaiming male jobs in every field—from
working in factories to administering the railroads. However, the societal
changes occasioned by the war were irreversible, regardless of the setbacks
women experienced as their men returned from the battlefield. As indi-
cated by Paret, Lewis, and Paret (1992, 66), individuals participating in the
women’s rights movements underway in a number of countries dedicated
their organizational skills to national welfare and service bureaucracies. In
return, they expected to be rewarded with equal rights. However, even in
countries where women were accorded the vote, the outcome of the war
did not bring about the hoped for equality.
Indeed, among the posters that depict America women’s struggle for suf-
frage (Paret, Lewis, and Paret 1992, 66–67), one example, by a woman
artist, Evelyn Rumsey Cary, reverts to an allegorical figure, whose fingers,
like those of Daphne, metamorphose into fruits and leaves, and whose feet
have become the roots of a tree. The decorative composition places the
figure in front of the Supreme Court, and on its golden borders one reads
“Woman Suffrage.” Beneath the picture, Cary placed a kind of scriptural
verse that is abstract enough to be nonthreatening. More aggressive female
tactics would also backfire (Grayzel 2002, 20); patriotic women who had
participated in the so-called “white feather campaign,” passing out this
“symbol of cowardice” to men who were not in uniform, “were eventually
made to feel ashamed of acting so unwomanly as to challenge men in
public. ”
As an intermediary for information for and about women and their
wartime roles, the medium of the poster seems to have become bankrupt
by the end of the war. The question became, how best to translate the
tragedy of the previous four years into meaningful visual form that could
express, ennoble, psychologically contain, and perhaps heal the ravages of
battle. Representations of women shifted from posters to the thousands of
permanent war memorials that sprang up in every country. Moreover, it
was women who often assumed the tasks of acquiring sites, hiring archi-
tects, and overseeing construction. The poster could not accomplish the
solemn and stately task of commemoration and, most of all, of mourning.
Monuments seemed to provide a measure of solace, and even construct a
post-facto justification for the war. Statues depicting flesh and blood nurses
and mothers, as well as allegorical images of Victory, Peace, and Nation,
joined those of soldiers on the monumental commemorative sculptures
(Sherman 1996; Mosse 1993).
In the midst of the comforting, fund-raising, designing and erection of
the memorial statues, there lurked the disquieting specter of deceit and
irony. The poster women who had goaded their men into battle appeared
retrospectively as accomplices to tragedy. Claire M. Tylee (1990, 257) asserts
that, “the final burden of guilt [was] placed by literature on the shoulders
of women.” She observes of the poster Women of England Say—Go!, dis-
cussed above, that it “seems designed as much to convince women of what
to say, as to convince men that they were saying it.” Actually, Tylee argues,
many women tried to get their sons out of the army. Others were agitating
to prevent conscription. Still others were working for a negotiated settlement
to the War. It is only recently that the suppressed history of this political
dissent has been recovered.
Such a claim may elucidate some of the veiled disjunctions displayed in
these works (usually made by men), which this essay set out to trace.
Despite the complex and often contradictory attitudes betrayed in the very
public forum of the poster, the postwar environment did not erase women’s
hard-won self-awareness and social progress. Their war work had proven
their worth. Women’s challenge to the masculine construct of war on all
fronts positioned them to pursue their appropriate place in twentieth-
century society and to secure it for their female progeny.
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“GERMAN WOMEN HELP TO WIN!” 485
chapter thirteen
“GERMAN WOMEN HELP TO WIN!” WOMEN AND THE GERMAN

MILITARY IN THE AGE OF WORLD WARS
Karen Hagemann*
The word “people’s army” (Volksheer) has a wholly different meaning and
content now than in previous times. The change began with the coining of
the terms home army (Heimatheer) and home front (Heimatfront), which
did not exist before the war, and in which the “army of labor” for the first
time played an explicitly military role, whose execution helped to determine
the fate of the outer front. This new type of people’s army is the vehicle of
permanent war, whose distinguishing feature is the mobilization of the entire
people in a thousand ways. (Lüders 1937, 15)
With these words Marie Elisabeth Lüders, a former leader of the Federation
of German Women’s Associations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, BDF),1
who was responsible for the national organization of female labor for the
war industries during World War I, described the changes in the relation-
ship between home and front that had occurred during this war in her
1937 book Volksdienst der Frau (Woman’s Service for the People). She argues
in the book that due to the industrialization of warfare the home front was
increasingly important for the failure or success of the new form of “total”
or, as Lüders calls it, “permanent war.” The whole population had to become
a “people’s army” and thus women too had to be mobilized for this new
form of industrialized mass warfare. She believed that to a far greater extent
than in the First World War, in the next war all segments of the population
would have to play their specific roles in supporting war, and that the lines
* I would like to thank Pamela Selwyn for her help with the translation. This chapter
is a shortened and modified version of a longer article published under the title “Mobilizing
Women for War: The History, Historiography, and Memory of German Women’s War Service
in the Two World Wars,” Journal of Military History 75:3 (October 2011): 1055–1093.
1 Marie Elisabeth Lüders (1878–1966) had lost all of her administrative positions after
the Nazi Party came to power in January 1933, because she had represented the liberal
German Democratic Party (DDP) in the Reichstag, and had belonged to the executive board
of the BDF, which had dissolved itself in 1933 in order to avoid Gleichschaltung, or being
forcibly brought into line with Nazi ideology. She nevertheless believed that German women
had to support a future war if the “fatherland was again in danger.”
486 Karen Hagemann
between front and home would become more fluid still than in the last
war. In order to prepare for this eventuality, she proposed the introduction
of a “compulsory service year for women” parallel to “men’s compulsory
military service,” which the Nazi state had reintroduced in 1935 (Lüders
1937).
In fact, women in the Third Reich had to support the Second World War
that started only two years after the publication of the book far more
actively than scholars have long assumed: through a compulsory service
year for all German girls, through deployment in the wartime economy,
where they increasingly had to replace drafted men, and through their
wartime nursing activities and work as army auxiliaries (Wehrmachtshel
ferinnen). Nearly 400,000 German Red Cross (DRK) nurses and nurses’ aides
and 500,000 army auxiliaries were deployed during the war, not including
400,000 female antiaircraft auxiliaries (Reichsluftschutzhelferinnen). The
central institutions of the National Socialist policy of persecution and
extermination such as the police, Gestapo, and the SS also trained their
own female auxiliary corps (Helferinnenschaften). Some 10,000 women were
active in the SS alone (Maubach 2007, 93f). The scale of women’s deploy-
ment far outstripped that during the First World War.
To be sure, in the age of the world wars all the belligerent powers needed
women’s active support, as the contributions by Kimberly Jensen and
Margaret Vining in this volume show. A comparative approach, however,
indicates that this mobilization was particularly marked in Nazi Germany.
At the end of the Second World War, there was one woman for every twenty
male soldiers in the German armed forces. As “army auxiliaries” these
women were subject to military law and military discipline, but they never
officially attained the status of soldiers. This would have clashed too sharply
with the official Nazi ideal of womanhood. Rather, every attempt was made
to maintain gender boundaries, at least rhetorically and symbolically, even
if everyday life in wartime meant that they were continually breached and
increasingly challenged (Schwarz and Zipfel 1998, 2–3).
Not only the National Socialists themselves but also the postwar German
public in East and West, and even historians, long overlooked the impor-
tance of women for the conduct of the First but above all the Second World
War. The relevance of “gender” for the understanding of both wars as “total
wars” was thus ignored for many years. According to the current scholar-
ship, “total wars” are ideal-typically shaped by the interplay of four ele-
ments: the “totality” of war aims, methods, mobilization and control, which
leads to an abolition of the boundary between the military and civilian
realms, between “front” and “homeland”. The “homeland” becomes a front
in a dual sense: as the “home front”, without whose support the war cannot
be won, and as a battlefront itself threatened by war, in the form of both
enemy bombing missions and invading ground troops (Chickering 2000,
306, and 1999; Förster 1999). “Gender” is a central indicator of this abolition
of the boundary between the military and civilian realms, which is gener-
ally considered the defining characteristic of “total wars.” The consequence
of this abolition in everyday life during wartime is a challenge to the con-
structed “traditional order” of the gendered division of labor: in an indus-
trial and technological war, men can no longer function adequately as
either “breadwinners” or “protectors.” Women actively had to support the
war—as self-sacrificing “heroic mothers,” “soldiers’ wives” and “warriors’
sweethearts” as well as “motherly nurses” and “unyielding helpers” in the
wartime economy and the army—or the war could not be won (Hagemann
2002). This applies to a greater or lesser degree to all of the wartime powers.
At the same time, when the demands of war challenged the gender order,
the discourses and cultural practices had to cement the lines of gender all
the more firmly. Margaret and Patrice Higonnet already pointed to this
paradox in their article for the groundbreaking 1987 volume Behind the
lines: Gender and the two World Wars (Higonnet and Higonnet 1987). In the
chapter that follows, I will take a closer look at this paradox by exploring
German women’s wartime service for and in the military in the First and
Second World Wars, and its public perception. Since the “totality” of wom-
en’s wartime activities and the conditions that made them possible become
visible only when we study “home” and “front” together, I explore both.2
Female War Service during World War I
During the war years 1914–18, industrialized mass warfare demanded an

unprecedented degree of mobilization of soldiers and civilians alike. More
2 Because of the other articles in this Companion to Women’s Military History, I have
not included literature on other countries in my notes and references. On the development
of research on the military, war, and gender in modern German history, see Hagemann
1997, 1998; 2002b and 2007; Kundrus 1997 and 1999; Kühne 1999 and 2000; Hämmerle 2000.
The most important publications on women and the German military in the period of the
world wars are Gersdorff 1969; Seidler 1978 and 1979; Tuten 1982; Willmot 1985; Rüdiger
1987; Campbell 1993; Hacker 1995 and 1998; Zipfel 1995 and 1996; Schwarz and Zipfel 1998;
Vogel 1998; Kundrus 1999; Schönberger 2002; Williamson 2003; Blum 2005; Zegenhagen
2007; Kramer 2007; Maubach 2007 and 2009. In addition, several autobiographical texts
have been published. See Koepcke 1982; Spieckermans 1984; Szepanski 1986; Himmelstoß
1994; Chamier et al. 1995; Schmidt 1999; Westerhoff-Rupi 2000; Killius 2003; and Ebert 2006.
488 Karen Hagemann
than ever before, the war was decided by the willingness of the “home front”
to support it and to provide a steady supply of material and human beings
(Kocka 1984). The broadly accepted notion of a blitzkrieg, however, meant
that the German political leadership was insufficiently prepared for this
(Förster 1985). The organization of civilian wartime service and the conver-
sion to a long-term wartime economy, in particular, posed serious prob-
lems, whose solution the “polycratic chaos” of Wilhelmine Germany’s
functional elites rendered more difficult (Chickering 1998; Davis 2000).
The middle-class women’s movement organized in the Federation of
German Women’s Associations actively supported the First World War
from the beginning through engagement in the civilian wartime service.
By late July 1914, the BDF had already founded the “National Women’s
Service” (Nationaler Frauendienst) with the aim of mobilizing women for
“patriotic work on the home front.” At first, the National Women’s Service
focused on helping to organize wartime nursing care, ensuring provisions,
and providing relief for the families of soldiers and support for those who
had lost their employment as a result of the war. Soon, however, their
activities broadened in scope. Gradually they became more involved in
child and youth welfare, protection for new mothers and infants, and relief
for the homeless (Gersdorff 1969, 145–37; Greven-Aschoff 1981, 150–58;
Kundrus 1995, 98–124; Quataert 2001, 251–92). They could only cope with
this huge area of responsibility because, as early as August 1914, the wom-
en’s secretariat of the executive of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and
the women workers’ secretariat of the General Commission of the Free
Trade Unions had joined forces with the National Women’s Service. This
was wholly in the spirit of the declared policy of a party truce for the dura-
tion of the war. Both bodies thus relinquished for the first time their previ-
ous principle of strict separation from the middle-class women’s movement.
By participating in the National Women’s Service, they sought to do more
than merely avoid a dissipation of their energies. It was also their declared
hope that, in recognition of their common efforts in communal work on
the “home front,” women would finally be granted suffrage (Hagemann
1990, 523–36). The middle-class women’s movement shared this hope. Its
rhetoric equated women’s wartime civilian service with men’s military
service, and derived the demand for equal political participation from
women’s willingness to do their duty to “defend the fatherland,” just as
middle-class men had used their military service in the wars of 1813–15 a
century before to underpin their demands for political equality with the
nobility (Hagemann 2008).
In the course of the war, mobilizing women for the wartime economy
as well as job placement increasingly became important arenas for the
National Women’s Service. Because of the enormous loss of life in the great
battles of the summer of 1916, the government was compelled to free up
more men of military age for service on the front and to step up arms pro-
duction. To this end, in December 1916 the Reichstag passed the “Patriotic
Auxiliary Service Act” (Gesetz über den Vaterländischen Hilfsdienst), which
required all men between the ages of 17 and 60 to do compulsory war work
(Daniel 1997, 74–79). Women were explicitly exempt, but as it quickly
became apparent that the desired success could not be achieved, they were
increasingly recruited as volunteers for wartime industry. Responsibility
for implementing the Auxiliary Service Act was turned over to the War
Office (Kriegsamt) already established in November 1916. In order to orga-
nize the hiring and distribution of the female workforce needed by the
armaments industry, a “Central Women’s Labor Office” was set up in this
government department, with Marie Elisabeth Lüders as its director. The
work of the Women’s Labor Office was supported by a “National Committee
for Female War Work” with 37 member organizations (Gersdorff 1969,
22–27 and 119–24). In cooperation with the Women’s Labor Office, until
the end of the war, the War Office intensively promoted civilian wartime
service for women under the motto “We need every worker” (Jede Kraft
wird gebraucht) (Gersdorff 1969, 274).
Beginning in the spring of 1917, as the army’s “replacement problems”
grew, women were increasingly deployed also with the troops as so-called
“rear area auxiliaries” (Etappenhelferinnen) (Schönberger 2002). They were
supposed to free up soldiers for service on the front. In strategic and actual
terms, the rear area was directly behind the front. It was supposed to sup-
port an army group (Heeresgruppe), ensure the flow of ordnance and orga-
nize the army’s needs. Alongside the military offices proper, the “lines of
communication inspectorate” (Etappeninspektion) included the various
“economic sections.” Thus women worked in the immediate vicinity of the
battle zone, and were exposed to the same dangers as any male soldier in
the rear area, but they were not considered military persons—only part of
the Heeresgefolge (literally, the “army's entourage”). They mainly served as
salaried employees and only rarely as wage laborers. According to the
guidelines, in the occupied territories the latter “were to be drawn from
the local population wherever possible” (Gersdorff 1969, 169–72).
490 Karen Hagemann
A remarkably large number of women took up this new opportunity for
female wartime service. Besides deployment as nurses, service in the rear
area quickly became an important means for women to participate in the
war close to the front. Contrary to collective memory in the Weimar
Republic, which emphasized the image of the Red Cross nurse as the com-
plement to the front solder, in the First World War almost as many women
were deployed as rear area auxiliaries as worked as nurses (Vogel 1998). At
the end of the war they numbered more than 20,000 (Schönberger 2002).
The total number of women who volunteered as war nurses was 28,000,
19,800 of them with the Red Cross (Pflugk-Hartung 1932, 340–41). The sys-
tem of rear area auxiliaries was also organized by the Women’s Labor
Office, which together with the War Office was repeatedly compelled to
publicly counter objections to women working so close to the front
(Gersdorff 1969, 27–30). This is expressed in a War Office press release of
August 1918, which said of the rear area auxiliaries:
Not lust for adventure, at least not in the negative sense of the word, drives
these women into these surely austere and arduous positions. Besides the
wish to serve their fatherland in difficult times, it was, rather, the desire to
support their families at home that caused them to arrive at this decision.3
The militarily deployment of young women in the rear area required pub-
lic legitimation, unlike women’s traditional involvement in wartime nurs-
ing and relief work, which had been increasingly acceptable since the
anti-Napoleonic wars of 1813–15 (Quataert 2001; Hagemann 2004). Since
rear area auxiliaries actually replaced men, their work, unlike that of nurses,
challenged the gender order and thus attracted public reproach and accu-
sations of selfishness and immorality, even during the war. The divergent
perception of rear area auxiliaries and nurses was apparently intensified
by the varying social origins of the women in the two groups. While the
auxiliaries largely came from the lower and middle classes and needed to
work for money, many nurses were from the upper middle class and the
aristocracy, and could afford to volunteer their services. The former were,
thus, repeatedly accused of only working as auxiliaries because of the
relatively high income and independent life it offered, while the latter were
supposedly motivated by “female patriotism” and the willingness to “self-
sacrifice” (Schönberger 2002; Schulte 1995).
Notions of gender and class thus played a significant role in the public
assessment of women’s wartime service and the definition of their scope
3 Reprinted in Württembergische Zeitung, 28 August 1918. In Schönberger 2002, 84.

of activity. Political concepts also became increasingly important, however.
The soldiers in the rear area and front alike frequently greeted the auxiliary
service conscripts (Hilfsdienstpflichtige) deployed in the rear area with less
than enthusiasm. The more war-weariness and the longing for peace spread
among soldiers, the more hostile the soldiers’ reactions became. The female
rear area auxiliaries, like the male auxiliary service conscripts, were accused
of unnecessarily prolonging the war. Thus a “Report from the Royal
Bavarian Ministry of War” of September 1917 wrote of an inspection tour
to the rear area:
Key personalities are agreed in expressing the hope that better results can
be achieved with female than with male auxiliaries because the various
areas of friction that exist between the military and the male auxiliary ser-
vice conscripts are eliminated in the case of the female auxiliaries. Nonethe-
less, a hostile attitude to the arriving female auxiliaries can occasionally be
observed among the soldiers. The female auxiliaries were sometimes greeted
with open threats based on the claim that “they were prolonging the war,”
as well as calls to “take out your machine guns.” The highly visible black,
white and red sash of the female auxiliaries frequently provided occasion
for harassment. This observation was made in various rear areas. It is thus
so unpopular that in one of the rear areas, a fine of 20 marks for not wear-
ing the sash had to be set.4
By deploying female rear area auxiliaries instead of male auxiliary service
conscripts, the War Office was clearly also trying to calm the mood in the
rear area and the front. The hope seems to have been that soldiers would
be less hostile towards women, viewing their deployment more as an indi-
cator of home support for the front. This hope was clearly misplaced. The
war-weary soldiers did not care whether the auxiliaries whose deployment
helped to prolong the war were male conscripts or female volunteers.
The War Office’s final attempt to marshal female labor for wartime
service was the 27 July 1918 decree on the establishment of a “Women’s
Signal Corps” (Nachrichtenkorps). The model was the British Women’s
Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) founded in the spring of 1917 (Seidler 1978,
292–93). The implementation regulations concerning the “Women’s Signal
Corps” stated that:
In order to free non-commissioned officers and troops for the front, auxil-
iaries will be deployed wherever possible for use in all areas of the signal
services at first at home, in the General Gouvernements, the territories of
4 Report of the Royal Bavarian Ministry of War, Tour of Inspection in the Occupied
Territories, Munich, 3 September 1917. In Gersdorff 1969, 191f.
492 Karen Hagemann
the Supreme Commander of the East (Oberost), and in the rear area. Together
with the required relief officials and the other non-technical auxiliary and
medical personnel, they formed the “Women’s Signal Corps.” The women
deployed in technical operations are designated Nachrichtlerinnen.5
This decree was intended as a solution to the increasingly thorny problem

of replacing lost soldiers. The Supreme Army Command hoped that this
measure would allow them to free up “100,000 men as soon as possible.”6
Given this lofty goal, the new corps was promoted with all the available
means of modern advertising—print advertisements, posters, and even
the new medium of film. A typical example was a poster of July 1918 bear-
ing the text “Bulletin: The fatherland needs educated women and girls for
the Women’s Signal Corps.” As this advertising slogan shows, the govern-
ment sought to attract mainly educated young women as telephone, tele-
graph, and radio operators. Only they could be trusted to operate the signals
services competently with just four weeks of training. They had to sign up
for twelve months of service, during which time they were subject to mil-
itary law. Unlike the rear area auxiliaries, Nachrichtlerinnen, as legally
recognized “military persons” were to wear uniforms (Gersdorff 1969,
31–34). However, despite or rather because of the uniform, advertisements
stressed the attractive femininity of the young Nachrichtlerinnen, demon-
strating that they remained “all woman” despite their voluntary military
service—an attempt to bolster the threatened gender order. This decree
integrated German women into the army for the first time and placed them
under military law.
Women in the Weimar Reichswehr
While the Nachrichtlerinnen were not actually deployed during the First
World War, the War Office continued to pursue the establishment of a
“Women’s Signal Corps” after the war. In February 1919, it agreed to the
formation of a “female signal battalion ” of the East Prussian Corps of
Volunteers, which was under the general command of the 1st Army Corps
in Königsberg. The first training course began in May 1919, and more than
400 women volunteered. They were trained as telephone, radio, and tele-
5 Ausführungsbestimmungen zum Erlass zur Gründung eines “Weiblichen Nach

richtenkorps,” (Implementation regulations concerning the “Women’s Signal Corps”) 27
July 1918. In Gersdorff 1969, 32.
6 Major v. Massow, Signal Staff Chief on Ludendorff. In Gersdorff 1969, 31.
graph operators and deployed throughout the area of the 1st Army Corps
as well as in the German-occupied Baltic region. The “female signal bat-
talion” was only disbanded with the reclassification of the military district
commands in the autumn of 1920, and the members were redefined as
employees. This step corresponded to Weimar Reichswehr policy. Since
the June 1919 Treaty of Versailles restricted the German armed forces to
100,000, the army now assigned all tasks that were not strictly “military” to
civilian employees, because they were not included in this number. In this
way, during the Weimar Republic women were already deployed as “civil-
ians” in many areas of the Reichswehr. As employees they performed admin-
istrative duties and worked as telephone operators. Women even worked
as volunteer aircraft reporting auxiliaries (Flugmeldehelferinnen) in the
Reichswehr’s secret air watch detachments (Flugwachkommando) under
conditions of strict secrecy. They were generally excluded only from com-
bat units and staffs, where administrative and clerical tasks were performed
almost exclusively by men. The official explanation was that women,
because of their family ties as wives or daughters, were not mobile enough
to follow the troops on maneuvers and occasional deployments (Gersdorff
1969, 33–39). This naturally did not apply to husbands and sons. This argu-
mentation was based on the old notion that a modern, professional army
should ideally be a woman-free zone in order to promote comradely male
bonding and thus discipline, efficiency, and fighting spirit.
Women at the Home Front during World War II
The Weimar Reichswehr’s policy concerning the deployment of women

continued after the National Socialists took power in January 1933. The
expansion of the armed services was accompanied by an expansion of the
military administration. As a consequence, the number of female employ-
ees continued to rise. In the context of preparations for war, which began
early on in the regime, the groundwork was also laid for women’s wartime
deployment. The main legislative foundation for women’s compulsory
service was the Defense Act of May 1935, whose introductory stipulations
included the following: “In wartime, in addition to military conscription,
every German man and woman is obligated to serve the fatherland”
(Gersdorff 1969, 49).
The concrete implementation of this compulsory wartime service was
regulated even before the war, first by the Reich Labor Service (RAD) Law
494 Karen Hagemann
(Reicharbeitsdienstgesetz) of June 1935, which stipulated that all boys and
girls had to work as an “honorary service for the German people.” While
male youths were mustered and drafted immediately after the Reich Labor
Service Law went into force, the female RAD was voluntary until 1939. The
number of so-called Arbeitsmaiden or labor girls thus remained relatively
low, at 40,000. Only those young women who wished to pursue university
studies were required to complete six months of RAD before they could
matriculate. Thus at first they made up the largest proportion of RAD girls.
Only in September 1939, with the beginning of war and the “Decree on the
Implementation of Reich Compulsory Labor Service for Female Youth”
(Verordnung für die Durchführung der Reichsarbeitspflicht für die weibliche
Jugend), did the RAD become compulsory for all girls aged 17–25 who did
not work full-time or attend school or vocational training, and who were
not needed to help out on the family farm. During the first two years of the
war they were largely deployed in agriculture and gardening, as well as
assisting in households, and caring for children, the elderly, and the sick.
The Wehrmacht’s growing need for personnel then led to the June 1941
“Decree on the Further Wartime Deployment of the Reich Labor Service
for Female Youth” (Erlass über den weiteren Kriegseinsatz des Reichsarbeits
dienstes für die weibliche Jugend), which made it possible to use Arbeits
maiden in the wartime auxiliary service. They were now enlisted for twelve
months as Wartime Auxiliary Service Girls (Kriegshilfsdienstmaiden). Their
number was to be increased from 100,000 to 130,000 by October 1941, with
preparations for a further rise to 150,000. The young women were subse-
quently also deployed in the Wehrmacht itself and increasingly assumed
duties previously performed by soldiers, above all in office work and com-
munications (Seidler 1978, 44–50; and 1979).
The “Emergency Service Ordinance” (Notdienstverordnung) of October
1938, which regulated the enlistment of labor to “combat public emergen-
cies,” made it possible to mobilize all other women and girls for compulsory
wartime service under the Defense Law. The first implementation decree
of September 1939 obligated all Germans of both sexes aged between 15
and 70 years to perform emergency service unless they cared for two or
more children under the age of fifteen in their own household, were at least
six months’ pregnant, or generally unfit to work. Only those who worked
in medical and other strategic fields were exempt. Anyone who refused to
perform paid compulsory emergency service was threatened with impris-
onment or a fine (Seidler 1979, 46–47 ).
Since all of the mobilization measures organized during peacetime by
the Nazi state and the Wehrmacht presupposed that the war would be
brief, and because unemployment was high at the beginning of the war as
a result of the conversion from a peacetime to a wartime economy, the
kind of mass deployment of women that the emergency service allowed
for was not introduced until 1941 (Kroener et al. 1988, 769–74, and 1999).
Moreover, such a compulsory deployment of women faced significant
ideological opposition: the National Socialist female ideal propagated
before the war permitted the employment of single, divorced, or widowed
“German women,” but not their married counterparts. Mainly for reasons
of demographic policy, the latter were confined chiefly to their duties as
housewives and mothers (Rupp 1980; Pine 1997).
The Nazi government concluded from the experiences of the First World
War that they must undertake all possible measures to prevent the home
front from “stabbing the front in the back.” For that reason, not only were
married women not fully enlisted for compulsory service, but soldiers’
wives and their families were supported as well as possible throughout the
war at the expense of the occupied and pillaged East. Far more thoroughly
than the government of Imperial Germany had done, the Nazi state filled
the gap left by absent male breadwinners and sought in this way to stabilize
the “home front” (Kundrus 1995, 322–51; and 1997). It offered financial sup-
port to the wives of soldiers that allowed most of them, unlike during the
First World War, to feed their families without going out to work. What is
more, since according to the guidelines these family benefits were reduced
by the amount of women’s earnings from employment, in practice this
policy motivated some women to quit their jobs (Kundrus 1995, 245–96;
Kroener et al. 1988, 770–74).
However, the Nazi state was highly selective in granting support to
soldiers’ families, in keeping with its racial and class policy: while better-
heeled women with children received so much money that they did not
have to seek paid employment throughout the war, and could easily use
their connections to avoid any sort of compulsory service, as the war went
on, working-class mothers were forced more and more into war work. This
produced increasing disgruntlement among the civilian population and
soldiers alike (Gersdorff 1969, 56–60, 342–49). A secret report on the situ-
ation compiled by the Security Service of the SS thus noted as early as
September 1941, that:
The entire deployment of women comes down to the fact that only women
of the working class and the little people are called up, although women
496 Karen Hagemann
from better-off circles clearly have much more time on their hands and
could be used for labor service. The work of the employment offices is com-
pletely one-sided, and they resort only to simple women, because they can
offer neither excuses nor “connections.”7
This labor market and family policy, which was influenced on the one hand
by population and racial policy motives and on the other by the exigencies
of the wartime economy, could be upheld during the war years only because
of the massive use of forced laborers, who kept the wartime economy afloat
(Bock 1992; Hachtmann 1993; Gerber 1996; Winkler 1997). To be sure, even
during the First World War prisoners of war and civilians had been
deployed for war work, but in the Second World War forced labor assumed
unprecedented quantitative and qualitative dimensions under Nazi rule.
By late May 1941, some 1,753,500 civilian workers deported from the occu-
pied countries and 1,316,000 prisoners of war were active in the German
wartime economy. During the first two years of the war they too were
mainly deployed in agriculture and forestry. Beginning in 1941, however,
they were increasingly exploited in wartime industry as well (Kroener et
al. 1988, 774–75; Herbert 1997).
During the first two years of the war, in addition to the Reich Labor
Service, the Nazi regime, thus, relied primarily on the mobilization of
women and girls for voluntary war work. One of the means to this end was
the press policy action “German Women Help to Win”, which the Nazi
party’s Reich Press Office launched in March 1941 to promote “the voluntary
enlistment of all women and girls suitable for deployment in the war
effort.”8 During “subscription week”, the government was to appeal above
all to the “honor” of “German women”:
In particular, a strong appeal needs to be made to honor, which should be
emphasized with steady intensification throughout subscription week. The
historic struggle in which we find ourselves today demands the dedication
of all members of the [German] people (Volksgenossen). While German man
does his duty at the front, German woman must devote her labor power to
taking man’s place above all in the wartime economy. Every woman fit to
work, whose health and family duties permit it, is expected to report for
duty.9
This press campaign targeted the “big city press” and the “papers with
7 SD-Bericht, Meldung No. 224, 29 August 1941. In Gersdorff, 1969, 58.

8 Confidential press information, press policy action plan for the action “Deutsche
Frauen helfen siegen,” March 1941. In Gersdorff 1969, 327–28.
9 Ibid.
a more intellectually demanding readership,” which indicates the main
addressees: women of the urban upper middle class.10 They were to be
better integrated into war work in order to quiet the growing public
discontent over the unequal treatment of German women of different
social classes. The press action was bolstered by posters and handbills as
well as public events, which were also reported in the press.
With the invasion of the Soviet Union and the opening of a second
battlefront in June 1941, the personnel needs of wartime industry and the
Wehrmacht grew substantially. At the same time, the number of dead and
wounded soldiers also rose. As a consequence, more and more able-bodied
men were drafted. This also increased the necessity of obligating women
to replace conscripted men in wartime industry. For a long time, however,
it was feared that drafting adult women for war work would not merely
sour the mood on the home front, but also, through letters from family,
lower troop morale (Kroener et al. 1988, 772). Only in light of the
Wehrmacht’s dramatic defeat at Stalingrad did the last reserves have to be
mobilized beginning in early 1943, for which reason a “Führer decree” of
January 1943 declared “total war” publicly for the first time and ordered the
“comprehensive deployment of men and women for duties of defending
the Reich.” With the aim of “freeing able-bodied men for deployment at
the front” women were to be employed more extensively in all strategic
areas of the economy.11 An implementation decree of that same month
ordered all men between the ages of 16 and 65 and all women between 17
and 45 to report to the relevant employment office for labor service. Only
expecting mothers and women with a child below school age or at least
two children under 14 years were exempt.12 In July 1944, a second Führer
decree extended the order to include women aged 45–50 (Gersdorff 1969,
430). As the war went on, the need for labor grew and women were increas-
ingly deployed in jobs previously reserved for men.
Parallel to the increasingly extensive integration of women and girls
into the “home army” of laborers and employees in the wartime economy,
with the advent of war a rapidly growing number of German women
became active as Wehrmacht auxiliaries (Wehrmachtshelferinnen). To be
10 Ibid.
11 Hitler’s decree on the comprehensive deployment of men and women for the defense
of the Reich, 13 January 1943. In Gersdorff 1969, 375–77.
12 Verordnung über die Meldung von Männern und Frauen für Aufgaben der
Reichsverteidigung (Ordinance on the Registration of Men and Women for Reich Defense),
27 January 1943. Reichsgesetzblatt (RGBl.) 1943, 67.
498 Karen Hagemann
sure, women had already been deployed as rear area auxiliaries in the lat-
ter phase of the First World War. In the Second World War, however, the
work of Wehrmacht auxiliaries was far more significant. Not only he num-
ber of nurses and nurses’ aides grew from 15,000 at the beginning of the
war to 400,000 in 1944; the number of women deployed in the Wehrmacht
also rose sharply. At the beginning of the war, some 140,000 women were
employed by the army; in the winter of 1944 the figure was 320,000, 300,000
of whom were deployed with the reserve army (Ersatzheer), 12,500 as staff
auxiliaries and 8000 as signal auxiliaries with the field army and in the
occupied territories. In addition, the Luftwaffe employed 130,000 women,
among other things as air force auxiliaries (Luftwaffenhelferinnen). A further
20,000 women were active in the navy, mostly as naval auxiliaries
(Marinehelferinnen).13 During the final phase of the war 500,000 women
were deployed in varied capacities in the Wehrmacht (Seidler 1978, 59).
Nearly 400,000 additional women served in air defense in the Reichsluft
schutzbund (Maubach 2007, 93–94; Kramer 2007).
It is noteworthy that only one-third of female Wehrmacht auxiliaries
were conscripted (Gersdorff 1969, 49–77). A very large number of mainly
young women supported the war actively and voluntarily, above all during
the early years. We know little about their motivations. Existing research
and the published memoirs of former Wehrmacht auxiliaries suggest that
younger women in particular were motivated, alongside political consid-
erations, by the desire for adventure and travel, for independence from
their parents and opportunities to make their own decisions, for increased
responsibility and career prospects, higher income, and special privileges.14
When analysing memoirs, however, we should keep in mind that in retro-
spect, the women recounting their lives—like the men—tended to portray
their own activities within the Wehrmacht and occupation regime as “apo-
litical” and “uninvolved,” and only rarely reflected on their own responsibil-
ity (Harvey 2002 and 2003).
All Wehrmacht auxiliaries were civilian employees of the various
branches of the army without military status. They were largely deployed
in low-status areas of operations. Even the women employed in the medi-
cal corps appear to have been almost exclusively nurses and nurses’ aides
rather than doctors (Buchner 1999). Only in the Luftwaffe were a few female
13 Gersdorff 1969, 74; Maubach 2007, 93–94; Kundrus 1999, 722; Seidler 1978, 159–162;
Buchner 1999.
14 See Maubach 2007 and 2009; Koepcke 1982; Spieckermans 1984; Rüdiger 1987; Schmidt
1999; Himmelstoß 1994; Killius 2003; Ebert 2006.
pilots deployed, but they had already been well-known amateur aviators
before the war (Bracke 1990; Zegenhagen 2007, 386–409). With the rapid
growth in the number of Wehrmacht auxiliaries, however, their opportuni-
ties to rise to the rank of Führerinnen and advance in their careers also
increased. In the course of the war, the hierarchies became ever more
differentiated in order to organize, supervise, and integrate large numbers
of women. While in March 1941, for example, there were only six service
grades among the signal auxiliaries, one year later the number had risen
to ten. Women increasingly attained leadership positions whose rank cor-
responded to that of officers. This development is an indicator of the sta-
bilization and professionalization of the female auxiliaries’ work and
probably motivated dedicated female followers of National Socialism to
volunteer, since they saw opportunities for advancement (Maubach 2007,
105).
In legal terms, Wehrmacht auxiliaries were considered part of the “army
entourage” rather than as female soldiers, since they were not officially
doing “military service.” They were subject to the military penal code, the
Wehrmacht disciplinary code, and the wartime criminal procedure code
(Kriegsstrafverfahrensordnung). In the everyday life of the auxiliaries, how-
ever, the stipulations of labor and service law took precedence over military
law. When Wehrmacht auxiliaries were deployed abroad, they were defined
according to Article 3 of the 1907 Hague Convention respecting the laws
and customs of war on land and paragraph 1 of the Geneva Convention on
the treatment of prisoners of war as “non-combatants of the belligerent
party.” In case of capture, they thus had the right to be treated as prisoners
of war (Seidler 1978, 96–97). Only antiaircraft auxiliaries (Flakwaffenhelfe
rinnen) were recognized as combatants by the Wehrmacht, because of the
obviously military character of their work (Blum 2005, 47).
In order to facilitate the “support” (Betreuung) and supervision of Wehr
macht auxiliaries abroad while also strengthening their cohesion and oblig-
ing them to maintain “unblemished” conduct appropriate to the “reputation
of German womanhood” they were organized into so-called auxiliary corps,
lived in communal apartments outside the barracks, and wore uniforms.
The National Socialist Women’s League (NS Frauenschaft) and the Reich
Labor Service for Female Youth vied with each other for responsibility for
this “support,” i.e., specialized instruction, political training, sports and
leisure activities. Pressure from the party leadership decided this struggle
over responsibility, which was typical of Nazi organizations, in favor of the
Women’s League (Seidler 1978, 77–152).
500 Karen Hagemann
The party and Wehrmacht leadership alike were very concerned to
maintain highly visible gender boundaries in the military despite the grow-
ing deployment of women. Their central strategy was to repeatedly stress
the “womanliness” of the Wehrmacht auxiliaries and, at least verbally, to
distinguish clearly between men’s and women’s military duties. Accordingly,
the June 1942 “Guidelines of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht on
Women’s Deployment in the Territories Outside the Reich Borders” stated
that:
It is the Führer’s will that all German women, particularly those working
far from their parents and homeland as auxiliaries to the German army, be
provided with every care and support to protect them and facilitate the
performance of their duties. The measures necessary for this support, how-
ever, must be suited to their womanly nature and by no means lead to a
militarization of woman, which could quite easily occur in the realm of the
Wehrmacht. The “female soldier” is incompatible with our National Social-
ist view of womanhood.15
Within the Wehrmacht, too, men thus remained the “protectors.” The
femininity of Wehrmacht auxiliaries was to be preserved at all costs. Under
no circumstances should they become female soldiers. At the same time,
their moral reputation must be maintained in the interest of the
“Wehrmacht’s standing.”
The circumstance that women and men were working, and at times
living, together at close quarters in a foreign country was quite novel in
this war-specific form (Seidler 1978,126–31). The Wehrmacht auxiliaries
entered a male society idealized as the “comradeship of the front,” which
functioned according to its own gender-specific rules and gave little con-
sideration to women (Kühne 2002 and 2006). This seems frequently to have
led to problems and tensions: the behavior of officers and soldiers was
“undisciplined” and “unchivalrous”; they even treated Wehrmacht auxil-
iaries as easy sexual prey. They perceived women as “disrupters” of their
male-bonding activities “in the circle of comrades,” where they “boozed”
and indulged in “crude soldierly carousing” in their leisure time. For that
reasons there were calls in Wehrmacht circles to “keep girls out of the
everyday sociable intercourse of our army wherever their presence is not
strictly necessary.” 16 Complaints by Wehrmacht auxiliaries on behavior in
15 Richtlinien des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht zum Fraueneinsatz in den Gebieten

