It's My Country Too

by Jerri Bell, Tracy Crow

  Gannett, Deborah Sampson. “An Address, Delivered with Applause, at the Federal-Street Theatre, Boston, Four Successive Nights of the Different Plays, Beginning March 22, 1802; And After, at Other Principal Towns, a Number of Nights Successively at Each Place.” Speech, March 22, 1802. In Extra Number, vol. 124 of Magazine of History with Notes and Queries. Sharon MA: Sharon Historical Society, 1905.

  Graydon, Mary Ellen (Liz). Love & War (One WAC Remembers World War II). N.p.: printed by author, 1998.

  Halloran, Lauren Kay. “Inheritance of War.” Drunken Boat 24 (December 15, 2016). http://www.drunkenboat.com/db24/home/lauren-kay-halloran.

  Hancock, Cornelia. Letters of a Civil War Nurse: Cornelia Hancock, 1863–1865. Edited by Henrietta Stratton Jaquette. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

  Hancock, Joy Bright. Lady in the Navy: A Personal Reminiscence. Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013.

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  Herron, Berneice A. Dearest Folks: Sister Leatherneck’s Letter Excerpts and World War II Experiences. N.p.: iUniverse, 2006.

  Hikiji, Miyoko. All I Could Be: The Story of a Woman Warrior in Iraq. Palisades NY: Chronology Books, 2013.

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  Imsdahl, Lori. “Freak Accidents.” O-Dark-Thirty 3, no. 2 (Winter 2015): 11–26.

  Johnson, LouAnne. Making Waves: A Woman in This Man’s Navy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986.

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  Leibrand, Lela. “The Girl Marines.” In Women Marines in World War I, by Linda L. Hewitt, 75–77. Washington DC: History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1974.

  Lyne, Mary C., and Kay Arthur. Three Years behind the Mast: The Story of the United States Coast Guard SPARS. N.p., 1946. http://www.uscg.mil/history/WomenIndex.asp.

  MacDonald, Beatrice. “Experiences in a British Casualty Clearing Station and an American Evacuation Hospital during 1917 and 1918.” Quarterly Magazine, 15–22. In Beatrice MacDonald Scrapbook, Ann Fraser Brewer Papers, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Accessed June 7, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:rad.schl:10354150.

  “Major Mary V. ‘Ginger’ Jacocks.” In Desert Voices: An Oral History Anthology of Marines in the Gulf War, 1990–1991, edited by Paul W. Westermeyer and Alexander N. Hinman, 83–92. Quantico VA: United States Marine Corps History Division, 2016.

  Maloney, Linda. “She’s Got Grit: A Conversation with Pioneer Navy Navigator Linda Maloney.” Interview by Shannon Huffman Polson. The Grit Project. Last modified November 10, 2015. Accessed June 7, 2016. http://aborderlife.com/grit-project-blog/grit-flygirl-linda.

  McGee, Anita Newcomb. “Report to the Daughters of the American Revolution.” Address, June 28, 1898. U.S. Army Medical Department, Office of Medical History. Quoted in “Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee and What She Has Done for the Nursing Profession,” by Dita H. Kinney, originally published in Trained Nurse and Hospital Review, March 1901. Accessed June 7, 2016. http://history.amedd.army.mil/ancwebsite/McGeewhmspecial/McGee_Extract.html.

  —. “Report to the Daughters of the American Revolution.” Address, September 1898. U.S. Army Medical Department, Office of Medical History. Quoted in “Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee and What She Has Done for the Nursing Profession” by Dita H. Kinney, originally published in Trained Nurse and Hospital Review, March 1901. Accessed June 7, 2016. http://history.amedd.army.mil/ancwebsite/McGeewhmspecial/McGee_Extract.html.

  New York Times. “Kept House Nineteen Years on Robbin’s Reef.” March 5, 1905. Article on Kate Walker, USLHS.

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  Rader, Stephanie Czech. Interview by Jane Maliszewski. September 2006, Arlington VA. Oral History #074520, two tapes, collection of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation.

  Reynolds, Mary. Mary Reynolds to John J. Pettus, November 26, 1861. In Women Who Kept the Lights: An Illustrated History of Female Lighthouse Keepers, by Mary Louise Clifford and J. Candace Clifford, 34–35. Williamsburg VA: Cypress Communications, 1993.

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  —. “Women in the Armed Forces—Regular versus Reserve: Extension of Remarks of Hon. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine in the House of Representatives, Tuesday, April 6, 1948,” 80th Cong., 2d Sess.

  St. Louis Daily Times. “Cathy Williams’ Story.” January 2, 1876.

  Taylor, Susie King. A Black Woman’s Civil War Memoirs: Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops, Late 1st South Carolina Volunteers. Edited by Patricia W. Romero. New York: Markus Seiner, 1988.

  Telford, Emma P. “Harriet: The Modern Moses of Heroism and Visions.” 1905. The Telford Manuscript. Cayuga Museum of History and Art, Auburn NY.

  Van Devanter, Lynda. Home before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam. 1983. Reprinted, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.

