Women in War

For most of history, society has defined as nearly synonymous the military and the male roles. The Amazon legend flourishes in many cultures and portrays the military woman as an aberration, reinforcing traditional gender roles. Women dissatisfied with their circumscribed roles have sometimes disguised themselves as men and joined armies. Probably hundreds served during the American Civil War. Much more often, women accompanied armies as "camp followers" who had auxiliary roles, serving as laundresses or as wives to the officers and noncommissioned officers, and drawing official rations. In Mexican military formations during the 1910s, "soldaderas" played auxiliary roles. Occasionally a wife might play a combat role; "Molly Pitcher" was the generic term for a woman who carried water to the artillery in battle and occasionally substituted for fallen men in the critical job of swabbing the insides of hot cannon barrels. George Washington tried to eliminate the auxiliaries in order to professionalize the Continental army; his partial success produced a decline in standards of cleanliness, hygiene, and discipline. By 1800, women had been excluded from auxiliary roles in most of the world.

Women often played active roles in guerrilla wars or resistance movements, but once the underground forces came to power, they typically relegated women to noncombat jobs (as in Israel and Vietnam) or ousted them from the military entirely (as in Yugoslavia and France). At Okinawa in 1945, the Japanese army drafted civilian women and used them in frontline auxiliary roles. Most were killed. Back in the home islands, the army prepared for the American invasion by training and arming large numbers of civilians, including women.

In established armies, women began making a comeback in the Crimean War, when Florence Nightingale seized worldwide attention and created a new nursing profession out of the old auxiliary role. In the American Civil War, about 10 percent of the nurses on each side were civilian women. The invaluable role of 1,500 civilian nurses in the Spanish-American War led to the creation of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps as an auxiliary in 1901; the Navy Nurse Corps was established in 1908. The women were seen as specialized technicians, but not as soldiers. Their status in uniform guaranteed their availability in time of need.

The vast casualties of World War I necessitated the mobilization of women nurses. Germany used about 100,000 civilian women. Great Britain employed many civilians and expanded the ranks of its military nursing auxiliary to about 18,000. In the United States, the number of army nurses shot up from 400 in 1916 to 20,000 in 1918, and then receded to peacetime levels. Over 5,000 served on the Western Front, giving special attention to gas victims who needed around-the-clock nursing. The British army, uncertain that enough civilian volunteers would be available, experimented with numerous semiofficial and official women's units in 1914-1918. About 80,000 women served in uniform, in noncombat roles. Their main function was to perform roles that women were supposedly best at handling (such as telephone operator) and to replace men in service jobs so the men could be reassigned to combat units. The latter function was seen as highly threatening by many men (and their fiancées). The U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps enlisted about 11,500 women, with full military status, to handle clerical jobs. Known as Yeomen (F), these women were demobilized at the end of the war. An additional 300 women were attached to the American Expeditionary Force in France as Signal Corps telephone operators. After the tsar was overthrown in 1917, the provisional government established some all-female battalions; some 5,000 Russian women were involved. Two units engaged in active combat against the Germans in 1917, but nearby male units refused to support them, and they suffered heavy casualties. Perhaps their purpose was to shame men into volunteering for combat; one veteran, Maria Botchkareva, published her autobiography, Yashka, in New York in 1919. About 80,000 women served as auxiliaries in the Red Army during the Russian Revolution. Finland and Sweden developed "Lotta" auxiliary units.

World War II was a total war, and many nations had to reevaluate how efficiently their womanpower was being utilized. Recognizing that modern warfare required large numbers of soldiers to handle noncombat duties, General Staffs analyzed how they could fill these jobs with women and thereby release men for combat. However, total war also depended on the morale of the civilian population, who were essential to the production of munitions, which were considered just as decisive as manpower. Women entered munitions factories worldwide in unprecedented numbers; in their roles as housewives, they were forced to handle severe controls, restrictions, and shortages as they struggled to feed and clothe their families and, in many cases, substitute as family head while the husband was in uniform. Ideology entered the calculus as well—Germany and Japan were reluctant to tear women away from traditional kitchens and bedrooms. At the other extreme, Joseph Stalin proved the most willing to experiment with new gender roles with scant regard for public opinion.

