The Coast Guard enlisted only a few women in World War I to serve at the headquarters as yeomen. The first, nineteen-year-old twins Genevieve and Dorothy Baker of Brooklyn, had originally enlisted as yeomen (F) in the Navy and served as bookkeepers. On April 11, 1917, twenty-one light stations transferred to the Department of the Navy, and their keepers were tasked with keeping a lookout for the German U-boats that were sinking coastal shipping. Four women serving as keepers in the United States Lighthouse Service for periods of at least six continuous months were awarded the World War I Victory Medal.
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. The Army trained them, paid them the same as their male counterparts, and subjected them to military discipline. In France, Chief Operator Grace Banker and six others were ordered to the headquarters of the First Army near the front at Ligny late September 1918. Six more women joined them to handle the volume of traffic, which included orders for troop movements. On October 30, 1918, under German aerial bombardment, the barracks housing the switchboards caught fire. The women refused to leave their posts until Signal Corps officers threatened to court-martial them for disobeying a direct order to leave immediately. They returned to the switchboards, only a third of which remained operational, within an hour. The Army awarded Banker the Distinguished Service Medal.
After the war, when the women requested their Victory Medals and honorable discharges, they found that the Army had only considered them contract workers. Had they been wounded, killed, or captured, they would have had no military status for internment under the rules of war, prisoner exchange, or veterans’ benefits.
With the exception of a small number of Army and Navy nurses, military women were discharged from service within a year of the Armistice. The service of women who joined the armed forces or served abroad in civilian relief agencies like the Red Cross changed American society. They voluntarily took on the responsibilities of full citizenship despite not having the same rights as men. In part because of their service, Congress granted American women suffrage in 1920. After the war the Army granted its nurses relative rank, though they continued to receive less pay and to hold less authority than men of the same rank.
Many women who served in the Great War did not reintegrate into traditional domestic roles. They continued to work as civilian nurses and clerical personnel. A few became writers and journalists, though they rarely, if ever, mentioned their wartime experience. A few penned brief memoirs that remained unpublished, or wrote short articles for professional nursing journals and reunion societies.
The women were thanked for their service and told that they would never be needed in uniform again.
Beatrice MacDonald
(1881–1969)
U.S. Army Nurse Corps
Beatrice Mary MacDonald of New York, New York, enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps in 1917 and went to France with the Second Evacuation Hospital. While on duty with the surgical team at the British Casualty Clearing Station No. 61 in France on August 17, 1917, she was wounded by shrapnel during a German air raid. Surgeons tried to remove the shrapnel, but had to remove her entire eye. MacDonald insisted on returning to duty six weeks later, declaring, “I’ve only started doing my bit.” She returned to the front lines as the chief nurse of Evacuation Hospital No. 2 in May 1918, and continued to serve through January 1919. MacDonald and her tent mate, Helen McClelland, received the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism during the air raid. MacDonald also received the Distinguished Service Medal, the Purple Heart, the Military Medal (awarded by Great Britain for bravery in a land battle) with an associated Royal Red Cross Medal, and the French Croix de Guerre with Bronze Star. The excerpt below is taken from an article she wrote for the Quarterly Magazine, the Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing alumnae publication.
When I was asked if I would contribute an article [to this journal], I hesitated at first, for the reason that I felt there were many members of the Unit . . . who were far better qualified to record their experiences in front line hospitals, than this humble “step-child.”
On July 20th, 1917, when I was . . . told that two surgical teams (a surgical team consisted of a surgeon, anesthetist, nurse, and orderly) were to be sent to the British front for the great offensive in Flanders, which was later known as the Paschendahl Battle, and asked if I would be willing to go on Col. Brewer’s team, needless to say, I was thrilled. We were told to hold ourselves in readiness to leave at a moment’s notice, and to take only sufficient clothing to last three days, or a week at the most.
After anxiously waiting for two days, orders came through for both teams to proceed at once, to report to the Gas School in Havre for steel helmets, gas masks, and instruction, which included entering chambers containing a certain amount of Phosgene and other gasses, in order that we should be able to recognize them in case of an attack, and to become adept in adjusting our gas masks in less than ten seconds. . . .
We proceeded to Havre as per orders, received our instruction at the Gas School, and by eleven o’clock were winding our way through the lovely Normandy country. . . . We arrived at Abbeville about 8 p.m. . . .
After leaving Abbeville, we began to see trenches, barbed wire entanglements, partially and totally destroyed villages, dire evidences of war. As we neared the front, we passed large numbers of British troops moving up, and my Scotch heart fairly burst when I heard the skirl of the bagpipes and saw the Black Watch marching along with every kilt swinging in unison.
