Soldiers' Stories |Women Soldiers: Other Services

The story of aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran and the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) is told by some of the participants and illustrated with archival film and home movies. During WWII, more than a thousand women signed up to fly with the U.S. military. Wives, mothers, actresses and debutantes who joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) test-piloted aircraft, ferried planes and logged 60 million miles in the air. Thirty-eight women died in service. But the opportunity to play a critical role in the war effort was abruptly canceled by politics and resentment, and it would be 30 years before women would again break the sex barrier in the skies.

In these pages, readers will meet these and other courageous women and girls who risked their lives through their involvement in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. Fifteen suspense-filled stories unfold across China, Japan, Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines, providing an inspiring reminder of womens' and girls' refusal to sit on the sidelines around the world and throughout history. These women--whose stories span 1932 to 1945, the last year of the war--served in dangerous roles as spies, medics, journalists, resisters, and saboteurs. Seven of them were captured and imprisoned by the Japanese, enduring brutal conditions.

In this groundbreaking, insider's look at the women defending our nation, Tanya Biank brings to light the real issues--of femininity, belonging to an old boys' club, veiled discrimination, dating, marriage problems, separation from children, questions about life goals, career trajectories, and self-worth--that servicewomen are facing by focusing on four individual stories. Brigadier General Angela Salinas, the Marine Corps' first Hispanic female general, faces the challenge of commanding an all-male institution. Second Lieutenant Bergan Flanagan finds herself on the frontlines in Afghanistan, serving in the same military police company as her husband. As a marine drill instructor, Sergeant Amy Stokley demands the very best from the recruits at Parris Island. And Major Candice O'Brien deals with deployment to Afghanistan, with two young children and a strained marriage back home.

This volume presents women warriors and hero cults from a number of cultures since the early modern period. Exploring issues of violence, gender fluidity, memory and nation-building, the authors discuss how these real or imagined female figures were constructed and deployed in different national and transnational contexts. Divided into four parts, they explore how women warriors and their stories were created, consider the issue of the violent woman, discuss how these female figures were gendered, and highlight the fate of women warriors who live on. The chapters illustrate the ways in which female fighters have figured in nation-building stories and in the ordering or re-ordering of gender politics, and give the history of women fighters a critical edge.

Details the lives and military careers of 21 women, from Joan of Arc to modern women in military service, highlighting their career influences and military achievements, and presents capsule biographies for some 83 other women throughout history. Includes information on women who aided the military in many capacities.

Recounts the role of US women in military and relief efforts at home and abroad while the men were fighting to end war. Drawing heavily from interviews, diaries, letters, and memoirs, describes service in the Navy, Marines, Signal Corp, Red Cross, Salvation Army, YMCA; and as Army Nurses, reconstruc

In this groundbreaking work, which covers thousands of years and spans the globe, Linda Grant De Pauw depicts women as victims and as warriors; as nurses, spies, sex workers, and wives and mothers of soldiers; as warrior queens leading armies into battle; and as baggage carriers marching in the rear. Beginning with the earliest archaeological evidence of warfare and ending with the dozens of wars in progress today, Battle Cries and Lullabies demonstrates that warfare has always and everywhere involved women. Following an introductory chapter on the questions raised about women's participation in warfare, the book presents a documented, chronological survey linked to familiar models of military history.

Containing the intimate accounts of twenty-eight servicewomen, many of whom risked their lives, this book examines the crucial role these women played in World War II.

Camouflaged Sisters chronicles the courageous path of fourteen women who overcame various internal and external struggles during their military careers. These veterans give open accounts of how they adapted, achieved work-life balance, relied on their faith, and used mentorship as a vital tool in their success pre- and post-military career. Expect to be inspired by black women who fight for our homeland, while simultaneously battling to protect and preserve the assets most important to them. If you're entering, serving or transitioning back into civilian life, this guide is a must read to support you in your honorable journey.