außerhalb der Reichsgrenze (Guidelines of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht on
Women’s Deployment in the Territories Outside the Reich Borders), 22 June 1942. In
Gersdorff 1969, 361–62.
16 Gefahren der Teilnahme von Nachrichtenhelferinnen und anderen Volksgenossinnen
an Kasinoabenden usw. (Dangers of the Participation of Female Signal Auxiliaries and
the officers’ clubs provided the impetus for this demand. Other young
women, in contrast, enjoyed living with soldiers and officers while deployed
abroad. They exploited the freedom from parental control to live more
freely and entered into relationships, usually with higher-ranking members
of the Wehrmacht. Such conduct led some people back home to denounce
these women, insulting them as “officer’s mattress” or “soldier’s floozy”
(Schmidt 1999, 25–27; Spieckermans 1984, 28; Killius 2003, 46).
The problems and tensions in the relationship between male and female
members of the Wehrmacht became known in Germany, not least through
the military post, and caused parents, in particular, to have misgivings
about their daughters’ military service (Seidler 1978, 147–52). In order to
counter such concerns, the party and military leadership sought to control
and regulate the everyday lives of Wehrmacht auxiliaries as much as pos-
sible. This went so far in the “Official Regulations for Female Signal Auxi
liaries in the Armed Forces” (Official Regulations for Female Signal
Auxiliaries in the Armed Forces) of April 1942 that women’s appearance
and behavior in public were strictly regimented: even in the army, a
“German woman” must not smoke or drink or wear make-up or jewelry.17
All “unclean elements, sexually loose, thieving, hysterical or drunken aux-
iliaries” and women who read “trashy literature” or distributed “dirty books”
were discharged or sent back to Germany.18 This policy had little effect on
the widespread misgivings and prejudices among the German public, how-
ever. Parents became ever less willing to allow their daughters to volunteer
for service during the last two years of the war.
Mobilizing Women for the "Endkampf"
The deployment of Wehrmacht auxiliaries was expanded in four stages,

opening up new military fields of ‑activity for women and girls. In the first
phase they were transferred from Wehrmacht offices in Germany for
deployment in the occupied countries—beginning in autumn 1939 in
Poland, then from spring 1940 in Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries
and then, from summer 1940, in France. They staffed the typing pools of
the rear area and the staffs, telephone and telegraph offices and the air
Other German Women in Evenings at the Officer’s Club, etc), confidential letter from a
major, 6 June 1941. In Gersdorff 1969, 334.
17 Dienstordnung für Nachrichtenhelferinnen des Heeres, 1 April 1942. In Seidler 1978,
148.
18 Richtlinien für den Fraueneinsatz im Bereich der Wehrmacht (Guidelines for the
Deployment of Women with the Wehrmacht), 22 June 1942. In Seidler 1978, 148.
502 Karen Hagemann
reporting, air-raid warning, and weather services. When personnel needs
rose further with the invasion of the Soviet Union, an intense public cam-
paign to promote female military service began in summer 1941 under the
slogan “Help to win!” (Seidler 1978, 59). The second phase of women’s
military deployment began after the winter of 1941–42, with the heavy
losses of the Russian campaign. For the first time, the Wehrmacht was
suffering from a serious personnel shortage. Given the limited reserves, the
commands decided to “release” the male communications and clerical staff
still working in the Wehrmacht offices for “use at the front” and replace
them with women (Seidler 1978, 59). The third phase began in the winter
of 1942–43, when the Russian campaign was producing ever-greater casu-
alties, culminating in the catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943.
Starting in July 1943, women were in addition permitted to operate the
command and control equipment, searchlights, and curtain-fire guns of
the Luftwaffe’s Flak units. From autumn they were also deployed on the
air signal corps’ radar equipment. Since spring 1944 women were increas-
ingly deployed in the Flak batteries where they had to take on a growing
range of duties, with the exception of actually operating the guns.
In the final year of the war, the fourth phase,—or “Endkampf ” the mil-
itary deployment of women reached a highpoint. In July 1944 a second
Führer decree on “total war” ordered a further summoning of resources. In
the context of a gigantic military reserve program all available and able-
bodied soldiers were to be “freed up” and replaced by women and girls. In
particular, members of the Luftwaffe were to be replaced by women in
order to set up “air force divisions.” The aim was to “free up” 100,000 men.
As a consequence, at the end of the war, with the exception of leadership
positions, military air defense was almost entirely in female hands. 160,000
female Flak gun auxiliaries and RAD girls served in the Luftwaffe’s Flak
artillery alongside 60,000 male Flak auxiliaries deployed by the RAD and
50,000 male Luftwaffe auxiliaries recruited from among the Hitler Youth.
They all trained together on the Flak guns, since the efficiency of the oper-
ation depended on their perfect cooperation (Gersdorff 1969, 69–70; Seidler
1978, 86–88; Schwarz and Zipfel 1998, 2–3).
The development in the final year of the war, especially the massive
deployment of women in air defense, showed the utter absurdity of the
oft-propagated notion of soldiers as the male protectors of the “female
homeland.” The “RAD war auxiliary service girls” who did most of the work
of air defense both in and outside of Germany were clearly combatants in
practical terms. They took over direct military duties from soldiers. The
young women active here were largely emergency conscripts, to be sure,
but initially only those who had specifically volunteered were deployed for
these special duties. That changed during the last year of the war. The
initial 12-month term of service in air defense was extended to 18 months
by a Führer decree of April 1944, and in November 1944, as was the case for
soldiers, it was made indefinite, that is, for the duration of the war (Gersdorff
1969, 71–74, 446–60; Seidler 1978, 67–74). In light of the Allied invasion in
France, however, in July 1944 it was ordered that all female auxiliaries under
the age of 21 deployed outside of Germany should be relieved by the end
of September 1944. These approximately 8,000 girls were to work in
Germany instead (Seidler 1978, 163).
In order to equalize the position of the female auxiliaries in the various
branches of the armed forces and deploy them more efficiently for the
declared final battle, an “Order on the Implementation of Total War” of
November 1944 stipulated that a “Wehrmacht female auxiliary corps” was
to be formed by February 1945 (Gersdorff 1969, 471f; Fritz 2004). At the same
time, in order to solve the increasingly pressing problem of reserves, this
auxiliary corps was intensively promoted at home (Gersdorff 1969, 438f ).
The main argument was now no longer “honor,” but the necessity of defend-
ing the “homeland” in the final battle with the approaching enemy. An
“Appeal to German Women to Aid in Defense” published in December
1944 by NS Reich Women’s Leader Gertrud Scholz-Klink and the head of
the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel, BDM) Jutta Rüdiger
stated:
German women and girls! The foe’s hatred seeks to extinguish our German
people. You know that the enemy is not merely at the gates of the Reich,
but has already crossed our frontiers at several points. … The more tightly
we were encircled, the stronger grew the desire of many women and girls
to participate in actively defending our people. … Today, when every able-
bodied German man is at the disposal of his fatherland, we women and girls
want to do everything in our power to allow the soldiers of the home terri-
tory to devote themselves completely to service at the front. Thus in these
days we are combining the existing women’s deployments into a Wehrmacht
auxiliary corps, in which any German women over the age of 18 willing to
defend the country can perform any duty in place of a soldier, which will
be assigned to her in this corps according to her suitability.19
This form of propaganda did not meet with the hoped-for response, how-
ever. Public opinion was too strongly influenced by the dominant gender
19 Aufruf zur Wehrhilfe der deutschen Frauen (Appeal to German Women to Aid in
Defense), 4 December 1944. In Seidler 1978, 70.
504 Karen Hagemann
images that had also long been propagated by the Nazi leadership, accord-
ing to which the “willingness to defend” the nation was connoted with
masculinity. Men must be willing to fight and protect the “homeland” by
defending the Reich, while women’s wartime duty was to maintain the
home front as civilians. The criticisms at home of women’s military de
ployment also appear to have increased. At least that is the impression
from diary entries such as the following one from the last year of the
war:
The most recent enlistment of women into the Wehrmacht is actually frowned
upon everywhere, not just at our factory, but wherever I hear people talking,
whether men or women, old or young, rich or poor. They will not be able
to gather a large troop by voluntary means, but we hear that the word vol-
untary counts only on paper, and companies are being combed systemati-
cally. And I believe it. (Puttkamer 1948, 330)
A consequence of the growing resentment against the “final muster” for
the Wehrmacht’s “final battle” was that the pace of enlistment into the
“Wehrmacht auxiliary corps” was extremely slow. These resentments were
doubtless heightened by the grim news reaching Germany of the growing
retreat of their armed forces before the advancing Allies. More and more
people were hearing how dangerous the military deployment of women
was becoming under the conditions of retreat. The retreat before the invad-
ing Allied troops in the South of France in August and September 1944,
during which hundreds of Wehrmacht auxiliaries were overrun by the
Allied advance, made this all too evident. An unknown number of women
went missing at that time (Seidler 1978, 163; Schmidt 1999).
The introduction of a “Wehrmacht auxiliary corps” did nothing to
change the fact that the female auxiliaries—although they performed
military duties and replaced a large number of soldiers—were still classi-
fied as mere “helpers” until the end of the war. This classification was
intended to signal their secondary rank in the hierarchy of the armed forces.
The National Socialist worldview could accept them only as auxiliaries, not
as soldiers. As such, they did not fundamentally challenge the gender hier-
archy. To maintain some semblance of gender order despite the perils of
the national crisis of wartime, the military leadership was anxious to ensure
that women did not operate weapons—at least not officially. In the rheto-
ric of the “Third Reich,” armed combat was the manliest realm, the very
core of military masculinity. A secret communiqué of September 1944 from
the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht accordingly stated that:
The dominant principle of any deployment of women, particularly a joint
deployment [with male soldiers], must be that “the female soldier” is incom-
patible with our National Socialist view of womanhood. As a matter of prin-
ciple, women do not participate in armed combat, even when threatened
with being taken prisoner. When deciding on their deployment and organiz-
ing their extraordinary living conditions, concern for the health of German
women and girls and thus of the future mothers of our people must be the
foremost consideration.20
This rhetorical position was maintained even in the last months of the war,
in the face of the Wehrmacht’s continuing and at times highly dramatic
retreat. In practice, however, women appear to have trained with weapons
more frequently the longer the war went on. Various autobiographical
accounts attest to this (Spieckermans 1984, 32; Rüdiger 1987, 27; Killius 2003,
104). In February 1945, in a radio broadcast on the “Deployment of Female
Auxiliaries,” the Wehrmacht Supreme Command was forced to concede
“the massive deployment of female specialists and key individuals in the
Wehrmacht … makes it impossible to remove them completely when
battle is imminent.” Female auxiliaries were to be issued with “hand guns”
for their own protection only in special cases, however. Under no circum-
stances were women and girls to be enlisted “to operate firearms in combat
with the enemy.” The “foremost principle” for soldiers and officers must
remain the “protection of German woman,” for which reason they were
repeatedly enjoined to take timely measures to repatriate all those women
who were not “absolutely necessary to maintain readiness for battle” when
“fighting was imminent” (Gersdorff 1969, 504).
Since in the final phase of the war many officers and soldiers appear to
have been concerned only for their own safety, the repatriation of these
female auxiliaries frequently posed serious difficulties (Gersdorff 1969,
89–96). The repeated repatriation orders for female auxiliaries were seldom
executed according to plan. There are no reliable statistics on the number
of female Wehrmacht auxiliaries who were captured or went missing. All
we know is that in the period between March 1945 and June 1946, a total
of some 8,700 German women prisoners were registered in western Allied
prisoner of war camps or military hospitals outside the territory of the
former German Reich (Seidler 1978, 169–72). The number of Wehrmacht
auxiliaries estimated to have been taken prisoner by the Soviet Army is
25,000, of whom reportedly not more than 5,700 survived (Böhme 1964,
20 Geheimes Schreiben des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (Secret communique

from the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht), 5 September 1944. In Gersdorff 1969,
441–42.
506 Karen Hagemann
344; Kilius 2003, 19). We know as little of their subsequent fate as we do of
the large number of female auxiliaries officially discharged from the
Wehrmacht on 7 May 1945 (Seidler 1978, 164–65).
“Total War”, Postwar, and Gender Order
Only an analysis of the gender order of the military and civilian society in
the age of world wars and its contrast with everyday life in wartime shows
the ambivalences, tensions, ruptures, and contradictions between norma-
tive images and the practical constraints of war. According to the image
propagated during the First and Second World Wars and National Socialism,
men go to war as “defenders of the fatherland,” preserving and protecting
the “homeland” embodied by women. In this image women, for their part,
support the war not just mentally but also practically through their willing-
ness to serve and sacrifice. In First and Second World War Germany, this
model of a wartime gender order appears to have functioned above all to
mobilize men for war. Particularly under the conditions of “total war” dur-
ing the Second World War, however, it seems to have been ever less effec-
tive for the mobilization of women, since growing numbers of them had
to assume new roles in the wartime economy, relief, and nursing, but above
all in the armed forces, that flew in the face of the traditional gender order.
Their scope of action expanded constantly during the war. This develop-
ment was legitimized in propaganda mainly with the rhetoric of the “excep-
tional situation” of wartime, the “societal state of emergency.”
Because of these tensions between images, rhetoric, and practices, which
de facto massively challenged the gender order, after the First World War,
and above all in the West after the Second World War, the respective
political elites of the societies marked by the consequences of war (Kriegs
folgengesellschaften) (Naumann 2001, 9) did everything to counter the
wartime expansion of women’s scope of action by intensely propagating
a gender order based on the model of the “breadwinner-housewife family.”
Practical policy, too, aimed to stabilize this model and establish it more
universally. An example of this is the demobilization policy of the early
Weimar Republic. Its primary objective was to stabilize the social and
political order by reintegrating former soldiers into the workplace. This
could only be achieved by dismissing women in those areas of the economy
in which they had taken jobs during the war previously reserved for men
(Hagemann 1990, 430–45; Rouette 1993). Another instance is social and
family policy in West Germany after 1945, which aimed to restabilize the
family and re-Christianize society (Moeller 1993). Published discourse glo-
rified the family as a basis of social reconstruction “unsullied” by National
Socialism and a haven of continuity and stability. Marriage and the family
were thus turned into “arenas for coming to terms with the war privately”
(Naumann 2001, 25).
There is much indication that in German history, both postwar societ-
ies—post-1918 and post-1945—were phases of historical development in
which the “re-gendering” of the social order proceeded with great intensity
(Eifler 1999, 157). A gender order “disordered” during both world wars by
the particular demands of a “total” wartime society was reestablished after-
wards with particular vehemence (albeit at different levels, adapted to the
altered conditions of the times), since it was accorded central significance
for stabilizing the entire postwar social order. After all, the gender order is
a fundamental social structure that runs through all areas of the economy,
society, the military, and politics, linking the individual with the collective
and the “private” with the “military” and the “political” (Higonnet and
Higonnet 1987, 39).
Particularly after the Second World War, the lasting suppression and
concealment of women’s mass military deployment was also a central
component of this restoration of the gender order. Without it, the “victim-
ization discourse” that dominated in the West after 1945, splitting off and
delegating personal responsibility and guilt and stylizing “the German
people” as a whole, or at least individual population groups, as proxy vic-
tims, could not have established itself so easily (Moeller 2001). Had their
military role been acknowledged, women could not simply have been
stamped as an “uninvolved” and thus “innocent” victim group who suffered
under constant Allied bombardment and secured the survival of their
families during and after the war despite deprivation and destruction. After
1945, the image of female army auxiliaries who either contributed to orga-
nizing the atrocities of the SS and the Wehrmacht or at least witnessed and
tacitly condoned them would have competed with the image of the masses
of German women raped by Soviet soldiers (Grossmann 1997).
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512 Karen Hagemann
“Not Even For Three Lines in History” 513
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Not Even For Three Lines in History”:

Jewish Women Underground Members and Partisans
during the Holocaust
Yehudit Kol-Inbar
Almost six million Jews, half of them women and girls, were murdered in
the Holocaust. Some of those who died, like some who survived, took part
in one or another resistance movement. Contemporary opinion on the
subject of resistance to the German Nazis during World War II defines
resistance as any type of action opposing dehumanization, a process whose
extreme outcome entailed murder, experienced especially by the Jews
during the Holocaust (Baumel 2006, 5; Ofer 2006, 27). For decades, the
organized armed resistance of groups of Jews against the German Nazis
was perceived as the epitome of this phenomenon (Rozet 1990, 392).
However, armed resistance was a relatively marginal phenomenon, despite
its position in the research discourse and its continued significance for the
collective memory of Jews in general, and of Israelis in particular. To this
very day, debates lose not their fervor over the subject, raising issues such
as the disregard of the revisionist Beitar’s (i.e., the Jewish Military
Organization or Irgun Zvai Yehudi: ZZW) participation in the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising (see, for example, Libyonka and Weinerbaum 2007, Hasson
2010, Friedländer 2009, 495).
For the Jews, the value of resistance resided in the act itself, it being clear
from the start that any attempt to oppose the German Nazis would end in
devastating defeat (Karkowski 1990, 392; Bauer 2007). Considering that
almost all the violence directed against the German Nazis and their col-
laborators was futile, and the fate of the war against the German Nazis was
determined in the large-scale battlefields, examples of such behavior signi-
fied a conscious choice to embrace heroic death. Active resistance, there-
fore, represented the understanding that although the Jews were doomed
to die, they would do so proudly, with self-respect as well as vengeance
marking their behavior. These acts were meant to be integrated into a
legacy to be handed down so that future generations would know that Jews
514 Yehudit Kol-Inbar
had fought the German Nazis with guns, all in honor of their people
(Gutman 1995). In such circumstances, only rarely was the fighting aimed
at the rescue of individuals.
The initiation and leadership of armed resistance against the German
Nazis were usually male endeavors. Prior to the Holocaust, Jewish women
had been excluded from positions of leadership and power within Jewish
communal life, especially in Orthodox communities. Almost the same was
true among liberal and socialist organizations such as the Bund and the
Zionist youth movements. In Eastern Europe, not a single woman stood at
the head of any of these movements (Bauer 1998, 254). The situation dif-
fered somewhat in Western Europe. For example, before the Holocaust,
my mother, Keta Muskat (Kol), chaired the Brussels branch of the Hanoar
Hatzioni youth movement, yet the hierarchy was clear. My father, Moshe
Kolodny (Kol) was the head of that movement across Europe and Palestine.
Although the Eastern European pattern was revised as the Holocaust con-
tinued, most meaningfully in terms of gendered roles, yet few leadership
tasks that touched upon community defense or armed resistance would
ever become available to women.
So long as women saw themselves only through the prism of the family,
there was no possibility for their active involvement in other frameworks.
This was quite noticeable immediately after the Germans began their occu-
pation of neighboring countries but before establishment of the ghettos.
[Perhaps ironically, opportunities for active resistance were significantly
more numerous than in comparison to later stages of the war, when ghet-
tos had become regular features of Jewish urban existence.] The only
women who could allow themselves the privilege of fighting—either in
direct combat or by joining the underground—were young in years, rela-
tively mature, still unmarried. Most importantly, these women had not yet
become mothers. Most of them were formerly active in youth movements,
organizations that had transformed their missions from the creation of
social solidarity of one political color or another to resistance (Gutterman
2011, 16). The only other avenue for active defiance available to young
women outside the ghettos and cities was to join the partisans. Relatively
few women joined them in comparison to the number of men; their status
reflected their number and position. The majority of women in fact joined
the partisans in order to survive, not to fight.
In many Western and central countries (as well as in a few Eastern ones),
Jews participated in rescue activities on a major scale (along with armed
resistance undergrounds). Rescue-oriented underground units were either
Jewish in their entirety or had accepted Jews into their midst; In many of
them Jewish women played central roles. These underground units man-
aged to rescue more than 20,000 children living in these countries. The last
major venues in which women could oppose the German Nazis were the
forced labor and death camps. There, women tended to practice resistance
by sabotaging the armaments they were occupied in manufacturing. Few
joined the undergrounds active in the camps.
My objective in this chapter is, therefore, to draw as comprehensive a
portrait as possible of the involvement of Jewish women who actively
opposed the German Nazis during the Holocaust. Among the 1.5 million
Jews fighting Germany within the framework of various regular armies,
many were Jewish women. Some had escaped from areas subjected to the
German Nazi occupation. A majority of these women joined the Red Army,
which treated them as regular soldiers, as it did with other women in the
army; they fought as pilots, machine gunners, lookouts, artillery crew mem-
bers, and many other combat ratings. The activities of these women deserve
separate study. In this chapter, however, I limit myself to a survey of the
Jewish women who took part in active resistance on German Nazi-occupied
soil. I examine the subject from the perspective of gender research while
focusing on the relationships between men and women constructed within
their separate contexts. In addition, I delineate the factors that differenti-
ated the patterns of resistance adopted by women in Eastern as distinct
from Central and Western Europe.
Eastern Europe’s Ghetto Undergrounds
The earliest resistance organizations were established during the initial

stages of ghettoization in late 1940 but mainly during 1941, when pioneer
youth movements began to shift some of their aims to collecting money
and obtaining weapons. They also distributed underground newspapers,
established connections, exchanged information with other ghettos, and
formulated programs for resistance both within and outside the ghettos.
The German Nazis inaugurated massive implementation of “the final solu-
tion” toward the end of 1941 and into 1942; mass killings at the edge of pits
and deportations to the death camps concluded in destruction of the ghet-
tos. As youth movement participants grew to comprehend the German
Nazi intent to totally destroy the Jewish people, they transformed them-
selves into standard-bearers for continued active resistance.
In ghettos throughout Poland, Lithuania, Belarus (Belorussia, White
Russia), and the Ukraine, resistance movements drew primarily members
of the Zionist youth movements, but also individual groups of communists,
bundists, and others. These organizations had one shared purpose: armed
struggle, either revolt within the ghetto or escape from the ghetto to join
partisan bands (Krakowski 1990, 939). Women and young women were
meaningful participants in these movements in terms both of numbers
and responsibilities; though they often fulfilled important roles, women
rarely entered the upper leadership ranks. We have no accurate figures
about the number of women participating, although Rachel Auerbach, in
her poem “And these were their names,” written in commemoration of
youth movement fighters in the ghettos, cited numerous women in addi-
tion to men (Fredeka 1953, 72–74).
One of the most salient and fascinating characteristics of the youth
movements during the Holocaust was the duality of their vision: On the
one hand, we find a sustained naivety despite the pure evil they experi-
enced—the murders of their families and friends, humiliation, betrayal,
and torture; on the other, we find thoughtfulness and perspicacity, revealed
in their perception of the hopelessness and imminent total destruction of
the Jewish people. Evidence for this duality is found, for example, in the
debates conducted among youth movement members while being
transported to the death camps: Who would jump first, the girls—because
girls need help—or the boys—as demanded by the girls so that they could
return to the ghetto and continue the battle (Tenenbaum 1954, 384). Similar
debates erupted despite the scanty chances to survive which depended
on being able to tear a board from the cattle-car floor (Nalkowska 1954,
507).This duality erected a barrier between the movements and the
majority of Jews who, unable to perceive the reality despite the disastrous
events, wanted only to survive without further aggravating the situa-
tion (Friedländer 2009, 503). Raisel (Ruzka) Korczak of the Vilna
Ghetto described the astounding gap in attitudes (or perhaps, more cor-
rectly, in aspirations): “the ghetto became agitated, it detested us. … The
ghetto suddenly saw us as enemies, traitors, provocateurs!” (Korczak 1954,
425).
Couriers
Historian Emanuel Ringelblum (1993, 384), founder of the Oneg Shabbat