The British opted for a practical solution. Beginning in late 1941, Great Britain registered women and required national service. Most entered munitions work as civilians, but 125,000 were drafted into the military; 430,000 more volunteered. The largest of the women's units, the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), began as a women's auxiliary to the military in 1938 and in 1941 was granted military status. With Luftwaffe bombers overhead, the Anti-Aircraft (AA) service went to the ATS to find women soldiers to serve alongside the men on the guns and searchlights. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was enthusiastic. He argued that any general who saved him 40,000 fighting men had gained the equivalent of a victory. By September 1943, over 56,000 women were working for AA Command, most in units close to London. The first mixed regiment to fire in action was the 132nd on November 21, 1941; the first "kill" came in April 1942. As one general observed, "Beyond a little natural excitement and a tendency to chatter when there was a lull, they behaved like a veteran party, and shot an enemy plane into the sea."

The United States entered the war more than two years after Britain, and Generals George C. Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower closely monitored the British experience. (Australia, Canada, and New Zealand also were using women in AA jobs.) They were impressed with what they saw; at the request of Marshall and the urging of Eleanor Roosevelt and other women leaders, Congress created the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in May 1942. The navy bypassed the auxiliary stage in July and created the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), with the same status as male reservists. By November the U.S. Coast Guard had created SPAR (from the guard's motto, semper partus); finally, the marines followed in February 1943. In all, over 350,000 American women served in uniform during World War II, with a peak strength of 271,000. The women were all volunteers and on average were better educated and older than the men who served. Although publicity focused on the traditionally male job assignments they sometimes handled, the great majority of servicewomen had clerical jobs as secretaries and file clerks, or worked as shopkeepers, technicians, and hospital orderlies. (The women did not cook for the men.) The WAVES were kept in the United States, but women who served in the army and the army air forces traveled worldwide, with duty in the South Pacific the most unhealthy and unpleasant.

In 1942 Marshall set up a secret experiment to see how well his WAACs could perform in antiaircraft combat. The results stunned the General Staff: mixed gender crews outperformed all-male crews. The women were more careful, paid more attention, and did a better job working the rather primitive radars and range finders. But Marshall refused requests to add women permanently—and publicly—to AA units. Although military efficiency called for such assignments, he feared public opinion was not ready for such a step. America thus drew the gender line against combat for women in 1943. Marshall kept the experiment secret and promised Congress that the U.S. Army would keep women out of combat. Reassured, in June 1943 Congress upgraded the auxiliary WAAC into the permanent Women's Army Corps (WAC) with full military status. The WASPs (Women's Airforce Service Pilots) flew airplanes for the air force during the war, ferrying bombers, testing fighters, and towing targets. The 1,074 WASPs had civilian status and never were integrated into the WAC. Since flying warplanes was the critical definition of a warrior in the air force, however, that service gained a special respect for women. In general, aviation has been much more supportive of women in new roles—including combat.

The posters that suggested a woman who volunteered for service could release a man for combat duty reflected the thinking of the generals and admirals, but it frightened many men who might get that combat duty. Their reaction was a whispered slander campaign that insisted women in uniform were sexually "abnormal"—either lesbian or morally loose. The allegations were false—the women were rather more prudish and vastly less sexually active than servicemen. Nevertheless, the rumors destroyed the image of heroic national service and caused volunteering to plummet. The Pentagon never got a fifth of the million WACs it wanted, and women comprised only 2 percent of the personnel in uniform.

Despite Nazi antifeminism, the shortage of manpower by 1943 forced Berlin to enroll women volunteers; about 450,000 joined auxiliaries, in addition to the civilian units of nurses. By 1945, women were holding approximately 85 percent of billets as clerical workers, accountants, interpreters, laboratory workers, and administrative workers, together with half of the clerical and junior administrative posts in high-level field headquarters. As Allied strategic bombing grew ferocious, antiaircraft units became increasingly central to Germany's war effort. In mid-1943, Adolf Hitler relented, and eventually some 65,000 to 100,000 women served in AA units in Luftwaffe uniforms. Some searchlight units became 90 percent female. As did the British women, they bonded with the men as effective teammates. They emphasized their continued femininity:

In spite of all the soldier's duties we had to do, we did not forget that we are girls. We did not want to adapt uncouth manners. We certainly were no rough warriors—always simply women.