In Iraq, the front line is everywhere . . . and everywhere in Iraq, women in the U.S. military fight. More than 155,000 of them have served in Iraq since 2003--4 times the number of women sent to Desert Storm in 1991--and more than 430 have been wounded and over 70 killed, almost twice the number of U.S. military women killed in action in Korea, Vietnam, and Desert Storm combined. But should women be in combat? Do they have what it takes to be warriors? Compelling questions once . . . but empty questions now, because more than ever, American women are in combat, and they are warriors. The real question is: What is their experience of war? We haven't heard their stories--until now. Band of Sisters presents 12 of these amazing and often heart-wrenching stories of American women in the frontlines: Accounts from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.

After being commissioned into the U.S. Air Force, MJ Hegar was selected for pilot training by the Air National Guard, finished at the top of her class, then served three tours in Afghanistan, flying combat search-and-rescue missions, culminating in a harrowing rescue attempt that would earn MJ the Purple Heart as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor Device. But it was on American soil that Hegar would embark on her greatest challenge--to eliminate the military's Ground Combat Exclusion Policy, which kept female armed service members from officially serving in combat roles despite their long-standing record of doing so with honor.

The changing role of women in warfare, a neglected aspect of military history, is the subject of this collection of perceptive, thought-provoking essays. By looking at the wide range of ways in which women have become involved in all the aspects of war, the authors open up this fascinating topic to wider understanding and debate. The discuss how, particularly in the two world wars, women have been increasingly mobilized in all the armed services, originally as support staff, then in defensive combat roles. They also consider the tragic story of women as victims of male violence, and how women have often put up a heroic resistance, and examine how women have been drawn into direct combat roles on an unprecedented level, a trend that is still controversial in the present day.

More than one hundred U.S. Army and Navy nurses were stationed in Guam and the Philippines at the beginning of World War II. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, five navy nurses on Guam became the first American military women of World War II to be taken prisoner by the Japanese. More than seventy army nurses survived five months of combat conditions in the jungles of Bataan and Corregidor before being captured, only to endure more than three years in prison camps. When freedom came, the U.S. military ordered the nurses to sign agreements with the government not to discuss their horrific experiences. The authors conducted numerous interviews with survivors and scoured archives for letters, diaries, and journals to uncover the heroism and sacrifices of these brave women.

This is the first history of the female spies who served Britain during World War I, focusing on both the powerful cultural images of these women and the realities, challenges, and contradictions of intelligence service. Between the founding of modern British intelligence organizations in 1909 and the demobilization of 1919, more than 6,000 women served the British government in either civil or military occupations as members of the intelligence community. These women performed a variety of services, and they represented an astonishing diversity of nationality, age, and class.

Interviews with more than three hundred servicewomen document their feelings and concerns about their careers, sexual harassment, family life, and women in combat.

In 2004, Erin Solaro went to Iraq to study American servicewomen , what they were doing, how well they were doing it, how they were faring in combat. In 2005, she went to Afghanistan on the same mission. Having spent time embedded with combat troops and conducting stateside interviews with numerous analysts and veterans, Solaro is convinced that the time to drop all remaining restrictions on women's full equality under arms is now. The Army, the country, the women of America , and of the world , need it. Women in the Line of Fire details why this will not be an easy task. Although 15 percent of the military is female, the Army and Marines still resist acknowledging what is, in fact, already happening , women are fighting, and fighting well.

Caroline Johnson was an unlikely aviation candidate. A tall blonde debutante from Colorado, she could have just as easily gone into fashion or filmmaking, and yet she went on to become an F/A-18 Super Hornet Weapons System Officer. She was one of the first women to fly a combat mission over Iraq since 2011, and she was the first woman to drop bombs on ISIS.Jet Girl tells the remarkable story of the women fighting at the forefront in a military system that allows them to reach the highest peaks, and yet is in many respects still a fraternity. Johnson offers an insider's view on the fascinating, thrilling, dangerous and, at times, glamorous world of being a naval aviator.

During World War I, the first American war in which women were mobilized on a mass scale by the armed services, more than sixteen thousand women served overseas with the American Expeditionary Force. Their motives for enlistment ranged from patriotism to economic self-interest, from a sense of adventure to a desire to challenge gender boundaries. Zeiger uses diaries, letters, questionnaires, oral histories, and memoirs to explore the women's experience of war. She draws upon insights from labor history, political history, popular culture, and the study of gender and war to analyze the ways in which women's wartime service heightened and made visible the contradictions in the prevailing gender relations.