Our destination was Dozingham (a code name), situated about three and a half miles northwest of Poperinghe, Belgium, which we reached about four o’clock on the afternoon of the 23rd. . . . These two hospitals [Casualty Clearing Stations 61 and 47] were located within three hundred yards of each other, and under canvas, except for the large operating theatres, which consisted of corrugated iron Nissen huts, containing seven tables, and one small theatre under canvas with two tables. The part of the hospital which handled the surgical casualties was divided in two parts by a broad duck-board walk. There were nine wards on either side, with smaller duck-boards between each ward; and woe betide anyone who was unfortunate enough to step off a duck-board, as I realized to my sorrow one night as we were hurrying from the operating theatre to snatch our much needed six hours’ rest, when someone accidentally ran against me. I landed in the mud face down, and sank almost out of sight. Laid out on the ground in front of the hospital, plainly visible by day, and strongly illuminated at night, was a large Red Cross 30 x 40 feet. There were also one or two Red Crosses on top of the large tents; so we felt secure and had no fear of the enemy mistaking it for an ammunition dump, army camp, quartermaster’s stores, etc.
No. 61 and 47 CCS were new hospitals established especially for this drive and within four miles of the front line. For some reason the offensive did not start as early as expected, and we were at the station a week without any active surgical work. Our days were occupied making supplies, helping to put the finishing touches to the operating room, watching the enemy observation planes, and when it was not pouring rain, making short trips to nearby places of interest. The nights during this first week were comparatively quiet. We could hear the enemy aeroplanes go over us to the back areas, but we paid little attention to them until the anti-aircraft guns began, when we would get up and watch the planes passing along in the light of the strong electric searchlights, and after watching for a time, would turn in again.
On the night of July 30th, all hell seemed to break loose, and we realized that the great offensive had started. From midnight on, especially when the barrage was laid down just before dawn, there was the most terrific bombardment. I must say that I got very little sleep that night, as I sat on my cot with the flap of the tent held back, sim
ply fascinated watching the flashes of the guns in the sky, listening to the terrific explosions, and the whizzing of the shells from the heavy guns in our rear passing over our heads. At that time, I was sharing a tent with four British sisters who had seen nearly three years’ service. Three of them slept through the whole thing, and I marveled that human beings could get so accustomed to it, that they slept as if in a peaceful English countryside. One sister, who was rather wakeful, said to me, “Sister, you had better try and get some sleep, here is some cotton, put it in your ears, we shall have some heavy days ahead.” She was absolutely right. We began to receive wounded about ten o’clock on the morning of the 31st. The plan was for the three hospitals in the immediate neighborhood . . . to each receive 200; but it seemed that we hardly made a dent in the number to be operated upon before word would come that we were again receiving. The three hospitals had over 2,400 casualties in the first twenty-four hours. All operating teams worked continuously for twenty-two hours, then took four hours’ rest; returned to duty and worked another eighteen hours, then took six hours’ rest, and carried on in this manner until the battle was over. We then went on a regular schedule of eight hours on and eight hours off. No one ever grumbled at the long hours, we only begrudged the time we took for sleep; but this we knew was absolutely necessary in order to be able to “carry on.”
By the end of the second week, and particularly after the heavy work, we were desperate for fresh clothing, my two operating dresses and service dress were filthy, and my cloth mess dress was hanging in my tent soaking wet, the result of slipping into a blind ditch filled with muddy slimy water nearly up to our waists, as we crossed the fields to attend a Sunday service in an old convent about a mile from the hospital. A British Tommy came to our rescue, helped us out of the ditch, emptied our rubber boots, brought us a pail of water and towel from his quarters nearby, and we washed our faces and hands, repaired as much of the damage to our dresses as possible, in full view of the Headquarters of the Prince of Wales and the passing troops, then proceeded to service. The officers were pretty much in the same straits in regard to clothing; so Col. Brewer prevailed upon the Commanding Officer to send a camion to our base for fresh clothing for the two teams, as it was evident that our stay at the front was to be an indefinite one.
On the night of August 17th just as we had turned in after a heavy day’s work, the anti-aircraft guns started. We could hear and see an enemy plane about 5,000 feet up with the searchlights on it, we could see the shrapnel bursting, but finally it went away and we went to bed. A few minutes later, we heard three explosions, which seemed to be almost in our compound, then the whizzing of another plane coming, coming. I remarked to my tent mate, Miss McClelland of the Philadelphia team, that I believed they were out to get us, and picked up my steel helmet to put it on my head, when suddenly without the slightest warning, there were three more explosions accompanied with the most violent concussions and our tent riddled with small fragments of bombs and debris. We were shocked, and I was soon aware of blood trickling down both cheeks, and totally blind in the right eye. I was taken at once to the operating room where it was decided to send me on the hospital train to Boulogne. Our night cook, who was standing outside the mess tent about twenty feet away, was blown to pieces, and one of the British officers severely wounded. There was also one British sister severely shocked, and one very slightly wounded.
I later went back to my base, where I remained until May 1, 1918, when orders came through for my transfer to Evacuation Hospital No. 2, A.E.F., as its Chief Nurse. My first impulse was to ask Col. Darrach, who was our Commanding Officer at that time, if he would request that I remain at Étretat. He asked me if I had any feeling about going back to the front after my experience in Flanders, and when I told him I had not, he replied, “Then I am afraid you will have to go.” I had been so happy at Étretat, had made so many friends, that I was very loath to leave the Unit, and would have preferred a thousand times to go up again on a surgical team with some of our own officers, than assume the duties of a Chief Nurse for which I did not feel fully qualified.