The German women, like the British, were forbidden to fire the guns—training women to shoot at men was thought to be going one step too far. The Germans looked upon armed Soviet women as "unnatural" and consequently had no compunction about shooting such "vermin" as soon as they were captured. Referring to enemy females by degrading epithets made it easier for German soldiers to fight against these unladylike women.

The Soviets mobilized their women early, bypassing the auxiliary stage entirely. About 800,000 women served in the Red Army, and over half of them were in frontline duty units. Many were trained in all-female units. About a third of the servicewomen received additional instruction in mortars, light and heavy machine guns, or automatic rifles. Another 300,000 served in AA units and performed all functions in the batteries—including firing the guns. When asked why she had volunteered for such dangerous and "unwomanly" work, one sergeant explained that her father had been killed and that she "wanted to fight, to take revenge, to shoot." She recalled the terror of battle: "The planes seemed to be heading straight for you, right for your gun. In a second they would make mincemeat of you.... It was not really a young girl's job." Eventually she became commander of an AA gun crew. Women made up about 8 percent of all Soviet combatants (not counting guerrillas and irregular units, which had a higher proportion of women). Over 100,000 were decorated during the war, including 91 who received the highest award for valor.

All the belligerents used women nurses, either as civilians or as auxiliaries. During World War II, 47,000 women nurses served in the U.S. Army and 11,000 in the U.S. Navy. In 1944 the Pentagon raised them from auxiliary status to full-status officers, with equal pay and rank—in theory. In practice, the doctors were nearly all men who were superior in rank and power to the nurses. Men were still prohibited from the nursing corps (until 1951), but 800,000 enlisted men joined Medical Corps, where they served as frontline medics and hospital orderlies. In one of the most unexpected role reversals in gender history, the women nurses, as officers, supervised the enlisted male orderlies. In no army were women nurses allowed in the front lines—the first medical intervention was the function of enlisted male medics. U.S. Army nurses served in combat zones. The policy was to keep them out of the enemy's artillery range, but to allow them to work inside the enemy's bombing range. Some became casualties, and 81 nurses were captured by the Japanese in the Philippines and Guam. Although the Japanese were extremely harsh toward male prisoners and executed some British and Australian nurses, they did not mistreat the American women.

After the war, most nations disbanded or drastically reduced their women's units. In the United States, however, the generals and admirals who had once been dubious about them proved enthusiastic. They demanded and received from Congress permanent women's units in each service. Ninety-eight percent or more of the military was still male, but women filled cadres that could be expanded enormously in case of another full-scale mobilization. In the mid-1970s, the feminist movement and the end of the draft forced the military to abolish the separate women's units and to integrate its women and men. Women were kept out of combat roles (including practically all infantry, armor, artillery, combat aircraft, and combat warship billets). In global perspective, the United States did, however, take the lead, passing the 12 percent female proportion in 1990 and systematically expanding the scope of women's activity. The first women reached flag rank in 1970 (army), 1971 (air force), and 1972 (navy), and they had command over significant numbers of men.

Sexual harassment has remained a serious problem, as exemplified by the navy's notorious "Tailgate" scandal and cover-up in 1991. Although official policy demanded equal treatment of women, many male soldiers thought the policy was artificial and political, covering up the basic "fact" that women could never be "real" combat soldiers. These men conceptualized combat in terms of individual performance, especially muscular displays that featured male upper-body strength. But senior officers have focused instead on team performance and, noting the outstanding record of mixed crews, insisted that women be accepted as teammates. Women served in Vietnam almost exclusively as nurses, but in the Gulf War of 1991, 41,000 women filled many noncombat jobs under harsh conditions and earned a grudging respect. Finally, in 1994 the Pentagon started assigning women to certain combat roles—as high-prestige pilots—for the first time.

D'ann Campbell

D'Ann Campbell, "Women in Combat: The World War II Experience in the U.S., England, Germany, and the Soviet Union," Journal of Military History (April 1993): 301-323; Nancy Loring Goldman, ed., Female Soldiers: Combatants or Non-Combatants (1982); Jeanne Holm, Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution (1992); Elizabeth Salas, Soldaderas in the Mexican Military (1990); Shelly Saywell, Women in War: First-Hand Accounts from World War II to El Salvador (1985).