WOMENS HISTORY MONTH 2006

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WOMENS HISTORY MONTH 2006 'WOMEN, BUILDERS OF
COMMUNITIES AND DREAMS'
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FIRST WOMAN MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENT (1865)
DR. MARY WALKER, ARMY SURGEON
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HEROISM IN BATTLE

• At Anzio, Italy, six Army nurses died from two
  separate German bombardments. Nurse Deloris
  Buckley was one of several nurses wounded in
  these attacks. In an interview conducted during
  her recuperation, she stated that she did not
  remember being hit, but remembered coming to find
  herself lying on the floor with a shrapnel wound
  in the leg. She saw other personnel nearby who
  needed help, so she clamped off the bleeding
  veins and arteries in her leg and attempted to
  render assistance to others.

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HEROISM IN BATTLE

• When the Japanese attacked US territories across
  the Pacific in December 1941, Army and Navy
  nurses were taken prisoner of war. Five Navy
  nurses were captured when the island of Guam fell
  to Japanese forces. They were transferred to a
  prison camp in Japan and held for five months.
  Eleven Navy nurses captured in the Philippines
  endured 37 months as prisoners of the Japanese at
  Los Banos prison camp, and 66 Army nurses were
  imprisoned for 33 months at Santo Tomas prison
  camp in the Philippines.

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HEROISM IN BATTLE (OIF)

• A soldier, a mother of two, believed to be the
  first American Indian woman ever killed in
  combat, was the pride of the Hopi Indians living
  in Tuba City, Arizona. PFC Lori Piestwa and nine
  soldiers, died in the battle in which PFC
  Jessica Lynch was taken prisoner. They were both
  apart of the 507th Maintenance Co that was
  ambushed early in OIF I. When Lynch, Piestewa's
  friend and roommate at Fort Bliss, was rescued
  from a Nasiriya hospital April 1, Piestewa's body
  was among those found nearby by U.S. troops.
  Those surviving saw Piestewa draw her weapon and
  shoot until she went down.

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WOMEN OF ALL BACKGROUNDS CONTRIBUTE TO THE
SUCCESS OF OUR MILITARY

• Beginning with.Five years after the Gulf War,
  Hispanic women comprised approximately six
  percent of enlisted women in the military, and
  three percent of female officers. Today, Hispanic
  women are serving throughout the armed forces and
  breaking traditional barriers. Army Major Sonia
  Roca, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, was proud to
  have been the first Hispanic female officer to
  attend the Command and General Staff College.
• Iris Rodriguez, a sergeant with the United States
  Army, was the Military District of Washingtons
  Soldier of the Year in 1996. During an assignment
  at the Pentagon, she was selected to work for the
  Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the
  Services (DACOWITS).

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The Hispanic Contribution

• Carmen Lozano Durnier graduated from
  Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing in Puerto
  Rico in the spring of 1944 knowing that she
  wanted to join the Army Nurse Corps. She was
  sworn in on August 21, 1944, and remembers it as
  the proudest day of her life. She was one of the
  first Puerto Rican women to become a U.S. Army
  officer. Her first assignment was at the 161st
  General Hospital in San Juan. The Army then sent
  her to Camp Tortuguero Training Center near Vega
  Baja. The patients were happy to have a
  Spanish-speaking nurse that they could relate to.

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Asian-Pacific-American Contribution

• Corporal Helen M. Lee of Willows, California,
  joined the WAC (Womens Army Corps) in August
  1943 and was assigned as a Chinese translator of
  GI training films at Lowry Army Air Field in
  California.
• Sergeant Julia (Larm) Ashford joined the WAC in
  1944 and served in the Pacific Theater of
  Operations. After the war, Sergeant Ashford was
  sent to Germany as part of the Army of
  Occupation. She remained in the Army until 1948,
  when she enlisted in the newly formed Air Force
  where she served until 1953.

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Asian-Pacific-American Contribution

• Maggie Gee, a 1941 graduate of Berkeley High
  School, started the war as a mechanical draftsman
  at Mare Island, California. However, her dream
  was to fly and as soon as she had saved enough
  money, she took flying lessons. She accumulated
  50 hours of flight time and qualified for
  acceptance into the WASP. After graduating from
  the training program, Gee was assigned a training
  position. She took military pilots up for
  qualifying flights to renew their instrument
  ratings and copiloted B-17 Flying Fortress
  bombers through mock dogfights staged to train
  bomber gunners.

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Asian-Pacific-American Contribution

• Captain Melissa Kuo of Manchester, Connecticut,
  joined the Marine Corps in 1992 and served on
  active duty until 1996, when she transferred to
  the Marine Corps Reserve. She spent a six month
  deployment aboard the USS Peleliu as a member of
  the first Western Pacific (WESTPAC) Marine
  Expeditionary unit to include women. Kuo joined
  the Marine Corps Reserve in 1997 and served in
  Bosnia for nine months during Operation Joint
  Guard, a NATO peacekeeping mission.

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African-American Women in the Modern Military
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PAST CONTRIBUTIONS OF WOMEN

• On July 15, 1964, Margaret E. Bailey became the
  first black nurse promoted to lieutenant colonel
  in the Army Nurse Corps and would later become
  the first black colonel.

