American women in World War I

World War I marked the first war in which American women were allowed to enlist in the armed forces. While thousands of women did join branches of the army in an official capacity, receiving veterans status and benefits after the war's close, the majority of female involvement was done through voluntary organizations supporting the war effort.^[1] Additionally, women made an impact on the war indirectly by filling the workforce, becoming employed in the jobs left behind by male soldiers.

U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard

In 1917, the U.S. Navy was the first branch to allow women into its ranks, enlisting over 11,000 women, designated as "Yeomen (F)" to serve stateside in shore billets and release sailors for sea duty. The women were colloquially known as "yeomanettes." More than 1,476 U.S. Navy nurses served in military hospitals stateside and overseas. The Marine Corps soon followed suit, officially beginning to enlist women in August 1917. The U.S. Marine Corps enlisted 305 female Marine Reservists (F) to "free men to fight" by filling positions such as clerks and telephone operators on the home front.^[2]

Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy, was an outspoken proponent of using women in the military, which enabled the quick enlistment of women in the Navy. He made many public statements about the potential of women to aid in the war effort, saying in 1917, "In my opinion the importance of the part which our American women must play in the successful prosecution of the war cannot be overestimated."^[1]

African-American women also served in World War I as U.S. Yeomen (F). Of the 11,274 U.S. Yeomen (F) who served from 1917-1921, 14 were black.^[3][4] The Yeoman (F) recruits and Marines primarily served in clerical positions. They received the same benefits and responsibilities as men, including identical pay of $28.75 per month, and were treated as veterans after the war. These women were quickly demobilized when hostilities ceased and, aside from the Nursing Corps, the soldiery became once again exclusively male.

On 21 March 1917, YNC Loretta Perfectus Walsh became the first female Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy. In 1918, Pvt. Opha May Johnson became the first woman to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. In 1918, twin sisters Genevieve and Lucille Baker of the Naval Coastal Defense Reserve become the first uniformed women to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard. At the time of the armistice on November 11, 1918 there were 11,275 Yeomanettes in naval service, with some 300 female Marines in the Marine Corps.

U.S. Army

Women were never allowed to enlist in the army in an official capacity, however, many were part of the Army Nursing Corps or supported the Army through voluntary organizations that operated domestically as well as sending contingents of women abroad to follow the army and provide support. During the course of the war, 21,498 U.S. Army nurses (military nurses were all women then) served in military hospitals in the United States and overseas. Many of these women were positioned near to battlefields, and faced long and grueling hours tending to those who had been wounded. Eighteen African-American Army nurses served stateside caring for German prisoners of war (POWs) and African-American soldiers. They were assigned to Camp Grant, IL, and Camp Sherman, OH, and lived in segregated quarters while caring for German POWs and black soldiers.

The U.S. Army recruited and trained 233 female bilingual telephone operators to work at switchboards near the front in France and sent 50 skilled female stenographers to France to work with the Quartermaster Corps. More than 400 U.S. military nurses died in the line of duty during World War I. The vast majority of these women died from a highly contagious form of influenza known as the "Spanish Flu," which swept through crowded military camps and hospitals and ports of embarkation.^[5][6][7]

Voluntary and Third Party Organizations

Social status often dictated the way in which a woman was involved in the war effort. Working class women were generally the ones enlisting in the armed forces or taking over jobs left behind, while middle and upper class women generally participated in voluntary organizations.^[8] These were the women with more free time, whose living standards did not necessitate that they earn a salary. One prominent issue at the outset of the war was how to organize and coordinate female support and service, which led for female leaders to push for the creation of the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense (WCND), established by the Wilson administration to serve as an advisory committee.^[9] The Committee appropriated projects to voluntary organizations such as the Red Cross, Women's Temperance Union and others, in order to drum up support for the war and mobilize the female half of the population amidst rising manpower concerns.

