My Weblog: Remembering the American Women of World War I

Our guest today is Elizabeth Foxwell, Managing Editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection and editor of the critically acclaimed series, McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction. She has recently published an anthology of the writings of American women who served in various capacities in World War I, In Their Own Words, published by Oconee Spirit Press as both an e-book and in trade paperback. I asked her for a short description of this project, the first of its kind to focus on American women in World War I.

Their work carried them up to the front, and they were subjected to shellfire, bombs and poison gas. Many of them were wounded, many of them were gassed.

Now, unprovided for in many cases, aging and faltering under aggravation of old wounds and mental shock, and lacking the organizational punch to carry through a program which would aid them, this little band of women is calling for help.

A recent call for the VA to assist women vets? No, these words were written by then-newspaperman Bruce Catton in 1937, long before he published his Pulitzer Prize-winning A Stillness at Appomattox. Yet his concerns about meeting the needs of the female U.S. veterans of World War I have a contemporary ring in highlighting these women’s service under combat conditions, the toll on them (some 200 American women died in the line of duty), and the nation with a short memory.

The absence of a collection reflecting the varied war work of thousands of U.S. women motivated me to compile In Their Own Words: American Women in World War I. Seeking to reach beyond the typical image of U.S. woman as war nurse, the book encompasses roles such as canteen staffer, dietician, entertainer, fingerprint expert, librarian, physician, Red Cross searcher, refugee advocate, reporter, stenographer, and telephone operator. It includes annotated, first-person accounts from the different theaters of the war, biographical information on each woman, and photographs. The accounts range from librarian Katherine Tappert’s description of reading tastes of Camp Upton (NY) patrons, official “song leader” Estelle Pearl Cushman’s activities with Southern troops, and Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore’s account of Japanese-German conflict to author-war correspondent Mary Roberts Rinehart’s apprehension about spies, pilot Ruth Bancroft Law’s campaign for admittance of women into the Army Air Corps, and black YMCA canteen worker Addie Hunton’s narrative of black soldiers burying the dead in France. I hope In Their Own Words will lead to renewed appreciation for the contributions and sacrifices of these women and so many others, and perhaps lead readers to learn further about the experiences that have real relevance to today’s women addressing the effects of war around the globe. The achievements of other American women in the war are featured on my blog American Women in World War I.

The “fingerprint girls” of U.S. naval intelligence, 1918. From left: Blanche Donahue, Marie S. Dahm, Blanche Stansbury, and Julia G. Boswell, with fellow fingerprint clerk James A. Noonan.