Women in War
I was recently having a discussion with someone about women. They didn't think that women were ever doing anything other than sitting at home during the wars and everything that went on in history. So I am here to talk about that a bit. While this whole feminist movement is not worth the paper it's printed on, there were women recorded in history who fought. Here is a list of women who were part of warfare *before* Hollywood was a blink in the eye of humans. Also this much history cannot be made up. I also seen these in several different sourced books, from Harvard (least) to Notgrass (most...)
And this was just 2 centuries. This wasn't during revolutionary war when women were just as much a part of the war.
Women held wig parties in secret, or attended them in lieu of their husbands. Women were spies in the American army to the British. Women housed british soldiers in their homes as Tories, just to turn around and report everything to the wig parties. women were an active part of wars.
In the Civil War, women were part of the battle by dressing up as men. They housed enemy soldiers, they were spies (because who would suspect a woman to be smart?), they were nurses, they held meetings in place of their husbands. Outside of the actual war, the men were gone, so the women had to run the factories, make supplies. The women in the south, who didn't have factories or anything to help the cause like that, decided to make clothes, bandages, whatever else was needed to help their cause. Thousands of women signed up for volunteer brigades on both sides of the line. Women created the santitary commission to help make things cleaner in the hospitals on battle fields. By the end of the war, they made over 15,000,000 dollars for that cause. Women were part of moving hospitals that showed up and helped the wounded, as well as did the final rites for the dead. This was dangerous because more than likely the enemy was not a couple miles away and there was fighting going on. Because women could pass as men back then, no one can estimate the amount of women who fought in the civil war. The government back then denied any woman had ever served in the civil war and stated that a "few" could have possibly slipped and served, but it was unlikely a higher number did. However, there are records of hundreds of women getting injured and being found out and having to go home to being a hero. There are also many journals and news articles from back in the day that stated different women and their roles in the army as a soldier. And being seen as a man, there wouldn't be any form of "women need things easier". These women had to do the exact same thing the men did. There was no lesser degree of difficulty or anything like that. It was all the exact same. Women killed just as a man did with a gun, sword, cannon, or whatever was needed. They would assume manly names (John Evans was one) and no one would think anything of it. There was such a call for soldiers in that war that it would've been easy to slip by. To join all you had to do was sign your name on a roster, be given a gun, and you would start training. There was no examination to make sure you would be a good fit. The way they seen it was that you would die within a week of being sent to the field. Most people trained for 1-2 months, then they went off to the war.
There are many notable names in history as well, I'll name a few here. Queen Catherine, Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, Dorothea Dix, Susan Travers (guerilla fighter), Nancy Wake (Guerilla fighter), Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya (guerilla fighter), Lydia Litviak (Pilot/Pilot Instructor), Krystyna Starbeck (spy), Dahomey Amazons (Soldier), Ruby Bradley (Colonel), Lyudmila Plachenko (Sniper and Major), Neor Innat Kahn (Princess, Spy), Violette Szabo (Spy), Lisa Boersum (refugee smuggler), Natalia Peshkova (Combat Medic), Felice Schragenheim (Underground operator), Hannie Shaft (Resistance fighter), Eilenne Nearn (Spy), Lady Trieu (led the rebellion of the Wu dynasty), Viking Shield Maidens, and more.
I hope this gives you some ideas on how women were a notable part of history and did lead (even as queens). While I'm not into the feminist movement, it is irksome when people claim women had nothing to do to shape our world. Thank you, Charity
P.S. I meant to sent this back in March, so it the argument I was having actually happened back then. Thanks :)
Great read
ReplyDeleteSpot on!!!!
ReplyDelete