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PAST CONTRIBUTIONS OF WOMEN

• From its beginning in 1942, black women were
  part of the WAAC. Enlisted women served in
  segregated units, participated in segregated
  training, lived in separate quarters, ate at
  separate tables in mess halls, and used
  segregated recreation facilities. Officers
  received their officer candidate training in
  integrated units, but lived under segregated
  conditions. Specialist and technical training
  schools were integrated in 1943. During the war,
  6,520 black women served in the WAAC/WAC.

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NATIVE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION

• Nearly 800 Native American women served in the
  military during World War II. Elva (Tapedo) Wale,
  a Kiowa, left her Oklahoma reservation to join
  the Women's Army Corps. Private Tapedo became an
  "Air WAC," and worked on Army Air Bases across
  the United States.

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NATIVE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION

• Beatrice (Coffey) Thayer also served in the Army
  of Occupation in Germany. Beatrice remembers
  being assigned to KP with German POWs, who were
  accompanied by armed guards. Beatrice was in
  Germany when the Berlin Wall went up, and
  remained in the Army until the 1970s.

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NATIVE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION

• Terri Ann Hagen, a former Army medic, was a
  member of the Army National Guard when she was
  killed fighting a fire on Storm King Mountain in
  Colorado in 1994.

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NATIVE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION

• Verna Fender entered the Navy during the Korean
  Conflict and trained at Bainbridge, Maryland. She
  was severely injured during basic training and
  was sent to a Naval hospital for physical
  rehabilitation. Undeterred, Verna returned to
  Bainbridge and completed her training. The Navy
  assigned Verna to its base in San Diego,
  California, where she completed her three-year
  term of enlistment, working in the Departments of
  Berthing and Sectioning, Supply, and Ordnance.

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FUN FACTS
DID YOU KNOW?
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DID YOU KNOW?

• ... during the Civil War, women filled many
  roles supporting and serving with the Union and
  Confederate forces? Women helped organize and run
  public relief and sanitary commissions that
  gathered and distributed supplies to the armies.
  Women nurses and matrons staffed government and
  regimental hospitals of the Union and
  Confederacy, served as disguised male soldiers
  fighting at the front as laundresses, cooks, and
  spies and, at least one, as an Acting Assistant
  Surgeon tending to the wounded.

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DID YOU KNOW?

• During World War II Josephine Baker worked with
  the Red Cross, gathered intelligence for the
  French Resistance and entertained troops in
  Africa and the Middle East.

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DID YOU KNOW?

• ... the first woman general was promoted in
  1970? On November 8, 1967, President Lyndon B.
  Johnson signed Public Law 90-130 removing legal
  ceilings on women's promotions that had kept them
  out of the general and flag ranks. This law also
  dropped the two percent ceiling on officer and
  enlisted strengths for women in the armed forces.

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DID YOU KNOW?

• ... in March 1996, Sergeant Heather Lynn Johnsen
  became the first woman to earn the badge for
  guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns?

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TRIVIA

• WHO IS THE WOMAN IN THIS PICTURE?

BESTY ROSS! SHE HAD SEWN THE FIRST AMERICAN FLAG
AND EVEN THOUGH UPDATED SINCE THIS PHOTO, U.S.
CITIZENS AND THE U.S. ARMED FORCES STILL FLY THE
FLAG TODAY IN HONOR OF OUR COUNTRY.
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212,000WHAT DOES THIS NUMBER RESPRESENT?
TRIVIA

• Total number of active duty women in the
  military, as of Sept. 30, 2004. Of that total,
  35,100 women were officers and 177,000 were
  enlisted.(Source Statistical Abstract of the
  United States 2006, Table 501.)

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THE STORY OF MOLLY PITCHER
An Artillery wife, Mary Hays McCauley (better
known as Molly Pitcher) shared the rigors of
Valley Forge with her husband, William Hays. Her
actions during the battle of Monmouth on June 28,
1778 became legendary. That day at Monmouth was
as hot as Valley Forge was cold. Mary Hays
McCauley was earning her nickname "Molly Pitcher"
by bringing pitcher after pitcher of cool spring
water to the exhausted and thirsty men. She also
tended to the wounded and once, heaving a
crippled Continental soldier up on her strong
young back, carried him out of reach of
hard-charging British. On her next trip with
water, she found her artilleryman husband back
with the guns again, replacing a casualty. While
she watched, Hays fell wounded. Without
hesitation, Molly stepped forward and took the
rammer staff from her fallen husbands hands. For
the second time on an American battlefield, a
woman manned a gun. General Washington himself
issued her a warrant as a noncommissioned
officer. Thereafter, she was widely hailed as
"Sergeant Molly. Women provided support for
troops 200 years ago that evolved through time
which today has blossomed into the Family
Readiness Program/Group.
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THE ARMED FORCES SALUTE WOMEN SERVING IN THE
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.
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CREDIT

• www.womensmemorial.com
• photographs and quoted information
• www.mtsu.edu/
• photographs
• sill-www.army.mil/pao/pamolly.htm
• photographs and excerpts from story