Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jerri Bell
Read between
May 27 - September 1, 2023
They were promoted more frequently than their male counterparts—possibly because misbehavior attracted attention and threatened their disguises. The Army court-martialed no women for dereliction of duty, military crimes, or disgracing the uniform. Only three are known to have deserted; two of them later reenlisted.
Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew convinced Confederate First Lady Varina Davis to accept the service of Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a former slave freed by the family. Bowser, educated in a Philadelphia school, read Confederate president Jefferson Davis’s correspondence when she cleaned his study and eavesdropped on his conversations with Confederate leaders. She reported the information to Ulysses S. Grant through Van Lew’s espionage network. Because of racial prejudice and assumptions about the literacy and intelligence of African Americans, Davis did not suspect her of being the leak until late in
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the biggest talkers are not always the best fighters, and that a good many men will say things over a glass of whiskey in a bar-room, who won’t do a tenth part of what they say if they are once placed within smelling distance of gunpowder.
Many and many a time has the subject of women serving in the army as soldiers been discussed at the mess-tables and around the camp-fires;
a good deal better than some others who aspired to be officers before learning the first rudiments of their business, and without having the pluck to conduct themselves before the enemy in a manner at all correspondent to their braggart style of behavior when not smelling gunpowder under compulsion.
I have seen a good many officers like this one, who were brave enough when strutting about in the streets of cities and villages, showing themselves off in their uniforms to the women, or when airing their authority in camp, by bullying the soldiers under them, but who were the most arrant cowards under fire, and who ought to have been court-marshalled and shot, instead of being permitted to disgrace their uniforms, and to demoralize their men, by their dastardly behavior when in the face of the enemy.
At that time, many doctors believed erroneously that women of color had “natural immunity” to tropical diseases.
Army nurses did not hold military rank at that time, but they had opened the door for women’s military service. It would never be closed again.
In Europe, Armed Expeditionary Forces commander Gen. John J. Pershing found his operations hampered by the poor quality of the French telephone system. The Army enrolled 450 women into the Signal Corps beginning in March 1918. The women, nicknamed the “Hello Girls,” purchased Army uniforms and insignia at their own expense.
Some of the men were very comfortable in their jobs and resented the WACs who would depose them. The men did not want combat and neither did their families and fiancées. They believed that the WACs were to blame for the threat of overseas duties. The women who joined the military meant change, and men did not want change. Therefore, they believed the worst rumors about the women, and passed them on (elaborately embellished) to their fellow soldiers, families, and friends.
Some men could, however, and they wanted the women out of the WAC. They wanted to remain safe and secure on U.S. soil. If the WACs took over the menial tasks the men were doing, servicemen had no reason to remain in the States, and overseas duty was inevitable. But, were we to blame? We volunteered for overseas service when the Army needed us, knowing that our lives could be at risk. . . . We (the WACs) wanted to serve our country anywhere the Army needed us. What does that say about some of the men?
Good reflexes are important in a career in the Navy.
We taught mostly by slides that would project a very small image on a screen. In a matter of a tenth of a second the pilots had to discern whether the flash was a Japanese plane, an American plane, or a British one. They further had to tell whether it was a bomber, a fighter, or another type plane. . . . They also had to be able to distinguish ships . . . and finally they had to study and be able to identify submarines and Japanese Merchant Shipping Tonnage. . . .
its true expertise lies in wielding the instruments of peace: enforcing laws and treaties. Of the nation’s five armed services, only the Coast Guard performs this service without violating civil rights or waging an act of war.
changes in women’s military status were driven not by a desire to impose equality or by abstract notions of “political correctness,” but by the armed forces’ reluctant recognition that they would need to recruit and retain women in order to meet personnel goals for an all-volunteer force and their desire to avoid outside interference in military personnel policy.
[Aviation integration is] something I haven’t quite come to terms with yet. There is still a painful feeling looking back and contemplating the military aviation integration transition and those professional relationships with many of my male contemporaries. I wonder how many of them are dads now, especially dads of daughters. I wonder what they say to their daughters about achieving their goals and aspirations and if their attitudes have changed over the years towards women in non-traditional jobs such as flying military combat aircraft.
She is a proud Army wife.
“Nine Charlie,” the euphemism they used when talking about the looney bin.
The dawn always comes eventually.
living with dishonor was a lot worse than dying. Her last thought was, At least I’m dying doing something honorable.
Conservatives and many senior military retirees declared that women were weakening the armed forces; some claimed that feminists had exaggerated women’s contributions in Grenada and Panama, and that military leaders who knew the truth about women’s performance were being silenced in the interest of so-called political correctness.
Once we were deployed, he spent a lot of time in the G-2 section sitting in front of the map talking to [me and] the Marines that worked for me, because he wanted to make sure that if he had a question or he wanted a response from them, that there was a rapport between him and the corporals and the sergeants that were there—that they would be able to talk to each other, that the sergeants wouldn’t be so intimidated that they wouldn’t be able to think.
No matter how much I try to reason with myself it still gets to me that the women, usually the older women more so, don’t think their opinion has any value. We asked them if they want to send their daughters to school and they said, “I’m just a woman, it doesn’t matter what I think, you should ask my husband.”
After detecting this strange calm at the job site, I realized I wasn’t scared to die anymore, because nothing about the experience seemed terrible to me. Though I wasn’t scared to die, I wanted to believe that death was not in my near future, for I felt that I still had things to accomplish: words to write, issues to be an activist about, and children to raise. But I understood that Herrera, Howard, and Clark must have felt that they still had things left to accomplish, too. For this reason, I came to believe that whether or not I lived was not my prerogative, but the prerogative of something
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Proponents argue that “attaching” but not “assigning” women to combat units—as was the case with Female Engagement Teams and Cultural Support Teams—allows the military to use servicewomen in combat without having to recognize their service. They point out that women attached to combat units do not get the same level of combat training as the men they serve alongside, and as a result are at increased safety risk when in the field.
Finally, they argue that women veterans who served in combat are frequently perceived not to have been in combat; therefore, they have more difficulty producing documentation for combat-connected medical conditions that would entitle them to additional benefits and the level of post-service health care automatically given to men who served in combat.