[MacDonald then describes this post, including the help she receives from her commanding officer in relocating the nurses’ quarters to the hospital compound so they can be nearer their work, and the difficulty of training staff who have had no previous wartime experience and who do not understand the need to conserve materials or to vacate the upper floors of buildings during air raids. Evacuation Hospital No. 2 then transfers to the Army of Occupation and advances into Germany.]
It was due entirely to the encouragement, consideration and patience of the officers and nurses with whom I was associated, that I was able to “carry on” as soon as I did after being wounded. At no time was I ever made to feel an outsider, and I look back upon those days spent with the Unit at Étretat as the happiest ones during my war service.
Joy Bright Hancock
(1898–1986)
U.S. Navy
Joy Bright Little Hancock Ofstie, from Wildwood, New Jersey, served as a Navy yeoman (F) and courier at the Naval Air Station, Camp May. After the war, she took a job with the Bureau of Aeronautics. Her first husband, a pilot, died in the crash of a ZR-2 airship in 1921. Her second husband, also a pilot, died in a crash in 1925. Undaunted, Hancock learned to fly, but she preferred working on airplane engines.
During World War II, she joined the Navy as a first lieutenant in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). She rose to the rank of commander by the end of the war. In February 1946, Commander Hancock became assistant director (Plans) of the Women’s Reserve and then director of the WAVES five months later. She was promoted to the rank of captain in 1948.
Hancock retired in 1953 and married a vice admiral, a former World War I pilot whom she had known since 1920. She was widowed a third time a year later. Despite her enormous personal losses, Hancock continued to work to expand the roles of women in the military. The excerpt below is from her memoir Lady in the Navy: A Personal Reminiscence.
In 1917, I was attending business school in Philadelphia. My chief fear was that I would not be qualified in time for naval service. . . .
As soon as possible, I explored the possibilities of enlisting in the Navy. Since Captain Elmer Wood, a retired naval officer who had lived in Cape May Court House when I was a child, had been recalled to active duty and was in charge of the Branch Hydrographic Office of the Navy in Philadelphia, I had not too far to go for information. I had come to the right place, for he took me to the Philadelphia Navy Yard to introduce me to a friend of his, Captain George Cooper.
In response to Captain Wood’s statement that I wanted to enlist, Captain Cooper said that, although no very formal organization had been set up to handle such a request, I could go to the Naval Home for a physical examination. If I qualified on that score, he would arrange for a test of my clerical ability.
Some consternation was clearly the reaction of the medical staff at the Naval Home when I appeared for physical examination. But since consternation did not involve prejudice, I passed both the physical and mental tests successfully and was enlisted as a yeoman first class.
Indoctrination was not the order of the day; one simply plunged into service cold. At the Navy Clothing Depot, I was outfitted with two uniforms and told to report to the office of the Navy Superintending Constructor of the New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden. . . .
No dormitory arrangements were made for the women in service; they simply lived at home and reported daily for work. Since I lived in Philadelphia with one of my mother’s friends, I commuted to Camden, New Jersey, via the ferry across the Delaware River and thence a twenty-minute train ride from Camden to the New York Shipbuilding Corporation. Ferry and trains were so jam-packed with shipyard workers that it was not unusual to ride straddling the couplings. On this twenty-minute run, the men called me “Heavy Artillery,” in teasing recognition of my five-feet, four inches and mere 102-pound weight.
Since I w
as assigned to the superintending constructor’s office, one of my duties was to carry papers and plans to naval ships being built at the yard. As I walked on these errands, my friends of the daily train rides would spot me and call out cheerily, “Hello there, Heavy Artillery.” This practice was discontinued when an efficiency expert following me found that the time taken out to call greetings was a comparatively costly gesture. Thereafter, a sailor took over that task.
Some of my off-duty time I spent with other yeomen (F) who were assigned to sell Liberty bonds in theaters. At Keith’s theater in Philadelphia, for example, we would go up and down the aisles during intermission to make sales.
We also participated in Liberty bond parades on Broad Street. Our training for this activity was acquired at the Navy Yard twice a week. There Marines taught us the rudiments of drill, but we learned hardly more than “forward march,” “halt,” and the necessity of maintaining straight lines and keeping in step. No instructions were ever given to the effect that we were not to break step for any obstacle that might be in the way, but sometimes there was sharp provocation for changing direction, as, for example, the time we marched behind beautiful, high-spirited horses that had not been housebroken. After a particularly shabby parade performance, our instructor gave us explicit directions: “You don’t kick it, you don’t jump over it, you step in it.”
After a year, I was a seasoned yeoman. There being no designation for women signifying their sex on the rolls, I received orders to duty aboard a combatant ship. My commanding officer, a naval constructor, had never approved of women being attached to the Navy in a military capacity, so when I presented these orders to him, he was blunt. “Carry them out.” Upon reporting to the Fourth Naval District in Philadelphia, I was told in no uncertain terms that the Navy had no intention of ordering women to sea for duty on combat ships. My orders being so endorsed, I returned to my job in the superintending constructor’s office. Because assignments like these were also received by other women, an “F” was placed after the rate to alert assignment officers that the yeoman was a woman.
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