Archive in the Warsaw Ghetto, made the following entry in his diary on 19
May 1942:
The underground couriers—these heroic girls, Chaika, Frumka and oth-
ers—travel back and forth to cities and towns in Poland, equipped with
Aryan certificates as Poles or Ukrainians. … [T]hese Jewish girls are writing
a glorious page in the history of the Jews during this world war.
Ringelblum was referring here to one of the most important tasks that
women performed in the Eastern European resistance as well as in the
underground, couriers delivering information and other items to the resis-
tance groups established in the ghettos. Despite the enormous danger, this
remained an essentially female task: about a hundred women, 20 years old
on average, comprised 60 to 70 percent of all couriers (Shchori 2007).
Two of those couriers were Ewa (Hava) Fulman and Frumka Plotnicka.
Ewa Fulman was a youth movement activist in Warsaw. After becoming a
courier for Eyal, (or Irgun Yehudi Halochem, the Jewish Fighting Organi
zation) and Dror HeHalutz (or Freiheit, Freedom) movements, she was
dispatched to Krakow. Following the attack on Krakow’s Tzigainer café in
December 1942, she was caught by the Gestapo; considered a non-Jewish
Pole, she was sent to Auschwitz but survived (Gutman 1990, 741). In her
diary, Fulman writes about her discovery that the Jews were definitely being
sent to extermination camps, about her fear, and about the awesome risks
that she and Plotnicka took in order to deliver the awful news to the ghetto.
There, her report was received with incredulity:
It was early spring 1942. … Frumka Plotnicka and I left the ghetto. In those
days it was still possible to do so. We sat down in the train. … [W]e were
approaching the Harroubeshov station when we looked out the window:
There was unusual traffic. Masses of people were gathered beside the plat-
form. … [I]t all immediately became clear: These were Jews. Men and women,
old people and babies crammed next to parcels, bedding and bundles.
We heard screaming and crying and, more than anything, the Germans’
shouts. … I looked at Frumka’s face. She was ghastly pale. We understood
everything without making a sound. Next to the platform were freight cars.
This was a “special” train. It was going Belzec [one of the six death camps;
the others five were Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-
Birkenau]. The last of the Jews entered the cars. German boots where shov-
ing them. … [T]his was the first definite information [about the transfers]
that we brought to Warsaw. They didn’t believe us. (Fulman 1990, 40–43)
Frumka Plotnicka had been sent to Bialystok in northeast Poland by the
Dror. Her mission was twofold: to obtain some impression as to whether
the movement should begin taking people out of the Vilna Ghetto, and
whether a resistance unit could be established in the city. She was later
sent to the Bedzin shtetl, where she helped lead the ghetto’s rebellion. In
a letter to Palestine dated 17 June 1943, Plotnicka (1954, 358–59) summa-
rized the destruction of Polish Jewry, including a detailed list of the major
extermination sites. She notes that “all the places I have written about, I
visited myself; I witnessed the entire extermination process. … When you
get our letter, no one will be left among the living”. Plotnicka was later
murdered in a laundry basement in Bedzin while still clutching her rifle
(Leeware 1954, 358).
Ghetto Resistance Groups
We often wonder about the types of people who took part in the resistance
movement in the ghettos. They were, in fact, young people who felt that
they were watching a world coming to its end, where everything familiar—
social frameworks, attitudes, and codes—was collapsing. Resistance groups
often served as surrogate for the security, permanence, and human warmth
of the young whose families were murdered. We must still ask what moti-
vated these youngsters, often teenagers, to take an active part in resistance
even though it was painfully clear that their heroic efforts were doomed
to failure. Was it love, ideology, group solidarity, youth, a thirst for revenge,
or an aversion to compromise? We can assume that all these factors were
present in various combinations.
Krakow. In March 1941, the Krakow Ghetto was established; in 1942, the
first deportations to the Belzec death camp began. Two youth movements
active in the ghetto, Akiva and Hashomer Hatzair, began to plan active
resistance against the German Nazis in mid-1942 (Bauminger 1967, 10).
Initial small-scale successes motivated them to attempt a larger-scale
operation, especially after the second German Nazi aktion in the ghetto in
October 1942: “About 40 people, men and women, went to their fates in
Krakow’s streets that night of 22 December 1942. None of us remained in
the ghetto” (Shlomo Schein, quoted in Bauminger 1967, 59). The first of the
group’s members to leave the meeting place were the young women, car-
rying anti-Nazi posters, which they distributed throughout the city; next
came the young men, carrying flags. At 7 pm, they attacked three coffee-
houses. Their greatest success occurred at the Café Tzigainer, where seven
Germans were killed and many others injured. This operation was the apex
of organized Jewish activity in Krakow but it ended the string of their suc-
cesses. In consequent operations, the majority of the movements’ members
were either jailed or killed.
Two of the members of the Krakow resistance were Gusta (Justina)
Dawidson-Draenger (b. 1917) and her husband Shimshon Draenger. A
recently-married couple, they made a pact: if one should be captured, the
other would surrender him/herself to the German Nazis. Shimshon was
arrested by the Gestapo in January 1943; a few days later, Gusta fulfilled the
terms of their pact. The German Nazis subjected her to severe torture
before transferring her to Cell 15 in the Montelupich Prison in Krakow.
While incarcerated, Gusta wrote a diary on toilet paper, describing activi-
ties of the Krakow underground from April 1941 until March 1943. Gusta
was held in Cell 15 from early February until 15 April 1943. All the jailed
women—even Poles—contributed their toilet paper so that she could
complete her work. In her diary, Gusta refers to herself as “Justina” and
Shimshon as “Mark.” The majority of original chapters have survived
(Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum Archives, file no. 2724). On 29 April 1943,
Gusta and Shimshon escaped and together joined the partisans in the
forests. After being recaptured, they managed to flee once more. On 8
November 1943, Shimshon was eventually caught and told the Gestapo
where Gusta could be found and he gave them a letter addressed to her
(Blumental 1953, 165–66). The German Nazis would later murder the
27-year-old lovers.
Gusta Dawidson-Draenger’s diary, written as if detailing another wom-
an’s life, refers to some meaningful gender-related differences that influ-
enced participation in the youth movements and the resistance. For
instance, she (Dawidson-Draenger 1953, 11) writes that responsibility for
the family’s welfare remained on women’s shoulders:
Is not accidental that the responsibility for the entire family’s well-being …
fell on Justina’s shoulders. … [S]he was forced to rely only on her own
strengths, quickness and enterprise. … Mark’s private life had ended. … [W]
hen she saw the contours of his face, as if chiseled from bronze, and the
glances darting from his steely blue eyes, she clearly felt that he again was
no longer aware of her.
Elsewhere Dawidson-Draenger (1953, 41) writes that the male fighters
resembled a type of child-adolescent who enjoyed playing with guns: “Mark
dismantled the pistol. … [I]t’s impossible to know who is happier inside—
the man who has obtained an instrument of war, or the child playing with
a beloved toy.” In a subsequent segment, Gusta recalls that even if women
were seemingly accepted as equals, they remained outside the select circle
when crucial decisions were to be made. At the section’s conclusion, Gusta
(1953, 53) quite openly suggests that the men clearly preferred suicidal
operations, options quite contrary to what the women would have chosen:
They closeted themselves in Ewa’s little room. … [T]hey spoke in whispers.
How she yearned to be among them, there, inside! … now that the fate of
their people was in the balance. The right thing was for her as well to be
sitting among those four. But perhaps not her; maybe Anna, Mira, Ewa—any
other girl. … There, inside, when the time comes for consulting together,
only the boys participate. But the men have no way to back out. Every retreat
[from violent acts] represents defeat in their eyes.
Although the diary was written by Gusta, every woman in her cell lent a
hand. Genia Meltzer wrote about the women’s motivations: “In your diary,
Gusta, we wished … to be memorialized” (Zuckerman and Bassok 1954,
311). We can therefore assume that they all thought alike on these issues.
Gusta’s cellmates in the Montelupich Prison were friends from the Akiva
and Hashomer Hatzair as well as the PPR (Polska Partia Robotnicza, Polish
Workers Party). The majority had been caught doing the December 1942
operation. On 13 March 1943, members of the Bochnia Arayot (the Bochnia
Lions) resistance group joined them. A good number of her new cellmates
had acted as couriers before being captured. Life in the cell is described by
Bauminger (1967, 78) as well as Dawidson-Draenger (1953). Other inmates
who survived, like Pessia Warshawski (Moreshet Archive, file no. A313) and
Elza Lappa (Moreshet Archive, file no. A472) also provided testimonies.
Despite Gusta’s comments, quoted above, it was decided to save human
lives during this critical debate (Dawidson-Draenger 1953, 41). Still, Aharon
(Dolek) Liebeskind, the group’s commander, constantly repeated the idea
of an honorable death rather than any attempt at rescuing ghetto occu-
pants, based on his assessment of the Jews’ desperate plight and his desire
not to be the last one left alive. His motto was “to fight for three lines in
history”: that is, to fight in the name of heroism even at the price of death
(Wolf-Klein 1954, 310; Blumental 1953, 131). For another example of the
contradiction between the women’s stress on survival and the men’s choice
of an honorable death, see the protocol of the general assembly of Kibbutz
Tel-Hai and Dror activists in Bialystok, 27 February 1943 (Zuckerman and
Bassok 1954, 391).
In late March of that same year, Gola Mira arrived at the Montelupich
prison. Before the war, Mira had been a member of the Polish Communist
Party’s Central Committee, head of the Workers Committee in the Kontact
electrical products factory in Lvov, and the Communists’ representative
on the Lvov Municipal Council. Because of her party involvement, she was
arrested and sentenced to 12 years in prison, from which she managed to
escape. Mira had given birth to a child while in hiding, following her hus-
band’s death. Although she managed to reach the Krakow ghetto, the baby
died. While in the ghetto, she gradually approached the Eyal leadership as
well as established contacts with the Polish PPR, a connection that facili-
tated cooperation among the different resistance groups for a period of
time. Mira was also captured after the December 1942 operation; she was
held for 14 days in a dark, dank cellar, suffered torture (her hair was pulled
out and her fingers smashed) and was temporarily blinded. Her transfer to
Cell 15 initiated
[a] period of spiritual elevation like that experienced by those sentenced
to death; and so, any differences in perspective that might have been found
between us prior to the arrests were put aside. Sisterhood and mutual assis-
tance among fighters united the resistance members. (Bauminger 1967, 79)
While in prison, Mira also wrote poems, the most famous being “Europe’s
bloodletting” and “Beside my child’s crib” (Zuckerman and Bassok 1954).
On 19 March 1943, 20 of the prisoners who had been sentenced to death
were taken from Cell 15. One of them was 16-year-old Tzesia Draenger,
Gusta’s sister-in-law, who shouted back: “Don’t be afraid; I won’t cry.” Thirty
Jewish women remained in the cell, Gusta and Mira among them. They
planned their escape: “We’ll organize something memorable for the end.
We will make their work difficult; we won’t dig our own graves nor stand
naked nor useless nor motionless. This will be different!” (Gusta to Genia
Meltzer; see Zuckerman and Bassok 1954, 323). On 29 March, while being
transferred to an extermination camp, a signal was given and all the prison-
ers began to run. Washka Julis and Gola Mira were shot in the street. Only
Genia Meltzer and Gusta Dawidson-Draenger survived, although Gusta
would be killed later (Peled 1993). After the war, Gola Mira received the
highest commendation for bravery awarded by the Polish government.
Warsaw. In April–May 1943, the largest armed uprising initiated by
European Jews erupted in the Warsaw Ghetto. Upon its establishment, the
ghetto’s occupants numbered more than 450,000. By the time the uprising
began, only about 55,000 to 60,000 Jews remained (Pagis 2008, 76), the
majority having been deported to the death camps, mainly Treblinka. The
uprising, organized by Eyal and led by Mordechai Anielewicz, involved the
majority of political parties and underground groups active in the ghetto.
Members of the right-wing Zionist youth movement Beitar—the Jewish
Military Organization (ZZW) —also participated but in autonomous fight-
ing units. Israel Gutman has estimated that Eyal’s fighters numbered not
more than 500, about a third of them women. All the district commanders,
however, were men (Gutman 1990, 746; Gutman 2008b). Their few weapons
were obtained through Eyal’s connections with the Polish resistance and
the manufacture of improvised Molotov cocktails. On 18 January 1943, with
renewal of the deportations to the East, the uprising erupted. The deporta-
tions stopped after reaching 5000 to 6000 ghetto inhabitants, for reasons
unrelated to the Jewish resistance (Pagis 2008, 78–79). But the assumed
association between the events led to greater cooperation between the
fighters and the ghetto’s residents, who saw in the uprising hope of rescue.
The fighters’ commanders did not share their optimism, even as they
encouraged the preparation of bunkers for lengthy stays (Gutman 1990,
746; Friedländer 2009, 495). Probably because of those early uprising events,
the German Nazis decided to destroy the ghetto (Friedländer 2009, 494).
On 19 April, heavy German Nazi forces entering the ghetto were met with
fierce opposition, forcing their retreat. Despite being vastly outgunned by
the German Nazi attackers, the ghetto fighters still resisted. On 8 May 1943,
after the German Nazis set the ghetto ablaze; the fighters’ headquarters fell
into German Nazi hands. The German Nazis reported in an inner meeting
that the fighting was tough, and mentioned especially that armed Jewish
women fought to the end (Friedländer 2009, 497). Two days later (10 May),
the few surviving fighters escaped to the Polish (Aryan) part of Warsaw
through the sewage canals under the ghetto. On 16 May 1943, the com-
mander of the German Nazi forces announced that the uprising had been
suppressed. The ghetto was razed, with 56,065 Jews caught or annihilated,
as recorded in a German Nazi battle diary’s final entry, April–May 1943
(Arad, Gutman, and Margaliot 1999, 312).
One of the best-known women who belonged to Eyal was Zyvia Lubetkin
(b. 1914). Initially a member of the Dror movement, Lubetkin later joined
the HeHalutz leadership. In early 1940, she returned to occupied Warsaw
from the Soviet-occupied areas of Poland where she became, in 1942, one
of the founders of the Anti-Fascist Bloc, the first organized body in the
Warsaw Ghetto to advocate armed resistance to Nazi Germany. In July
1942, as a founder of Eyal, she played an important role in shaping its image
and agenda. She took an active part in the organization’s first resistance
action in January 1943, as well as in the uprising that erupted on 19 April
1943. Lubetkin remained with the movement’s leaders in their hideout
located at 18 Mila Street almost to the moment when it was demolished
on 8 May. She escaped through the sewage tunnels on 10 May to remain
active in the underground throughout the war. Working from a hideout
located in Warsaw’s Polish sector, she was one of the thousand Jews who
took part in the Polish Warsaw uprising in August–October 1944 (Berman
2008, 98, 199).
One of the core themes resonating throughout Lubetkin’s (1954, 185–201)
description of life in the Warsaw Ghetto was her concern for its inhabitants.
Toward the end of her testimony, this concern wanes, with the fate of the
Jews becoming blurred. Lubetkin’s (1954, 185–201) description of the fight-
ing, the deaths, and her escape from the Ghetto grows correspondingly
stronger:
The Ghetto burned. … [T]he fire consumed house after house. … We were
hundreds of fighters, our commanders were with us. We were surrounded
by thousands of Jews. … All our plans were destroyed. We dreamed about
fighting face-to-face, a final battle, knowing we would be overtaken by the
enemy, but the enemy would pay in blood for our losses. … We approached
Mila 18. … We were surrounded by remnants of people who told us how the
heavy equipment had [demolished] the Jewish fighter’s shelter at Mila 18.
… That was how the splendor of Warsaw’s Jewish fighting heroism was
destroyed, while struggling. One hundred Jewish fighters found their death
there, among them was the adored Mordechai Anielewicz, our courageous
leader, so handsome; even in those hours when the horror was hovering
around us, a touch of mirth played on his lips. At night sleeping around a
bonfire that blazed within a burrowed-out hole, we felt like the scraps of a
bereaved, annihilated people.
Lubetkin owes part of her legendary status in Israel to the detailed descrip-
tion, given during her June 1946 lecture about the uprising and the opera-
tions in which she had participated, delivered at the Kibbutz Hameuchad
Convention, at Kibbutz Yagur. As one of the first survivors to reach Palestine
after the war, her stress on heroism, which contradicted the accepted image
of European Jews during the Holocaust—“sheep led to the slaughter”—fell
on willing ears. As Baumel (1996, 189–201) writes, Palestine’s Jews during
this period were only able to cope with the trauma of the Holocaust through
the prism of heroism. The kibbutz movements’ leadership in Israel stressed
Jewish heroism as opposed to passivity (Gutterman 2008). Lubetkin’s
descriptions were adapted to fit this stance, which equated the Warsaw
uprising with the Jews’ rebellion against the British during the Mandate in
Palestine. The “heroism-victimization” dichotomy became integral to the
glorification of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as well as the Masada revolt
against the Romans in 73 ad (in that incident, 960 men, women and chil-
dren, led by Elazar Ben Yair, committed collective suicide), two historical
events that began to dominate the public discourse.
Another leading member of Eyal, Masha Futermilch (b. 1924), whose
entire family had been murdered, joined the movement in early 1943. She
was originally a member of the socialist anti-Zionist Bund movement.
During the April 1943 uprising, Futermilch fought along Zamenhofa, Mila,
and Bertchinskanska Streets. As the fighting continued, she hid in the
bunker at 18 Mila Street and was among the few fighters that successfully
escaped through the sewage canals. While Lubetkin describes Mordechai
Anielewicz with total admiration and relates even to his physical appear-
ance, until her last day, Futermilch felt extreme anger at the uprising’s
commander, Anielewicz, in great part due to the following incident:
A close friend …, Meilech Perlman, who fought together with me in our
unit, was immediately shot in the stomach by the Germans. After realizing
the extremity of his situation, I turned to Mordechai [Anielewicz] and asked
that he allow me to place him [Meilech] in the bunker at 18 Mila, but Mor-
dechai refused. Meilech heard the argument and asked that we leave him
a pistol so that he could shoot himself the moment that he was discovered
by the Germans but Mordechai again refused. He said that every firearm
was important. I pulled Meilech into one of the abandoned buildings. That
night, the Germans burned the building. I can still hear Meilech’s screams
and won’t forget them until I die. He was burned alive. (Zaretsky 2007)
While remembering that Anielewicz was only 23 at the time of his death
(Gutman 1990a, 116), we can also gain some insight into his tough and
somewhat arrogant behavior from the way he treated Israel Gutman, who
was wounded at the time of the uprising (Pagis 2008, 77, 92), and from a
conversation, held in 1958 between Israel Gutman and Irena Admovicz,
who had met with Anielewicz on the eve of his return to Warsaw. Admovicz:
“He had greatly matured in the meantime, become tougher, another per-
son—strong and perhaps rigid. If I had to define him in one word, I would
say—vengeful” (Devir 2003, 13).
Women among the Partisans
During the early stages of the war, when it was still possible to escape to
the forests or to the east, it was mainly the men who did so, based on the
gender-biased assumption that the German Nazis would not harm women,
the old, or children. The ghetto undergrounds, which directed people to
the woods, also believed that women were incapable of tolerating such
difficult physical conditions. This attitude further reduced women’s
chances to be saved (Tec 2003, 256). Escape grew more difficult after the
ghettos were sealed. For those who did manage to leave, a hostile environ-
ment awaited them, infused by the threat of being turned over to the
German Nazis or murdered even before they reached the forests. Physical
conditions, such as the lack of convenient hiding places in cities, often
interfered with their escape. In the Baltic states as well as the districts
around Vilna, in Belarus, and the eastern Ukraine, however, Jewish partisan
groups, totaling between 20,000 and 30,000 fighters, were formed, some of
which included women (Gutman 1990, 993).
Early in the war, Eastern Europe’s partisans were occupied more with
survival, retaliation, and sabotage along the enemy’s rear than with offen-
sive operations. Despite these objectives, they refused to accept anyone
into their ranks who did not arrive armed or was unable to fight. Others,
including women, were considered burdens. Without a male fighter to
protect them, usually in exchange for sexual favors, there were indeed few
options open to women wanting to join the partisans. Many of the women
who sought to join, did so primarily for reasons of survival. Even as the war
progressed, women continued to be assigned traditional female tasks in
the rear—caring for others, preparing food, nursing the sick and wounded,
cleaning, and providing some culture. A rumor spreading among Russian
partisan units stated that Jewish women had been sent to the forests in
order to poison them with their cooking (Tec 2003, 325–30). Alternatively,
Jewish women’s excellent culinary skills put them in demand in the camps
(Kahanowicz 1954, 325). In regimental, brigade, and unit headquarters,
women worked as clerks, stenographers, and translators; some also kept
guard. Only a few women participated in direct fighting; their main assign-
ments were capturing supplies, sabotage (mainly of trains), or dealing
harshly with informers.
Moshe Kahanowicz (1954, 325), a partisan and one of the first to docu-
ment the subject, provides some details on what women fighters did:
They were among the first line of superior fighters. Jewish women can credit
themselves with a large number of blown-up trains and dead Germans.
Many were awarded the highest medals for bravery while writing a marvel-
ous chapter in the story of the Jews’ contributions to the Soviet partisans.
According to Kahanowicz (1954, 330–31), some women fought to avenge
the murder of their children, while others fought with their children
strapped to their backs. One particularly striking case of the latter was that
of Anda Luft who, together with her baby daughter Pantelleria, were killed
during a battle with the German Nazis. Not all the partisan women inter-
nalized the demands of active resistance, which included the drive to lead
in battle—command and leadership were, after all, male “virtues.” And so,
even if they were given an opportunity to lead, they often surrendered their
positions after a short trial period (Kempner-Kovner 2003).
Despite the fact that partisans were, in essence, antiauthoritarian, when
it came to women they adopted the most conservative model of traditional
society, and sometimes intensified it. Even women who fulfilled such vital
tasks as doctors, surgeons, and nurses could not avoid the humiliation of
being treated like sex objects or servants (Tec,1993). This attitude was
particularly startling given the fact that the partisans were strongly tied to
the Red Army and nourished (physically as well as spiritually) by the
Russians and communist ideology; the Red Army counted numerous
women, including Jewish women, as active soldiers in the field. Nehama
Tec (1993), herself a Holocaust survivor and author of many pioneering
studies on related subjects, including the partisans, explains this phenom-
enon by the fact that men were the leaders and dominant figures. Moreover,
the partisan units contained many men who were physically powerful but
of low social station; the behavior they exhibited was characterized by
extremely chauvinistic attitudes toward women. Finding themselves in the
forests where they believed that the weight of tradition and authority
(despite the rigid hierarchy and discipline) had been shed, they allowed
themselves the most callous expressions of aggression toward men whom
they considered weaker, but especially toward women.
Jewish women were members of Jewish as well as non-Jewish partisan
groups. Something can be learned about their position in the integrated
units from the following examples. Ida Pinkert, born in the Ukraine, was a
university-educated musician who worked as a teacher in a Kiev orphan-
age. Her husband, who had served in the Red Army, fell at the front. As the
German Nazi army approached Kiev, she fled to the forests concealing her
Jewish identity. Erroneously assuming, as others did, that women and
children would be exempt from German Nazi cruelty, she left her mother
and young son behind. She was later to learn of their murders at Babi Yar
(28 October 1941). In her testimony, Pinkert (1961, 194–206) spoke about
what women did among the partisans:
My most dangerous tasks were performed together with Slizhovskaya, who
had taught Russian in a Minsk school. Her real name was Nehama Kotliar,
and she was married to a Russian army officer fighting in the east. … We
tried to hide our Jewish origins not only from the Germans, but even from
our Russian friends with whom we fought shoulder-to-shoulder. … [O]ur
primary role was to locate escaped prisoners of war and transfer them to
the rear. There was enemy fire everywhere. The third young woman among
us was a member of the communications corps. We three women, all of us
Jewish, managed to locate about 50 prisoners.
Fanny Solomian (Solomian-Lutz 1971, 93) was a physical therapist working
in Warsaw hospitals when the Polish Ministry of Health sent her to Sweden
for advanced training; at the war’s outbreak, she returned to her home city
of Pinsk. She refused an invitation to join the Judenrat (Jewish Council),
preferring to act as a courier for the first partisan cells in the area. With the
destruction of the Pinsk Ghetto and the murder of all its residents by shoot-
ing at the murder-pits, she was among the handful who successfully
escaped to the forest, where she joined the partisans. At first, she served
as a nurse in a small unit, but was later promoted to the position of chief
physician of the partisan brigade, with a rank of captain. Solomian’s recol-
lections convey the numerous difficulties met in adapting to her new cir-
cumstances but more than anything else, they reveal her anger and disgust
from her dependence on men in addition to male attitudes toward women:
I didn’t then understand that a woman alone, even if she had a profession,
could not avoid facing these conditions, and that she was forced to find
someone to “protect” her [from] the worst or most abhorrent thing, just so
long as it was someone wearing pants. … I was unable to get used to the
idea that in order to obtain some relative peace during the day, I had to
agree to a “lack of peace” during the night. The confessions of the women
who requested that I end a pregnancy that had become a burden, deepened
my revulsion at the thought of any contact with men. I protested against
the immorality of men who were only interested in quenching their lust. …
[S]ometimes I was able to end a pregnancy by using quinine … [yet] my
efforts often ended with death on the operating table. (Solomian-Lutz 1971,
113–14)
Some partisan detachments, primarily in eastern Europe, comprised only
Jews. Among these groups, attitudes toward women were somewhat better,
with women allowed to join fighting units. Similar opportunities were
available to women in some of what were called “family camps.” Zhenia
Eichenbaum (b. 1925–1943; see Kahanowicz 1954, 327) was a member of
one such Jewish military unit. Her name became the subject of adulation
not only among the members of her regiment, the 51st Jewish Company of
the Schorr Partisan Battalion, but also among partisans in the Brisk (Brest-
Litovsk) region where she fought. Eichenbaum participated in numerous
battles; her mine-laying along railroad tracks is credited with the destruc-
tion of 13 trains transporting “live cargo” (probably German Nazi soldiers)
and munitions (Kahanowicz 1954, 327). She is best known for her participa-
tion in the December 1943 mining of the tracks next to the Budy forced
labor camp. In recognition of her bravery, she was given an automatic
weapon, a rare achievement for women among the partisans. Eichenbaum
fell during a confrontation with the German Nazi army as it retreated from
the Ukraine, only one day before the region’s liberation. The Soviet Union
posthumously awarded her the “Red Star” and the “Partisan of the Patriotic
War, 1st Class” medals.
Other women filled different tasks in the family camps constructed in
the forests (Arad 1990, 691). “Family camps” was the name given to those
groups of Jews—men, women, and children, as individuals and families—
who together found refuge in the forests while seeking some avenue of
escape. These camps were to be found in eastern Poland, western Belarus,
and western Ukraine. A few were also established in the proximity of Lublin
in eastern Poland. The size of the camps varied from a few families to
hundreds of people. In some places, a partisan unit might be incorporated
into a family camp. The most significant difference between a family camp
and a partisan unit was that the main purpose of the family camp was
survival, with fighting of secondary importance, while the function of the
partisan unit was battling the enemy. Estimates indicate that not more
than 10,000 Jews found refuge in these camps.
One prime example of a family camp was the Modrick camp. Zina
Modrick, born in 1921 in Ilyintsy, the Ukraine, was married to David
Modrick, a former army officer. In August 1943, after almost all Jews had
left their village, David organized a group of 19 people who fled to the
forests and established a Jewish partisan unit. The Modricks left their baby
with a Ukrainian woman to protect him. In a mutual decision made by the
couple, Zina accompanied David on all expeditions conducted to obtain
food and arms. After learning from Ukrainian villagers where Jews were
hiding, the couple would locate and then guide them to their camp in the
forest. Whenever Ukrainian partisans planned difficult battles, they called
upon members of the Jewish company for help (only to position them in
the front line of fire). At the end of 1943, when the surrounding villages had
been effectively emptied of Jews, the Modricks’ objectives became more
aggressive. By the time of the German Nazi retreat, the Modrick camp
numbered about 200 individuals. Zina and David were awarded the “Red
Star” for their activities (Yad Vashem, research associated with lighting of
the torches, Holocaust Memorial Day, 2001).
In the Balkan states—Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece—fighting parti-
san detachments usually accepted Jews as equals. Attitudes toward women
there were also more favorable, though still patronizing. It appears that in
the Balkans as well, women were less interested in active fighting than in
performing other duties. There and in Western Europe, many Jews joined
the partisans not simply as Jews attempting to survive, but as citizens
motivated by patriotism or adherence to a political ideology, as exemplified
by Dr. Roza Papo. Born in Sarajevo in 1913, she completed her medical
studies there as well. In 1941, she joined Yugoslavia’s People’s Liberation
Army and became part of the group organizing the recruitment system; as
an officer, she served directly under Tito, the Yugoslav partisans’ com-
mander. Papo assumed responsibility for the network of hospitals main-
tained by the partisans; as such, she was the first to formulate criteria for
the appointment of military physicians. She was also the first woman in
Yugoslavia to rise to the rank of general, referred to affectionately as “the
general with braids.” Papo was awarded six medals in recognition of her
contributions. She later described operations performed without anesthe-
sia, amputations in the most primitive of conditions, and the treatment of
injuries from dum-dum bullets after worms had invaded the wounds.
“Those were difficult times, dangerous, but they were also the most beau-
tiful; we all acted like human beings; fraternity and compassion were our
primary values” (Shelach 1988, 24; Papo n.d.).
During 1939–45, “Independent Slovakia” came under German patronage,
its government having allied itself with the German Nazis. During the
Slovak national uprising in August 1944, about 2,500 Jews joined the strug-
gle, including more than 1,500 partisans in addition to Jewish youth move-
ment members and ordinary individuals. Edith Ernst (b. 1920; Ernst-Drori
2003) had lived with her mother in Zvolen, Slovakia. Her sister and a
brother had succeeded in leaving for Palestine, but her mother and another
brother had been transported and murdered. When the transports to
Auschwitz began in 1942, Ernst decided to take on a more active role. She
made contact with the local fighting underground and was sent to a cave
in the mountains. The guide who brought her there raped her in payment
for his services, an event rarely mentioned, even in testimonies. After
becoming a member of a small unit of opponents to the regime who lived
in the mountains, Ernst was given the nickname “Katka.” She became
famous for her part in the sabotage of the electricity network, which closed
down one of the local munitions factories for a considerable time: “In a
flash, Katka became the Cinderella of the Sitno legend,” Sitno being the
hilly area in which the detachment operated. The organization’s under-
ground newspaper, The People’s Voice, helped celebrate her accomplish-
ments. During this period, Ernst was appointed to head a group of partisans
comprised of refugees from various locations, including Russian officers
who had escaped German Nazi captivity (Ernst-Drori 2003, 49, 71, 100).
With the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising, Ernst’s unit became
the “Sixth Partisan Unit,” numbering about 500 at its peak. For her achieve-
ments in logistics (provisions and material), Ernst, now a second lieutenant,
received a commendation for excellence on 7 November 1944. With the
uprising’s failure, the remnants of the fighters fled to the mountains. One
day, Ernst heard machine gun fire. From discussions with villagers she
learned that Haviva Reik, her sister’s best friend and fellow immigrant to
Palestine, had returned. Reik and four other Jews parachuted into Slovakia
to fight with the partisans, but they were soon captured and executed (Greif
1990, 1161). Ernst later described her feelings: “For what purpose did she
come here from her new-ancient sun-drenched land? She obviously came
to help the wretched remains of Slovakia’s Jews. What a strange, symbolic
mission” (Ernst-Drori 2003, 253).
With the German Nazi conquest of Greece in April 1941, Salonica-born
Dora Hendelis (b. 1926) was sent to live with relatives in the town of
Naoussa, where she made contact with the partisans. In her testimony,
Hendelis tells about life among the partisans and about their fears:
There were only 9 people in the group. … [O]ne had a weapon, a gun, another
had a rifle, and the third a rifle that supposedly didn’t work.… [W]e wandered
about constantly. … [D]iscipline was very strict. … [S]ometimes we would
ambush Germans. … I was present but didn’t participate because I only had
a handgun. Each one of us had a nickname. … [M]ine was “Tarzan”; I was
like a wild man, with long hair, torn trousers … with some type of shoes
made from pigskin, that looked like canoes. … [T]he most important thing
was not to let them know that I was Jewish. … [T]hey either didn’t know or
didn’t ask. … I knew a few Latin letters, so I knew how to differentiate
between medicines, although I knew nothing about medicine or dressing
wounds. But they made me a sort of paramedic, then promoted me to “nurse”
to assist the doctor. … Our fears were greatest at night. … I volunteered to
keep watch and not to sleep. … The truth was that if the partisans had
something, if someone managed to get hold of some candy, a piece of cake,
fresh slice of cake—they always—really and truly—always remembered to
bring me some. (Hendelis, 1995)
Women in the Rescue Underground
The main function of many western European underground organizations,

whether partly or wholly Jewish (Michman 1990, 349), was rescue. Under
grounds in Holland, France, and Belgium concentrated their resources on
the often perilous rescue of children. Not only were women, including
Jewish women, found in strategic positions, but many rescue operations
were initiated by women acting autonomously. Rescue-oriented under-
ground organizations also existed in Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary, though
not so many. In Poland, the Zegota underground was the most prominent.
Members of Polish and Jewish political movements formed Zegota, the
Council for Aid to Jews, in December 1942, after Nazi Germany began its
campaign of deportation and murder. Zegota members contacted Jews
who had succeeded in escaping from the deteriorating ghettos and pro-
vided them with forged papers, hiding places, food, and money. Special
efforts were invested in rescuing Jewish children, who were placed in mon-
asteries and with adoptive families. At the risk of their own lives—the
penalty for hiding Jews in Poland was death—Zegota members were able
to bring almost 4000 Jews to safety. In Krakow, Zegota member Miriam
Hochberg (her alias was Maria Marianska) helped Jews escape from the
transports by securing money for bribes and scrounging temporary hiding
places. Her signature appears on an authorization of financial aid given to
Szymon Zajdow (Swiebocki 2000), a Jew who had escaped from Auschwitz
and had hidden in Krakow (Yad Vashem Archives, Zegota Collection, no.
O.6/87). Most of her efforts were devoted to hiding children. The number
of children saved through the efforts of Zegota is estimated at several thou-
sand (about 4,000). Hochberg’s story, like that of Zegota, demonstrates how
Poles ever so gradually came to realize that the rescue of Jews, beyond its
humanitarian aspects, expressed defiance to the German Nazis no less than
did armed military operations.
In France, various Jewish underground groups were scattered through-
out the country (Bar-Chen 2007, 68–69; Michel 1990, 18). The Jewish
Defense Army (Armée Juive [AJ], later renamed L’organization Juive de
Combat [OJC]), the Jewish Scouts in France (EIF), the Zionist Youth
Movement (Mouvement de Jeunesse Sioniste [MJS]), the OSE (Oeuvre de
Sécours aux Enfants; see Michel 1990, fn. 67), and the American Joint
Distribution Committee (AJDC) were the major organizations involved.
Additional assistance was provided by smaller groups. This complex net-
work was managed by an umbrella organization, the Coordination
Committee (Comité de Coordination [CC]), which made sure that the
groups continued to operate their orphanages and smuggle children while
fulfilling their other objectives. Hundreds of activists and ordinary people
assisted them, often paying with their lives. More than 5000 Jewish children
were saved in this way.
Women comprised a major proportion of the underground’s members,
especially field operatives, and the majority of OSE personnel (Poznanski
1998, 245). Andrée Salomon was one of those women. In the late 1930s,
Salomon (b. 1908) had helped care for refugees from Alsace, as well as
Jewish children who had reached France following the Krystalnacht
pogroms and synagogue razings (9–10 November 1938). From 1940 to 1947,
she acted as the OSE head of social services. Although she, together with
her husband, had an opportunity to escape to the U.S. in 1941, she remained
in France to organize the relocation of several hundred Jewish children to
America. Under the auspices of the OSE, Salomon was responsible for the
care of Jews held in camps in southern France, where she worked tirelessly
to convince parents to send their children to children’s homes. In 1942,
when it became clear that such solutions were no longer safe and that the
children might be sent from the homes to the death camps, it was decided
that private non-Jewish homes were to be located as alternatives. Salomon
organized and supervised the complex logistics needed to accomplish this
task as well as the subsequent follow-up. She operated a network of Jewish
social workers who visited the children and investigated their emotional
and physical condition; they also delivered funds to the families hiding
them. After the war ended, she located the children, reunited them with
their parents, and established orphanages to house those whose parents
had not survived (http://www.nunchak.com/ose/Salomon.pdf).
Together with her husband Mussa (Moshe) Abbadi, Odette Rosenstock
organized a separate effort to save Jewish children (Inbar 2007, 88–89).
French-born Odette (b. 1914) lived in Paris until 1940, where she was
licensed to practice medicine. The political deterioration in Paris forced
the couple to move south, to Nice. After learning about the mass murders
in the East, they understood that French Jews were to face a similar fate.
In cooperation with Monsignor Paul Remond, the Bishop of Nice, they
established an autonomous underground organization to prevent the
deportation of Jewish children. Monsignor Remond was able to arrange
false identity papers for the pair: Mussa as a Catholic school supervisor and
Odette as a social worker. Their official appointments provided them with
freedom of access to Christian institutions where Jewish children were
protected. The Abbadi network operated in Nice from 1943 to 1944, during
which 527 children were rescued by being hidden. In May 1944, the Gestapo
arrested Odette; despite the torture she suffered, she did not reveal the
network’s existence. After her interrogation, she was sent to Auschwitz-
Birkenau and then to Bergen-Belsen, which she survived.
Marianne Cohn (Colin), a young French Jew, also actively participated
in such rescue efforts. Cohn (b. 1924), a member of the Scouts as well as a
Zionist youth movement underground, was captured in 1944 while trying
to smuggle into Switzerland a group of children aged 4 to 16. Although
severely tortured, Marianne did not reveal the names of her superiors. At
the same time, her captors were unable to prove her Jewish identity because
she carried forged papers. Her friends in the underground managed to
contact her for the purpose of planning her escape, but she refused the
option for fear of Nazi retribution against the children. On 8 June 1944, two
French militiamen and collaborators removed her from her cell and mur-
dered her with an ax (Lazar 1990, 589). According to another version, she
was executed by the German Nazis. The children captured with her were
saved, thanks to the intervention of the Honorable Jean Defoe, Mayor of
Nice, and members of the Jewish underground. Marianne is thought to be
the author of this marvelous poem (facsimile of handwritten manuscript,
the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum Collection, Item No. 5224628) about
spiritual strength:
I will betray them tomorrow, not today
Today tear out my nails,
I will not betray them.
You know not the limits of my courage
But I do … .
I will betray them tomorrow, not today,
The file buried beneath the tiles
Was never meant for bars
The file was never meant for the hangman
The file is meant for my own hands
Today I have no more to say
I will betray them tomorrow, not today.
Marianne lived her message and kept silent. Efforts to smuggle the children
lasted until the spring of 1944, with about 1600 children brought to safety
in Switzerland.
The Dutch underground, too, focused on opposition, with many Jewish
women fulfilling major tasks in the various Dutch underground organiza-
tions as they did in France. As early as summer 1942, Jews who did not
present themselves for deportation to the transit camps were forced to go
into hiding. Groups and larger organizations dedicated to rescuing refugees
subsequently sprung up throughout Holland. According to one estimate,
about 25,000 Jews were hidden; of these, about two-thirds were saved from
the German Nazis (Michman 1990, 348). One special project involved an
operation dedicated to rescuing children. In early July 1942, a group of
students organized themselves for this purpose; three additional groups,
also specializing in hiding children, would join them later (Y.V. file 588).
A total of 4500 children were sheltered, with the majority rescued. A few
took advantage of the escape route along the Swiss border. One group,
named after their leader, Joop Westerwaal, joined forces with the Zionist
Pioneer Youth Movement to hide the organization’s teenage members
(Pinkhof-Watermann, vol 2, 42-45). About 45 percent of the movement’s
members were consequently saved (Michman 1990, 349).
The story of The Crèche, a childrens’ day care center, was exemplary for
the scope of its activities (Bakker 2005, 9–30). A thousand of the 4500 chil-
dren rescued in Holland between 1942 and 1943 were saved through The
Crèche (Bakker 2005,1; Van Ommeren and Scherphuis 1986, 1). The center
was located opposite the Amsterdam theater where Jews were housed prior
to being transported to the extermination camps. Because it would take a
few days for the transport operation to begin once announced, the German
Nazis actually initiated The Crèche’s absorption of the children. Since they
were needed to make the German Nazi plan work smoothly, three caretak-
ers working in the center had received special exemptions, removing them
from the transport list.
The rescue of such a large number of children under the watchful
German Nazis’ eyes was primarily the achievement of the director Henrietta
Pimental and the young caretakers, together with Walter Susskind who
was in charge of registering the people entering the theater. Beginning in
January 1943, Pimental and Susskind made contact with the student under-
grounds organizations (Y.V. file 588; Michman 1990,348) and were able to
start smuggling children out of The Crèche to adoptive families outside.
To diminish the threat to the families and the Jewish children, they
attempted to match them in appearance and other characteristics. Susskind
would receive details of the necessary physical features and pass them on
to Pimental, who would search for a suitable child. When a match was
found, the caretakers would seek out the child’s parents and try to convince
them to let their child be hidden with non-Jewish families so as to save
them (Kattenberg Cohen 1990, 11–13; Kattenberg Cohen 28.9.2011). Only the
parents could decide whether to hide their children with non-Jews, a deeply
painful decision (Michman 1989, 56). The women would hide the children
within the building and later, despite the German Nazi SD (Sicherheitsdienst,
the intelligence division of the SS) watch, smuggle them out in several ways:
When walking to the public park, the caretakers would miscount the num-
ber of children, allowing a child to be passed to a member of the under-
ground in the park; when the local train passed and blocked the view of
the guards, a member of the underground would take a child; a child might
be placed in a garbage or milk can or a laundry baskets outside, and picked
up later; passing the children (about 100) through the low fence separating
The Crèche from a nearby Calvinist Teachers Training College, whose
director Johan Van Hulst was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations
by Yad-Vashem, on November 3, 1970 (Y.V. file no. 588). Sieny Kattenberg
(later Cohen), then only 19 when working as a caretaker in The Crèche,
later wrote: “We brought small, empty blankets to the parents who had
given us their infants, and then they left on the transports” (Pinkhof-
Watermann 2007, vol. 2, 86). With the help of the underground’s members,
the children were brought by trolleys and trains to adoptive parents scat-
tered throughout Holland. On 29 September 1943, the German Nazis
decided to close The Crèche. That same day, they sent the center’s director,
Henrietta Pimental (67 years old) and about 100 children present at the
time, to the concentration camps and their deaths.
Belgium was characterized by broad support for the resistance and the
persecuted Jews. The population’s attitudes led to considerable cooperation
by ordinary citizens, especially regarding hideouts, which were sought for
Jews as well as the non-Jews evading forced labor (Michman 1990, 186).
Many of these Belgians worked for Catholic institutions. Subsequent to the
first arrests and deportations of Belgian Jews, one group initiated the for-
mation of the underground Committee for the Defense of Jews (CDJ).
Among its members were communists, Zionists, and members of the
underground Association of Jews in Belgium (Independence Front). Their
first priority was to seek out hiding places. One unit, headed by Yvonne
Jospa and Ida Sterno, specialized in rescuing children by transferring them
to private homes, monasteries, and children’s homes. A network of couri-
ers would locate the children and bring them to the chosen hiding places.
They recruited the non-Jewish Yvonne Nevejean, head of Belgium’s
National Agency for Children, whose official functions included supervision
of orphanages throughout Belgium. She recruited funds and institutions
belonging to her organization for the purpose of rescuing Jewish children.
The entire network managed to save between 3000 and 4000 children
(Brachfeld 1991, 177, 181–82).
Women among the Resistance Forces in Central and Western Europe
In Central and Western Europe, Jews were not separated into identifiable
ghettos. Perhaps for this reason, numerous Jewish women were able to join
the fighting resistance movements active in the region’s cities. One of the
leading resistance groups in Berlin was the Baum Gruppe (Bankier 1990,
147). During the 1930s, this anti-Nazi organization was formed and named
after its leader, Herbert Baum, and his wife Marianne. From 1937 to 1942,
the group was occupied in distributing illegal leaflets and organizing edu-
cational sessions, political training courses, and cultural events. On 18 May
1942, some of the group’s members set ablaze “The Soviet Paradise” an
anti-Soviet exhibition organized by the Nazi Ministry for Public
Enlightenment and Propaganda. The incident was badly received by the
German Nazis, as might be expected. In retribution, 500 of Berlin’s Jews
were arrested, half of whom were shot immediately with the other half sent
to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp before being murdered. Baum
was tortured to death; the remainder of the group was caught, with the
majority executed. Others were sent to the East and died in Auschwitz.
More than one-third of the group’s members were women.
In Paris one could find Jews, including women, active in the integrated
underground, especially units associated with communist movements.
Women’s assignments were centered on food, supporting men, demonstra-
tions, collection and distribution of intelligence, opposition to the depor-
tations, and the like (Poznanski 1998, 239; see also statements made by the
French Communist Party (PCF) from January 1943 regarding objectives of
the Jewish Women’s Committee). In 1943, Jewish underground fighters
formed separate Jewish communist units—the Main d’oeuvre immigrées
(Immigrant Workers’ Association, MOI)—which included the France
Tireurs Partisans (FTP), dedicated to armed resistance. A unit comprised
entirely of Jewish women was subordinated to the main technical division,
which delivered arms to the various units in the field. Women were not
encouraged to participate in the actual fighting. If caught, their fates were
equivalent to, if not worse, than that of the male fighters.
Olga Bancic (b. 1912), originally from Bessarabia, Romania, was active
in a local workers’ organization and frequently arrested (Raymond, 1975;
see also the USHMM Internet site; Poznanski 1998, 241). In 1938, she moved
to France, where she became involved in establishing contacts with the
Spanish anti-Fascist resistance. In 1939, after giving birth to her daughter
Dolores, Bancic handed the infant over to a French family that was to care
for her while Bancic herself joined the FTP. There, she prepared bombs
and transferred explosives for the purpose of attacking German Nazi field
units as well as sabotaging supply trains. Bancic also supervised the FTP-
MOI couriers. On 6 November 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo
together with 22 members of the Manouchian Resistance (Poznanski 1998,
241). French fascists accused the group of primarily Jewish immigrants
headed by the Armenian Manouchian of intending to bring about France’s
downfall. After being submitted to horrendous torture, Bancic still refused
to transmit any information about her comrades. The torture continued
even after she was sentenced to death. Her male comrades were executed
in Paris on 21 February 1944. Bancic herself was transferred from France to
a Stuttgart prison, where she was tried again and once more sentenced to
death. There were a very small number of similar cases of multiple trials,
such as that of Simone Schloss (Rossel-Kirschen 2002). This procedure was
rooted in French law, which did not allow the death penalty for women.
In order to execute women caught on French soil, the German Nazis had
to transfer them to Germany, where they would be tried, convicted, and
executed according to German law. On 10 May 1944, her 32nd birthday,
Bancic was beheaded. In a parting letter to her daughter while awaiting
execution, she wrote (http://www.Marxist.org, keyword: “Bancic”):
To my dearest darling baby daughter,
Your mother is writing you her last letter, my darling little daughter. Tomor-
row, 10 May, at 6 am, I will no longer be. Don’t cry my loved one. Your
mother is no longer crying. I go to my death in good conscience, with the
certainty that tomorrow you will have a better life before you, and a better
future than your mother has before her. You will no longer need to suffer.
Be proud of your mother, my dearest little one. Your image is always before
me. My darling child, I end this letter in the hope that you will be happy
throughout your life, with your father, with everyone. I kiss you with all my
heart, so many, many kisses.
Farewell my beloved,
Your mother
Resistance Movements in the Camps
Resistance in the camps was far more dangerous. Prisoners were tightly
supervised, with minimal possibilities for movement and contact. The
terror to which the prisoners were subjected limited their options for resis-
tance activities, further complicated by the chronic hunger and abysmal
conditions that led to their physical deterioration. Issues of collective
responsibility also created barriers to action. The terror to which the pop-
ulation outside the camps was exposed added to the already rampant
hatred of Jews and destroyed almost any possibility of assistance from that
source. Moreover, the array of barbed wire fences and blockades, guard
towers, and light posts, to say nothing of the guards’ weapons, eliminated
almost all conceivable options. Yet individuals or groups did sometimes
commit acts of defiance. One story about women in the camps tells of the
dancer Katerina Horowicz, who is said to have grabbed a rifle on her way
to the gas chambers and killed a guard (Baumel 1996, 194, 199; Prowizur-
Szyper 1981, 102). Prisoners in some camps were able to organize revolts
while in dozens of others they managed to execute escapes for the purpose
of joining the partisans (Karkowski, 1990, 395–96). Women also took part
in these activities.
Sometimes the resistance began even on the way to the death camps.
Claire Prowizur-Szyper (b. 1922), for example, had belonged to a Trotskyite
resistance movement in Belgium. During the war, she married Philippe
Szyper, a fellow movement member, also Jewish. Both were captured by
the Gestapo in 1943. After three months of internment at the Dossin camp
in Mechelen, Belgium, Prowizur-Szyper, together with her father and hus-
band, were among those sent to Auschwitz on the German Nazi’s twentieth
transport of Belgian Jews. By this time, the German Nazis had added bars
to the transports after the Resistance had freed some prisoners from the
nineteenth transport. Together with her husband, Prowizur-Szyper filed
through the bars of their rail car. Near Liège they jumped from the moving
train and managed to land in a field, unharmed. This is how Prowizur-Szyper
(1981, 122–23) described their daring escape:
This fateful moment of my life did not speed up my heartbeats beyond
normal. I remember my calm, a sense of confidence enwrapped me. When
turning my thoughts over, I reach the conclusion that in those fateful
moments, people are able to achieve the harmony that permits them to
completely reverse their situation. … I closed my eyes. … I simply allowed
myself to live without moving for a few moments, fearing to inhale too much
the breathe of freedom.
Roza Robota (b. 1921) was among the women who smuggled explosives to
the zonderkommandos, prisoners forced to work in the gas chambers and
crematoria, at Auschwitz-Birkenau. These explosives made possible the
only armed insurrection to take place in the camp. Robota, a member of
the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement, was deported from the Ciechanow
Ghetto to Auschwitz in 1942. She was then recruited by the camp’s Jewish
fighting underground, formed in 1943 in Auschwitz 1. Together with her
friends Regina Safirsztain (Sapirstein), Ella Gertner, and Esther
Weissblum—Jewish women prisoners who worked in the Union munitions
factory located in the Monowicz sub-camp—she constructed a network
to smuggle explosives into the camp, which were distributed to the Jewish
underground as well as the zonderkommandos. In both cases, Robota was
persuaded to smuggle explosives by former residents of her home city,
Tzechnow. In the case of the Jewish underground, it was Noah Zablodowicz,
a member of the rightist Beitar, who convinced her. A similar process took
place among the zonderkommandos. We should note that the rebellion
broke out as the transports from Hungary began to decline in number,
leading the zonderkommandos to grasp that they would no longer be
needed and therefore would soon be murdered (Pagis 2008, 117). Young
women would hide the explosives on their bodies before bringing them to
Robota, who would then transfer them to underground couriers for deliv-
ery to their destinations. On 7 October 1944, some of these materials were
used to explode crematorium number 4. The rebels killed a few S.S. guards
and destroyed the crematorium before all but one of them fell in the battle.
After an investigation, the four women were captured; despite horrible
torture, not one implicated her comrades. A short time before her execu-
tion, Robota was able to send a note to her partners in the resistance. In
that note, she stated that she had admitted to her interrogators that the
operation had been initiated by her, that she had smuggled in the explo-
sives and that she felt no contrition regarding her deed. She swore that she
had not betrayed her comrades. It was difficult for her to leave this life, she
added, but she made only one request: “Revenge!” She ended her note with:
“Be strong and of good courage!” On 6 January 1945, about one-and-a-half
weeks before the camp’s evacuation, Robota and her friends were executed
by hanging before the prisoners, standing in formation (Greif 1999, 75;
Gutman 1957, 255–57; Pagis 2008, 116–19). In her testimony, Haya Croyen
(1995, 74–75) recounted Robota’s last moments:
By now it was impossible to recognize the Roza who was lying on the floor,
a mass of sores and bruises. But she immediately recognized Noah and,
despite her condition, said in a clear but weak voice: “Listen, Noah, no one
will be arrested after me. We will win. Continue on our path. You will go to
Palestine and build the country. The Germans are finished.” Roza, with
supreme courage, tied the rope around her own neck with steady hands.
We all heard her clearly shout in Polish: “Sisters, revenge!”
Women and Resistance
Spiritual elevation could be achieved in acts of resistance that at least