Women and the Anti-War movement

While women were lauded for their patriotism and support in the Great War, many were also involved in protesting the war and encouraging an internationally agreed upon framework for a return to peace. Alice Paul, the famed advocate for women's suffrage, led the National Women's Party in multiple protests at the White House. One argument commonly made was that the United States should not have been intervening abroad, when they were still not providing equal rights and assurances to its own citizens, including still not allowing women to vote. The Women's Peace Party, led by President Jane Addams, was another strong voice that came out in opposition to the war. By 1915, the organization had over 40,000 members. Jane Addams met with President Woodrow Wilson six separate times to discuss the war.^[10]

Prominent women

• 1908: Lenah H. Sutcliffe Higbee: was a Canadian-born US Army nurse, and the first woman for which a US Naval Ship was named. Lenah was one of the first twenty women to join the Navy Nurse Corps in 1908. She rose through the ranks and served as the second Superintendent of the US Navy Nurse Corps during World War I. She was one of four women to be awarded the Navy Cross, and the only one out of the four to be alive at the time of receiving the award. After her death in 1941, the USS Higbee, a US Naval warship, was commissioned in 1945.
• 1917: Loretta Perfectus Walsh became the first active-duty U.S. Navy woman, and the first woman to serve in any of the U.S. armed forces in a non-nurse occupation on enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve on March 17, 1917. Walsh subsequently became the first woman U.S. Navy petty officer when she was sworn in as Chief Yeoman on March 21, 1917.
• 1917: Julia Hunt Catlin Park DePew Taufflieb was the first American woman to be awarded the French Croix de Guerre and Legion d’honneur, because she had transformed her mansion into a hospital near the front lines of battle in France. The hospital held 300 beds, and its location was prime for aiding wounded troops. She inspired many other Americans to join the war effort by opening up their own hospitals.
• 1917: In 1917 World War I Army nurses Edith Ayres and Helen Wood (nurses held no rank during World War I)became the first female members of the U.S. military killed in the line of duty. They were killed on May 20, 1917, while with Base Hospital #12 aboard the USS Mongolia en route to France. The ship’s crew fired the deck guns during a practice drill, and one of the guns exploded, spewing shell fragments across the deck and killing Nurse Ayres and her friend Nurse Helen Wood.^[4]
• 1918: Jane Arminda Delano worked as an army nurse during the Spanish–American War, and continued her work with the Red Cross after that time. During World War I, Jane stayed on the home front and organized nurses to go overseas and work with wounded soldiers. She was in charge of over 20,000 nurses, who all worked in vital roles overseas in the war. In 1918, Jane went to Europe to attend a nursing conference and to continue her work. However, she fell ill there and passed away in 1919. Because of her illnesses, she could not work as much as she liked, and her last words were “I must get back to my work”. She was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the Secretary of the US Army.
• May 30, 1918: Frances Gulick was a US Y.M.C.A. welfare worker who was awarded a United States Army citation for valor and courage on the field during the aerial bombardment of Varmaise, Oise, France.^[11]
• August 13, 1918: Opha May Johnson became the first woman to enlist in the United States Marine Corps as part of the United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve.
• 1918: Twin sisters Genevieve and Lucille Baker of the Naval Coastal Defense Reserve became the first uniformed women to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard.^[7][12][13]
• 2007: The last U.S. female veteran of World War I died, a former yeoman (F) named Charlotte Winters.^[14]

See also

• United States home front during World War I

References

External links

• Jensen, Kimberly: Women's Mobilization for War (USA), in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.

Further reading

• Beamish, Richard Joseph; Francis Andrew March (1919). America's Part in the World War: A History of the Full Greatness of Our Country's Achievements; the Record of the Mobilization and Triumph of the Military, Naval, Industrial and Civilian Resources of the United States. Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company. pp. 259–72.
• Dumenil, Lynn. The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I (U of North Carolina Press, 2017). xvi, 340 pp.
• Greenwald, Maurine W. Women, War, and Work: The Impact of World War I on Women Workers in the United States (1990) ISBN 0313213550
• Jensen, Kimberly. Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. ISBN 9780252032370
• Sklar, Kathryn Kish. “Jane Addams's Peace Activism, 1914-1922: A Model for Women Today.” Women's Studies Quarterly 23#3/4 (1995): 32-47. online
• Zeiger, Susan L. “She Didn't Raise Her Boy to Be a Slacker: Motherhood, Conscription, and the Culture of the First World War.” Feminist Studies 22#1 (1996): 7-39. online