It's My Country Too

by Jerri Bell, Tracy Crow

  Fig.13. In November 1943 thirteen flight nurses, thirteen medics, and four air crew from the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron were stranded behind German lines in Albania when their C-53 went off course and crash-landed. For the next nine weeks, Albanian partisans and a British Special Operations agent helped them evade German patrols while they crossed the Albanian mountains on foot, often in blizzard conditions and sharing the Albanians’ meager food supplies, to reach the coast. The nurses’ shoes wore out on the 800-mile trek. In this photo, taken after their rescue, they display the wear and repairs on the soles. Photo #342-FH-3A13649-59824AC, dated January 9, 1944, courtesy of National Archives.

  Fig. 14. Ens. Susan Ahn (1915–2015) at the pistol range at Naval Air Station Pensacola in 1943. Daughter of the first Korean couple granted permission to emigrate to the United States, Susan Ahn (Cuddy) was commissioned in the first class of WAVES officers and assigned as an aviation gunnery instructor. She was reassigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence, where her security clearance was delayed for months because of her Asian heritage, and then to the National Security Agency. When released from active duty in 1946, she remained at NSA and became director of the Central Research Facility, where she worked until 1959. Still active past her 100th birthday, she gave a presentation to college students in June 2015 and died peacefully the following day. Photo courtesy of the Lt. Susan Ahn Cuddy Archives.

  Fig. 15. Ten of the “Lucky Thirteen” nurses from the First Mobile Army Surgical Hospital who survived a night under fire in a ditch during an ambush near Seoul on October 9, 1950. (left to right): Capt. Mary Ward, Capt. Eleanor Faust, Maj. Eunice Coleman, Lt. Marie Smarz, Lt. Olive Rockabrand, Capt. Marion Benninger, Lt. Clara Kehoe, Lt. Ann Haddock, Capt. Jane Thurness, and Capt. Margaret Zane. The other three nurses (1st Lt. Faye Sullivan, 1st Lt. Winifred Jensen, and 2nd Lt. Cornelia Newton) are not pictured. U.S. Army photo by Cpl. George Dunn. Photo SC358193, dated February 14, 1951, courtesy of National Archives.

  Fig. 16. Frances Bradsher Turner (1918–2009) from Durham, North Carolina, washes her hair in a bowl at the Second Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea, ca. 1951. She wears the Army Nurse Corps brown and white striped seersucker overseas hospital dress. Turner served as an Army nurse during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. After her retirement in 1971 at the rank of lieutenant colonel, she served with the American Red Cross. Photo courtesy of the Frances Bradsher Turner Papers (WV0236), Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project, Martha Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, University Libraries, University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

  Fig. 17. Navy Nurse Corps Lt. Sarah Griffin Chapman, an amputee, works with an injured Korean War veteran as he learns to use his two artificial legs at the Rehabilitation Center, Naval Hospital, Oakland, California, 1951. Photo courtesy of the Naval History and Heritage Command, #NH 94946.

  Fig. 18. Diane Kay Corcoran, Army Nurse Corps, with Vietnamese civilians during a MEDCAP, a medical civic action providing outpatient health services to South Vietnamese. Photo courtesy of the Diane Kay Corcoran Papers (WV0526), Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project, Martha Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, University Libraries, University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

  Fig. 19. WACs Marilyn Roth, Vicki Lapinski, and Lee Wilson (left to right) pose together in field uniforms in Long Binh, Vietnam, ca. 1968. Photo courtesy of the Lee Wilson Papers (WV0449), Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project, Martha Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, University Libraries, University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

  Fig. 20. Lt. (j. g.) Beverly Kelley requested sea duty when she completed Officer Candidate School in 1976. When she received orders to shore duty at the Marine Safety Office in Portsmouth, Virginia, she began sending letters up the chain of command to policymakers in Washington DC. Four months later the Coast Guard changed its policy for assignment of women. Kelley was ordered to the cutter Morgenthau, homeported in San Francisco, as navigator and gunnery officer. She became the first woman to command a U.S. military vessel, the Coast Guard cutter Cape Newagen, in 1979. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

  Fig. 21. Lt. Col. Victoria Hudson with her wife, Monika Poxon, and their daughters at Hudson’s retirement ceremony, October 18, 2013. Photo courtesy of Victoria Hudson. Photographer: Barbara Hartford.

  Fig. 22. Capt. Linda Bray, commander of the 988th Military Police Company, takes in the Panama scenery. In 1989 Bray led her company through a firefight to capture a kennel holding Panamanian Defense Force guard dogs and a cache of enemy weapons. But news of this groundbreaking event also led to a public and congressional debate regarding the leadership role of women in combat. Photo courtesy of Linda Bray.

  Fig. 23. M.Sgt. Linda Cox, USAF, took advantage of the Air Force’s failure to ban women from serving in explosive ordnance disposal and became the first woman to graduate from the demanding and highly competitive Naval EOD School in 1974. A master sergeant when Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait, she volunteered to deploy when a male colleague found a reason not to go. In January 1991, Cox led a team of two intelligence airmen and another EOD technician into occupied Kuwait to survey the condition of runways and to search wrecked tanks for booby traps. Here she stands on her Humvee near the King Fahd Air Base, near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, during Desert Storm in 1991. Cox received the Bronze Star for her work in Desert Storm. She retired as a chief master sergeant, the highest enlisted Air Force rank, and continues to work in ordnance disposal. Photo courtesy of Linda Cox.

  Fig. 24. Sgt. Lauren Nowak, USMC, of Fremont, Ohio, helps a local Afghan student with his alphabet during a class at Ekra Elementary School in Helmand Province’s Nawa District on November 29, 2011. Nowak served as a team leader with a Female Engagement Team attached to Weapons Company, First Battalion, Ninth Marine Regiment during a seven-month deployment to Afghanistan. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Alfred V. Lopez.

  Fig. 25. Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, team leader, 4th Platoon, 617th Military Police Company, 503rd MP Battalion, 18th MP Brigade, stands in front of a captured weapons cache after her squad repelled an insurgent attack on a Coalition supply convoy southeast of Baghdad on March 20, 2005. When approximately fifty fighters ambushed the convoy with AK-47s, RPK machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades, Hester’s squad flanked the insurgents and cut off their escape route. She and her squad leader, S.Sgt. Timothy Nein, assaulted a trench line with hand grenades and M203 grenade launcher rounds. Twenty-seven insurgents were killed, six injured, and one captured. Hester was awarded the Silver Star, becoming the first woman to receive the medal since World War II. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. First Class Marshall P. Ware.