momentarily altered the hopeless reality in which the Jews found them-
selves during the Holocaust. Yet for a combination of historical, social, and
cultural reasons, most Jewish women did not view fighting per se as an
option. Those women who chose active resistance were primarily young
and members of Zionist youth movements or of groups having leftist, labor-
oriented ideological leanings; in such environments, women and men
ostensibly enjoyed equal rights. They were to learn that traditional gen-
dered differences between male and female roles endured and sometimes
intensified. As Bronka Klibanski, a courier and resistance fighter in the
Bialystock Ghetto, noted:
[We] didn’t see any need to wage a feminist battle in order to maintain our
human dignity. We gained respect by behaving and acting in a self-evident
manner. In comparison to the men, I believe that we women were more
faithful to our goals, more sensitive to the environment, more intelligent—
or at least more intuitive—and more determined in our commitment to
change reality. At the same time, we understood that things could not be
changed. We continued along our path without despair, without compromise
and without ceasing our efforts. (Klibanski 1998, 186)
A large proportion of the women who took part in active fighting, especially
in Eastern Europe, were occupied in essentially semi-military services, such
as delivering weapons, information, money, forged papers, and identity
cards. In some cases they were also comrades in arms, but not as command-
ers—unless the men holding these positions were killed and they were
forced to take their places. Among the partisans, women were occupied in
tasks traditionally considered female, such as cooking, laundry, medical
care—as well as the provision of sexual services. Relatively few became
real fighters or leaders.
Resistance activities in Eastern Europe’s ghettos had at best a local
impact, primarily on morale. The Jewish residents of the ghettos objected
to the actions of resistance activists, who they viewed as irresponsible
youngsters whose behavior might endanger a large and weak population
interested mainly in survival. In most cases they were ready to follow the
German Nazis’ orders, hoping that it would postpone the evil, gain time,
and that they would survive somehow (Friedländer 2009, 15). This com-
munity’s dream was far from that of Mordechai Anielewicz, commander
of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, who wrote in his last letter (Anielewiczer
to Yitzchak Zuckerman, 23 April 1943, in Arad, Gutman and Margaliot 1999,
315) that: “My dream is alive and well. I have been blessed with seeing
Jewish defense in the ghetto in all its power and glory.” For many years
Anielewicz’s dream was thought to have been shared by all members of
youth movement resistance groups. But was it truly shared by the women
in these movements? It appears that many of the women drawn to this
masculine dream often gave up their own dreams. In a discussion with the
author on 3 February 2008, Gutman recalled that while “Mordechai
Anielewicz was talking about the certain death that awaited us all, a girl
suddenly stood up, only a year older than I was, and asked: ‘Is no one sen-
tenced to life?’ Suddenly there was silence; everyone looked at her in hor-
ror” (see also Pagis 2008, 82). Following tradition, women’s needs and
wishes were considered irrelevant to the group’s priorities; what remained
was submission to the male agenda.
The testimonies and texts cited above construct a complex, dualistic
situation, different from the accepted image. On the one hand, they reveal
romantic admiration of the leader, the male; on the other, they disclose
significant anger, even among the women closest to these men. That level
of anger may well be related to the fact that in most cases, men were the
sole decision makers; they alone took positions of power, whereas women
were left outside the sphere of influence, their contributions disdained.
We also find outrage at the fact that women were expected to comply
unquestioningly, even when required to perform difficult, physically dan-
gerous, and emotionally debilitating tasks—as couriers, for example—and
without any compensation in terms of respect. They were considered, in
short, as simple “soldiers” who had to follow orders. Most significantly, the
factor separating female from male fighters during the Holocaust was
women’s perception of their objectives. Men saw defiance as an end in
itself. Honor and “three lines in history” (referring to the commonly known
statement ascribed to Aharon Dolek Liebeskind, one of the Krakow Jewish
underground commanders namely: "we are fighting for three lines in his-
tory" Blumental, 131) were what guided them; death in battle appeared to
be a fitting option. Women, however, did not view fighting as their goal;
they were generally uninterested in prestige or a place in history. They were
driven by a lust for life. Still, too many subordinated their vision to that of
the men; they were therefore blind to any opportunity to construct an
alternative leadership that might be open to their aspirations and views.
Viewed from this perspective, the women who joined the partisans—rather
than the resistance—apparently did attempt to realize their goal of survival
at all costs even if they sometimes fought according to male models.
From another vantage point, we can conclude that the rescue under-
ground displayed typical female behavior, especially female behavior dur-
ing the Holocaust. These frameworks did not promote grandiose armed
assaults, the majority of which could bring about no significant change in
the course of the events; instead, they organized rescue operations involv-
ing tens of thousand of people, many of them children. Rescue was a com-
plicated and dangerous activity, made conspicuous by the presence of
women; many became recognized leaders. Even those working in the field
gained status, they could thus make many autonomous decisions. This
flexible structure is symptomatic to the female state of mind and its
strengths. The outcomes of their activities were also undoubtedly much
more meaningful in their results, especially when compared with the out-
comes of resistance activity in the cities and ghettos.
With respect to the few women who did take part in active resistance
and fighting in the camps, their stories, so isolated in their frequency and
so unexpected, acquired tremendous force especially given the terrible
conditions in which they were executed. There is little doubt that the need
for female “superheroes” was felt by other women: “Perhaps it was only a
fable or a fairy tale? In the reality in which we lived, imagination was the
best refuge of them all” (Croyen 1995, 70).
Women and their contributions were given little place in the historiog-
raphy of the Holocaust during the first decades following the war. Due to
lack of awareness, even political interests, the subject was barely docu-
mented or researched before the 1980s. The women who had accomplished
wonders when caring for others, who somehow had improved the quality
of life for children, the old, and the sick as families journeyed toward death,
were rarely mentioned. Holocaust historiography stressed events involving
men, leaders, but especially acts of active defiance in the ghettos and for-
ests. Within that framework, the only acts performed by women that gained
any imaginative force or public homage were those that could be incorpo-
rated into the male ethos (Baumel 1996, 195). A historical injustice has been
committed to all those unknown women who were occupied with the
rescue of thousands and who employed other methods of opposition. Israel
Gutman in the aforementioned discussion, stated that an injustice had
indeed been done by excluding the efforts of people who were not fellow
youth movement members, but especially women in the documentation.
There was simply no one who did the documenting. Gutman (2008, 8) said
he would try to correct that injustice. Since the mid-1980s, but especially
the 1990s, female Holocaust scholars have been trying to locate original
materials in order to retrieve and record the stories of these women before
the living sources are no more (Baumel 1996, 9, 22). Women are therefore
returning to the forefront of the historical stage and slowly penetrating
collective memory.
The stories of many others are long inaccessible. This chapter is there-
fore dedicated to all those women.
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Sniper Girls and Fearless Heroines 547
chapter fifteen
Sniper Girls and Fearless Heroines:

Wartime Representations of Foreign Women in English-
Canadian Press, 1941–1943
Dorotea Gucciardo and Megan Howatt
On 21 September 1942, over 20,000 Canadians gathered at Maple Leaf

Gardens, in Toronto, Ontario, to catch a glimpse of Liudmila Pavlichenko,
a Soviet woman notorious for her peculiar wartime role: she was a Red
Army sniper. Junior Lieutenant Pavlichenko had spent over eleven months
in combat and boasted killing more than 300 Nazi soldiers. In recognition
of her feats in battle, the Canadian press labeled her the “representative of
fighting Russian women” and the Soviet government awarded her the Order
of Lenin, the country’s highest honor (Halifax Chronicle 1942b). The Toronto
rally was just one of several speaking engagements for Pavlichenko and
her trio of male comrades, on their Canada-wide tour aimed at encourag-
ing youth to participate in the war effort. The Canadian press became
fascinated with Pavlichenko; several newspapers dedicated full-page
spreads to her visit, and some journalists portrayed her as a hardened war-
rior who did not lose touch with her feminine side. One reporter even
observed that “the trigger finger of the Red Army girl sniper … was deco-
rated with bright pink nail polish” (Montreal Gazette 1942d ). Ironically,
although Canadian women were barred from combat service because it
was traditionally regarded as a masculine domain, the press and spectators
that gathered in Toronto applauded Pavlichenko for having killed over 300
men (Toronto Star 1942a, 1942b, 1943c; Halifax Chronicle 1942a, 1942b;
Montreal Gazette 1942b; 1942c; 1942d).
How the press portrayed Pavlichenko, and the thousands of other
women who took on military roles during the Second World War, is the
focus of this chapter. More specifically, we will be examining articles pub-
lished by the Canadian press during the years 1941–43; by this time, France
had fallen to Germany and was home to resistance movements, and the
Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union had passed from near victory to looming
defeat. The Canadian government had also established women’s military
548 Dorotea Gucciardo and Megan Howatt
services and was spearheading a promotional campaign to encourage
women to participate in war work. These events increased press interest
in the roles played by women in war, both in Canada and abroad. Thus,
when Pavlichenko arrived in Canada in 1942, press frenzy was at an all-time
high for publishing stories about women in combat. Articles concerning
Pavlichenko’s tour were part of a greater trend in Canadian newspapers
and magazines of issuing positive portrayals of foreign women in combat
roles, which at the same time were deemed inappropriate for Canadian
women. Contradictory images existed simultaneously in the Canadian
press: on the one hand, reporters lauded foreign women in combat roles,
while on the other they expressed concern that exposure to combat would
ruin the femininity and morality of Canadian women. Why was the
Canadian press willing to accept—and in some cases endorse—militaris-
tic behavior for foreign women, while promoting more traditional roles for
Canadian women?
The contradictory nature of the Canadian press highlights the difficulties
of prescribing meaning to a society faced with rapid change. “Like all his-
torical questions involving numerous issues and actors,” Jeff Keshen (2004,
145) writes in his study of Canada in World War II, “the patterns are not
neat and tidy but as chaotic and at times contradictory as the complex
society in which they occurred.” Canadian journalists were forced to make
sense of images and stories of foreign women that shattered accepted
gender boundaries. They provided no monolithic image of women in uni-
form, and commonly inserted contradictory images and comments within
the same article. Indeed, the news coverage of Pavlichenko’s tour provides
a good example. Contrary to its images of Canadian servicewomen, who
were presented as delicate and fragile, on 3 September the Montreal Gazette
portrayed Pavlichenko as tough and manly, a warrior who felt nothing for
killing Germans. The same article underscored her physical beauty, how-
ever, “shiny hair, bright smile, and beautiful complexion” (Montreal Gazette
1942d). While Pavlichenko’s promotion of female participation in the war
effort may have been lost in the Gazette’s discussion of cosmetics, it was
this reportedly violent woman that accounted for the great press coverage
of her visit.
Indeed, the influx of information about foreign servicewomen in the
Canadian press ought to remind us that gender construction is not limited
to views of national women alone. To date, the most commonly referenced
historical analysis of Canadian women during the Second World War is
Ruth Roach Pierson’s “They’re still women after all”: The Second World War
and Canadian womanhood (1986). True to its title, Pierson examines the
pressures faced by the women’s military services to assure the public that
despite the involvement of Canadian women in the military, their woman-
hood would remain intact. Subsequent histories have followed Pierson’s
lead by examining the representation of Canadian women in the press to
determine how female gender was socially constructed during the war
years, but rarely have these studies examined the representation of foreign
women in the same press (Dundas 2000; Bland 1983; Bruce 1985; Davidson
2001; Enloe 1983; Gossage 1990; McPherson et al. 1999; Trofimenkoff and
Prentice 1985; Latham and Pazdro 1984). There existed no debate in Canada
over whether or not Canadian women could adequately perform within
traditional “man-only” domains—they simply were not permitted. Women
from foreign countries were faced with different circumstances, however,
and the Canadian press were quick to publish reports on their experiences.
These articles formed part of the dialogue of women in war in Canada;
while it is impossible to measure the true effect of these publications on
readers, we believe that an examination of newspaper and magazine arti-
cles reveal contemporary debates about appropriate roles for Canadian
women and provide insight into how mid-twentieth-century Canadians
tried to make sense of their world.
Press as Propaganda?
Although the main focus of this chapter is determining why the Canadian
press chose to endorse the militant acts of foreign women while supporting
traditional notions of feminine limitations for its own women, it also
addresses some important dimensions of the role and purpose of print
media during the mid-twentieth century. We are not interested in the
theories and debates about the power of the press to persuade the pub-
lic—these have already been successfully addressed elsewhere by sociolo-
gists, historians, and media analysts. We do feel it is important to
emphasize, however, as Maureen Honey does in Creating Rosie the Riveter:
Class, gender, and propaganda (1984, 12), that “the power of the media to
reinforce is not a negligible one.” While the ability of the press to shape
Canadian attitudes toward women in uniform would have been limited by
readers’ existing assumptions, beliefs, and opinions about feminine limita-
tions, it remained a powerful vehicle for the social construction of gender
norms (Honey 1984, 10).
The boundaries between propaganda and press were blurred during the
Second World War, yet in order to remain relevant, newspapers and mag-
azines had to ensure that they met the ostensible needs and values of
Canadian society. Journalists promoting increased involvement of
Canadian women in war-related industries and the military services were,
at the same time, forced to grapple with the challenges that these women
posed to existing gender boundaries. What’s more, images and stories of
foreign women performing tasks that linked them to combat—and even
killing—further complicated their coverage. This may have led some writ-
ers to emphasize certain aspects of women’s involvement in wartime in
favor of others, depending on their own value systems; as historian Roberto
Franzosi (1987, 7) argues, “the type of bias likely to occur in mass press
consists more of silence and emphasis rather than outright false informa-
tion.” By using language as a tool of manipulation—employing certain
adjectives, synonyms, and nouns—journalists, foreign correspondents,
and editors prescribed meaning to the experiences of women in uniform
during the Second World War. We hope to decipher those meanings by
examining a selection of newspapers and magazines published in Canada
during the conflict, and to reveal how the Canadian press contributed to
the ever-evolving dialogue of women and war.
Any study heavily weighted in analysis of newspaper and magazine
articles can be problematic for empirical reasons. In our case, for example,
rarely did newspaper articles provide by-lines, which made it difficult to
collect quantitative information on the authors. Despite these limitations,
newspapers and magazines provide us with the only available source of
information on changing public perceptions of foreign women in nontra-
ditional roles, or at least the reportage that may have shaped those percep-
tions and perhaps even reflected them. To analyze patterns of reporting,
we built a sample of print media to encompass political, geographical, and
economic factors that may have influenced news coverage. We examined
Canada’s three national magazines—Maclean’s, Saturday Night, and
Chatelaine—because they had wide circulation and published numerous
reports on the experiences of foreign women during the conflict. Chatelaine
specifically was consulted because it was Canada’s only national women’s
magazine, described by historian Valerie Korinek (2000, 23) as the “biggest
kitchen table in the country.” We also read every issue from the following
sample of English-language newspapers for their representation of regional
and political variations: the conservative-leaning Globe and Mail, Halifax
Chronicle, and Montreal Gazette, as well as the liberal-leaning Toronto Star,
Winnipeg Free Press, and Vancouver Sun (Kesterton 1967, 84–111). By creat-
ing this sample, we can build on the existing knowledge about the repre-
sentation of women in the press during the Second World War and dissect
gender constructs in the Canadian press.
Canadian Women at War
The Second World War saw unprecedented female participation in the

Canadian armed forces. The government and the press pressured women
to “back the attack.” A variety of volunteer opportunities were open to
Canadian women, and many donated their time to mobile canteens, sal-
vage campaigns, knitting bees, the Red Cross, and purchasing war bonds
(Bruce 1985, 1). Some women chose paid work in one of the many essential
war industries, where their responsibilities ranged from inspecting machin-
ery and munitions to operating the heavy machines that built planes, tanks,
and ships (Maclean’s 1943). In many ways, the war contribution of Canadian
women represented their movement into the public sphere. Although
women took on unconventional roles during the First World War, there
was far more press interest in women’s wartime activities after 1939 (Keshen
2004, 154). Pictures of women in work trousers became commonplace, with
many articles in the press demonstrating that women could excel in male-
dominated jobs (Maclean’s 1943).
By 1941 growing labor force shortages forced the Department of National
Defence (DND) to rethink its exclusionary employment practices, and the
government began to recruit women volunteers for auxiliary military ser-
vice. The Canadian Women’s Auxiliary Air Force—later renamed Royal
Canadian Air Force (Women’s Division)—was established on 2 July 1941
and the Army followed suit on 13 August by creating a Canadian Women’s
Army Corps (CWAC). The Royal Canadian Navy, however, was slow to
recruit female volunteers. The Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service was
established nearly one year later, on 31 July 1942, and this service took in
the fewest female recruits (Keshen 2004, 177). By the end of the war, approx-
imately 370,000 women had participated in war industries and almost
50,000 had enlisted in the armed forces (Dundas 2000, 88).
The increased presence of women within the services achieved little in
the way of abolishing tangible gender barriers for military employment;
women were barred from combat service and most were confined to roles
that perpetuated traditional gender stereotypes, such as food-service pro-
viders, clerks, and fabric workers. Pierson (1986, 129) maintains that the
introduction of women into the three services “challenged convention
respecting women’s nature and place in Canadian society.” The govern-
ment, however, had no intention of endorsing this shift in gender norms;
through propaganda efforts, DND assured the public that the hiring of
servicewomen into the military was strictly a wartime necessity (Keshen
2004, 177). This measure did broaden the range of employment opportuni-
ties for women “from the … routine housekeeping trades … to [include]
skilled electrical and mechanical blue-collar trades” by the end of the war
(Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Decision, 1989). But these positions
tested the limits of Canadian tolerance. One 1943 public opinion poll
revealed that the majority of Canadians did not regard the military as a
suitable career choice for respectable women (Dundas 2000, 84).
There was genuine fear that women would lose their femininity (often
a euphemism for chastity) from participating in this masculine trade, and
in late 1942 a “whispering campaign”—later blamed on servicemen—
unleashed rumors of sexually loose servicewomen who were likely to infect
unsuspecting soldiers with venereal disease (Pierson 1986, 170); similar
whispering campaigns troubled British and American armies (Vining, chap-
ter 6, this volume). Many Canadians believed that the military would lead
to the demise of female morality, and characterized enlistees as “man-
hungry, prostitutes, or lesbians” (Keshen 2004, 178). The Canadian press
echoed these sentiments in articles that warned its readers of the potential
dangers that military life posed to a woman’s femininity and “self-respect”
(Pierson 1986, 171). These negative depictions of servicewomen resulted in
a decline in female recruitment between 1942 and 1943. One CWAC enlistee
poignantly told the Vancouver Sun that the crux of the problem was the
“masculine interpretation” of the military uniform, which was something
the Canadian public was unwilling to associate with its women (Vancouver
Sun 1942a).
The Department of National Defence attempted to neutralize the debate
by highlighting the femininity of its female recruits. It spearheaded an
ambitious promotional campaign that emphasized the glamour of the three
services. Recruitment posters depicted servicewomen as pin-up girls, and
the DND ensured enlisted women wore well-tailored uniforms with skirts
(pants were only allowed in a few cases); they enjoyed the services of on-
site hairdressers, received lessons in decorum, and learned how to apply
makeup (Davidson 2001, 48–49). Defence staff assured the public that
female personnel were “women first and soldiers second” (Chisholm 1943).
Servicewomen were assigned to jobs that were within the confines of what
was acceptable as “woman’s work”, such as clerks, waitresses, canteen
helpers, laundresses, cooks, and switchboard operators, with only slightly
more than 13 percent of enlisted women being employed in nontraditional
trades, such as driver-mechanics and fixed wireless operators (Pierson 1986,
110–11). Although Canadian women continually proved their ability to per-
form in nontraditional civilian jobs, the societal pressure for servicewomen
to retain their femininity resulted in them being confined to the noncom-
batant military roles connected with traditional notions of the “woman’s
place.”
Seeing foreign women in uniform, however, did not appear to be as
problematic. The war contributions of women in Allied countries—namely,
Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, along with the efforts of women
in resistance movements throughout Europe—stimulated a great deal of
interest and approval in the Canadian press. Their proximity to the front
lines afforded these women greater opportunity for direct military involve-
ment and the major magazines and newspapers were quick to publish
reports on the more unconventional, dangerous, and masculine work these
women performed. The articles were often framed in traditional and dual-
istic terms: masculine versus feminine, Amazon versus heroine. Examined
together, they reveal the fluidity of gender constructs during the Second
World War.
British Gun Girls, Soviet Snipers, and Chinese Guerrillas
Of these national groups, British women received the most press coverage,
which reflected a tacit sense of kinship between Britain and its former
colony (Vancouver Sun 1942a). The two countries shared similar language,
culture, and customs, making British women a subject that many Canadians
readers could relate to, and may also explain why more articles were pub-
lished about them than any other national group. Journalists and editors
often cited British women’s participation in the war effort as a model for
Canadian women, and stressed the importance of their role in releasing
men for active duty. This was especially true after the establishment of the
Canadian women’s services in the summer of 1941. For example, Byrne
Hope Sanders, a Chatelaine editor, cited the dedication and sacrifice of
British women in the services as a wake-up call for Canadian women to
increase their contribution to the war effort (Chatelaine 1941). Another
article in Chatelaine (1944) stressed that British women took on their jobs
without complaint in order to “keep the country running” (see also
Maclean’s 1940a).
Although British women were relegated to “noncombat” positions, much
like their Canadian counterparts, the proximity of the front lines to their
homes brought them closer to danger. Female pilots with the Air Transport
Auxiliary (ATA) flew planes from factories to the airports and bases of the
Royal Air Force, which attracted significant press attention. Journalists
wrote that these women had just as much skill as their male counterparts
because they flew alone and piloted all models of planes, from Spitfires to
bombers (Saturday Night 1941). The most publicized women, however,
were those serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), who operated
the searchlights and predictors—used to forecast the location of enemy
planes—in the mixed gender antiaircraft (AA) batteries. Although their
tasks were classified as noncombat, AA women performed the same tasks
as the men within their unit, including loading ammunitions and aiming
antiaircraft guns. The only exception was that they were absolutely forbid-
den from firing any weapon, even if the target was an enemy pilot. Yet, as
commanding officer Gen. Frederick Pile (Campbell 1993, 308) observed:
“the girls lived like men, fought their fights like men, and alas, some of them
died like men.” In a similar vein, a Canadian journalist dismissed any dis-
tinctions between the work of these “sky-gun girls” and the actual firing of
antiaircraft artillery (Saturday Night 1943a). Another noted that ATS ser-
vicewomen did everything but fire the antiaircraft guns because it required
“great physical strength” (Halifax Chronicle 1941a). By the end of the war,
the total number of battle casualties among AA women was 398 (Campbell
1993, 309). Although these women were officially barred from fighting in
battle, the reality of the Second World War proved that this was a distinc-
tion without a difference; the women of the AA batteries experienced
combat firsthand, regardless of how military authorities defined their role.
The Canadian press provided ample coverage of British women in these
nontraditional roles, and often described them as possessing the masculine
characteristics of hardened soldiers. One author for the Toronto Star
attempted to dispel the persistent myth from the First World War that
British paramilitary organizations were comprised of fragile upper-class
women unable to undertake the hard duties of military life. The author
insisted that the women of the Britain’s Mechanized Transport Corps were
“no pink-tea soldiers,” and explained that they showed their strength
through their work in France before the evacuation of the Dunkirk (Toronto
Star 1941a). The Winnipeg Free Press echoed this myth-breaking attitude in
an article that maintained British women were “in everything but the
name—soldiers in the army.” The author stressed that British women
dressed, ate, and acted like soldiers, though they were paid much less.
“Clearly,” the author argued, “she is no idle rich woman playing a soldier.
She is a soldier, living a soldier’s life” (Winnipeg Free Press 1941a).
Given the perception that British servicewomen were tough enough to
fill a man’s shoes, it is unsurprising that journalists and editors spilled much
ink deliberating the social ramifications of British women filling in the
ranks. A war correspondent stationed in Britain noted that “it seemed
strange to see girls in khaki, and there were plenty of jokes about women
saluting and calling each other ma’am” (Saturday Night 1940b). Some writ-
ers regarded women’s move into the military sphere as a threat to the
traditional order. One correspondent warned that female servicewomen
risked “danger of emasculation,” while others argued the aggressive nature
of military service turned British military women into “Amazons” (Saturday
Night 1940a; Montreal Gazette 1941a). Beverly Baxter, a popular war cor-
respondent for Maclean’s magazine and one of the war’s most outspoken
critics of women in uniform, argued that women should not be in the
military because their proper place was in the home “as the producers of
life” (Maclean’s 1940b). Criticisms such as these were few, however, and
most Canadian journalists wrote favorably about British servicewomen.
Several members of the Canadian press proclaimed the Second World
War had ushered in a new era of equality between British men and women.
An article in the Globe and Mail (1942a) argued the term “weaker sex” no
longer applied to British women, and that British men were the first to
admit it. An article in Chatelaine (1943a) declared that “there aren’t any
women in Britain. There are just Britons. There is no distinction of sex.”
The Montreal Gazette (1941a) summarized the participation of British
women in the war as an “epoch making” period for women in history. Some
journalists even tried to dispel the “Amazon” myth. One writer for the Globe
and Mail (1942b) explained that British women in the military were “not
Amazons,” but were in fact “women and will remain women—and they
have been drawn into service because they love their country.” Similarly,
a journalist for the Montreal Gazette (1941c) stated “the idea that a girl
becomes a hard-bitten Amazon more capable of destroying than keeping
up a home by serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service is a complete illu-
sion”. Not only were female enlistees equal in the cause these journalists
argued, British “Ack-Ack” girls, along with their ATA counterparts, were
heroines who helped their fathers, husbands, sons, and homeland for the
war effort.
The debate about the appropriate role for British servicewomen often
mirrored that of their Canadian counterparts. Although the nature of the
war brought danger to their doorstep, British authorities, much like
Canadian defense staff, prohibited servicewomen from participating in
direct combat. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, apparently had no
qualms about the involvement of women in direct combat. The tradition
of women in the Russian military dated back to the First World War, with
the establishment of several all-female units, including the notorious
Battalion of Death (Stockdale 2004, 85). By the end of the Second World
War, 800,000 women had served with the Red Army, and approximately
half of those served in frontline units. Russian servicewomen fired mortar
and machine guns, worked in AA batteries, drove trucks and tanks, flew
bombers and fighter planes, and fought in the infantry. Although number-
ing only 8 percent of total troops, the participation of Soviet women in
combat was noted by the enemy; Germans feared and loathed these flin-
tenweiber (gun women) and “night witches” (Campbell 1993, 318).
While the Canadian press expressed neither love nor hatred for female
Soviet enlistees, many journalists did display fascination. One writer for
the Winnipeg Free Press (1941b) was amazed that even women in noncom-
bat positions were armed with pistols and trained to use them in case of
enemy attack; in contrast, British and Canadian women were not permit-
ted arms training. The Toronto Star (1942c) published a photo spread of
Soviet women on the “firing line … doing as much to hold back the German
hordes as their men.” The Globe and Mail (1941a) reported that men and
women were fighting side-by-side to save Leningrad, while Chatelaine
(1942a) lauded the many Soviet women who fought and died for their
country. Journalists also profiled individual women, such as Liudmila
Pavlichenko and Captain Emma, dubbed the “Woman Warrior” by the
Winnipeg Free Press (1942) for having killed twelve Germans, despite being
wounded in battle. Although these women were typically described as
heroines, an inspection of the press coverage reveals a debate about the
proper gender roles for women.
On one hand, some journalists characterized female servicewomen as
violent and masculine. These authors tended to portray Soviet women as
decidedly less feminine than Canadian women. For example, while war-
time propaganda of Canadian women in uniform tended to highlight their
femininity through images of well-coiffed hair, rosy cheeks, and red lips,
Soviet women appeared hardened, often wearing more fatigue around their
eyes than makeup. One correspondent commented that Soviet women
“shake hands like a strong man … why, they never think of kissing a man.
They shake hands with him—man to man, you might say” (Toronto Star
1942d). Several journalists argued that women in the military, especially
those in combat, were no longer women but men in disguise. One reporter
stationed in the Soviet Union explained that the masculinity of the Soviet
women, or “hardiness” as he calls it, was due to the “tremendous hardening
process, which affected the Russian people” because of their exposure to
battle (Saturday Night 1944). These journalists described Soviet women as
unforgiving and tough, and speculated that they would never quit or lay
down their arms (Toronto Star 1942e).
Rather than viewing the resilience of Soviet women as a negative attri-
bute, most Canadian journalists chose to embrace it as an ideal of sexual
equality. Two writers in particular, Bernice Coffey and Rosita Forbes,
regarded Soviet women as examples in the progress of women’s rights.
Since Soviet women had fewer basic rights than Canadian women, these
journalists wrote about them in a tone of admiration for their work in
defying gender roles. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Canada’s national women’s
magazine, Chatelaine, heralded the work of Soviet women in nontraditional
roles as influencing the women’s movement in their country. Forbes (1942),
a well-known travel writer whose columns appeared in Chatelaine, wrote
admiringly of Soviet women who went from being the property of their
husbands before the revolution to working side-by-side with men, even in
the military. An article in the Toronto Star (1942f) explained that the active
role played by Soviet women during the war was evidence of “how well
they took advantage of the freedom and opportunities accorded to them
and how extensively their country had benefited from this measure.” An
editorial in the same paper explained that the reason why Soviet women
had such an effect on the war effort was because they experienced political
and social equality. The editor was amazed at the “stunning transition of
Russian women from serfdom to independent citizens with full rights” that
was demonstrated by their combat roles (Toronto Star 1941b).
This sense of equality between the sexes was also extended to Chinese
women. Though little has been written about Chinese women in combat,
we do know that the political climate of China during the Second World
War allowed them to assume a more direct role in the fighting. Chinese
women gathered intelligence, provided logistical support, sheltered sol-
diers, and participated in guerrilla raids on the Japanese (Spence 1999,
437–38). Much like the women of the Soviet Union, Chinese women tended
to fill traditionally masculine roles due to the dire circumstances of enemy
invasion. Indeed, Canadians held a widespread belief that the Soviet Union
and China were similar in their politics and use of women in war; this belief
may help to explain why Soviet and Chinese women were treated in much
the same manner by the Canadian press (Iacovetta, Draper, and Ventresca
1998, 483; Ward 2002, 4).
There were fewer articles about Chinese women than Soviet and British
women, but those that were published usually portrayed them in combat
roles similar to their Soviet counterparts. One Globe and Mail (1941b) cor-
respondent explained that many Chinese women trained and fought with
soldiers on the frontlines, while untrained women travelled with the troops
to provide help and entertainment for the soldiers. Chatelaine (1943b)
lauded Chinese women for fighting in the trenches, captaining Yangtze
steamboats, and working as dynamiters. The Montreal Gazette (1942e)
reported that 40,000 Chinese women underwent military training and were
“armed with daggers, hand grenades, Mauser rifles [and] enrolled on an
equal footing with the men.” The Winnipeg Free Press (1941c) emphasized
that many women took over home guard duties while the men were away
and warned: “Woe betide an unwary Jap who gets in the way of her rifle”.
Several members of the Canadian press touted the tremendous feats
accomplished by Chinese women as proof of an equalizing factor between
the sexes in China. The Montreal Gazette (1941d) reported that as many as
20,000 Chinese women fought as guerrillas and that the heart of the Chinese
war effort was in the “backwoods.” The same newspaper reported that there
were so many women fighting in the countryside that nurseries were orga-
nized for their children (Montreal Gazette 1942f). The effort of Chinese
women as guerrilla fighters was often cited as a prime example for a newly
earned sense of equality between Chinese men and women.
This discussion of gender roles calls into question what equality meant
to Canadian journalists. Although women were pushing the envelope in
the Soviet Union and China, did that mean that these journalists, and by
extension the Canadian public, wanted to see their women as combatants?
The answer is a resounding “no.” While Valerie Korinek (2000, 19) has
argued that Chatelaine was a subversive vehicle for the feminist movement
in Canada during the 1960s and 1970s, it is more likely that the periodicals
and newspapers of the 1940s were more afraid of societal change than
advocates for it. The government—and much of society—was anxious to
return to the prewar status quo. Despite an increased participation of
women in the war effort, both through military enlistment and in the
munitions industry, it was widely accepted that once the war was over,
men and women would revert to their traditional gender roles. In fact,
government officials assured the public that after the war, female recruits
“will go back to their place in civil life; they will retake their positions in
the household and in the office or anywhere else where they originally
came from” (Pierson 1986, 132).
Despite any positive messages about Chinese and Soviet women, jour-
nalists and reporters drew a clear line between acceptable behavior for
Soviet and Chinese women with Canadian women. Soviet and Chinese
societies were perceived as “backwards” and less civilized than their
Canadian—and by extension, Commonwealth—counterparts, which for
many journalists explained why women were allowed to participate in
dangerous roles (Iacovetta, Draper, and Ventresca 1998, 483). While the
Canadian press tended to cite British women as a positive example for
Canadian women to replicate, the perceived backwardness and hardship
experienced by Soviet and Chinese women meant that they were politi-
cally, socially, and ideologically distanced from Canadian women.
Fearless Females in the Resistance
The nature of the war had turned entire countries into battlefields, and
women from occupied countries also participated in combat, albeit in
nonofficial military roles and on a smaller scale. Journalists discussed the
efforts of the women in the resistance movements of France, Belgium,
Poland, Yugoslavia, and Abyssinia who tried to protect their home and
country. The Canadian press tended to lump female resistance fighters into
a group, and cited their acts of sabotage against Nazi occupiers as brave
and courageous. Indeed, rather than portraying the female resisters as
combat-hungry, journalists instead labeled them heroines who were fulfill-
ing their motherly and patriotic duty.
France received the most press coverage of the occupied countries. This
may have been due to the popularity of the Free France Movement, which
was orchestrated by French citizens who did not support the Vichy regime
or the German Nazis. French women, such as Elisabeth de Mirabel, who
participated in organized resistance movements, garnered significant press
attention. Mirabel staged publicity tours throughout North America to
attract the empathy of Canadians and Americans (Chatelaine 1943b). Also,
Helen Terre and Réné Mathieu attracted press attention in Canada for their
daring escape to England to form the Corps Feminine of Free France as
part of the British foreign legion (Toronto Star 1941c). Stories in the Canadian
press detailed the extraordinary courage of the women in France in resist-
ing their Nazi occupiers. For example, Saturday Night (1945a) published
reports of a group of Frenchwomen who were parachuted into occupied
France to bring supplies and act as liaisons from Allied forces in England
to resistance groups in France. The Montreal Gazette wrote about the
French and Belgian women who produced the underground newspaper,
La Voix des Femmes, which provided women of occupied countries instruc-
tions on managing strict food rations and tips for conducting successful
sabotage missions without drawing attention from Nazi occupation author-
ities. The editor, known as “Madame Bonne Femme,” escaped Gestapo
capture by moving the printing presses almost every night (Montreal
Gazette 1942a). Ironically, although they were challenging conventional
notions of womanhood, the Canadian press presented female resisters as
the ideal of traditional motherly duty; by sacrificing themselves, they were
demonstrating their moral responsibility as mothers and supporters of
home, without seeking any personal gain (Honey 1984, 6).
Newspaper and magazine articles about Frenchwomen under occupa-
tion also attempted to evoke empathy among readers by describing the
horrors inflicted by the enemy. The Globe and Mail (1942c) published a
report about a French mother sentenced to death for leading a spy ring
that informed the British by shortwave radio about the departure of
German ships from her seaside town. Saturday Night (1943b) described to
Canadians the depressing circumstances experienced by the Frenchwomen
who were sent to work in Germany. Other women, in an effort to keep their
families together, voluntarily followed their husbands, children in tow, to
the German labor camps only to be separated upon arrival and experience
extremely poor living conditions. The stories of the resistance, however,
were not all sad. Writing for Saturday Night, Bernice Coffey (1943) optimis-
tically forecasted a great extension of the rights of women once France was
freed from Nazi occupation because of their vital role in the resistance
movement and in the Free French administration. A similar article in the
Halifax Chronicle (1942c) quoted Captain Burke, a French journalist, who
stated that Frenchwomen were “holding the nation together.” The articles
printed about Frenchwomen attempted to give Canadian readers a sense
of the terrible conditions of occupation, while showing the hope that
existed within the resistance movements.
Like the French, the resistance efforts of Polish women were also given
significant press attention. Polish exiles in Britain established a women’s
auxiliary corps linked with the British ATS, as seen in a photo spread pub-
lished in the Toronto Star (1941d). Some women who did not leave Poland
chose instead to perform acts of sabotage. The Vancouver Sun (1942b)
reported on Polish university women who risked their lives to take mes-
sages from Warsaw to Sweden. The Globe and Mail (1941c; 1941d) printed
three articles about two Polish women who were sentenced to death in a
German occupational court for insulting and injuring German citizens.
The two women led a group of twenty-eight Poles into a German shop
where they poured milk on the shopkeeper’s wife and hit her with the milk
can in protest of the Nazi control of milk, which was made unavailable to
the occupied peoples. The Canadian press portrayed these Polish women
as courageous and instrumental in the fight against fascism.
Women in the resistance efforts in other countries further afield, such
as Yugoslavia and Abyssinia, were also addressed by the Canadian press.
These articles described a more desperate, violent, and barbaric resistance
effort than that experienced in Western Europe. A Maclean’s correspondent
(1944) reported that women, and girls as young as 14 years old, participated
in the Yugoslavian resistance. Journalists were amazed that, despite the
danger, the women proudly took up the fight. The Halifax Chronicle (1942d)
featured Marie Simitch, a renowned guerrilla fighter whom it reported
“probably [did] more than any other of her country women to harass the
vindictive foe of her country.” Unfortunately, she was caught and executed
by the Nazis. Another woman was nicknamed the “Slav Joan of Arc” by the
Vancouver Sun (1941b) for her attempt to lead a guerrilla battalion into
conflict against the Germans.
News of female resistance fighters in Abyssinia was also found in the
pages of Canadian newspapers and magazines. One woman in particular,
Banichyzgu (Martha) Kidani, was profiled in the Halifax Chronicle (1941b)
because she fought the Nazis and Italian Fascists with Haile Selassie’s
troops. After the Italians executed her father, Kidani attempted to avenge
his death by going to the front as a nurse. When this was not permitted,
she shaved her head and joined the expeditionary force as a man.
Eventually, she was discovered, but she was allowed to stay and fight among
the men. The articles on Martha Kidani, Marie Simitch, and other women
in the Yugoslavian Comitaji displayed to Canadian readers a more barbaric
side of the resistance effort that forced these women to go to extraordinary
and violent lengths to fight the fascist enemy.
Although the press tended to focus on the more spectacular accounts
of female resisters, evidence suggests that most women—in the French
resistance at least—were engaged in more traditional and nurturing roles.
These women participated in resistance work that was an extension of
their role as homemakers, namely by supplying shelter and providing food.
In her study, Women and the Second World War in France, Hanna Diamond
(1999, 106) notes that “married women who centered their activity on the
home were able to maintain an appearance of normality, while men were
more likely to be noticed and went underground.” Women’s resistance
work was often camouflaged by their day-to-day lives, and their efforts
slipped under the radar of their German occupiers. This may explain why
most of the press coverage of female resisters was based on the more pub-
lic acts of these women. Also, and probably more likely, was that the cul-
tural context of the Second World War in Canada, with women making a
dramatic leap into the public sphere, produced a desire for new discourse
about women performing unconventional and masculine tasks.
Women and the Wartime Press
Women were a popular topic for newsmakers during the Second World
War. In Canada, women were employed in war-related industries, and by
1941, for the first time, they were permitted to enlist in the armed services
through the Canadian Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, the Canadian Women’s
Army Corps, and the Women’s Royal Canadian Navy. These new roles
posed a direct challenge to traditional notions of femininity and the stabil-
ity of the nuclear family, and the Canadian press was quick to provide
coverage and editorialize on those perceived threats. The press expressed
mixed messages about women’s participation in the war effort; some jour-
nalists reassured their readers that women in uniform retained their fem-
ininity, and others expressed concern—sometimes even panic—over the
long-term consequences of women’s military service. But we should not
be surprised by these contrasting messages; there existed no societal drive
to fully incorporate women into the military or the workforce until the
publication of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1970. The
nature of the war forced change onto the Canadian public, who were
assured that female participation was necessary for the duration, and that
their women would quietly return home after the war.
But that did not appear to be the message about foreign women. An
examination of press coverage of servicewomen and female resistance
fighters from countries around the world reveals that a dichotomy existed
between acceptable work roles for Canadian women versus their foreign
counterparts. The press could have chosen to ignore or bury stories of
foreign women performing militaristic tasks, but instead we located over
200 articles in our sample study. And news of these women was not rele-
gated to the women’s sections of newspapers and magazines; they graced
the front pages, were given photo spreads, and were routinely the subject
of follow-up stories. The detail and depth of these articles often depended
on whether or not a newspaper or magazine employed foreign correspon-
dents; the geographical distance of foreign women often left Canadian-
bound journalists filling in blanks about lifestyle, socio-economic
conditions, and the impact that these women had on their own societies.
Though their coverage may have been exaggerated in some instances,
the language used by the press to describe these women reveals that there
were two general concepts of women in war: woman as feminine heroine,
and woman as masculine “Amazon.” Interestingly, journalists cited both
models as capable of promoting gender equality—but only among foreign
women. The notion that women in military roles could be feminine and
heroic is exemplified in the coverage of women in occupied countries who
participated in resistance efforts. The press profiled these women as coura-
geous and also used stories about them to evoke empathy from Canadian
readers. Journalists tended to justify the unconventional roles of these
women by highlighting the desperation of their environmental circum-
stances. Female resistance fighters in Abyssinia and Yugoslavia, for exam-
ple, were lauded for participating in violent confrontation in order to
protect their homes and families. But rather than being labelled as combat-
hungry and aggressive, these women, along with their Polish and French
counterparts, were portrayed as competent and clear-headed, and par-
ticipated in resistance activities based on calculated decision-making.
Although the press tended to showcase the more extreme—and what could
be characterised by contemporaries as “masculine”—activities, reporters
often presented these female resistance fighters as the ideal in femininity:
women who were protecting their homes, families, and country, without
any pretence of personal ambition.
The terms “masculine,” “Amazon,” and, by extension, “foreign,” were
reserved for women who undertook formalized military training. Female
Chinese guerrilla fighters and Soviet servicewomen often appeared battle-
weary and tough, which separated them from the physical representations
of Canadian women in uniform, who were photographed in well-tailored
uniforms with manicured fingernails. Interestingly, however, some journal-
ists actually embraced the idea that these women possessed masculine
characteristics as proof that they were equal in the cause. These reporters
lauded their efforts as being instrumental in advancing the women’s move-
ment in their respective countries. Despite these positive images, their
contrasting physical representations served to highlight the foreignness
and perceived “backwardness” that mid-twentieth-century Canadians com-
monly associated with Chinese and Soviet societies, and it allowed journal-
ists to draw a distinction between appropriate roles for Canadian women
versus their Chinese and Soviet counterparts.
British servicewomen, on the other hand, were portrayed as being the
most similar to Canadian women, even though the two groups of women
were assigned different wartime roles. The war contribution of British
women was often cited as a source of inspiration for Canadian women, and
the British women’s military services were used as the model for the cre-
ation of the Canadian women’s services. They were such popular subjects
in Canadian newspaper and magazines that there were more articles about
British women than women from any other country, which may have been
due to the historical linkages between Britain and Canada. Discussion of
British servicewomen often mirrored debates about female personnel in
Canada. British women were frequently lauded for their courage and devo-
tion to their country in times of extreme hardship, yet when they filled
nontraditional, and sometimes unapologetically masculine, roles, some
journalists labeled them as masculine and “Amazonian.” These criticisms
were few, however, and the proximity to the frontlines allowed the press
to present British women—and most other foreign women—in such a way
that permitted them to step outside of the boundaries of prewar gender
norms.
Canadian servicewomen, on the other hand, were portrayed through
images of heightened femininity and womanliness. The entrance of
Canadian women into the public sphere during the Second World War
occurred because of the need for workers on the home front in factories,
government, and service industries. In Canada, the military—and much
of society—continued to operate around a sexual division of acceptable
work roles for men and women. The government and the press worked
hard to ensure that these new roles were unthreatening to pre-established
gender roles. Since there was no clear need for Canadian female combat-
ants, there was no push to make women in combat appear acceptable.
Even those women who enlisted in the military as noncombatants learned
from the slanderous “whispering campaigns” that many Canadians were
not yet ready to accept women in the military. Yet, stories of foreign women
in military roles appeared in the pages of Canadian newspapers and mag-
azines almost every day.
There are several purposes for studying why this dichotomy between
the representation of Canadian and foreign women in the press existed
during the Second World War. The first is to simply learn more about the
portrayal of foreign combatants in the Canadian press during this period,
since it is a topic about which virtually nothing has been written. More
importantly, however, examining press articles on foreign women lends
further insight into how gender roles were applied to Canadian women in
this period, and how these constructs were different for women of other
countries. To fully understand the portrayal of Canadian women during
the Second World War, it is helpful to look at the depiction of women
around the world.
It is impossible to measure the effect of articles about foreign women
in the Canadian press on readers. It is likely, however, that the print media
influenced the formation of a public image of women in uniform (Rupp
1978, 4). The Canadian public was certainly intrigued by the activities of
these women, as is evidenced by the more than 20,000 Canadians who
gathered in Toronto, Ontario, to applaud and learn more about the Soviet
Union’s famous junior lieutenant, Liudmila Pavlichenko. During her North
America tour, press interest was at its peak for publishing stories of service-
women, which reflected a general Canadian desire for as much information
as possible about these sniper girls and fearless heroines.
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Enlisted Women in the U.S. Army 1948–2008 569
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Enlisted Women in the U.S. Army 1948–2008:

A View from the Market Place
Judith Hicks Stiehm
In his History of Florence, Machiavelli observed that the view from the
balcony is different from the view from the market place. D’Ann Campbell
(chapter 7, this volume) has provided an account of policy changes related
to military women over the last sixty years. She has not only described the
changes, she has provided an account of how the changes were made, by
legislation, executive order, administrative rule, or judicial decision. Hers
is a view from the balcony—the view of policy makers and implementers.
The focus is on the “use” of women. This essay will cover much of the same
ground, though only for the United States, but it will endeavor to provide
a view from the market place, that is, it will try to describe how policy
changes were experienced by military women in the United States. In cur-
rent parlance, it will consider the women as agents, as individuals who
make choices, in this case amid ever-changing circumstances.
Campbell has noted that nurses are often set aside in discussions about
military women. That is because they provoke so little controversy and are
so necessary. In fact, the government was prepared to draft nurses during
World War II if there had not been enough volunteers. Still, it should be
remembered that even if today’s controversy is about men’s role in the
nurse corps, nurses were not always welcome, and, in many ways, they
served as a vanguard for other women (Reeves 1996). As Campbell has also
noted, much of the literature on military women focuses on officers.
Although it was not always the case, 85 percent of the women in the mili-
tary today are enlisted. In other words, only 15 of every 100 women who
wear uniforms are officers. Therefore, this essay will emphasize the view
and experience of enlisted women. In particular, it will emphasize army
women. This is for two reasons. One is that they are the largest group of
women enlisted. The second is that even though they may not serve in
combat specialties, army women today do serve in dangerous locations.
In the Iraq War, 112 died in the first five years and others became prisoners
570 Judith Hicks Stiehm
of war. Debate about army women’s risks and their responsibilities con-
tinues.
Preliminaries
Those who become police officers enter a career with a single track for
advancement. This is not true of the U.S. armed forces. Perhaps as a rem-
nant of the medieval army, where nobles rode horses while others walked,
those in uniform are divided into two very distinct groups. One comprises
officers, the other enlisted. In some militaries all initial enlistments are in
the enlisted ranks. Thus, those who later become officers have initially had
the enlisted experience. Also, a small number of enlisted do advance to
officer status by going through an officer training program, but this is not
usual. There is also a “between” category, warrant officer, for those with
special skills the military wishes to retain.
A basic distinction is that officers are college graduates who often obtain
a graduate degree as they advance in rank. Enlisted are typically high school
graduates (a small number may have a college diploma), but when recruits
are needed, some will be inducted who have not graduated from high
school. Since most enlistees serve for relatively short periods, this means
that enlisted personnel are mostly young. For them high school norms and
lifestyles prevail, not those of the college graduate. Until they left for basic
training many enlisted personnel had been living with their parents; many
had never been out of their home town or state. Basic training is often a
shock. It is likely less a shock for young men than for young women, who
have often been more sheltered.
New recruits start as E-1s. Military data is reported as ranks E-1 through
E-9, O-1 through O-10 and W-1 through W-4. Although named ranks such
as private, corporal, lieutenant and general are in common usage, they vary
by service, e.g. a sergeant is an E-5 in the army and marines but an E-4 in
the air force. An E-5 in the navy is a Petty Officer Second Class. Each indi-
vidual moves through each rank; lateral entry is rare. Promotions through
E-4 can occur rather quickly. Promotions to E-5 and above typically occur
after at least one re-enlistment and are competitive. Individuals who stay
in service for the maximum number of years (few do) have a good chance
of being promoted to E-6 and E-7. Individuals who do not expect to be
promoted are more likely to leave, thus, the “good chance” for promotion
is among those who have some expectations. Slots for E-8 and E-9 are
limited. Thus one cannot be promoted to E-9 unless there is an “opening.”
Promotions are linked to time in service. Women typically serve fewer
years than men, so it is no surprise that as one ascends in rank one finds
an ever diminishing percentage of women. Because large numbers of mil-
itary personnel serve only a single enlistment, the rank pyramid is, and is
expected to be, a steep one. Retention problems do occur, however. For
example, it may be hard to retain people who have an occupational spe-
cialty in demand in civilian life. A recent example (for men) involves
Special Forces personnel who can make a great deal more money working
as a civilian for a contractor. A change in circumstances, e.g., deployment(s)
to a combat zone, a phasing out of a military occupation specialty (MOS),
or a change in the rotation system may lead to an exodus as well. Enlisted
personnel enlist for a specific number of years. If they re-enlist, it is also
for a specific number of years. Regular enlistments in the All Volunteer
Force (AVF) are for four years. Individuals who receive special training may
make as much as a six-year commitment.
While in service enlisted, like officers, enjoy many benefits such as access
to commissaries, housing or a housing allowance, health care, and an allow-
ance for dependents. Basic pay, however, is low. Some personnel may
receive a variety of bonuses—recently some recruits have received as much
as $40,000 as an enlistment bonus—but the income of most enlisted is well
below the national median. For example, in 2006 basic pay for an E-1 was
about $15,000 and for an E-5 with 6 years of service (typically someone who
had enlisted for a second tour) $27,000. An E-9 with 26 years of service had
pay of only $65,000. If the median income for a male worker in the U.S. is
taken as $41,000, one would have to be an E-9, an E-8 with 12 years of service
or an E-7 with 16 years of service to reach the national (male) median. The
median income for a full-time female worker is $32,000. Military pay is
more competitive with civilian pay for women than it is for men (U.S.
Census Bureau 2006, 7; U.S. Department of Defense n.d.). Enlisted culture
is not only young, it is lower middle class. It would be difficult to support
a family on enlisted pay if it were not for the benefits and allowances. The
government actually provides military personnel with a strong social net.
It even pays them according to “need” in that individuals with the same
rank and years in service can get different allowances depending upon the
number of dependents they have. (But do not call a person in uniform a
socialist!)
Because the military is a hierarchical institution, civilians may perceive
it as a rigid and inflexibly ordered environment. Yet two crucial character-
istics of military life are mobility and rotation. Geographic mobility is not
just from state to state or country to country but continent to continent.
Rotation means having a new boss and new workplace peers at regular
intervals—one, two, or three years. Military personnel have to be resilient.
They cannot be rigid. They have to learn to accommodate and to do so
quickly. They also have to accommodate to new rules, e.g., because person-
nel are in short supply as a result of the war in Iraq, soldiers who were
scheduled to be discharged have had to stay on active duty because of a
new “stop loss” policy. During the last sixty years military women, in par-
ticular, have had to make accommodations because the laws and rules
regulating their service have greatly changed.
Many women officers have pressed to have the right to perform all the
duties men perform. Colonel Martha McSally of the air force is, perhaps,
an extreme example. She sued the government so she would not have to
wear an abaya while stationed in Saudi Arabia. She also has insisted on
wearing a male rather than a female uniform hat, and in a recent article
argued against all forms of “double standard,” including not just physical
standards, but uniforms which include pantyhose, high heels and skirts
above the knee (McSally 2007). Female officers have good reason to seek
the same duties as men: restrictions on their training and assignments tend
to reduce their chances for promotion. The situation for enlisted women
is different. They are not going to advance to high rank and high pay no
matter what. Thus some things seen by officers as an opportunity, such as
serving in combat, may not be seen as an attractive option by enlisted
women.
Finally, the services are different from each other. Carl Builder’s classic
The Masks of War (1989) remains the best description of their different
cultures. The air force experience for both men and women is closest to
that of being a civilian. As a rule only combat and test air crew are seen as
risking danger. They are but a small portion of the air force—air force
officers are 20 percent of the force and pilots are about 20 percent of offi-
cers, so air force “warriors” are only about 4 percent of the force—and have
been virtually unchallenged in the sky for 60 years. While women officers
now fly all air force planes, enlisted women spend their time on the ground.
In military surveys, air force women tend to express more satisfaction with
their service than do other military women.
Navy women, officers and enlisted, now serve on ships (except for sub-
marines), but again, with the exception of the terrorist attack on the USS
Cole in 2000, no enemy has challenged a U.S. Navy ship in more than half
a century. Navy life is complicated by requirements for sea duty. When
women won the right to go to sea, which officer women saw as necessary
to advance their careers, enlisted women found themselves going to sea
too; actually the deciding legal case on women’s sea duty was initiated by
an enlisted woman. In fact, most of the women aboard ship are enlisted
women, some of whom may have been quite happy about the old rules
which kept them on shore. Once women began to enter the navy in sub-
stantial numbers, barring them from sea duty meant that the shore slots
they filled were unavailable for men to rotate into from sea duty. This gave
the navy an incentive to support changing the legislation which restricted
women’s service on ships. Organizationally the marines are under the Chief
of Naval Operations but they behave and are treated as a wholly separate
service from the Navy. The marines are officially a combat branch of the
navy, but in many ways behave and are treated as a separate service. They
are sometimes described as military fundamentalists. Theirs is a combat
corps; it is smaller than the other services, and only a limited number of
marines are women. The coast guard is a military service, but in the past
it has been assigned to the Department of Defense only during wartime; it
is now part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Then there is the army. The army doesn’t have glamorous ships or planes
like the navy and air force. It doesn’t have good uniforms and a good song
like the marines. It is, however, the indispensable, basic fighting force,
which is probably the force most people think about when they think of
G.I. Joe and G.I. Jane. Ground combat is the army’s mission, a mission
accomplished in other people’s countries, happily for us. Because they fight
abroad, a large number of army personnel are engaged in a wide variety of
support roles. Again, army women are not supposed to be in combat, but
combat cannot be confined to a particular time and location, which means
that some women with support assignments do their work in a dangerous
environment. Remember that even if most women are in support military
occupational specialties (MOSs), they are vastly outnumbered by men even
in those specialties. Again, even though enlisted women have increased in
number, in the percentage of the force they represent, and in the variety
of MOS assignments they fulfill, with the exception of the nurse corps, in
every service and every specialty military women are tokens—less than 15
percent of the larger group. Whether women in a men’s group, men in a
women’s group, blacks in a white group, or whites in a black group, the
experience is much the same (Kanter 1979). Their common experience as
tokens differentiates them from the majority.
Post World War II through the Korean War
Demobilization was extensive and rapid after the end of World War II.
Army women numbered more than 90,000 on V-J Day, but by December
1946 they were less than 10,000 (Morden 1990, 28). The country had mobi-
lized for war: children collected aluminum cans and paper, people grew
vegetables and bought defense bonds, and women poured into the labor
force and into the military. Peace, however, was celebrated by a mass exo-
dus from the military. The women who remained in uniform in 1947 were
in an entirely different military, one that was almost a remnant. The women
were so few in number as to almost be a remnant of a remnant. The lack
of crisis was suggested by the fact that Congress allowed the draft to expire.
Almost immediately, however, the United States began its decades-long
Cold War with the Soviet Union, and almost immediately the draft (for
men) was reinstated (1948). Soon after that (1950) the country entered a
hot war in Korea.
By then the Navy and War Departments had evolved into the National
Military Establishment and then into the Department of Defense. The air
force had become a separate service. The most important decision related
to women was to retain a small number of them as regular members of the
military, i.e., not to relegate them to the reserves. The thinking was that a
cadre of experienced women ready to train and to lead women recruits
would be valuable should there be a need to rapidly expand the number
of women in uniform; in World War II it had at first been necessary to place
civilian women in leadership positions. But the Women’s Armed Services
Integration Act of 1948, Public Law 625, specifically limited women to 2
percent of the total force. While enlisted women could advance through
all ranks, officers could advance only to colonel or navy captain and could
hold that rank only temporarily when in an assignment requiring that rank.
Women under 18 could not enlist at all, and those under 21 required paren-
tal consent. While this legislation permitted women’s enlistment in the
navy and air force, it specifically forbade navy women from serving on ships
(other than hospital and transport ships) and air force women from flying
in aircraft on combat missions. The air force interpreted the law as prohib-
iting military women from flying any plane. This affected officers. As hos-
pital and transport ships were phased out, the navy interpreted the law as
forbidding women to go to sea at all. This affected women enlisted and
officers.
Army women merit special attention for two reasons. First, there were
no legislative restrictions on women’s assignments, if only because it was
well understood that WACs (members of the Women’s Army Corps) would
serve in support, that large numbers of officers would be nurses (and in a
separate corps), and that most of the other officers would be administrators
or would command enlisted women. Second, the WAC was integrated into
the army intact. Thus army women had a corps of their own. Even though
they worked with men in a variety of specialties and locations, their chain
of command was different. Women were not allowed to command men,
but, conversely, enlisted women had women as their commanders. Again,
they were integrated at work but had a corps, a chain of command and a
promotion system of their own. They did not compete against or command
men.
The newly-created air force also gave women a separate identity as
WAFs (Women’s Air Force). Like the army’s WAC, their organization was
not formally abolished until the late 1970s, but the WAF never had the
history and cohesiveness of the WAC. In fact, from its inception the air
force had a single personnel system. A WAF Director was appointed, but
her assignment was limited to giving advice (Holm 1992, 131–33). The navy
ended its special organization for women, the WAVES, right after World
War II, although a senior woman officer was designated Special Assistant
to the Chief of Personnel for Women, which provided women with some
effective senior leadership (Holm 1992, 37–39). Marine women were put
on reserve status. In sum, women won regular status, but their postwar
roles and numbers were limited by law. The limitations accorded with
wartime practice and were not contested. Going “regular” was a substantial
achievement in itself. Twenty years later the “climate” for women had
changed, and significant policy changes would be made beginning in the
late 1960s.
Black women were not admitted to the navy or marines during World
War II. The WAC tried to recruit black women to the same level of 10 per-
cent at which the army capped black male recruits, but was not able to go
beyond 6 percent. One battalion of black women did serve in Europe. Civil
rights groups had campaigned for this opportunity. As would be the case
in other new assignments, not all women were pleased by the “opportunity”
to be shipped abroad. Except at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, where WAC officers
in training shared housing and dining, the WAC, like the rest of the army,
was segregated. President Harry Truman would end segregation by execu-
tive order in 1948. Its full implementation would take some time.
The Korean War was not the kind of crisis which brought about signifi-
cant changes for military women. Efforts to increase the number of women
met with some success. Army women went from less than 5000 in June
1949 to more than 10,000 in mid-1952 (Morden 1990, 409). Still, the percent-
age of women actually declined, remaining far below the 2 percent allow-
able. One important change related to enlisted women; that was the change
in the ratio of enlisted women to officers. In 1948 enlisted women were less
than half of the women in the military. By 1960 they were 65 percent, in
2009 about 85 percent, approximately the same ratio as enlisted men to
male officers. Much of the military women’s story during the Korean War
was about nurses’ service abroad (Japan, Okinawa, Korea) and in challeng-
ing situations. In particular, army nurses wore combat boots and helmets
when they worked in Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units close
to the line of combat (as TV watchers well know).
During the Korean War the WAC (for the first time) recalled reservists
who did not want to serve. Also, the 1948 regulation which permitted dis-
charge of women upon marriage if they had served for one year was tem-
porarily suspended. Marriage was no longer an automatic way out; some
saw the discharge policy as an easy exit for a woman no longer enthralled
by military service. The policy of discharge upon marriage was an important
factor in women’s lack of promotion to senior rank. Imagine a military
composed only of single men! It is true that at different times married men
have been exempted from the draft. However, married men are very eli-
gible for promotion to the most senior ranks. Indeed, officers’ wives were
once considered so important to their husband’s career that their perfor-
mance was part of an officer’s evaluation. This kind of regulation nicely
served the needs of the military. On the one hand it was a way of shedding
a special needs soldier. The wartime suspension, though, was a way of
keeping a needed soldier. Note that the rules were changed when women
were “needed” and they were changed back when the new regulation was
found to negatively affect recruitment and retention. Similar shifts in pol-
icy would occur decades later when the military had fully accepted married
women. Discharge upon marriage was ended in 1966. It was reinstated in
1969 when officials concluded that women who wished to leave simply
took another avenue such as going AWOL (Morden 1990, 175, 225). In 1973
discharge for marriage was finally ended (Morden 1990, 304).
Accommodating the idea of mothers in uniform took longer. For years,
having a child—even marrying a man who already had minor children—
meant a woman had to leave the military. The policy then evolved to one
which gave women a choice: stay or leave. Eventually, the military assumed
the choice. Mothers whom the military particularly needed, such as those
with special training, were not automatically given a discharge even if they
requested it.
Another result of the Korean War was the creation the Defense Advisory
Committee on the Status of Women (DACOWITS) in 1951. This DOD com-
mittee consisted of fifty prominent women from across the country. Its
purpose was to assist in recruiting and to promote military service for
women as both legitimate and prestigious. Slurs against women who do
unusual things are not uncommon and frequently involve the women’s
sexuality. A well-circulated canard alleged military women were either
whores or lesbians. One might think that one way to refute such defama-
tion would be to allow military women to marry and have children. Much
DACOWITS activity was designed to enhance the public image of military
women. Its intended focus was the public and its opinion. Over the years
its role would evolve to one of being a supporter of and watchdog on behalf
of military women. During the second Bush administration there was a
push to abolish DACOWITS. It survived, but with diminished influence.
“Peacetime” and Vietnam
The Korean War ended in 1953. The circumstances and regulations for
military women remained more or less unchanged until the late 1960s. One
change involved the Army Nurse and Medical Specialists Corps and the
Air Force Nurse Corps which were opened to men in 1955. The navy’s nurse
corps remained sex-segregated for another decade. Army enlisted women
were a third of all enlisted women. They continued to be limited in number
by law although by then they outnumbered officer women two to one.
Large numbers of army women officers were nurses and most enlisted were
in medical or clerical assignments. The Army Nurse Corps was separate
from the Women’s Army Corps. So when a reference is made to women
army officers, individuals from both corps would be counted. When refer-
ring to enlisted women one would be referring to members of the WAC
and to medical specialists. Both officer and enlisted WACs had a strong
allegiance to the WAC which trained them, commanded them, and decided
their promotions. The women worked with men but lived together. They
were childless and mostly single. Many did not complete their first enlist-
ment even though the standards they met to enlist were significantly higher
than those for men. This was because a limited number of women were
recruited and the services took “the best.” Having to recruit many more
men meant having to use lower standards. Standards constantly change
as the number of recruits needed changes.
The Vietnam Conflict (never officially a war) is usually said to have
begun in 1964. Although the Tet offensive of 1968 suggested that the U.S.
was not going to achieve victory in Vietnam, the Geneva Peace Treaty was
not actually signed until 1973. That means that for more than a decade
(1953–63) military women were enlisting in a peacetime military, despite
the continuing Cold War and the heightened anxiety created by the 1961–
62 Bay of Pigs fiasco and Cuban Missile Crisis. They were not swept up in
a patriotic fervor. They were not subject to the draft. They were actively
choosing military service. And they were doing so on terms which clearly
distinguished the nature of their service from that of men. Still, that service
provided participation in a community of women with strong bonds to
each other just as men’s service created strong bonds, bonds which the
military values and calls cohesiveness. The recruitment of women was
ramped up during the Vietnam Conflict just as it was during the Korean
War. The increase remained well below the 2 percent cap, but in 1967 that
cap was removed by Public Law 90–130. This was the only change in the
law which directly affected enlisted women and it was largely symbolic
since women’s numbers remained below 2 percent for a number of years.
But officer women’s rank caps were removed entirely in the same legisla-
tion and by 1970 two army women became generals—an important first,
though again largely symbolic.
The Vietnam era included two important domestic movements: the civil
rights and the women’s movements. The military was affected by both. The
military had considered itself in the forefront of racial integration ever
since President Truman’s 1948 Executive Order directed an end to racial
segregation. Still, African Americans (and supporters of civil rights) in and
out of the military questioned the slow and imperfect implementation of
that policy (MacGregor 1981). When the WAC was established as a Regular
Corps in 1948 there were only 121 enlisted black women on duty (Morden
1990, 85), a 10 percent maximum was the rule until 1950, but by 1952, 13
percent of WAC was black. Most military women were reluctant to identify
with the women’s movement, to describe themselves as feminists, or to
press the military for change. Nevertheless, what was happening in civilian
life had an affect on the military.
What happened in civilian life were passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963,
the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and a highly visible drive for passage of an Equal
Rights Amendment (ERA). Since military pay is linked to rank, one might
think there were no pay issues for military women. But the military does
not actually give equal pay for equal work. It has a system which takes into
account need by giving allowances for dependents. By law, however, it did
not treat male and female spouses in the same way. Men’s wives were
automatically considered dependents. Husbands were not. A military
woman could receive a dependency allowance only if she proved her hus-
band was, in fact, financially dependent on her. An air force officer brought
the issue before the courts and in 1973 in Frontiero v Richardson the law
was overturned on due process grounds. Four Supreme Court justices were
prepared to rule that sex was an “inherently suspect” classification and
were prepared to define the issue as one of equal protection. The Equal
Rights Amendment had recently passed Congress, however, and it seemed
headed for quick ratification by the states. Three justices who supported
Frontiero therefore held that respect for the legislative process suggested
that the court should not “unnecessarily … decide sensitive issues of broad
social and political importance at the very time they are under consider-
ation within the prescribed constitutional processes.” Lacking one vote,
then, sex did not become a “suspect category.” Lacking 5 percent of the
states—70 percent of the states (35) instead of the needed 75 percent—the
Equal Rights Amendment failed in 1982. Some have argued that the ERA
failed because of lack of clarity about its meaning with regard to women’s
military service, including their eligibility for the draft and for combat.
Indeed, a military exemption was specifically not included in the amend-
ment. But it should be noted that southern states (and many southern
voters) resented the overturning of their laws and practices by the Civil
Rights Act, and were not inclined to support anything which might increase
interference in their affairs by federal administrators or courts. No southern
state ratified the ERA. The only non-southern states which did not ratify
were Utah, which, ironically, was one of the first to give women the vote,
and Illinois where opponents were particularly active and where a 60
percent vote was required for passage.
The Civil Rights Act forbids discrimination in employment including
discrimination against women. “Sex” was added to the legislation at the
last minute by Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia. Some believe
it was an attempt to scuttle the legislation, although Smith professed to
speak sincerely in its support. It was not added as a result of visible lobby-
ing by women’s organizations. It did not specifically forbid discrimination
against women who became pregnant, but civilian schoolteachers who lost
their jobs when they became pregnant won important cases in 1973 and
1974. The military, then, anticipating the possibility of similar cases by
military women, began an internal debate about permitting mothers to
remain in the military. The senior woman in the navy and the Director of
the WAC opposed a change. WAF Director Jeanne Holm supported it, but
the regulation which permitted no woman to have a minor in her home
for more than thirty days a year was not changed until an air force officer
took the issue to court and also refused a waiver offered to her as an indi-
vidual.
Even after the air force changed its policy, the other services continued
to resist a change although they issued waivers to moot a number of cases
in order to avoid a court decision. A complication in the discussion was
the fact that in one of the first cases the woman who challenged the regu-
lation was not married. The navy argued it could not condone the “dilution
of moral standards set for women in the Navy.” The woman’s attorneys
responded that there was no penalty for unwed fathers. In this specific case
the navy decided the enlisted woman could stay; in fact, it promoted her,
and offered her re-enlistment. Nevertheless, her case proceeded; by the
time it reached a judicial conclusion the navy asserted that it had changed
its policy, and that men and women were now being held to a single moral
standard. Challenges and waivers had become numerous enough that in
June 1974 the Department of Defense directed the services to develop
policies making separation on grounds of pregnancy voluntary by May
1975. The air force did so. The army resisted until November. But the final
decision came in 1976 in a case involving the marines, Crawford v Cushman.
The circuit court held that pregnancy was “no longer a dirty word” and “no
different from other disabilities in terms of mobility, readiness or even
convenience.” The regulation was found to penalize the decision to bear a
child, a decision constitutionally protected.
Married women and married and unmarried mothers significantly
changed the military. The services had long assumed that most women
would be single and childless, would serve for a short time, and would leave
when they married, often before meeting their enlistment commitment.
Now, women could have families and plan a full career, though many
military women (as well as men) did not welcome the change. The creation
of a maternity uniform was a landmark event. After 1976, then, new recruits
entered an institution with very different rules than those which had
applied to the women senior to them, women who had become the first
regular, peacetime members of the military. “Sisterhood” may have
remained a value, but in the future more and more women would have
spouses and children. The generations of military women would be very
different from each other (Stiehm 1989, chapter 2).
Even though the ERA did not ultimately pass, fear that it would pass
created turmoil at the Pentagon. Anticipating that more women would
want to enlist in an “equal” military, but assuming that the ban on their
use in combat would continue, planners tried to devise a formula which
would show how many women could be absorbed or used. This involved
setting aside many occupations entirely. A percentage of slots within other
occupations was also set aside in order to permit rotation. Still other occu-
pations or slots were thought to require too much strength for women. An
estimate of women’s “propensity” to enlist was added to the calculations.
The military was not used to actively recruiting young women. In 1976 one
study showed more than 20 percent of high school men describing them-
selves as “likely” to enter the military and a smaller percentage saying they
wanted to serve. For women about 12 percent said they wanted to serve
but only 8 percent said they were “likely” to serve. The numbers rose to a
peak in 1983. After that the men’s propensity declined to 15 percent in 1996
and the women’s to between 5 and 10 percent (Segal et al. 1998). What
emerged were “goals” for recruitment, goals which often functioned as caps
for women.
But there was another momentous change which had important con-
sequences for women. In 1972 Congress decided to end conscription. Even
though the Gates Commission analysis of the plan to abolish the draft did
not see enlisting more women as necessary to ease recruitment challenges,
military planners did. The Department of Defense told the services to
double their number of women within five years (Stiehm 1989, 38; Morden
1990, 411). In fact, within five years the number of enlisted women tripled.
In 1972, one of every 30 recruits was a woman, in 1976 one of every 13. The
WAC had the largest number; 19,000 women joined the Corps that year.
Black women were 22 percent of the WAC by that time (Morden 1990, 410,
415). They were now and would continue to be “over-represented.”
Post Vietnam: The Ford, Carter, and Reagan Years
Increases in equality are usually assumed to be welcome and beneficial,