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  Velazquez, Loreta Janeta. The Woman in Battle: A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures, and Travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Otherwise Known as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate States Army. Edited by C. J. Worthington. Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. First published 1876 by Dustin, Gilman, with introduction by Jesse Alemán.

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  Wilson, Tiffany. “Hello from Afghanistan.” Women Marines Association (blog). Entry posted November 26, 2011. https://womenmarines.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/hello-from-afghanistan.

  —. “Life as a FET 2.” Women Marines Association (blog). Entry posted October 28, 2011. https://womenmarines.wordpress.com/?s=life+as+a+FET&submit=Search.

  —. “Happy Thanksgiving.” Women Marines Association (blog). Entry posted November 26, 2011. https://womenmarines.wordpress.com/?s=happy+thanksgiving&submit=Search.

  Wingo, Josette Dermoody. “Mother Was a Gunner’s Mate”: World War II in the WAVES. Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994.

  Further Reading

  To write this book, we consulted hundreds of print and online sources. Three of the most important were Brig. Gen. Jeanne Holm’s history Women
in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution (Novato: Presidio, 1987); Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee’s history A Few Good Women: America’s Military Women from World War I to the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (New York: Anchor, 2010); and Judith Bellafaire’s Women in the United States Military: An Annotated Bibliography (Abingdon UK: Routledge, 2011). Below is a short list of other histories, biographies, and memoirs we found especially useful during our research.

  Binker, Mary Jo. Her Story: An Oral History Handbook for Collecting Military Women’s Stories. Washington DC: Military Women’s Press, 2002.

  Blair, Jane. Hesitation Kills: A Female Marine Officer’s Combat Experience in Iraq. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011.

  Blanton, DeAnne, and Lauren Cook Wise. They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.

  DePauw, Linda Grant. Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from PreHistory to the Present. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1998.

  —. “Women in Combat: The Revolutionary War Experience.” Armed Forces and Society 7 (1981): 209–26. http://afs.sagepub.com.

  Ebbert, Jean, and Marie-Beth Hall. The First, the Few, the Forgotten: Navy and Marine Corps Women in World War I. Annapolis MD: Naval Institute, 2002.

  Frank, Lisa Tendrich, ed. An Encyclopedia of American Women at War from the Home Front to the Battlefields. 2 vols. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2013.

  Goodman, Robin Truth. Gender for the Warfare State: Literature of Women in Combat. New York: Routledge, 2016.

  Graf, Mercedes H. “Women Nurses in the Spanish-American War.” Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women in the Military 19, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 3–38.

  Harris, Sharon M. Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, 1832–1919. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009.

  Kraft, Heidi Squier. Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital. New York: Little, Brown, 2007.

  Lemmon, Gayle Tzemach. Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield. New York: Harper Collins, 2015.

  Lowery, Donna. Women Vietnam Veterans: Our Untold Stories. N.p.: AuthorHouse, 2015.

  Maloney, Linda, ed. Military Fly Moms: Sharing Memories, Building Legacies, Inspiring Hope. Dowell MD: Tannenbaum, 2012.

  Mangerich, Agnes Jensen. Albanian Escape: The True Story of U.S. Army Nurses behind Enemy Lines. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999.

  McIntosh, Elizabeth P. Sisterhood of Spies: Women of the OSS. Annapolis MD: Naval Institute, 1998.

  Miles, Rosalind, and Robin Cross. Hell Hath No Fury: True Stories of Women at War from Antiquity to Iraq. New York: Three Rivers, 2008.

  North, Louise V., Janet M. Wedge, and Landa M. Freeman. In the Words of Women: The Revolutionary War and the Birth of the Nation, 1765–1799. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2011.

  Ritchie, Elspeth Cameron, and Anne L. Naclerio. Women at War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

  Sarnecky, Mary T. A History of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.

  Sherman, Janann. No Place for a Woman: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

  Smith, Winnie. American Daughter Gone to War: On the Front Lines with an Army Nurse in Vietnam. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

  Stremlow, Mary V. A History of the Women Marines, 1946–1977. Washington DC: History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1986. http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Publications/A%20history%20of%20the%20women%20marines%201946–1977%20pcn%2019000309400_1.pdf.

  Williams, Kayla. Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.

  —. Plenty of Time When We Get Home: Love and Recovery in the Aftermath of War. New York: W. W. Norton, 2014.

  Witt, Linda, Judith Bellafaire, Britta Granrud, and Mary Jo Binker. “A Defense Weapon Known to Be of Value”: Servicewomen of the Korean War Era. Hanover NH: University Press of New England, 2005.

  Young, Alfred F. Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier. New York: Random House, 2004.

  About Jerri Bell

  Jerri Bell is a retired naval officer and the managing editor of O-Dark-Thirty, the literary journal of the Veterans Writing Project.

  About Tracy Crow

  Tracy Crow is a former Marine Corps officer and the author of Eyes Right: Confessions from a Woman Marine (Nebraska, 2012) and On Point: A Guide to Writing the Military Story (Potomac Books, 2015).

  About Kayla Williams

  Kayla Williams served in the U.S. Army for five years and is the author of Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U. S. Army and Plenty of Time When We Get Home: Love and Recovery in the Aftermath of War.