but feminists and military women soon learned that rules which make
women “equal” to men are not necessarily equitable. Military women also
learned that protections they may have enjoyed either by rule or practice
would be resented and changed as their numbers increased and men saw
them as competitors. One example of the difficulties involving the differ-
ence between equal and equitable is physical fitness standards. Although
efforts to prescribe specific strength standards for specific military occupa-
tions eventually went by the board as far as excluding individuals from a
particular MOS, all military personnel have to pass fitness tests at regular
intervals. These tests involve items like pushups. It was determined that
“fit” men could do more pushups than “fit” women. Therefore, the standard
women had to meet was set lower than that required of men. This was
judged equitable by policy makers, but it was clearly not “equal” and there-
fore not “fair” in the eyes of many men. Differences in physical fitness
standards remain an item of discussion especially among younger person-
nel. It should be noted that there are also different physical standards for
older personnel, but no critiques are made of that differential. Presumably
this is because those benefiting from the reduced standards for older indi-
viduals are the senior members of the military—officers and enlisted.
Also, women who worked in certain units may not have been required
to participate in certain duties such as night shifts in which they worked
alone. This would change. Again, if women enjoy new benefits, as they
approach equality with men, men will, unsurprisingly, insist that they also
assume the burdens of their new status. Since the mid-1970s some polls
show men as (somewhat) more supportive of women’s equality than
women. One explanation could be that about that time men began to
perceive women as advantaged. Supporting “equality” was a way of saying
women must assume the burdens that went with their new opportunities.
Examples in civilian life would be men’s demands for alimony and for equal
rights in child custody matters. More changes for military women occurred
between 1976 and 1982. They were not all viewed as positive, at least by
some women.
By 1976 women were admitted to Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC)
and to the military academies, but these changes had no direct effect on
enlisted women. For them the abolition of the WAC in 1978 was far more
momentous. The WAC had been almost a sisterhood. Army women were
trained by women, housed with women, commanded and promoted by
women. The community became less homogeneous when married women
were allowed to stay in service, and many WACs believed that motherhood
and especially single motherhood should have remained a bar to service.
When the WAC was abolished, women, especially enlisted women, lost an
important support system. Soon they had to compete directly with men,
this in a situation in which they were a minority even in the occupations
in which they were concentrated. Air force and navy women had earlier
lost any formal organization, but they retained an identity as WAFs and
WAVEs and did enjoy separate housing. In fact, because of recruiting pres-
sures, the military began to encourage women to enter a variety of “non-
traditional” fields, i.e., anything except medical and clerical/administrative
MOSs. Just as in civilian life, women who entered these occupations faced
difficulties that women who worked in occupations in which they
“belonged” did not. Additionally, they often worked in places where they
were few in number, leading to social isolation.
A second major change involved the efforts of the navy. Chief of Naval
Operations Adm. Elmo Zumwalt sought to open all positions to women,
including those aboard ships. Although forbidden by Act of Congress, the
policy was challenged by four enlisted women in Owens v. Brown (455 F.
Supp. 291 [D.D.C. 1978]). The enlisted women were later joined by three
officers, including Lt Commander Kathleen Byerly who had been featured
on the cover of Time magazine as a distinguished young woman. By this
time the navy had no transport or hospital ships. Owens argued that
women, therefore, had no opportunity at all to go to sea. Her application
to serve on a naval survey ship operated by civilians, which had civilian
women on board, was denied. In 1978 Judge John Sirica ruled the legislation
was overly broad and the next year the legislation was changed to allow
an incremental change, i.e., women would not be assigned to ships on
combat missions, and they would be assigned only temporary duty on ships
except hospital ships, transport ships and other vessels not expected to be
assigned a combat mission.
After an “experiment” on a decommissioned hospital ship, Sanctuary,
women won assignment to yard boats, tugs and tenders: (extreme) caution
was the navy’s watchword. The navy believed women should not work in
isolation and therefore ruled that while no ship could have more than 25
percent women on board, that 25 women was to be a minimum, that 30
percent of enlisted women must be E-4 or above, and that any ship with
enlisted women should also have women officers. These rules were partly
a matter of berthing requirements and partly an understanding that women
should have recourse to experienced enlisted women and to a woman
officer. The rules also suggest worry that too many women might diminish
effectiveness. In the beginning the navy displayed some sleight of hand by
defining some overseas billets as sea duty for women but not for men and
by assigning women to ships which were in port. But the navy also wanted
a rotation for men which involved half their time at sea and half in port.
Thus, pressure grew to require women to accept the same rotation as men,
something which had not been part of the mission for which women had
volunteered. When the navy began to assign women to ships, it did not
“grandmother” women who had joined under different rules. All in the
appropriate specialties were liable for an assignment aboard ship. A victory
for some women thus proved a problem for others.
As women’s numbers increased they were expected to become more
like men in other ways as well. The driving force was to ensure that women
were not favored. In one remodeling the navy is said to have used 1945
bathroom fixtures to ensure that women did not have better facilities than
men (Stiehm 1989, 265 fn). Controversy arose when the services began
integrated basic training, except for marine women who continued to have
segregated basic training. While housing remained separate, army training
was integrated at the level of the platoon; a platoon is composed of two to
four (sex-segregated) squads and has 20 to 50 members. In segregated basic
training women had been instructed in things like grooming, physical
appearance, and manners. Their uniforms had skirts; they were issued
pumps but not combat boots; they had no fatigue uniforms and no weap-
ons training. Getting combat boots which fit properly and supported wom-
en’s feet turned out to be something of a problem. New recruits who went
through integrated training did not know how things “had been.” Their
seniors did, however, and many men (and some women) had doubts about
integrated basic training. Inevitably women’s mere presence would lead
to charges that the program had been “softened” so women could make it
through. Others would question the wisdom of having male drill sergeants
in charge of young women recruits. Some women were appointed as drill
instructors, and some even had authority over male recruits
Some dormitories were integrated floor by floor. Since it was both a
peacetime and all-volunteer force, the military had to provide amenities
which had not been necessary when the draft provided all the recruits
needed. One example was the construction of new, motel-like housing
rather than dormitories for enlisted personnel. This kind of “softening” was
often attributed to women’s presence and/or need for coddling. One must
remember, however, that the AVF, which was the driving force for women’s
rapid expansion, also had to enlist and retain large numbers of men. This
led the DOD to create a variety of incentives even more of which would
have been necessary if women’s numbers had not been increased. Thus,
much of the perceived “softening” was due to the new AVF.
Women who entered the military after 1978 entered a male institution
with limited special support for women but with apparently great oppor-
tunity. By 1980, however, the year of Ronald Reagan’s election as president,
public doubts about the value of military women and the policies about
them began to surface. Almost as soon as the inauguration was over the
army announced a “pause” in its expansion of the number of women it
planned to recruit. At the time there were about 150,000 women in uniform.
DOD plans called for an expansion to 223,000 by 1986 (Stiehm 1989, 54).
Critiques of military women’s service became public, and, what is more,
were made by military and civilian officials. Women’s training and service
were described as a “social experiment.” The emphasis on equal rights was
decried as having proceeded so far as to impair national security, an impor-
tant part of the Reagan platform—the Soviet Union had recently invaded
Afghanistan, and Iranian students had taken Americans hostage in Tehran.
Women’s competence in nontraditional jobs was questioned. Expenses
such as day care were questioned and attributed to women, but child care
facilities were also part of the effort to increase the retention of men. The
“readiness” of married couples and of women with children was cast into
doubt. Studies on the role of military women were demanded. Some who
demanded them assumed they would show women as deficient and a
hindrance to performance.
A rift developed between the services and civilian DOD officials;
Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger sent memos to each service saying
the administration wished to increase women in the military and asked
them to ensure that women experienced no discrimination. At about this
time the role of DACOWITS began to evolve into one which did not just
reassure the public about women in the military, but one which addressed
the services’ treatment of women. DACOWITS began to query policies and
to raise “issues of concern.” I served on DACOWITS. There was some antic-
ipation that DACOWITS would be different during the transition from
Carter to Reagan appointees, with more Republican fundraisers and busi-
nesswomen and fewer Democratic journalists and academics. It wasn’t.
The army soon (1982) re-segregated basic training, saying men were not
being sufficiently challenged physically and that women’s presence had a
negative effect on esprit and morale. Further, the army’s Policy Review
Group (of women’s capabilities in various MOSs) reported to DACOWITS
in 1982 that combat and physical strength issues suggested that as many
as 30,000 army women (close to one half of all army women) were in inap-
propriate positions. Much of the controversy involved the army and navy
(Stiehm 1989, 57–67), but the air force also planned a severe cutback in
women’s accessions. In 1982 the air force had 51,000 women in uniform. It
publicly announced a planned increase to 61,000 by 1986, omitting the fact
that the planned increase had been to 90,000 and that virtually all air force
jobs were open to women. This decision was considered so outrageous that
in 1985 Congress did something unheard of. It set the recruitment of women
goals for the air force in its defense authorization bill.
The army more than the other services does extensive social science
research and makes its findings available. It had begun a series of studies
about its women beginning in 1975. A number of the studies asked military
men and women about women in nontraditional military occupations and
about women’s possible participation in combat (Stiehm 1989, 90–107).
Overall men thought women should not be in combat, while about 50
percent of women thought they could fill that role. About half the men but
only 15 percent of women thought women in leadership would decrease a
unit’s effectiveness. About 40 percent of men but 70 percent of women
believed women were performing “very well.” A number of other studies
demonstrated similar differences of opinion about women’s roles and
performance. Most studies distinguished officer men from enlisted men
and officer women from enlisted women. Differences among the four
groups were often significant. Clearly there was substantial and widespread
resistance to the new policies related to military women. There was also
some belief that women received preferential treatment, i.e., that any
discrimination was against men. Also, large numbers of enlisted women
were opposed to women’s service in combat. Opinions are important, but
it is also important to remember that in the military at the time, 90 percent
of personnel were men as were virtually all senior officers and enlisted.
Women’s opinions did not carry a lot of weight.
Again, women were submerged in an institution with grave reservations
about them. On the other hand, the military is a hierarchical institution in
which the behavior of subordinates can be directed. Further, the military
is subordinate to civilian authority and that authority had views closer to
those of military women than those of military men. Much of the early
research seemed to ask opinions about whether or not women were able.
Usually the same question was not asked about men; it was assumed men
were able. Other studies attempted to collect evidence (as contrasted to
opinion). Once questions were asked about both men and women some
surprises emerged. For instance, a good deal of time was spent deploring
women’s lost time due to pregnancy. This seemed to be a good reason for
restricting women’s service until it was pointed out that the general issue
was “lost time,” and once lost time data was systematically recorded for
women and for men, it was found that men actually lost as much time as
women albeit for quite different reasons, e.g., AWOL, discipline, injuries.
In one study when data was recorded there was no difference; when it was
recollected (remembered), women were thought to have more lost time
(Stiehm 1989, 149).
Between 1976 and 1982 the army conducted nine major research projects
on women (Stiehm 1989, 134–54). Although most were constructed with
the assumption that women were disturbances if not liabilities, Army
Research Institute findings did not always confirm such assumptions. Still,
policy decisions were largely driven by the opinion of commanders rather
than research findings. One example is the 1982 re-segregation of basic
training done on the basis of commanders’ judgment. There was no data
to support the decision, no prior announcement, no consultation with
DACOWITS, no assessment of the effect of the change on women.
Early research did not focus on the possible mistreatment of women,
but as women entered new MOSs, and as they found themselves in isolated
situations at work, and even in mostly male military housing, DACOWITS
and the media began to hear about issues like sexual harassment. These
were issues which were surfacing in civilian life as well. There is some
debate as to whether there are more problems in civilian life or in the
military with its high percentage of young people, with limited numbers
of women, and with the potential for the exploitation of rank. Remember,
though, that the military prides itself on having higher standards than
civilians and it does have tools of command which are not available in
civilian organizations. Further, the military places a high value on team-
work, cooperation, cohesiveness. Thus controlling any behavior which
diminished women’s “belonging” and performance might seem possible
(Stiehm 1989, 205).
In 1980 a house subcommittee issued a report on sexual harassment in
the federal government, including military women; it was not comforting.
That same year a series of televised hearings at Fort Meade, Maryland,
which were prompted by stories in the Baltimore Sun, made public sig-
nificant mistreatment of army trainees. Testimony suggested that junior
enlisted women experienced a considerable amount of harassment, for
which they felt they had no recourse because it was done by senior enlisted
men. Regular verbal taunts were described, and women felt constrained
in many different ways, such as using dining halls and service clubs.
Different subcultures have different norms for language, for teasing, for
courtship, for self-defense, for appeal to authority. In the military “melting
pot” a particular behavior could be considered insulting or intimidating to
some young women. Other women might enjoy or be amused by the same
behavior. This has not been studied, to my knowledge, and it is not intended
to excuse; however, it does remind us of the complexity of human interac-
tion and the need to create appropriate control strategies.
The Secretary of Defense issued an edict, education programs were
begun, and some cases made the headlines. One of the first was of a woman
private who was reduced in rank, sentenced to 30 days’ hard labor, and
fined $298 for squeezing a man’s genitals. At about the same time, a colo-
nel charged with attempted rape, indecent assault, and sodomy against
three women was allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges and retire with
full pay after paying a fine of $15,000 (Stiehm 1989, 207). A complication in
a variety of issues like harassment and fraternization cases was that often
the male’s seniority meant that he “had more to lose,” e.g., an extended
career, which, again, did not excuse, but could create sympathy for an
offender.
There is much more to be said about harassment. It has not gone away.
Outrages periodically resurface. Officers are not immune. The highest rank-
ing woman in the army, Claudia Kennedy, charged a fellow general with
harassment and prevented his assignment to a post in which he would
have been in charge of that very issue (Kennedy 2001)! The relative numbers
alone mean that women will regularly be in situations where they are
greatly outnumbered. They will be besieged. Some men will court them,
others will want to seduce them, others not in a position to either woo or
seduce will slander them. Military women cannot afford to be unduly
sensitive. Formal regulations are in place, but many women do not believe
they will produce a satisfactory outcome and have found it makes more
sense either to ignore or to accept others’ misbehavior or to use a variety
of informal defenses and/or ways of retaliating. Men’s socialization seems
to include a code of “not telling” but also of “taking care of business.” In
this culture, women have more often relied on authority and not on infor-
mal retaliation. Instead of more procedures, women might profit from
learning canny forms of retaliation.
During World War II and for some time thereafter, a good deal of effort
was expended by the Women’s Corps and by DACOWITS to establish the
respectability of military women. Women were held to high moral stan-
dards even when military men’s sexual escapades were condoned. By the
1980s women had won the right to be judged by the same standard as men.
Their morals were no longer a separate issue. Further, half of military
women were married and a third were mothers, a substantial number of
them sole parents (Stiehm 1989, 220). What was not an issue was women’s
morale. Most studies did not yet try to determine which circumstances led
to the best leadership, highest morale, and highest performance for women.
Those studies would come later.
The Commands of George Bush and Bill Clinton
The issue of basic training was not easily put to rest. Debate focused (1) on
basic training in the army specifically for recruits going into noncombat
specialties—those going into combat specialties were all men and were
trained at a different location—and (2) on the level—company, platoon,
squad, or not at all—at which units should be integrated. The Army
Research Institute undertook several studies from 1993 to 1995 suggesting
that integration did not degrade male performance and morale but did
increase female performance and morale. The recommendation was to
restore integrated basic training for the noncombat specialties (about 70
percent of army recruits) and to do so down to the squad level (of about a
dozen members.) The study also indicated that drill sergeants did not feel
prepared to train women.
By 1996 all army women and half the men trained in units that com-
prised 20–50 percent women. In the navy, units comprised 50 percent
women or no women. The air force paired male and female flights of about
twelve people. A General Accounting Office report (GAO 1996) that year
supported gender integration and found that costs such as redesigning
barracks were relatively low. Yet the next year a specially commissioned
report by the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender-Integrated Training
and Related Issues (DOD 1997), often referred to as the Kassebaum Report,
proposed re-segregation below the level of the company! By then the ser-
vices were satisfied with existing policy and while they made other changes
in training, they did not re-segregate. The Center for Military Readiness,
which generally believes the DOD has been too responsive to “feminist”
political pressure, continues to raise the issue. Its interpretation of the
research (or lack thereof, in its judgment) finds that segregated training is
best for all recruits and for the military.
Changes in policies for military women are more often linked to the
services’ need for women than to studies or reasoned discussion. In par-
ticular, war creates a need, a need which some women (but not all) see as
an opportunity. Thus in 1990 when President George Bush took the coun-
try to war in the Gulf after Iraq invaded Kuwait, women went to the theater;
15 were killed, and two became prisoners, one of whom, Rhonda Cornum
(1993), emerged as the very model of an army officer. Soon thereafter,
Congress repealed the prohibition on women in combat aircraft (against
the wishes of the air force) and later repealed the ban on women’s service
on combatant ships except submarines and amphibious vessels (with the
navy’s concurrence).
Army combat and combat support units routinely co-locate. While
direct ground combat units have remained closed to women, assignment
to some combat support units is permitted. This meant that a number of
new slots were opened to women, and Margaret C. Harrell and Laura L.
Miller (1997) prepared a thorough study of the implementation of the
changes. The study suggested women could serve in two-thirds of army, 91
percent of navy, 99 percent of air force, and more than 60 percent of marine
positions (Harrell and Miller 1997, 98). It also reported that a majority of
those interviewed said sexual harassment did not occur in their unit
(Harrell and Miller 1997, 100). Women said they thought it best to handle
it on their own. Reasons given for this were that nothing would happen to
the offender, that there would be a draconian response; or that there might
be a backlash against women in general. One finding was that gender
integration was perceived as having a small effect on readiness, cohesion,
and morale. Pregnancy had some effect on readiness where there was a
high concentration of women particularly because policy called for no
temporary replacements. But cohesion and morale (or their lack) was
primarily linked to leadership. The study also noted men’s concern about
false accusations of sexual harassment and men’s perception that prefer-
ential treatment was given women by supervisors; the authors considered
men’s perception of a double standard “a major problem area.” Another
finding was that over 40 percent of junior enlisted men favored a relaxation
of the combat exclusion policy for women and 80 percent of women agreed.
The researchers also found that male and female personnel alike were
generally (very) tired of being studied.
Embarrassing sexual harassment issues erupted again in 1996, leading
the Secretary of the Army to create a Senior Review Panel on Sexual
Harassment. Its charge was “the human relations environment.” Its eight-
month, two-volume study (U.S. Army Senior Review Panel 1997) involved
30,000 participants. It found that the army lacked commitment to its Equal
Opportunity program, and that soldiers did not see it as a recourse. It also
reported that sex discrimination and sexual harassment existed throughout
the army: 7 percent of men and 22 percent of women said they had been
harassed in the last twelve months; even for officers the numbers were 2
percent and 6 percent. A 1997 panel showed 78 percent of women experi-
encing crude or offensive behavior, 72 percent experiencing sexist behav-
ior, 47 percent receiving unwanted sexual attention, 15 percent sexual
coercion, and 7 percent sexual assault. The report concluded that leader-
ship is crucial to the creation of a positive environment, and that too few
leaders had the trust of their soldiers. Responding to the statement “I am
impressed with the quality of leadership in this company,” 40 percent of
men and 51 percent of women disagreed. Although basic training instruc-
tors performed competently and well, “respect,” a core army value, was
“not well institutionalized.” “Soldierization” including cohesion was not
being accomplished. In sum, different leaders seemed to produce quite
different environments for women.
When Bill Clinton took office he had committed himself to ending the
ban on gays and lesbians in the military. Attitudes had been changing in
civilian life and in politics too. The military, however, was not ready for the
change. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell went so far as to
publish an op-ed in opposition. Congress engaged the issue, and a “com-
promise” was reached. The new policy, “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” was supposed
to permit service by those who were discreet and to end the active pursuit
of homosexuals. What had been a policy which could have quietly evolved
now became legislation which would require action by Congress and pres-
ident or, possibly, the Supreme Court to change. Further, the “findings”
incorporated in the legislation flatly assert that homosexuals would create
an “unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and
discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.”
The Michael D. Palm Center, formerly the Center for the Study of Sexual
Minorities in the Military, at the University of California, Santa Barbara
became a good source of information on gays and lesbians in the military.
It also fulfilled an advocacy function. Congress and the president did act;
the ban was ended in September 2011.
Traditionally a higher percentage of women than men have been dis-
charged for homosexuality; enlisted women, in particular, have endured
“witch hunts” in which whole groups of women working together were
interrogated, accused, and discharged. There have always been known
homosexuals in the military. The problem is that even though an indi-
vidual is discreet and enjoys the support of peers and superiors, because
of the rapid rotation of assignments it is always possible that an individual
will run up against an intolerant peer or superior and find themselves
charged and discharged. DOD data shows that under the new policy dis-
charges grew from 617 in 1994 to 1273 in 2001. When war became part of
the picture, there was a sharp drop in 2002. Discharges fell to the 600 level
again by 2006. In 1994 women were 12 percent of the force and 26 percent
of the discharges; in 2001 they were 14 percent and 30 percent of the dis-
charges; in 2004 they were 15 percent and 33 percent. Thus they are dis-
charged for homosexuality at double the rate of men. The Gallup poll
reported that 91 percent of 18–29 year olds approve of gays serving openly
and that 73 percent of soldiers supported their service (Darrah 2008).
And Today
We are at war in Iraq and in Afghanistan and our troops are distributed
broadly around the globe. Women have served some 200,000 tours in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Since some of them served more than one tour, probably
about 160,000 women have served there. The media, of course, are also an
important source of information. They have mostly portrayed women as
bravely and effectively participating in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Jessica Lynch story, however, was not handled well. The first accounts
of the ambush in which Jessica Lynch was injured, captured by Iraqi forces,
and then rescued were dramatic. Later accounts were more mundane and
far less “heroic. ” What eventually displaced the many positive stories about
women were the shocking revelations of women’s participation in the
torture of prisoners. Army enlisted women Lynndie England, Sabrina
Harman, and Megan Ambuhlo were among the few convicted of abusing
prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. Further, many of the old issues have not
gone away and the pattern of de facto change during wartime has been
repeated. This has been especially true for army women. The Army
Research Institute conducts a Sample Survey of Military Personnel and
beginning in 1991 has tracked opinions and attitudes of military personnel.
Its findings suggest that between 1991 and 2001 attitudes toward women
improved among senior officers and NCOs and among noncombat men.
Morale overall was high but this was also the time that significant cuts in
military personnel led to new forms of stress such as more missions to a
wider variety of locations. For many, women’s presence seems to have been
accepted as a given.
Once troops were sent to the Gulf, “in-the-field” issues became impor-
tant. In addition to combat, issues included health, family, and cases of
sexual assault. Much of the literature on military women has been cast as
advances and accomplishments. Even if women experience tough times,
they tend not to make their stories public. In Warriors without weapons,
Donna Dean (1997) draws a different picture. A PhD psychologist, Dean
recognized that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder even
though she had not been in combat. Military service for men can also be
profoundly difficult—even for those who are not in combat. In assessing
the environment of an institution, it is important to consider the views of
those who do not stay, who do not ”succeed,” as well as those of individu-
als who thrive. The military and schoolteaching are honored occupations,
but in both cases roughly half of the new recruits do not complete five years
in their chosen occupation. What is wrong with this picture? Does high
turnover refresh or diminish an institution?
By 2007 women’s negative experiences began to find their way into the
mainstream media, most noticeably perhaps, to the 18 March 2007 cover
story of The New York Times Magazine. The article broadcast news about
harassment, rape, lethal attacks, and post traumatic stress disorder expe-
rienced by women deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan over a four-year
period. Women were 10 or 11 percent of the deployed force. In 2005 the
DOD created a Sexual Assault Prevention and Response program which
included Victims Advocates and confidentiality for reports (Corbett 2007,
45). In the first year of the program reports went up 40 percent. This may
represent a new trend. When women are new and few they do not com-
plain. As they increase in number and become secure in their “belonging,”
there may be more outrage expressed about what is not yet “right.”
During the second Bush administration, DACOWITS, once a high status
committee but one which had, perhaps, become demanding and critical,
was suspended and then recreated as a smaller and less prestigious orga-
nization. Conservative organizations, in particular the Center for Military
Readiness, had lobbied to have DACOWITS abolished. Before 2001
DACOWITS produced substantial issue books and sets of recommenda-
tions twice a year and its members toured bases all over the globe. It still
has an advisory function and its meeting reports (2003–2007) are available
online, but the topics to be examined are set by the DOD rather than by
the committee. In thinking about army women’s role today, it should be
remembered that this period is, for the military, a time of war. Personnel
are experiencing frequent and lengthy deployments which, especially for
the marines and the army, are also dangerous. Further, more women than
ever are working in dangerous locations.
A major focus for the new DACOWITS has been family issues which,
again, are important to women but also to the recruitment and retention
of men who can no longer be drafted. “Spouse employment” is an example
of a family issue interesting to women but perhaps of even greater interest
to men, especially enlisted men who are likely to need two incomes to
support a family. Health issues were highlighted in 2007, especially for
those deployed abroad. In 2006, in what almost seemed a diversion, the
DOD asked DACOWITS to investigate why more women physicians, clergy,
and lawyers were not joining the military and advancing to the highest
ranks. They found that male doctors and lawyers at the highest rank had
had combat-related experience the women did not have, and that many
women professionals placed family concerns above maximizing their
opportunities for promotion. Women clergy were 1.5 percent of the chap-
lain corps while they are 15 percent of civilian clergy. No clear explanation
for the discrepancy was offered.
As in civilian life, military women find the work-family balance difficult.
Women are anxious about the restructuring of careers and civilianization
of their military occupations. Most important, though, are the effects of
deployments on their families, including their children. As DACOWITS
noted, enlistment is an individual choice. Re-enlistment is a family deci-
sion. While the military has developed Family Service Centers and a
Military One Source Program, DACOWITS found they were not well known
or utilized and recommended that they be evaluated for effectiveness.
Other recent DACOWITS recommendations included: (1) not deploying
both parents of minor children simultaneously; (2) considering leaves of
absence and sabbaticals; (3) making child care more regularly available;
and (4) enforcing scheduled mental health screenings.
A 2004 DOD report by the Sexual Assault Task Force drew a strong
response from DACOWITS. In no uncertain terms DACOWITS stated that
sexual assault had a negative affect on unit cohesion, morale, performance,
readiness, and mission accomplishment. Further, it was a crime. It must
be prevented. Any victims must be treated, and all perpetrators prosecuted.
The committee proposed single-sex training on sexual assault, and empha-
sis on the effect of alcohol and one’s responsibility for oneself and for oth-
ers. The 2005 regulations discussed above were put in place shortly after
DACOWITS’ strong statement. Harassment remains an unsolved problem.
The Defense Manpower Data Center (2007) reported that 34 percent of
women said they had been sexually harassed.
One reason more army women are exposed to danger in Iraq and
Afghanistan is that they have moved into more nontraditional fields. MOSs
in Combat Support may be co-located with combat troops and because
there is nothing resembling a front line in Iraq or Afghanistan, any calcula-
tion of “risk” is made difficult. An extended discussion of DOD and army
policy (which are not identical) related to women in combat appears in
Margaret C. Harrell et al. Assessing the Assignment Policy for Army Women
(2007). It discusses the difference between “primary” and “routine” mis-
sions. It also considers whether “self-defense” involves “repelling” the
enemy. It notes the difference between closing specialties to women and
closing particular units. It is a valuable clarification of the issues often
treated with some emotion. In 2008 enlisted women were 34 percent of
support and administration personnel, and 16 percent of personnel in
health care. In nontraditional fields they were 6 percent of infantry, gun
crew, and seamanship specialties, 5 percent of electronic equipment repair,
4 percent in communications and also in technical specialties, 11 percent
of power/mechanical repair personnel, 2 percent in crafts, and 12 percent
in service and supply (Women’s Research and Education Institute 2008,
20).
During the Vietnam War, individuals (including a later Commander in
Chief) who did not wish to serve on active duty found the reserves and
National Guard an effective way to avoid going to Vietnam. Today, however,
reserve and National Guard troops are regularly serving on active duty and
being sent to both Afghanistan and Iraq. Issues relating to veterans’ ability
to return to their civilian jobs and issues related to family stress affect both
men and women, few of whom expected that the rules for reservists and
guard members would change so dramatically.
Women’s participation in ground combat remains the most contentious
issue. As long as women are all volunteers both for service and for their
particular military specialties, and as long as they are at a distance from
where the killing is done, i.e., on ships or in planes, there is not likely to be
a public and/or congressional outcry. The issue of ground combat, though,
remains very much alive. Erin Solaro (2006), who was an embedded jour-
nalist in both Iraq and Afghanistan, argues that women, as citizens, should
serve their country as men do. She notes that many are already serving in
combat units and that should be acknowledged. The concern is that women
in direct support specialties who are officially “not in combat” (President
George Bush, 11 January 2007) and who are “not assigned” to ground com-
bat battalions, may be “attached” to those units where they may be endan-
gered because there is no line, no front, no rear. By the end of 2007, 100
women had been killed and close to 300 wounded in Iraq (Tyson 2005).
Black men are less than 20 percent of enlisted men, but black women
are a third of enlisted women. They are 38 percent of enlisted army women,
29 percent of navy enlisted women, 25 percent of those in the air force and
16 percent of those in the marines (Women’s Research and Education
Program 2008, 16). Although minority enlistments have been falling in
recent years, black women have clearly found a home in the military. The
military’s claim to more successful integration than exists in civilian insti-
tutions is particularly true of the army, more so for the enlisted ranks, and
most true for army enlisted women.
Some places to monitor current issues related to women in uniform are
the minutes and reports of DACOWITS; the publications and conferences
on Women in the Military sponsored by the Women’s Research and
Education Institute; and the publications of the Minerva Center. The
Women’s Research and Education Institute, founded by women members
of Congress, holds regular conferences on women in the military and pub-
lishes a booklet by the same title, Women in the Military, providing a brief
history of women in the services as well as current statistics. It also provides
information on women in the militaries of other countries and raises issues
concerning women veterans. As their numbers increase, more will be heard
from and about women veterans who are now 7 percent of the total. The
Veterans Administration now has a Center for Women Veterans, and
Congress has created the Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs Advisory Committee
on Women Veterans. The Minerva Center, established in 1983, is a nonpar-
tisan educational foundation that provides information by and to academ-
ics, journalists, filmmakers and others interested in women in the military
and women in war. It publishes a journal and has a net discussion group,
H-Minerva. It has no affiliation with the DOD although both active duty
women (and men) and women (and men) veterans participate in center
activities. The Army Research Institute, the Defense Manpower Data
Center, the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University
of Maryland, and Armed Forces and Society are also excellent sources of
information. Perhaps the single most useful source of current data comes
from the DOD Office of Personnel and Readiness (DOD 2006), Annual
report on status of female members of the armed forces of the United States
FY 2002–06I, compiled by the Defense Data Manpower Center and the
service’s human resource staffs and commands.
A Reprise
During World War II women enlistees were expected to be mature, single

women who would serve their country in its time of trial and leave once
victory had been achieved. Having achieved regular status during peace-
time, if only for a limited number and with new regulations allowing them
to remain in service after marriage, some women aspired to a full military
career. When newer regulations in the mid-1970s gave women the right to
have children and remain in service, the prospects for a full career became
brighter still. Balancing home and military life is more difficult for military
women than it is for civilian women because of deployments and readiness
requirements. About half of all military personnel are married, although
only 42 percent of enlisted women are married. Close to 40 percent have
children. There are many marriages between service members. Indeed,
half of married enlisted women are married to other members of the mil-
itary. There are also many single parents: In 2001, 64,000 single fathers and
23,000 single mothers (Segal and Segal 2004).
Clearly the military has become more civilian-like. Its personnel is older,
more married, and includes more parents than in the days of conscription.
In fact, it actually has more dependents than it does active duty personnel.
It farms out many of its former activities to civilian (profit-making) contrac-
tors. It calls up civilian members of the reserves and National Guard not
just to active duty but to fight a “war of choice.” And, of course, it has always
had a large number of DOD civilian employees. At the same time, for most
of the 300 million U.S. civilians, the 1.4 million active duty personnel are
out of sight and largely out of mind. Some would argue that ending con-
scription has nearly severed the link between republican government and
its citizen soldiers. The remaining link is that when men become 18 they
must still register for the draft. The Supreme Court ruled that women do
not need to register in Rostker v Goldberg 453 U.S. 57 (1981). That decision
rested on the fact that women could not serve in combat and that the draft
was needed to fill combat units. Today the facts on the ground are suffi-
ciently different; another legal challenge may be made.
All this could change should the homeland itself rather than just U.S.
interests, be threatened. If that should occur, and a draft be reinstated,
there will surely be a conflict between the ethic of equality, which could
call for drafting women as well as men, and putting the women in ground
combat units as needed. Public opinion polls would show some support
for doing so, but the predominant view, which would accept a draft for
women, would probably not support putting them into ground combat
units. The public’s comfort with some women serving in risky assignments
today is almost certainly conditioned on the fact that they are clearly vol-
unteers.
Basic facts every citizen should know about U. S. military women include
the following: As of 2008, women are 14 percent of active duty personnel
and almost 18 percent of the guard and reserves. They are almost 10 percent
of the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than a third of women officers
and more than half of enlisted women are minorities. Women are 11 percent
of senior noncoms (E-7 to E-9). There are 56 women generals and admirals,
0.5 percent of the total. Ann E. Dunwoody became the first woman four-star
in 2008.
The last half-century has seen a remarkable change in the role of enlisted
women, and especially of army enlisted women. The changes have been
driven by a new, strong ethic (and legislation) against discrimination, by
the exigencies of recruiting and retaining personnel without conscription,
and by the decision to wage war without reinstating the draft. Women
today are true soldiers. They no longer serve only “to release a man for war.”
They are going themselves.
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Morden, Bettie J. 1990. The Women’s Army Corps 1945–78. Army Historical Series. Washington,
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Reeves, Connie L. 1996. The military women’s vanguard: Nurses. In Judith Stiehm, ed., It’s
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Segal, David R., and Mady W. Segal. 2004. America’s military population. Population Bulletin.
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index 601
INDEX
Aaronsohn, Sara, 210-11 angel, 458, 476-77

Abu Ghraib prison, women implicated in Britannia, 462
torture at, 307, 592 Columbia, 461, 462-63, 464, 468-69; Ill.33
ack-ack girls, 555 Italia, 463
administrators, women as military, Liberty, 459, 463
elite premodern, 64, 67, Madonna (Pietà), 464, 477-78, 480
with irregular armed forces, 224, 266 Marianne, 461, 463-64
with regular armed forces, 352, 481, 493, Peace, 462; Ill.34
583, 595 Victory, Winged (Nike of Samothrace),
See also clerical workers 459, 463, 470
Afghanistan war, American (2001–), See also symbolic figures
women in Allied Photographic Intelligence Service,
as American military personnel, 307, women in, 251
308, 592, 593, 595, 598 All-Russian Women’s Military Union of
as peacekeepers, 321, 322 Aid to the Motherland, 209
Afghanistan war, Soviet (1979–89), women All Volunteer Army (US), women in, 291,
in 293, 296, 297, 571, 584
as Red Army personnel in, 333 Amalia Elisabeth, Landgravin of Hesse-
in the Afghan resistance, 333 Kassel, 66
African warfare, traditional, women in, 153 Amaya, Irma, 349
African-American women in L’Amazone chrestienne, 124
American Civil War, 147 Amazons
Spanish-American War, 160 in Greek mythology, 18, 19, 411
World War I, 196, 202, 215 in the 18th-century imagination, 123-24
Spanish Civil War, 225 in French revolutionary rhetoric, 131
World War II, 241, 255-56, 257 symbolism of, 37, 162, 411, 553, 555, 563,
Korean War, 575-77 564
Vietnam War, 293, 294, 578 American Civil War (1861‒65), women in,
the Cold War, 293-94, 575, 581 141, 145-48
African civil wars, women in, 354 American Defense Rifle Club, women in,
African National Congress guerrilla army 208
(Umkhonto we Sizwe [Spear of the American Joint Distribution Committee
Nation, or MK]), women in, 352-53 [AJDC]), women in, 531-32
age grade systems, African, and women, American League for Self-Defense, women
154 in, 473
Ah Cheu, 449 American Legion, women and the, 220-21
Air Defense Forces (PVO, Russia), women American Library Association, war work of
in, 334-35 women in, 215
Air Force Nurse Corps (US), 292, 577 American Red Cross, women and, 449
Air Raid Precautions (UK), women in, 271 in Spanish-American War, 158, 160
Air Transport Auxiliary (UK), 554 reorganized, 161, 166
alcohol, women as dispensers of. See in World War I, 196, 202, 219-20, 455,
sutlers 470, 471, 476
Algerian War (1954–62), women in, 343-34 in World War II, 240, 241, 276
allegorical figures, women as, in war See also Barton, Clara; Red Cross,
posters, 459, 479, 481 International
602 index
American Revolution, women in, 138, 424- army, aggregate contract, pre-1650,
26, 460 centrality of women to, 94-101
American War Camp Community Service, Army Auxiliaries, Female
women in, 471 (Wehrmachtshelferinnen), 486, 497-503
American War-Community Services, Army-Navy Nurse Act of 1947 (US), 291, 292
women in, 275 Army Nurse Corps (US)
American Women’s Hospitals, 196 established, 160, 292
American Women’s League for Self- general in command of, 304
Defense, 208 in World War I, 202-203, 220
ammunition and missile supply, women’s in interwar period, 222-23
role in, 23, 26, 27, 34, 52, 66, 217, 218, in World War II, 240, 241, 242, 254
342, 345, 350. See also munitions in Korea, 294
workers in Vietnam, 295
Amrane, Djamila, 343 opened to men, 577
Anderson, Dr. Louisa Garret, 193 Army Nursing Service (UK), 144, 161-62
Anderson, Mrs. William Hart, 437 Army of National Liberation (Algeria),
angel. See allegorical figures women in, 344
Anglo-Boer War (1899‒1902), women in, Army Psychological Testing Program (US),
158, 161-63 women’s contribution to, 214
Angola, war in. See Portuguese colonial army, state commission, post-1650,
wars restricted role of women in, 94, 101-20
Annapolis. See US Naval Academy Arnaud, Madame, 207
Anne of Austria, 411 Arundell, Lady Blanche, 124
Antiaircraft Auxiliaries, Female Association of French Ladies (Association
(Flakwaffenhelferinnen or des dames francaises), 152
Reichsluftschutzhelferinnen), 486, 499; Association of Jews in Belgium
Ill.52 (Independence Front), women in, 535
antiaircraft defense, women‘s service with Association of WRNS, 221
British, 251, 252, 254, 309, 554, 555 Atontinon, Marie-Barbe, 415
German, 486, 499, 502; Ill.52 ATS. See Auxiliary Territorial Service
Israeli, 342 Auerbach, Rachel, 516
Soviet, 332, 334-35, 556 Augusta, Queen of Prussia, 149-50
anti-colonial wars, women in, 340 Augustinian Hospital sisters (Canada), 410,
Algerian, 343-44 416, 427
Palestinian, 343 Auschwitz-Birkenau, role of women in
Southeast Asian, 341 insurrection at, 538-39
sub-Saharan African, 349-50 Australian Women’s Services Corps, 207
See also irregular warfare Auxiliary Fire Service (UK) , women in, 271
And see individual wars: Cuban Revo- Auxiliary Territorial Service (UK), 554, 555
lution; Mau Mau; Namibia war; established, 247
Portuguese colonial wars; South Jewish service in, 342
Africa war; Zimbabwe war opened to non-White members, 253
Anti-Japanese War. See Sino-Japanese War, organization of, 248
Second Polish exiles auxiliary linked to, 561
archaeological evidence of military uniforms of, 249-50
women, ambiguity of, 45-46 “whispering campaign” against, 248-49
Archidameia of Sparta, 26 Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, adjunct
Aristotle Politics, on military service and of, 250-51
citizenship, 137 Ayre, Ruby, 201
Army in Defense of the National
Sovereignty of Nicaragua, women in, baggage trains, women’s place in
346 Antiquity, 32, 47, 48
index 603
Europe through the Thirty Years’ War, Booth, Catherine and William, 157
76, 78, 80, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87; Ill.3, 7, Border Security Force (India), Ill.61
8, 9 Bourgeoys, Marguerite, 411, 415, 417
Europe, 1650–1815, 93, 102, 116. 119, 138; Bowen, Clotilde, 293
Ill.18 Boxer Uprising, women in, 140
17th–18th century Russia, 387, 389 Brey, Laura, 468
19th century, 139 Brion, Irene, 258
Baland, Catherine, 116 Britannia. See allegorical figures
Bancic, Olga and Dolores, 536-37 British Federation of Business and
Bandel, Betty, 258 Professional Women. 247
Bankes, Lady Mary, 68, 124 British Red Cross Society, 163, 237. See also
Barbier, Marie, 417 Central Red Cross Committee
Barkalow, Carol, 298 British Union of Fascists, women in, 224
barrage balloon operations, women in, 251 Brown, Dr. Mary L., 195
Barreau, Rose, 121 Brown, Pfc. Monica, 308
Barton, Clara Browne, Felicia, 226
and the American Red Cross, 158-59 Bullion, Duchess Angelique de, 417
in American Civil War, 146 Butler, Ethel “Bunny,” 433
in Spanish-American War, 160 Byerly, Kathleen, 583
Bates, Dr. Mary E., 195
battles, women in, 118-19 Cadet Nurse Corps (US), 241, 254
Chiclana (1811), 116 Cai Chang, Ill.45
Cunaxa (401 BC), 29-30 campaign community, women as part of,
Edgehill (1642), 79 95, 109-10
Gabiene (317 BC), 32 camp followers, female, presence of, in
Jankow (1645), 86-87 Classical Greece, 23-24, 25
Kolin (1757), 113 Xenophon’s Ten Thousand, 29-30
Marston Moor (1644), 71 Alexander’s army, 30
Mǎrǎşeşti (1917), 206 Roman republican armies, 42-43, 47-48
Nordlingen (1634), 85-86 Roman imperial armies, 44
Quebec (1759), 422-23 early modern European armies, 76-88,
Solferino (1859), 148-49 120-21
Stalingrad (1942–43), 244, 261 American and French revolutions, 138
Talavera (1809), 110 American Civil War, 147-48
Torreón (1914), 208 See also baggage trains, women in
Warsaw Ghetto uprising (1943), 521-24 camp followers, female, 5, 130-31, 137-38,
Waterloo (1815), Ill.17 432; Ill.11, 13
See also siege warfare as pillagers, 77-78, 94, 99, 115
Baum Gruppe, women in, 536 as holders of the purse, 99-100; Ill.2
Baum, Marianne and Herbert, 536 as temporary wives, or whores, 97
Baxter, Beverly, 555 hardships of, 85-86, 119-20; Ill.7
Baza, siege of (1488), Queen Isabella at, 64 lower class or plebeian origins of, 93,
Belgian Red Cross, 465, 476-77 95, 124, 130, 140
Bellona’s Amazons, 130 19th century decline in numbers of, 138,
Benham, Alice, 193 153; Ill.21
Bennett, Agnes, 194 numbers on campaign restricted, 92,
Berry, F. May Dickinson, 193 103-104
Bickerdyke, Mary Ann „Mother,“ 146 reduced numbers of, post-1650, 102-103
Birds of Freedom, Tamil, 356 disappearance of, 155
Black Tigers, Tamil, 356 See also families, soldiers’; marriage,
”black widows,“ Chechnyan, 333-34 soldiers’; mercenaries; prostitution;
Blue Triangle (of the YWCA), 474-75 women’s military work
604 index
Canada’s Wrens. See Women’s Royal Chen Zongying, Ill.45
Canadian Naval Service child soldiers, female, 345, 354
Canadian Active Service Force, nurses chimurenga uprising (Rhodesia), women
with, 239-40 in, 351
Canadian Army Nursing Service Chinese armed forces, women in.
early history of, 239 See Boxer Uprising; Chinese Civil
equivalent military rank in, 160 War; Chinese Revolution; People’s
established, 144 Liberation Army; Sino-Japanese War;
in World War I, 200-201 Taiping Rebellion
in World War II, 239-40 Chinese Civil War, women in, 268-69; 336;
Canadian Army Service Corps, employment Ill.45
of women by, 213 Chinese Revolution (1911), women in, 140
Canadian colonial wars, women in, 409-29 Churchill, Diana, 252
Canadian press, depiction of World War II Churchill, Lady Jenny Randolph, 162
servicewomen in, 547-65 Churchill, Mary, 251
Canadian Red Cross, 551 Churchill, Sarah, 251
Canadian Women’s Army Corps, 562 Christmännin, Anna Maria, 122
established, 551 Citadel, The (US), admission of women
integrated into Canadian army, 253 to, 302
“whispering” campaign against, 248-49, citizenship and military service, 156, 189-
552, 562, 565 90, 193
canteen workers, women as military according to Aristotle, 137
as camp followers, 113. See also in the French Revolution, 130, 137
in suffrage rhetoric, 163
cantinières; sutlers
See also suffrage
with regular armed forces, 222, 276,
Civil Defense (UK), women in, 270-71
551, 553
civilian employees of the military,
cantinières, 116, 138, 139, 154; Ill.22. See also women as
sutlers World War I
lithographic representations of, 156 France, 212-13
Captain Emma, the “Woman Warrior,” 556 Germany, 488, 489-92
Carl, Ann B., 259 US, 214, 222
Carreiras, Helena, 315-16 interwar Germany, 492-93
Cary, Evelyn Rumsey, 481 World War II, 234-35
Castellani, Maria, 223 Germany, 497-506
Catherine I of Russia, 405 UK and Commonwealth, 271, 272-73
Catholic Cristero Rebellion (1926–29), US, 242, 254, 258-60, 276, 277
women in, 218 in NATO, 312
Cavell, Edith, 204-205, 476 in Turkey, 320
Center for Military Readiness US), women in Russia, 333, 334
in, 307 in China, 337, 338
Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities See also contract workers
in the Military (US), 591 Civilian Organization of the National
Center for Women (Ottoman), 199 Liberation Front (Algeria), women in,
Central Red Cross Committee (UK), 161-62 344
Central Women’s Labor Office (Germany), civilian women, uniforms of,
489 before World War I, 156; Ill.25
Cezelly, Françoise de, 68-69 in World War I, 207, 234, 475; Ill.39
Chacόn Piqueras, Carme, Ill.59 American League for Self-Defense,
Chapelle, Dickey, 344-45 473-74
Chechen Wars (1994–96, 1999–2009), American Library Association, 215
women in, 333-34 Girl Guides, 164
Chen. See Israeli Women’s Army Corps Jewish Welfare Board, 215
index 605
Rear Area Auxiliaries, 489-92 See also sewing circles
Salvation Army, 157 Cluett, Frances, 201
street sweeper, 30 Cochran, Jacqueline, 258, 259
tram operators; 28, 29 Coffey, Bernice, 557
VAD, 164 Cohn (Colin), Marianne, 533
Women’s Defense League; Ill.27 Cold War, women in, 349, 443, 447, 574, 578
Women’s Volunteer Reserve, 206 See also Afghanistan, Russian war in;
Young Women’s Christian Korean War; Vietnam War
Association, 215 Collins, Clella, 277
interwar, 224; Ill.44 Colombian guerrilla movement, women
in World War II, 235, 245-46, 271; Ill.47, in, 344, 345
52 Colonial Dames of America, National
See also contract workers; uniforms
Society of, 157, 158
Civil Rights Act of 1964 (US), effects on
women of, 578, 579 Columbia. See allegorical figures
Clastres, Mme, 118 combat, women in
Claudia Severa, at Vindolanda, 18 debate on. 307-11
cleaners and hygiene promoters, military in World War I, 208-209
women as in Spanish Civil War, 224
as camp followers, 62, 72, 76, 100, 101, 110 in World War II, 246, 260-63, 309, 332,
with irregular armed forces, 333, 341, 336, 515, 556
525 in irregular warfare, 344
with regular armed forces, 142, 199-200, See also battles, women in; soldiers,
212 female; women warriors
clerical workers, military women as comfort women, 268
in American Civil War, 147 See also prostitution
in World War I, 189, command and control equipment
American, 213, 214, 221, 222 operators, women as. See
Australian, 207 communications equipment operators
British, 193, 209, 213 Committee for the Defense of Jews (CDJ),
Canada, 213 women in, 535
French, 212 Committee of Ladies (Ottoman), 153
German, 211 Committee on Women in the NATO
in interwar planning, 220 Forces, 311
in World War II Committee to Secure Rank for Nurses
American, 242, 274 (US), 203
British, 247, 252 communications equipment operators,
Canadian, 552, 553
military women as, 189, 595
German, 494, 502
command and control, 335, 502
the Resistance, 525
in post-World War II armies radar, 335, 502
American, 577 radio and wireless
Chinese, 338, 339 in regular armed forces, 335, 338,
Russian, 333, 334, 337 492, 492-93, 553
in irregular warfare, 352, 356 in irregular warfare, 348, 352, 360
clothes makers and menders, military switchboard, 339, 474, 560; Ill.43
women as telegraph, 207, 492, 492-93, 501
ancient Roman, 50-51 telephone, 212, 214, 222, 472. 501, 553
as camp followers, 19, 72, 76, 93, 97, 102, See also couriers; signal corps service
110, 111-12, 113, 138, 404; Ill.6 compulsory military labor, women’s. See
with irregular armed forces, 139, 341, conscription, female
345 concentration camps, women’s resistance
with regular armed forces, 147, 199, 552 in, 537-39
606 index
conference, “Respect for women: Where is Council for Aid to Jews (Zegota), women
the military taking us?”, 308 in, 531
Congregation of Notre Dame (Canada), couriers and messengers, women as
415, 417, 418, 419 military,
conscription, female, 233, 235, 245, 314 in the American Civil War, 147
Germany, 486, 491, 493, 494-95, 497-98, in World War I, 209-11, 216
503 in World War II, 266, 517-18, 520, 527,
Israel, 311, 342 535, 537, 539, 540, 541
PLA, 337 in irregular warfare, 218, 341, 344, 345,
UK, 248, 270, 271, 276 347-48, 349, 351, 352, 353
See also forced labor Crèche, The, 534
constructing defenses, women’s role in. See Crimean War (1854‒56), women in, 139,
siege warfare 140, 142-45
Contagious Diseases Acts (1860s), effects Crop Corps women, 277
on women of, 154-55 cross-dressing, 93, 121, 131
contract workers, women as military See also gender inversion; soldiers,
for volunteer military service, 334, female
335-36 Croyen, Haya, 539
in medical services, Cuban war of independence, women in,
American Civil War, 145, 146 139
Spanish-American War, 159-60 Cuban Revolution, women in, 344-45
World War I, 191, 194, 196, 221, 226, Culala, Felipa, 267
211-13 cultural workers, female military, 336, 525
See also civilian employees of the
Cummings, Missy, 305
military
Curie, Marie, 192
cooks and food servers, women as military,
Curtis, Helen, 215
as camp followers, 19, 23-24, 27, 28, 34,
52, 62, 72, 76, 100, 110, 112, 138, 139, 146,
147, 401; figures 1, 4, 6, 16. See also DACOWITS (Defense Advisory Committee
sutlers on the Status of Women), 577, 585, 587,
with irregular armed forces, 217, 218, 588, 593-594, 596
224, 266, 333, 341, 344, 345, 348, 349, dame blanche, La, 210
352, 353, 356, 525, 540 Daughters of the American Revolution, 157,
with regular armed forces, 207, 212, 213, 158
220, 432, 553 in the Spanish-American War, 159
See also farm labor; foragers Davies, Christian, 113, 114-15, 116-17, 118, 121,
Cooper, Isabel Rosario, 448 127-29
Coordination Committee (Comité de Dawidson-Draenger, Gusta (Justina), 519-
Coordination [CC]), women in, 531-32 20, 521
Cornum, Rhonda, 303, 310, 590 Dayang-Dayang, 267
Corps Feminine of Free France, British Deaconesses, Institution of (German), 141
foreign legion, 560 Deborah, 123
Corps of Female Auxiliaries (German), Declaration of the Rights of Women, 130
incorporating Corps of Female Signals Decree on the Further Wartime
Auxiliaries, Corps of Female Staff and Deployment of the Reich Labor
Economics Auxiliaries, and Corps of Service for Female Youth (Erlass
Welfare Auxiliaries, 263 uber den weiteren Kriegseinsatz des
Corps of Female Signals Auxiliaries Reichsarbeitsdienstes fur die weibliche
(German), 263, 498, 499, 501 Jugend) of 1941, 494
Cossé Brissac, Marie de, Maréchale de La Decree on the Implementation of
Meilleraye, 123 Reich Compulsory Labor Service for
Council of Women for War Service (UK), Female Youth (Verordnung fur die
220 Durchfuhrung der Reichsarbeitspflicht
index 607
fur die weibliche Jugend) of 1939, 494, Dunwoody, Gen. Ann, Army Materiel
499 Command, 304, 598
Defense Act of May 1935 (Germany), Durova, Nadezhda, 388
women’s obligations in, 493, 494
Delacroix, Eugène, painting of Liberty Easter Uprising, women in the, 216
leading the people, 459, 461 economy, military, women in
Delegation of Women (Ottoman), 152 campaign, 113
Department of National Defense (DND) garrison, 400-402
(Canada), and female recruitment, 551, See also sutlers
552 Egyptian army reforms
d’Ernecourt, Alberte-Barbe, Comtesse de and women’s medical training, 151
Saint-Baslement, 69, 124 effects on women of, 155
Desert Storm. See Persian Gulf War Eichenbaum, Zhenia, 527-28
Devold, Kristin Krohn, 312 Eisenhower, Mamie, 445-46
Diaz, Nidia, 348 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 64-65
Diodorus Siculus, on women’s military support for the United Provinces (1577),
roles, 35 65-66
direct ground combat rule, 291, 303-304 and Spanish Armada (1588), 65
Dix, Dorothea, 145 Elizabeth, Princess, 249
domestic needs of soldiers, women as Emergency Farm Labor Program (US),
providers of, women in, 276
as camp followers, 77, 83 Emergency [Medical] Service (UK), 220,
with irregular armed forces, 213, 217, 341 237, 247
with regular armed forces, 212, 247, Emergency Service Ordinance
232, 252 (Notdienstverordnung) of October 1938,
See also cleaners; cooks; foragers; and women’s compulsory service, 494
nurses; seamstresses Endell Street women’s hospital, 193
Donnelly, Elaine, 307-308 English Civil War, women in, 66, 68, 70-71,
donors of money and goods to soldiers, 73, 82, 124
women as, 28-29, 158, 193, 195. See also entertainers, female, of soldiers, 50, 118, 275,
sewing circles; soldiers’ aid 336, 339, 525, 558
d’Orléans, Anne-Marie-Louise, Duchesse Equal Rights Amendment (US), 291, 297,
de Montpensier, 124 579, 581
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, 306, 591-92 Erauso, Catalina de, 121
“double-helix” model of gender relations, Eritrea war of liberation, women in, 353-54
Higonnets’, 252, 489 Eritrean Liberation Front, women in, 353
Draenger, Tzesia, 521 Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, women
drivers and mechanics, women as military in, 354
in World War I, 472, 473, 479 Ernst, Edith (Katka), 529-30
British, 193, 200, 201 Etchebéhère, Mika, 224
Canadian, 207, 213 Ethiopian resistance, women in, 559, 561,
Australian, 212 563
French, 212-13, 221
in World War II factory workers, women as wartime
American; Ill.49 in American Civil War, 147
British, 247, 249, 252, 272 in World War I, Ill.26; Ill.39
Canadian, 553 in World War II, 346, 504, 521; Ill.46,
in irregular warfare, 348 50, 53
See also technical and mechanical See also munitions workers; war
workers industry
Du Bosc, Jacques, La Femme héroique families, soldiers’
(1645), 123 Hellenistic, legitimacy of, 31
608 index
Hellenistic, and morale, 32 Vietnamese women in, 341
Irish and Scots mercenaries, See also Vietnam War
accompanying on campaign, 75-76 1st Women’s Naval Detachment (Russia),
as potential distraction, 86 209
hereditary nature of, 87-88 Fliedner, Frederika and Theodore, 141
in Russian garrison communities, 389- flogging, women in campaign against
93, 402-405 military, 141
American, in the Philippines, 431, 450, Fodoreanu, Jeanna, 198
434-36, 450 foragers and food providers, women as
German, labor policy concerning, military
495-96 as camp followers, 19, 62, 72, 77, 138, 432
See also wives, officers’ with irregular armed forces, 139, 341,
FANY. See First Aid Nursing Yeomanry 344, 349, 528, 537, 562
farm labor, women’s wartime role in, 74, 75, with regular armed forces, 551-52, 553
494. See also Women’s Land Army See also cooks; Women’s Land Army
Fascist National Association of Women Forbes, Rosita, 557
Artists and Degree Holders (Italy), 223 forced labor, woman as wartime, 496, 515,
Federal Advisory Committee on Gender- 528, 560
Integrated Training and Related Issues, forest doctors, women as, 344
589 Fort, Cornelia, 259
Federation of German Women’s Foster, Laura, 193
Associations (Bund Deutscher France Tireurs Partisans (FTP), women in,
Frauenvereine, BDF), war support by, 536-37
212, 485, 488 Franco-Prussian War (1870‒71), women in,
Female Signal Battalion, East Prussian 149-50
Corps of Volunteers, 492-93 Freedom (Dror HeHalutz, or Freiheit)
Female officer, The, play (1740), 129 movement, women in, 517
Female volunteer; or, an attempt to make French and Indian War (1756–63), women
our men stand, The, play (1745), 129 in, 422-24
femininity, 563 French Red Cross, 152
appeal to, in female recruitment, 250, in World War I, 192, 193, 196, 197, 477
301, 349, 474, 475, 476, 492, 552, 556 French Revolution, women in, 458
as ideal to be defended, 120, 273, 500, and dissolution of convents, 144, 427
553, and prostitution, 105
military service as threat to, 448, 552, and right to bear arms, 131, 137
562, and soldier marriage, 106
See also gender roles; masculinity; and traditional roles for, 111-12, 138
slander campaign French Wars of Religion (Fronde), women
feminization of the military, 310, 335 in, 68-69, 70, 73, 124
firearms, military women’s Fronsperger, Leonhard, on women’s camp
training with denied, 211, 295, 556, 584 duties, 100-101
training with offered, 207, 268, 351, 352, frontier posts, women at
505, 556, 558 Roman, 17-18, 45-46, 51
limited to handguns, 505, 530 In 19th century, 139, 153
See also combat, women in See also garrison communities
First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Frontiero v Richardson (1973), 296
establishment of, 164; Ill.25 Frontinus Stratagems, on discipline
in World War I, 200 challenged by camp followers, 42-43
in World War II, 247 frontline girl friends, 244
First Indochina War (1946–54) Fulman, Ewa (Hava), 517
French women in, 341-42; Ill.56 Funston, Eda Blankart, 437
index 609
Futermilch, Masha, 524 Girl Guides, 164
Girl Reserves (YWCA), 474-75
Gannensagouas, Thérèse, 415 Gouges,Olymphe de, 130
Garcia, Maj. Sarah, 312 Great Northern War (1700–21), effect on
garrison communities, women in women of, 402-403
Hellenistic, 31 Great Poland Uprising (1918–19), women
Roman, 17-18 in, 216
Early modern European, 95-96, 103, Great War. See World War I
120-21 Green, Nan, 225
early modern Russia, 390-93, 396-400 Grenada, women with US forces in, 303
18th-century Prussian, 107 Grey Nuns, 418
the German states, 108 Grimmelshausen, The life of Courage, 115
British India, 432 Guangxi Women’s Fighting Corps, 269-70
French North Africa, 432 Guatemalan guerrilla movement, women
the American West, 3, 153, 432-33 in, 344, 345
gays in the military, 305, 306, 591, 592 guerrilla warfare, women in. See irregular
See also slander campaign warfare
gender inversion, 126-27 Guevara, Ernesto “Che,” on women’s
in World War I, 205-206 military work, 345
See also cross-dressing guides and scouts, women as military, 147,
gender roles, military 207, 341, 344, 345, 528
in irregular warfare, Guinea-Bisseau, war in. See Portuguese
in the Resistance, 514, 516, 519-20, 524- colonial wars
25. 526, 527, 541-42 Gulovich, Maria, 266
in “total” war, 486-87, 497 gun women (Flintenwieber), 556
role of press in constructing, 549-51 Gwynne-Vaughn, Dame Helen, 248, 249
wartime issues of, 251-52, 263, 274-75,
490 Habsburg-Ottoman War, women in, 72
See also femininity; masculinity; Halfaker, Lt. Dawn, 310
slander campaign; women’s military Halstead, Frances Adams, Columbia calls
work poster and poem, 460
General Commission of the Free Trade Hancock, Joy Bright, 258
Unions, Women Workers Secretariat of Haughton, June, 208
(Germany), 488 Hays, Brig. Gen. Anna Mae, Army Nurse
General Hospices (Canada), 418, 419, 420, Corps, 304; Ill.57
422, 424, 427 Hellenistic warfare, women and, 25-32
German Red Cross, 153 Hendelis, Dora, 530
establishment of, 149-50 Henrietta Maria, Queen of England, 66
militarization of, 156 Henson, Maria Rosa, 268
as model for other countries, 163, 166 heroines. See women warriors and fighters
in Franco-Prussian War, 50 Herrera, Petra, 217-18
in World War I, 195, 197-98, 464, 471, Hesburgh, Father Theodore, on
477, 478, 490 servicewomen in World War II, 245
in World War II, 244-45, 486 Hobby, Oveta Culp, 255
See also nurses and nursing Hochberg, Miriam, 531
“German Women Help to Win” (Deutsche Hodgson, Marion Stegeman, 259
Frauen helfen siegen) press campaign, Holder, Mary, 441-43, 444
496-97 Holm, Maj. Gen. Jeanne, US Air Force, 304
Gertner, Ella, 539 home front, gendered construction of, 409
Gertzowna, Wanda, 205 in World War I, 190, 205, 233, 456, 458
Gesche Meiburg, 72 Canada, 195
Girard-Mangin, Dr. Nicole, 191-92 France, 192
610 index
Germany, 471, 480, 485, 487-89 World War I, 209-11, 213
UK, 200, 206, World War II, 251, 257, 266
US, 196, 208, 459-60, 469-71, 478 Vietnam, 294, 348, 536.
in Spanish Civil War, 225 See also spies
in World War II, 233, 235, 264, 270-77 Intifada (Palestine), women in, 343
Australia and New Zealand, 273 Iraq war, women in, 305, 307, 308, 310, 569-
Canada, 273, 564 70, 572, 592, 593, 595-96, 598
Finland, 267 Irene, Princess, of Prussia, 150
Germany, 486-87, 495, 497, 504 Irish Citizen Army, women in, 216
Japan, 264 Irish War of Independence (1916–21),
UK, 271-73 women in, 216
US, 256, 274-77 Irish Women’s Council (Cumann na mBan),
See also total war; war industry 216
Home Guard Auxiliary (UK), women in, irregular warfare, women in, 265, 340-41,
271 345, 542
Home Service Corps , women’s (UK), 206 See also anti-colonial wars;
homosexuality, military concerns about, independence wars; rebellion and
189, 190, 205, 206, 591-92 civil war; resistance to invasion;
lesbianism, 208, 227, 249, 306, 552, 577 settler regimes, wars against
See also “don’t ask, don’t tell”; slander Isabella, Queen of Castile, 63-64
campaign Israeli Women’s Army Corps (Chen), 311,
Hopper, Grace, Ill.55 342-43
Horowicz, Katerina, 538 Israeli War of Independence (1948),
Hôtels-Dieu (Canada), sisters of, 412-14, women in, 342
418, 420, 422, 424, 427 Italia. See allegorical figures
Hübscher, Catherine, 116 Italo-Ethiopian wars, women in, 353
Huk Rebellion (Philippines), women in, See also Ethiopian resistance
267-68, 341 Ivins, Vivian, 443-44
Hunan [women’s] War Zone Service Corps,
269 Jael, 123
Hunton, Addie Waites, 215 Japanese armed forces, women in, 340
Hutchinson, Lucy, 82 Japanese Red Cross Society
establishment of, 165
Immigrant Workers’ Association (Main militarization of, 156
d’oeuvre immigrees, MOI), women in, as model for other countries, 153, 163,
536 166
Imperial War Museum, women and war in Russo-Japanese War, 165-66
in, 271-72 in World War I, 204
independence wars, women in. Jewish Defense Army (Armée juive [AJ],
See individual wars: American; Cuban; women in, 531-32
Irish; Israeli; Latin American; Jewish Fighting Organization (Eyal, or
Philippine; Polish Irgun Yehudi Halochem), women in, 517,
See also anti-colonial wars; rebellion 521, 522, 524
and civil war. Jewish Scouts in France (EIF), women in,
Indian Army Nursing Service, 161 531, 533
Indian Mutiny, women in, 140 Jewish resistance in World War II, women
industrialization, armies and women, in, 513-43
156-57 Jewish Welfare Board, 215, 275
Inglis, Dr. Elsie, 194 Jewish Women’s Committee, 536
integration of women in US armed forces, jihad, women’s roles in, 333, 334
292-93, 296-97 See also Intifada: suicide bombers
intelligence, military, women in, Joan of Arc, 411, 463, 561
index 611
Johnson, Kathryn, 215 Latin American wars of independence,
Jones, Helene, 475 women in, 139
Jospa, Yvonne, 535 Latin American rebellions and civil wars,
journalists, female, in World War II, 257 women in
Judith, 123 first wave, 345-46
Julis, Washka, 521 second wave, 346-47
Junius, Maria Anna, 81 laundresses and laundering, military
as camp followers, 62, 77, 93, 97, 102, 106,
Kahanowicz, Moshe, on women’s military 110, 111, 113, 138, 143, 389-90, 401, 404;
work, 525 Ill.5, 12. 14, 16
Kaiserwerth, and nursing education with irregular armed forces, 139, 224,
influence on Florence Nightingale, 141 266, 344, 353, 540, 553
and uniforms, 142 with regular armed forces, 146-47, 154,
as model, 149 212, 220, 432, 433-34; Ill.23
Karpinski, Brig. Gen. Janis, 307 Le Moyne, Pierre, La Galerie des femmes
Kassebaum Report. See Federal Advisory fortes (1647), 123
Committee on Gender-Integrated Leonora, Duchess of Urbino, 66
Training and Related Issues Leucate, siege of (1589), 68-69
Kassner, Elizabeth, 303 LeVasseur, Irma, 195
Kattenberg, Sieny, 535 liaison, military, women in, 224, 266, 338,
“Katia,” 388 560
Kea, Salaria, 225 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, women
Kelsey, Marion, 273 in, 356
Kennedy, Lt. Gen. Claudia, 305 libertine lifestyle of early modern soldiers,
Khaki Girls (Australia), 207 96-97
Kidani, Banichyzgu (Martha), 561 decline of, after 1650, 102
King, Sara Elizabeth, 449 Liberty. See allegorical figures
Klibanski, Bronka, 540 Libyan armed forces, women in, 340
Knox, Jean, 249 Linck, Catharina, 121
Korczak, Raisel (Ruzka), 516 Liu Ying, Ill.45
Korean War Livermore, Mary, 146
US women in, 291, 294, 295, 575-77, 578 Livonian War (1558–82), women in, 388
Chinese women in, 336-37 Long Meg of Westminster, 125
Korinek, Valerie, 558 Longueville, Madame de, 411
Kotliar, Nehama (Slizhovskaya), 526-27 Lottas, 266-67; Ill.47
Krakow Ghetto resistance, women in, Love, Nancy Harkness, 258, 259
518-19 Lovejoy, Dr. Esther Pohl, 195
Kurdish Workers Party (Partiya Karkeren Löwenstein, Elisabeth Juliana von, 81
Kurdistan, [PKK]), women in, 355-56 LTTE. See Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam
Lubetkin, Zivia, 522-23
Labor Girls (Arbeitsmaiden), wartime Lüders, Marie Elisabeth, 485, 489
service of, 494 Luft, Anda and Pantelleria, 526
Ladies Voluntary Aid Committee (Japan), Luftwaffe, female pilots in, 262-63, 498-99
165 Luftwaffe Auxiliaries, Female
Lagasca (Johnson), Maria Rosario, 436 (Luftwaffenhelferinnen), 498
land girls. See Women’s Land Army lumberjills, 272
Landis, Carole, 275
Lane, Sharon A., 295 MacArthur, Jean Faircloth, 448-49
Laroon, Marcellus, drawing of sutler’s tent, MacArthur, Louise Cromwell Brooks,
117 447-48
Latin American armed forces, women in, McGee, Dr. Anita Newcomb, 159 -60, 165
347 Mackenzie, Elizabeth, 143
612 index
McMein, Neysa, 474 medical personnel, female military, 192
MacPherson, Grace, 201 hostile workplace for, 203-204
McSally, Col. Martha, 572 power of, 143, 146, 160, 162, 198, 203
“Madame Bonne Femme,” 560 professionalization of, 196
Madame Sans-Gene, 115 in British service, 191, 199, 200, 201
Madonna (Pietà) . See allegorical figures in Canadian service, 201
Magdeburg, siege of (1631), 73-74 in US service, 195
Mance, Jeanne, 410-11, 412-14, 415, 416, 417, race of, 147, 160, 196, 202
428, 429 social class of, 2, 141, 152, 153, 155
Marianas Grajales Women’s Platoon in colonial Canadian warfare, 421
(Cuba), 344 in Crimean War, 143, 144,
Marianne. See allegorical figures in American Civil War, 145, 146-47
Marie de l’Incarnation, 411, 415-16, 417 in Franco-Prussian War, 150
Marie, Queen of Romania, 198 in Spanish-American War, 160
Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, 254, 257- in Anglo-Boer War, 161-62
58, 292 in Russo-Japanese War, 164, 165
marriage, soldiers’ in World War I, 196-97, 197, 198, 199-
Hellenistic, 31 200, 204
Roman, 20, 49 status of
early modern European, 83-84, 87-88 in Australian service, 201-202
temporary (Mainehen), 97 in British service, 163, 192-93, 194,
state regulation of. 103-104 199, 200, 490
Swedish regulation of, 105 in Canadian service, 162, 201
in French service, 191-92, 197
French restrictions on, 105-106
in New Zealand Service, 201
French Revolution effects on, 106
in Soviet service, 526
Prussian regulation of, 107
in US service, 196-97, 203-204
small German states regulation of, 108
See also nurses and nursing;
British regulation of, 108-109 physicians and surgeons
Austrian regulaton of, 109-10 medical technicians, women as, 336
US policy re servicewomen, 576 Medical Women’s National Association,
See also families, soldiers’; wives, 194, 195
officers’ Meltzer, Genia, 520
masculinity memoirs, women’s, significance of, 2
and combat, 541, 547 in Crimean War, 145
and war, 263, 341, 453, 458, 468, 476, in American Civil War, 148
504, 562 in Anglo-Boer War, 163
challenges to, 189, 190, 227, 482 in World War II nurses, 242, 243, 258,
of military institutions, 190, 204, 211, 212, 266
227, 251, 261, 552, 558 Mendez, Casilda, 224
of queenship, 63, 65 mercenaries
of female soldiers, 121, 125, 128-29, 553, in Hellenistic armies, women and,30-32
554, 556, 557, 563-64 in early modern armies
See also femininity; gender roles flamboyant sexuality of, 95; Ill.2
Mass Observation, 272 libertine lifestyle of, 96-97, 102
Mathieu, Réné, 560 temporary marriage of, 97
Mau Mau rebellion (Kenya), women in, wives of, 74-75, 75-76, 86, 87-88
344 See also camp followers
May, Mary, 119-20 Méricourt, Théroigne de, 130
Mayo, Lucille, Ill.49 Meurdrac de La Guette, Catherine, 124
Mechanized Transportation Corps (UK), Mexican Revolution (1909–24), women in,
women in, 271, 554 139, 217-18
index 613
Mexican War (1846–48), women in, 139 Namibia war, women in, 351
milicianas, 224, 226 Napoleonic wars, women in, 137-38, 490
military academies and schools, women British, 108-109, 111
admitted to French, 116,
in US, 291, 298-302 Russian, 388, 405
in NATO countries, 317 National American Woman Suffrage
military revolution, 61-62 Association, 195
effects on women, 62, 93, 103 National Catholic Community Services,
Mira, Gola, 520-21 women in, 275
Mirabel, Elisabeth de, 559 National Committee for Female War Work
MK. See African National Congress (Germany), 489
guerrilla army national liberation wars, women in. See
Modrick, Zina, 528-29 anti-colonial wars, women in
Montmorency, Charlotte Marguerite de, National Nursing Council for War Service
411 (US), 241
Moore, Lady Alice, 70 National Socialist Women’s League (NS
Moore, Margaret, 294 Frauenschaft), 499, 503
Moore, Molly, 303 National Women’s Service (Nationaler
morale, servicewomen’s, 250, 309, 589, Frauendienst), 488-89
592, 594 Native American warfare, women in, 153-
morale, soldiers’, women and, 54
as camp followers, 31, 32, 43, 387, 405, NATO [North Atlantic Treaty
433 Organization] forces
with irregular warfare, 341 combat roles for women in 318-19
with regular armed forces conscription of women in, 314
in wartime, 236, 275-76, 441, 445, integration of women in, 315-16, 319
454-55, 497 limits on women’s rank in, 312
in peacetime, 585, 589, 590, 591 parental leave policies in, 316-17
Morin, Marie, 417 percentages of women in, 313-14, 314-15
Moro National Liberation Front policies for utilizing women in, 311
(Philippines), women in, 341 segregated training of women in, 312,
Moscow Battalion of Death, women’s unit, 317
209 women’s military duties in, 319-20
Mother Bickerdyke. See Bickerdyke See also peacekeeping
Mother Courage, 115 NATO Conference of Senior Service
Mother Mary. See Seacole Women Officers, 311
Mother Ross. See Davies Naval Auxiliaries, Female
Mozambique, war in. See Portuguese (Marinehelferinnen), 498
colonial wars Navy, Army, Air Force Institute (UK),
munitions workers, women as, 273, 459, women in, 271
472, 473, 539, 551, 559; Ill.26, 46. See also Navy Nurse Corps (US)
ammunition supply; war Industry established, 160-61, 202, 292
Munro, Robert, in World War I, 202, 220
on hardships of camp followers, 85 in World War II, 240, 241, 242, 254
on families as distraction, 86 in Korea, 294
Murray, Anne, 82 in Vietnam, 295
Murray, Dr. Flora, 193 needlework as women’s military work. See
Muskat (Kol), Keta, 514 clothes makers
Mutter, Lt. Gen. Carol, US Marine Corps, Nehanda, 351
304 Nevejean, Yvonne, 535
new military history, 4
and women’s military history, 88-89
614 index
New People’s Army (Philippines), women nurses and nursing, wartime, women in,
in, 341 409, 506
new social history, 3-4 Crimean War, 142-44; Ill.19
and revitalized women’s history, 4 American Civil War, 145-47
New Zealand Army Nursing Service, 201, Franco-Prussian War,149-50
240 Russo-Turkish War, 150-52
Nightingale, Florence Spanish-American War, 159-60
training at Kaiserwerth, 141 Anglo-Boer War, 161-62
in the Crimea, 142-43, 144 Russo-Japanese War, 164-66
on the importance of uniforms, 143 World War I, 196-205, 488, 490
influence on American practice, 145 as depicted in propaganda posters,
on women in war, 155 459, 461, 471, 474, 476-77, 478;
and Army Nursing Service, 161 Ill.40
Nike of Samothrace. See allegorical figures Spanish Civil War, 225
noblewomen, military roles of, 68-71, 124 World War II, 235, 236-45, 266-67, 486,
North Atlantic Treaty Organization. See 498; Ill.42
NATO Korean War, 294, 576
North-West Rebellion, nurses in, 239 Vietnam War, 294-95; Ill.57
Norwich University, admission of women colonial wars, 342, 351; Ill.56
to, 302 nursing sisters and sisterhoods, military
nurses and nursing, organized military, service of, 141
2, 457 in colonial Canadian wars, 412-28
in NATO armed forces, 312 in Crimean War, 142-44; Ill.20
in the PLA, 336, 339 in American Civil War, 146
in post-World War II US, 292, 569, 575, in Franco-Prussian War, 149-50
577 in Spanish-American War, 160
professionalization of, 141 in World War I, 196; Ill.40
relative rank for, 200-201, 203, 204, 222, See also Sisters of Charity; Sisters of
240, 292 Mercy, Russian
See also Air Force Nurse Corps; Army nurses, uniforms of, 142-43, 150, 156, 162,
Nurse Corps; Canadian Army 164, 165
Nursing Service; First Aid Nursing in World War II, 236, 238, 241
Yeomanry; Navy Nurse Corps; See also uniforms
Princess Mary’s Royal Air Force
Nursing Service; Queen Alexandra’s O’Beirne, Kate, 308
Imperial Military Nursing Service; Old Comrades Association, QMAAC, 221
Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Oman armed forces, women in, 340
Nursing Service; Navy Nurse Corps; Operation GRANBY, Iraq War, women in,
nursing sisters; Red Cross; Royal 303
Australian Army Nursing Corps; Order of St. John Ambulance Service (UK),
Territorial Force Nursing Service; 163
Voluntary Aid Detachments Order of the Exaltation of the Cross
nurses and nursing, premodern and (Russia), 144
irregular, 540; Ill.17 L’organization juive de combat [OJC],
by camp followers, 19, 27, 62, 78-80, 93, women in, 531-32
100, 102, 109, 110, 112, 113, 138, 432, 490 Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists,
by officers’ wives, 82 women in, 266
religious calling of, 141 orientalism, military, women’s role in
with irregular armed forces, 139, 224-25, propagating, 437-38, 438-41, 443, 444-45
266, 344, 345, 348, 350, 352, 353, 356, OSE (Oeuvre de secours aux enfants),
525, 526, 527, 530, 561 women in, 531-32
See also First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Osmont, Marie-Louise, 265
index 615
Ottoman Red Crescent Society, women in, Pfuel, Katarina Elisabeth von, 81
151-52 Philippine war of independence, women
in World War I, 198-99 in, 139
Overseas Nursing Sisters Association Philon of Byzantium Poliorcetics, on
(Canada), 221 women in sieges, 37
Phipps, Anita, 220
Palm, Michael D., Center. See Center for physical fitness, women’s military, 310
the Study of Sexual Minorities in the evaluation of, at West Point, 299-301
Military in NATO forces, 320
Panama, women with US forces in, 303 physicians and surgeons, military, women
Papo, Dr. Roza, 529 as
paramilitary organizations, women in, 205, in Spanish-American War, 159
227, 247, 554 in World War I, 191-96
World War I, 206-208 in resistance, 529
interwar, 223-24 See also medical personnel; nurses and
See also Girl Guides; Lottas nursing
Paris Commune (1871), women in, 139 pillage
partisan warfare. See resistance to invasion pre-1650 armies economy of, 98-99
Patriotic Auxiliary Service Act (Gesetz participation of women in, 77-78, 99,
über den Vaterländischen Hilfsdienst), 115
women’s exemption from, 489 Pimental, Henrietta, 534-35
Patriotic Union of Aviatrices of France, 212 Pinkert, Ida, 526-27
Patriotic Women’s Society (Vaterlandische PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan). See
Frauenverein), 149
Kurdish Workers Party, women in
Pavlichenko, Liudmila, 547, 548, 556, 565
Plains Indian warfare, women in, 153-54
Pavlovna, Grand Duchess Elena, 144
Plato, on women’s military roles, 37
Peace. See allegorical figures
in the Laws, 39-40
peacekeeping, women’s roles in, 310, 321-22
peddlers, women as military. See sutlers in the Republic, 38-39
People’s Armed Police (China), women Plotnicka, Frumka, 517-18
in, 338 Polish war of independence (1918–22),
People’s Liberation Army (China), women women in, 139, 216-17
in, 336, 340; Ill.62 political-military support workers, women
access to higher education by, 339 as, 278, 336, 342, 350, 352
as entertainers and athletes, 339 portage of military food, weapons, and
basic training of, 339 supplies, women’s role in
during Cultural Revolution, 337-38 with irregular armed forces, 296, 341,
during post-Mao modernization and 344, 345, 348, 349, 350
reform, 338-39 Portuguese colonial wars
segregated work of, 339-40 African women in, 350-51
See also Korean War; Sino-Vietnamese Portuguese women in, 351
border conflict Postal Censorship Branch (UK), women
Peloponnesian War, women in, 23-25, 32-33 in, 209
Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, 18, 22 postal workers, women as military, 209,
People’s Anti-Japanese Liberation Army 224, 266, 351, 397
(Hukbalahap), women in, 267, 341 posters, women depicted in World War I
Perkins, Frances, 253 propaganda, 453-82; Ill.30-40
Persian Gulf War, women in, 291, 303, 307, pregnancy and motherhood, military
310; Ill.58 women’s
Petrine military reforms, effects on women as camp followers, 85, 119; Ill.6, 12
of, 402-405 NATO nations’ policy re
Petrograd Women’s Battalion, 209 servicewomen’s, 314, 316-17, 318
616 index
US policy re servicewomen’s, 576-77, quartering, 71, 84
579-80, 582, 589, 597 See also Wandesford, Alice
preparedness movement (US), women in, Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military
207-208 Nursing Service
Presidential Commission on the established, 163
Assignment of Women in the Armed in World War I, 199, 219
Forces (1992), 303 in World War II, 237-38; Ill.51
Princess Christian’s Army Nursing Service Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing
Reserve (UK), 161 Service
Princess Mary’s Royal Air Force Nursing established, 163
Service (UK), 237, 238 in World War II, 237, 238
prisoners of war, women as, 86, 120, 210, Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps
238, 240, 242, 389-90, 499, 505, 521, 537- in World War I, 194, 213, 221, 475, 491
39, 569-70. See also Cornum, Rhonda queens, military roles of
professionalization, military, and women’s ancient, 18
roles in early modern Europe, 63
Hellenistic, 25-26 See also Elizabeth I of England; Isabella
Roman, 47-48, 51, 52-53 of Castile; Henrietta Maria of
early modern Russian, 390, 395-402 England; Penthesilea
19th century, 138, 153
Chinese, 337 RAD girls, service in FLAK artillery, 502.
See also mercenaries; Petrine reforms See also Reich Labor Service Law
Project Athena, 298-99, 300 radar operators, women as. See
communications equipment operators
promiscuity, allegations of service
Ramsey, Mabel, 193
women’s, 203, 206, 208, 211, 226, 501,
radio operators, women as. See
525, 540
communications equipment operators
See also sexuality; slander campaign
RAND study of women in combat, 308-309
prostitution, military, 3 Rani of Jhansi regiment, 253, 356
army wives and daughters in, 110 Rear Area Auxiliaries, Female
attempted bans of, 104-105. 389 (Etappenhelferinnen), 211, 489-91
Hogarth’s depiction of, 105 Reconquista, and Queen Isabella, 63-64
in Classical armies, 20, 24, 50 rebellion and civil war, women in, 139-140
in early modern European armies, 80, See also irregular warfare
96-97 and individual wars: African civil wars;
in the Philippines, 434, 435 American Civil War; Boxer Uprising,
moralizing against, 104, 105 Catholic Cristero Rebellion;
restrictions on, 103, 104-105, 389 Chechen Wars; Chinese Civil
Roman exclusion of, 42-43, 47 War; Chinese Revolution; French
unmarried women designated as, 83-84 Revolutionary Wars; French Wars of
See also comfort women; sexual Religion; Huk Rebellion; Mexican
services; slander campaign; whore Revolution; Army in Defense
Prowizur-Szyper, Claire, 538 of the National Sovereignty of
PVO. See Air Defense Forces Nicaragua; North-West Rebellion;
Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, slain by old Paris Commune; Revolutions of
woman, 22 1830 and 1848; Russian Revolution;
Pyskir, Maria Savchyn, 266 Sandinista; Shining Path; Spanish
Civil War; Taiping Rebellion;
QAs. See Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Tupamaro; Zapatista
Military Nursing Service reconstruction aids, 214, 221
Quakers, 426 recruiting posters, women targeted by, in
in World War I, Ill.44 World War I, 492
index 617
Red Army, Soviet, women in Rousseau, Jean-Jacques , Emile (1762), on
World War II, 261-62, 515, 526 women and needlework
after World War II, 332-33, 334 Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps, 240
See also Russian Revolution Royal Canadian Air Force (Women’s
Red Cross, International Division), 253, 551
expansion of, 152-53 See also Canadian Women’s Auxiliary
in Anglo-Boer War, 162-63 Air Force
in Franco-Prussian War, 149-50 Royal Commission on the Status of
in Russo-Turkish War, 150-151 Women (1970), and Canadian women’s
in World War I, 191, 193, 195, 476, 478, military incorporation, 562
480 Royal Naval Medical Air Evacuation Unit,
militarization of, 156 women in, 238
origins of, 148-49 Royal Observer Corps (UK), women in, 271
uniforms of, 150 Rüdiger, Jutta, 503
See also national Red Cross and Red Ruiz, Petra, 217-18
Crescent societies: American; Russian armed forces, women in
Austro-Hungarian; Belgian; British; early modern warfare, 387-406
Canadian; French; German, Napoleonic wars, 388, 405
Japanese; Ottoman; Russian Crimean War, 144
reform movements, middleclass women Russo-Turkish War, 150-51
in, 141 Russo-Japanese War, 164-65
refugees, women as, 74 World War I, 192, 205, 208
Reich Labor Service Law post-Soviet, 334-36
(Reicharbeitsdienstgesetz, RAD) of 1935, See also Red Army; Russian Revolution;
impact on women of, 493-94 World War II
Reik, Haviva, 530 Russian Red Cross, 164-65, 476
Reserve Officer Training Corps. See ROTC Russian Revolution (1917), women in, 209,
resistance to invasion, women in 243, 332, 556
World War II, 264-70, 513-43, 559-62; Russo-Japanese War (1905), women in,
Ill.48 164-66
Afghanistan wars, 333 Russo-Turkish War (1877‒78), women in,
See also anti-colonial wars 150-51
Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, women in,
139 Safĳirsztain (Sapirstein), Regina, 539
Rhodesia war. See Zimbabwe war St. Alexis, Mother Marie-Catherine de
Rhodesian Women’s Service, 352 Noyal de, 424-25, 426
Rice, Harriet, 195 St. Claude de la Croix de Ramezay, Mother,
risk rule, 291, 303 421-24, 428
Robota, Roza, 538-39 Sainte-Elizabeth Adhemar de Lantagnac,
Rodar, Ana Matilde, 348 Mother, 422
Rogers, Edith Nourse, 222, 254 Salomon, Andrée, 532
Roman armies and women Salvadoran insurrection, women in, 348-49
evidence of, 42-46 Salvation Army, 156-57, 166, 275
Republican, 46-47 Sampson, Deborah, 121, 122
Imperial, 47-52 Sandinista-Contra War, women in, 348
Romanian nursing in World War I, 198 Sandinista National Liberation Front
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 253 (Nicaragua), women in, 347-48
Rosenstock, Odette, 532-33 Sanders, Byrne Hope, 553
Rosie the Riveter, 274 Sandes, Flora, 205
ROTC [Reserve Officers Training Corps], sanitary commissions and fairs, 146
women admitted to, 291, 298, 582 Satsuma Rebellion, women in, 165
618 index
Scarlett-Synge, Dr. Ella, 195, 207 sexual services to soldiers, women’s, 110,
Scholz-Klink, Gertrud, 503 237, 266, 432, 540. See also prostitution
Schwytzer Chronica (1554), 94 Shea, Nancy, 446-47
scientists, female shelter providers for soldiers, women as,
in World War I, 214-15 62, 344, 348, 351, 352, 353, 557, 562
in World War II, 256, 257; Ill.55 Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) guerrilla
Scott-Ellis, Priscilla, 225 movement (Peru), women in, 347
Scottish Women’s Hospitals, 194, 195 Shunk, Caroline, 438-41, 442, 447, 448
Seacole, Mary “Mother Mary,” 142-43 siege warfare, women’s roles in, 37
Seawalt, Sgt. Patricia M., Ill.58 according to Philon of Byzantium, 37
Second World War. See World War II pre-Classical, 123
sentry duty, women performing, 312 Greek city-states, 22-25, 36-37
servicewomen, uniforms of Hellenistic kingdoms, 26-27, 34-35, 40
before World War I, 139, 156; Ill.22 the Roman Republic, 46-47
in World War I, 213-14; Ill.41 the Burgundian wars, 101
in World War II, 234-35, 249-50; Ill.45, early modern Europe, 71-73
49, 51 Habsburg-Ottoman war, 72
after World War II, 301, 337, 338, 572, French Wars of Religion, 73
573, 580, 584; Ill.52, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62 English Civil War, 68, 73, 82, 124
See also uniforms Thirty Years’ War, 68-69, 73-74
settler regimes, wars against, women French and Indian War, 120
in. See Intifada; Namibia war; South See also women’s military work
African war; Zimbabwe war signal corps service. women in, 206, 207,
Seven Years’ War. See French and Indian
221. See also Corps of Female Signals
War
Auxiliaries; military communications
sewing as women’s military work. See
equipment; Women’s Signal Corps
clothes makers
Silverstein, Esther, 225
sewing circles, women’s war support in,
147, 152, 164, 472. See also soldiers’ aid Simitch, Marie, 561
Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Simonton, Ida Vera, 473
program (2005), 593 Singapore armed forces, women in, 340
Sexual Assault Task Force (2004), 594 Sino-Japanese War
sexual coercion, military related, 354, 500, First (1895), women in, 165
593-94 Second (1937–45), women in, 268, 269-
See also comfort women; sexual 70, 336, 557-59
harassment Sino-Vietnamese border conflict (1979),
sexual harassment and sexism, 293 women in, 338
in World War I, 203, 208, 209, 211-12 Sisters of Charity, French, in the Crimean
in World War II, of women war workers, War, 143. See also nursing sisters
249 Sisters of Mercy, Russian
post World War II, in US, 304-306, 587- in the Crimean War, 143
88, 590-91, 594 in the Russo-Turkish War, 150-51
at US military academies, 298, 299 in Russo-Japanese War, 164-65
in Russian armed forces, 335 in Russian Revolution and Civil War,
in Chinese armed forces, 340 243
See also sexism; slander campaign” See also nursing sisters
sexuality, female slander campaign against military women,
and servicewomen, 190, 197, 202, 216, 190, 246, 248-49, 256, 306, 552, 562, 565
227, 301, 305-306, 475, 577 See also homosexuality; sexual
exploitation of, in war propaganda, harassment; sexuality
468, 470 Smith, Constance Babington, 251
See also promiscuity Smith, Margaret Chase, 242-43, 253, 293
index 619
Smolensk War (1632–34), women in, 387, Stabe, Mary, 303
389 Stanley, Charlotte, Countess of Derby, 68,
Snell, Hannah, 121, 125, 127-29, 130 124
social class, women’s, and Sterno, Ida, 535
military service, 211, 212, 215, 220 Stimson, Julia, 202, 203
19th-century, 5, 137, 140-41, 147, 155, Stobart, Mabel St Clair, 193
156 Stone, Mrs., 120
paramilitary activity, 206-207 Stoney, Florence, 193
See also medical personnel, female submarine service, women in, 318-19
military, social class of suffrage and military service, 166, 208, 189-
Society of Friends. See Quakers 90, 192-93, 219, 472, 481, 488
soldaderas, 217, 223 See also citizenship and military service
soldiers aid societies, women in, 147, 149- suicide bombers, female, 355, 356-57
50, 158 Chechnyan, 333-34
soldiers, female Muslim, 334
in early modern armies, 80 Palestinian, 343
as early modern cultural phenomenon, Kurdish, 355-56
93, 121-31 Tamil, 356
in early modern European song, 124-25, See also combat; terrorism
129-30 sutlers, female, 76, 93, 106, 110, 128, 389;
in early modern literature and drama, Ill.10, 15
125-29 increasing prominence of, 115
in the Napoleonic wars, 388-89 logistic role of, 77-78, 95, 113
in the American Civil War, 147
purveyors of drink, 95, 113, 115, 117, 118;
in Dahomey, 154
Ill.16, 24
in World War I, 205-206
purveyors food, 95, 112-13, 114-15, 116-17;
See also Davies, Christian; Snell,
Hannah; combat, women in; Ill.15
women warriors and fighters regulation of, 113-14, 115-16
Solferino, Battle of (1859), women in 148- taverns keepers, 117-18
49 tents of, 116-17
Solomian, Fanny, 527 as social centers, 117; Ill.10
South Africa war, women in, 352-53 uniforms of, 116
South African Defence Force, women in, with Classical armies, 19, 43
352-353 See also cantinières
South African National Defence Force, switchboard operators, women as. See
women in, 353 communications equipment operators
South Korean armed forces, women in, 340 symbolic figures, women as
Soviet armed forces, women in. See Red in 18th-century broadsheets, 126-27
Army in revolutionary rhetoric, 131
Spanish-American War (1898), women in, in World War I posters, 458-59, 460,
158-61 464-65, 467, 469, 470, 471, 479; Ill.31,
Spanish Civil War, women in, 224-26 32, 35-38
SPAR (Women’s Reserve of the US Coast in anti-colonial war rhetoric, 343
Guard Reserve), 254, 257, 292 in the Cultural Revolution, 337
spies, women as, 389 See also allegorical figures
in early modern Europe, 70-71
in American Civil War, 147 Taft, Helen Herron, 448
in World War I, 218 Tailhook, 304
in World War II, 266 Taiping Rebellion, women in, 139-40
in irregular warfare, 218, 268, 341, 346, Tamil Tigers. See Liberation Tigers of Tamil
347, 350, 353, 536, 557 Elam
See also intelligence, military Tania, 344
620 index
teaching, indoctrination, and propaganda, total war, meaning for women of, 233,
women women’s roles in 277-78, 454, 457, 480-81, 486-87, 493-97,
with irregular armed forces, 336, 341, 502-503, 506-507
345, 350, 352 Tour, Madame de la, 411
technical and mechanical specialties, tractorettes, 277
servicewomen assigned to, 213, 352, 595. training, military, for women, 39, 220, 251,
See also communications 268, 332, 337, 354, 355, 356, 486, 558, 563
as women’s war work, 256, 552 athletic, 339
See also communications equipment basic, 296, 301-302, 309, 339, 352, 570,
operators 584-85, 591
telegraphers, women as. See civilian, 205, 207, 208, 216, 247
communications equipment operators segregated, 292, 309, 312, 317, 353,
Teleky, Dora, 192 584, 585, 587, 589
telephone operators, women as. See medical, 151, 192, 214, 242, 339
communications equipment operators nursing, 191, 197, 198, 199, 225, 241
Telesilla of Argos, 36-37 officer, 220, 239, 257, 291, 298, 570, 575
Temple, Shirley, 470 physical, 300, 300-301
Temporary Military Nurse, 197 pilot’s, 259, 260, 338
Terre, Helen, 560 technical, 242, 339, 492, 492-93
Texas A&M University, admission of vocational, 256, 339
women to the cadet corps at, 302 See also firearms and women; military
Tandel, Laure and Louise, 210 academies; ROTC
Tec, Nehama, 526 tram operators in wartime, women as,
Teodoroiu, Ecaterina, 205-206
Ill.28, 29
Territorial Force Nursing Service
Travelers Aid Society, 275
established, 163-64
Tupamaros (Uruguay), women in, 345
in World War I, 199
Turkish armed forces, women in, 313, 314,
in World War II, 237
terrorism, female, 355, 356-57 316, 317, 320, 340
See also suicide bombers Turner, Sir James
Thais, wife of Ptolemaios I Soter, 30 on refugees of Vitsenhausen, 74
3rd Kuban Women’s Shock Battalion on women’s camp duties, 76-77
(Russia), 209 on supply problems, 77
Thirty Years’ War, women in, 124 on meager pay, 98
Hesse-Kassel, 67-68 on female sutlers, 79, 118
Stettin, 70 on women’s military value, 110-11
Pforzheim, 73 on women in the campaign economy,
siege of Magdeburg, 73-74 113
Vitzenhausen, 74 on Swedish regulation of sutlers, 115
female sutlers in, 77-79 Turney, Faye, Ill.60
officers’ wives in, 80-83 Two colored women with the American
hardships of, 85-87 Expeditionary Forces (1920), 215
inbred marriage during, 87-88
Thoms, Adah, 202 Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation).
Thucydides, on women’s roles in siege of See African National Congress guerrilla
Plataiai, 23-24 army
Tigrean People’s Liberation Front, women uniforms, 3
in, 354 and female citizenship, 137, 215, 234
Tigray war of liberation, women in, 354 and female suffrage, 163
Tikhomirova, Aleksandra, 388 cultural meaning of, 124, 126, 129
Toledo, siege of (1475), Queen Isabella at, infatuation with, 156
63 maternity, 580
index 621
women’s different from men’s, Victory, Winged (Nike of Samothrace) . See
significance of, 572, 584 allegorical figures
women’s in World War II, significance Vietnam War (1964–73)
of US women in, 291, 293, 294-95, 342, 577,
British, 249-50, 251, 252 578, 595
Canadian, 562, 563-64 Vietnamese women in, 295-96, 342, 350
US, 253, 257, 258 See also First Indochina War
See also civilian women, uniforms of; Vindolanda tablets, 17-18, 44
nurses, uniforms of; servicewomen, Virginia Military Academy (VMI),
uniforms of admission of women to, 302
Union of Women of France (Union des Virginia Tech, admission of women to the
femmes de France), 152 cadet corps at, 302
Vitzenhausen, siege of, 74
Ursuline sisters (Canada), 410, 415-16, 418,
vivandières. See sutlers
419, 423 VMI. See Virginia Military Academy
US Air Force Academy, women admitted voix des femmes, La, underground
to, 298, 299 newspaper, 560
US Coast Guard Academy, women Voluntary Aid Detachments
admitted to, 298, 302 established, 163
US Military Academy in World War I, 199-200, 201
leadership by women at, issues of, in World War II, 237
301-302 relation to Girl Guides, 164
physical standards for women at, 299- Volunteer Aircraft Reporting Auxiliaries
301 (Flugmeldehelferinnen), women in, 493
women admitted to, 298-99 Volunteer Corps of French and Belgian
women’s uniforms at, 301 Women for the National Defense, 207,
US Naval Academy, women admitted to, 212
298, 299 Volunteer Nursing Corps, 198
USO (United Service Organization), 275-76 volunteer relief and welfare organizations,
USO-Camp Shows, 275 women in, 155-56, 234
See also nurses and nursing; sanitary
VAD. See Voluntary Aid Detachments commissions; soldiers’ aid societies
Valladares, Maria Marta, 348 and specific organizations: Red Cross;
van Antwerpen, Maria, 121 Salvation Army; YMCA; YWCA
Vancouver Women’s Volunteer Reserve,
207 WAAC. See Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps
Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de, WAAF. See Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
on soldiers’ marriage, 106, 109 WAC. See Women’s Army Corps
Vaudreuil, Madame, 421 Wade, Ruth, Ill.49
venereal disease, fears of, 104-105, 151, 435, Walker, Jane, 194
552 Wallhausen, Johann Jacob von
See also Contagious Diseases Acts on numbers of camp followers, 93
Vercheres, Madeleine de, 411 on women’s work in sieges, 101
Verulana Gratilla, and the defense of the Wandesford, Alice, 71
Capitaline Hill, 69 AD, 48 Wardour, siege of (1643), 124
veterans, female War Camp Community Service, 471
of World War I, 219-23 war graves tenders, servicewomen
of World War II, 235-36, 247, 260-61, assigned as, 213
272-73 war industry, women in
of irregular wars, 348, 349, 353 Hellenistic, 27
Vezzani, Catherine, 125-26 colonial Canada, 419
Victoria, Queen of England, 156 American Civil War, 213
622 index
World War II, 234-35, 271, 273, 274, 551; Wittenmyer, Annie, 146
Ill.50, 53 wives, officers’
See also factory workers; forced labor; American, in the Philippines, 431, 434,
munitions workers 435, 437-50
war leaders, women as, 63-68 on the strength, 109, 139
Warsaw Ghetto resistance, women in, pensions for, 108
521-24, 540-41 roles of, in early modern armies, 80-81
Wartime Auxiliary Service Girls Roman, 17-18, 44
(Kriegshilfsdienstmaiden), 494 Russian, early modern, 387, 389, 393-95
war, women and, 105 vital role of, 576
evidence of, in Classical society, 19-25 See also families, soldiers’; marriage
in Classical society, 52-53 Woffington, Peg, 129
in early modern Europe, 71-76 Woman-Soldier, The (1928), 198
at turn of 21st century, 303-304 Women Accepted for Volunteer
See also irregular warfare Emergency Service. See WAVES
and individual wars: Afghan War; Women Airforce Service Pilots, 236, 254,
American Revolution; American 257-60
Civil War; Anglo-Boer War; Crimean Women in Military Service for America
War; English Civil War; Korean War; Foundation, 294
Mexican War; Peloponnesian War; Women in the Air Force, general
Persian Gulf War; Russo-Japanese commanding, 304
War; Russo-Turkish War; Sino- Women of World War II Memorial,
Japanese War; Spanish-American London, Ill.54
War; Thirty Years’ War; Vietnam Women Police Auxiliary Service
War; World War I; World War II (Rhodesia), 352
wartime relief and welfare organizations, Women’s Armed Services Integration Act
women in, 215 of 1948, 291
See also soldiers’ aid societies restrictions on women’s service
WASP. See Women Airforce Service Pilots imposed by, 293-294, 574
WAVES (US) Women’s Army Auxiliaries. See
established, 254 Etappenhelferinnen
organization and activities, 257 Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (UK). See
weaving as women’s military work. See Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps
clothes makers Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (US)
Weinstein, Millie, 256 conversion to WAC, 255
Weissblum, Esther, 539 established, 254
precursors of, 220, 253-54
West Point. See US Military Academy
Women’s Army Corps (US); Ill.49
Wheelwright. Esther. 418 abolition of (1978), 582
whispering campaign. See slander African-Americans in, 255
campaign Army Air Forces section of, 256
“white feather campaign,” 481 created, 254, 255
whore, as distinct from prostitute, 97 medical service of, 242
Whorwood, Jane, 70-71 postwar demobilization, 574
widows, soldiers, 74-75 slander campaign against, 256, 305
wig wag girl, Ill.27 See also slander campaign
Williams, Kayla, 305 Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (UK), 250-51
Wilson, Heather, 304 women’s auxiliary armed forces
Wilwort of Schaumburg, on women’s in World War I
work, 101 British, 213-14, 475
Windsor, Frances Evelyn, 195 German, 211-12, 486, 489-92
Winokurow, Dr. Elsa, 192 in World War II,
index 623
American, 248, 253-61 women’s military service
British, 247-52, 270-71, 554 conscription of, 234-35
Canadian, 252-53, 551 in World War I, 213-14, 221, 469
Chinese, 336 in World War II, 246-64
Finnish, 266 See also nurses and nursing; soldiers,
German, 262-64, 493-506 female; women’s auxiliary armed
in irregular warfare, 224, 352, 356 forces
Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron women’s military work, prescribed by
(US), 259 Diodorus Siculus, 35
See also Women Airforce Service Pilots Fronsperger, 100-101
Women’s Auxiliary Police Corps (UK), 271 Plato, 37, 38-40
Women’s Automobile Club for the Turner, Sir James, 76-77, 110-11
Transport of the Wounded (France), 212 Xenophon, 21
Women’s Battalion of Death (Russia), 209, women’s military work described, 92-93,
556 138
Women’s Christian Temperance Union Classical evidence for, 20
(US), 157, 158 gendered nature of, 110
women’s clubs and patriotic organizations, in Greek city-states, 23, 24
157-58 in Hellenistic armies, 30, 31
Women’s Defence Force (UK), 224 in the Roman Republic, 42-43
Women’s Defense League (US), Ill.27 in early modern Europe, 62
Women’s Emergency Corps (UK), 206 in irregular warfare, 224-25, 340-41, 345,
Women’s Flying Training Detachment 517, 525, 536, 540, 562
(US), 258 See also administration; campaign
See also Women Airforce Service Pilots economy; canteen workers;
Women’s Land Army, 236 cantinières; cleaners; clerical
American, 276-77, 472, 473 workers; clothing makers;
Australian, 273 communications equipment
British operators; cooks; couriers; cultural
in World War I, 272, 474 workers; drivers; entertainers;
in World War II, 247-48, 271, 272 factor workers; laundresses;
New Zealand, 273 political-military workers; nurses;
Women’s Legion (UK), 206, 220, 237 prostitution; siege warfare; soldiers,
Women’s Legion Motor Transport Drivers female; spies; sutlers
(UK), 221 Women’s National Military Union of
Women’s Midshipmen Study Groups, 299 Volunteers (Russia), 209
women’s military historiography, 1-5 Women’s Overseas Hospitals, 195, 466
Classical Antiquity, 19, 42, 45-46, 47-48, Women’s Overseas Service League (US),
49 221, 222
early modern Europe, 88-89, 122, 128- Women’s Power Committee (UK), 247
29, 131 Women’s Relief Corps, of the Grand Army
early modern Russia, 387-88 of the Republic (US), 158
the Crimean War, 144-45 Women’s Reserve of the Coast Guard
the American Civil War, 148 Reserve. See SPAR
Plains Indian warfare, 153-54 Women’s Reserve of the Naval Reserve. See
Spanish-American War, 160 WAVES
Anglo-Boer War, 163 Women’s Royal Air Force (UK), 213
World War I, 189-90, 200 Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service,
World War II, 235, 237-38 253, 551, 562
women’s military hospitals, 193 Women’s Royal Naval Service (UK), 213,
See also Scottish Women’s Hospitals 219, 221, 252
624 index
Women’s Signal Corps (Nachrichtenkorps), World War II
491-92, 492-93 Canadian women in, 547-65
Women’s Signallers’ Territorial Corps (UK), Japanese women in, 264
206 Jewish women in, 514-43
Women’s Steering Committee (China), 269 nurses and nursing in, 236-45
Women’s Timber Corps (UK), 271, 272 American, 240-43
Women’s Transport Service (UK), 271 British, 237-39
Women’s Voluntary Services for Air Raid British Commonwealth, 239-40
Precautions (UK), 247 German, 244-45
Women’s Volunteer League (Ochotnicza Russian, 243-44
Legia Kobiet [Poland]), 217 resistance movements, women in, 264-
Women’s Volunteer Reserve (UK), 206 65
Women’s Volunteer Service (UK), 271 Chinese, 268-70
Women’s Volunteer Reserve Corps of East European, 266-67, 513-30, 537-
Canada, 195 39, 559, 561
women’s war support Ethiopian, 559, 561
Greek, via subterfuge, 22 Southeast Asian, 267-68
Hellenistic, via donation, 27-28 West European, 265-66, 531-37, 559-
Boer, via exhortation, 162 60, 562, 563
interwar, via recruiting posters, 224-25 women’s changing military roles in, 234-
women warriors and fighters, 1 46
in the Classical world, 18-19, 32-42 women’s uniformed service in
as defenders of their homes, 22-23, 32- American, 253-61, 292
34, 41-42, 74 British and British Commonwealth,
247-53, 553-56
in the early modern imagination, 123-
German, 262-64, 497-506
24, 411
Russian, 261-62
See also Amazons; irregular warfare;
women on the home front in, 270-77
siege warfare; soldiers, female;
American, 274-77
combat, women in; women’s British and British Commonwealth,
military work 270-73
Women Workers’ Secretariat, General German, 493-97
Commission of the Free Trade Unions WRAF. See Women’s Royal Air Force
(Germany), 488 Wrens. See Women’s Royal Naval Service.
World War I See also Women’s Royal Canadian Naval
demobilization of servicewomen after, Service
219-20 Wrighten, Mrs., 129
female doctors in, 191-96 WRNS. See Women’s Royal Naval Service
female relief and welfare volunteers
in, 215 Xenophon Œconomicus, on women’s
female scientists in, 214-15 military roles, 21
female soldiers in, 205-209 Xia Ming, Ill.45
German women in, 487-92 Xie Bingying, 269
images of women in posters from, 456- x-ray operators, military, women as, 192
82
military intelligence, women in, 209-11 Yavein, Dr. Schischkina, 192
nurses and nursing in, 196-205 Yeoman (F), US Navy and Marine Corps,
reconstruction aids in, 214 213-14, 221, 469; Ill.41
women’s auxiliaries in, 211-14 YMCA (Young Men’s Christian
women veterans of, 219-23, 247 Association), black women in, 215, 275
World War Reconstruction Aides’ YWCA (Young Women’s Christian
Association (US), 221, 222 Association), 157, 275, 474-75
index 625
Yunnan Women’s War Zone Service Corps, Zegota. See Council for Aid to Jews
269 Zimbabwe war, women in, 351-52
Zionist Youth Movement (Mouvement de
Zagorska, Alexsandra, 216-17 Jeunesse Sioniste [MJS]), women in, 531,
Zapata, Ana Maria, 223 533
Zapatista movement (Mexico), women in,
347