  Fig. 1. Portrait of Deborah Sampson Gannett by self-trained artist Joseph Stone of Framingham, Massachusetts. The portrait greatly resembles biographer Herman Mann’s description of Sampson and depicts her in a fashionable dress with a fichu inserted at the neckline for modesty. Symbols of femininity (flowers), military masculinity (weapons and flags), and patriotism (an eagle and stars-and-stripes medallion) decorate the frame. Oil on board, dated 1797. Image courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society, RHi X5 25.

  Fig. 2. Sarah Osborn Benjamin (ca. 1745–1858). At the time this photograph was made, she claimed to be 109 years old. Photo courtesy of the Wayne County Historical Society, Honesdale, Pennsylvania.

  Fig. 3. Dr. Mary Edwards Walker in “reform dress” (shortened skirt over trousers) and wearing her Medal of Honor. Photo #p2101 dated January 1, 1870, courtesy of Legacy Center Archives, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia.

  Fig. 4. Harriet Tubman in Civil War scout attire. This woodcut, by J. C. Darby of Auburn, may have been based on a photograph taken during her service with the Union Army. Tubman’s grandnephew Harkless Bowley claimed that someone took the photograph and never returned it. The woodcut was used as the frontispiece for Sarah Bradford’s 1869 biography Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman.

  Fig. 5. (left to right) Susan Bordeaux (Rev. Mother Mary Anthony Cloud Robe); Josephine Two Bears (Rev. Sr. Mary Joseph); Rev. Francis M. Craft; Ellen Clarke (Rev. Sr. Mary Gregory/Gertrude); and Anna B. Pleets (Rev. Mother Mary Bridget) of the Congregation of American Sisters, possibly taken in Cuba in 1898. The four Lakota Sioux nuns, who served as Army contract nurses in the Spanish-American War, were posted to five different hospitals in Florida, Georgia, and Cuba in just four months. Mother Mary Anthony died in Cuba of complications from pneumonia and was buried with military honors at Camp Egbert in Pinar del Rio; however, her remains were not transferred to Arlington after the war with those of the soldiers buried there. Photo courtesy of the Marquette University Archives, Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions Records, ID #07436. Harmon & Shaw, photographer.

  Fig. 6. Loretta Perfectus Walsh (1896–1925) of Philadelphia, a 1915 graduate of the Scranton Lackawanna Business College, worked as a clerical assistant for the wife of recruiting officer LCDR Frederick Payne at the Philadelphia Navy League. She became the first woman to enlist in the U.S. Navy on March 21, 1917, at the recruitment office of the Fourth Naval District, Philadelphia. She held the rank of chief petty officer on her discharge in 1921. Walsh died of tuberculosis after contracting influenza during the war. Photo courtesy of the Loretta Perfectus Walsh Collection, Gift of James Walsh, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.

  Fig. 7. Cohan, France. ANC nurses Jennie Conn, Blanche Feister, Lucy Raeter, Mary Conyord, Mary Swain, and several officers look at a German aerial bomb that dropped within fifteen feet of a ward tent containing about fifty wounded soldiers on the night of August 12, 1918. Photo by Private R. P. Antrim, U.S. Army Signal Corps. Photo 111-SC-21795, dated August 13, 1918, courtesy of National Archives.

  Fig. 8. Army Signal Corps “Hello Girls” at a switchboard three kilometers from the trenches in France during the Battle of St. Mihiel Salient, October 15, 1918. T
hey have helmets and gas masks in bags on the backs of their chairs. Photo 111-SC-21981 courtesy of National Archives.

  Fig. 9. Army nurses freed from imprisonment in the Santo Tomas Internment Compound climb into trucks to leave Manila for repatriation to the United States. They wear new uniforms given to them to replace clothing worn out during their three years as prisoners of war. The nurses lost an average of forty pounds each while imprisoned. Photo 111-SC-200726, dated February 24, 1945, courtesy of National Archives.

  Fig. 10. WACs of the 6888th Postal Battalion sort packages taken from the mail sacks by French civilian employees at the 17th Base Post Office in France, 1945. Arriving in Birmingham, UK, in 1945, the women found unheated warehouses stacked to the ceiling with a backlog of mail. Rats gnawed through care packages to reach cookies and cakes. Working eight-hour shifts around the clock for seven days a week, the women processed an average of 65,000 pieces of mail each shift. They maintained information cards for seven million individual soldiers and cleared a six-month backlog of mail in three months. Moving to Rouen, France, they cleared a two- to three-year backlog in six months. Photo 111-SC-3337995-1 courtesy of National Archives.

  Fig. 11. Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) talk shop, 1943 or 1944. Photo courtesy of the Dorothy Nichols Collection, Gift of J. D. Nichols, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.

  Fig. 12. Specs. (Gunnery) Third Class Florence Johnston and Rosamund Small are the first WAVES to qualify as instructors on electrically operated .50-caliber machine gun turrets. Naval Air Gunners School, Hollywood FL. Photo 80-G-45240, dated April 11, 1944, courtesy of National Archives.