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A Companion to Women’s Military History

The titles published in this series are listed at www.brill.nl/hw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to women's military history / edited by Barton C. Hacker, Margaret Vining.

Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

2. Camp Followers, Sutlers, and Soldiers’ Wives: Women in Early

3. Essential Women, Necessary Wives, and Exemplary Soldiers:

4. Reformers, Nurses, and Ladies in Uniform: The Changing Status

5. Volunteers, Auxiliaries, and Women’s Mobilization: The First

6. Women Join the Armed Forces: The Transformation of Women’s

8. Revolutionaries, Regulars, and Rebels: Women and Non-Western

9. Women and War in Early Modern Russia (Seventeenth to

10. Sisters in Arms: Quebec Convents at the Crossroads of Empire

12. “The Spirit of Woman-Power”: Representation of Women in

15. Sniper Girls and Fearless Heroines: Wartime Representations of

1. Sketch of camp life by Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, 1520–22.

Mary Elizabeth Ailes, Ph.D. (University of Minnesota, 1997) is professor of

Donna Alvah is associate professor and Margaret Vilas Chair of U.S.

D’Ann Campbell, Ph.D. (University of North Carolina, 1979), is vice presi-

Dorotea Gucciardo, doctoral candidate (The University of Western

Karen Hagemann, Dr. phil. habil. (University of Hamburg, 1990, and

Megan Howatt (MA, University of Ottawa; LL.B./B.C.L. McGill University)

Kimberly Jensen, Ph.D. (University of Iowa, 1992) is professor of history

John A. Lynn II, Ph.D. (UCLA, 1973), is Distinguished Professor of Military

Jan Noel, Ph.D. (University of Toronto 1987), is an associate professor of

Elizabeth Prelinger, Ph.D. (Harvard University, 1987), is the Keyser Family

Judith Hicks Stiehm, Ph.D. (Columbia University, 1969), is professor of

Margaret Vining, MA (The George Washington University, 1983), is cura-

Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining

Military institutions have everywhere and always strongly influenced the

“KEEP THE WOMEN OUT OF THE CAMP!”: WOMEN AND MILITARY

The Hellenistic Period―Continuity and Change

Mercenaries and Their Women

The emergence of the professional soldier in the Hellenistic period brought

Fighting Women in the Greek World

Beyond noncombatant support there is enough evidence for women taking

Women and the Military in the Roman World

Rome, Republic and Empire

The literary sources almost universally stress the detrimental influence of

Conclusion―Women, War, and Armies in the Classical World

Camp Followers, Sutlers, and Soldiers’ Wives:

Mary Elizabeth Ailes

Between 1450 and 1650 the nature of warfare dramatically changed in

Throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, female

Noblewomen and the Defense of Property

Women in Civilian Populations

Essential Women, Necessary Wives, and Exemplary

Women’s participation with armies in the field changed dramatically in

Essential Women with Aggregate Contract Armies before 1650

A woodcut from Johannes Stumpf, Schwytzer Chronica, published in 1554

Necessary Wives with State Commission Armies after 1650

Writing during the mid-eighteenth century, Bennet Cuthbertson in A sys-

Exemplary Female Soldiers

The preface to Davies’s biography notes that she displayed an “uncommon

Reformers, Nurses, and Ladies in Uniform: The Changing

Interactions between women and military institutions changed dramati-

Women and Military Institutions in the Early Nineteenth Century

Western thought borrowed from antiquity, Aristotle’s Politics in particular,

Women and the Wars of the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Women and Military Institutions in the Late Nineteenth Century

As national Red Cross organizations flourished and training expanded in