139: From Yeomen (F) to “Hello Girls:” American Women in World War I
59:14 Share

I'm an educator, and I'm also a parent. As with any parent, you want to empower your children with knowledge and support them so they can succeed, now and in the future. But each of my kids are different, and they each learn in different ways.

One option for parents is K-12. K-12 powered schools are accredited, tuition-free, online public schools for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. K-12 can help your child reach their full potential and give you the support you need to get them there. K-12 is designed to help your child learn at their own pace, in their own place, with an engaging curriculum that supports individual learning styles.

This is different from homeschooling, where you are responsible for teaching them. K-12 powered schools have state certified teachers specifically trained in teaching online. They use hands-on innovative technology to make learning interactive.

K-12 powered schools even offer social opportunities, extracurricular activities, and in-person events. And K-12 has more than 20 years experience helping students gain the skills they need to thrive in the future. So join the more than 2 million families who have chosen K-12 and empower your student to reach their full potential now. Go to k12.com slash HTDS today to learn more and find a tuition-free K-12 powered school near you.

near you. That's the letter K, the number 12.com slash HTDS. K12.com slash HTDS. It's the evening of August 5th, 1915, and nurse Edith Cavill is busily attending to a wounded German soldier at a small hospital in German-occupied Brussels, Belgium. This isn't a show of support for Germany, mind you. Far from it. Edith is a proud Englishwoman, one who also loves the Belgian people,

She's lived and worked here as "directrice" at the Birkendale Medical Institute for years, long before the Great War began. But now, Edith serves at the pleasure of the Red Cross and as such, renders service without regard to race, creed, or nationality. So of course, the 49-year-old slender, fair-featured nurse is attending to this Boche soldier. Helping others is simply who Edith is.

But then, the hospital's relative calm is disturbed by a hard knock at the door. And suddenly, German military police are bursting in, seizing Edith before she can finish wrapping the wound on her fellow soldier, her patient. Rushed out the door, the Germans take Edith to the nearby military prison of Saint-Gilles. August 5th was a coordinated move.

That day, Edith is but one of some 35 Belgian-based nurses whom the German MPs arrest, all charged with smuggling out British, French, and Belgian troops stuck behind German lines. These women might not be German, but by the Second Reich's laws, helping these allied troops still violates the neutrality they enjoy as Red Cross nurses. It's punishable by death. The German authorities interrogate Edith. They tell her that the other nurses have already confessed.

It's an absolute lie, but Edith buys it hook, line, and sinker. Convinced that truth is the best and honorable course of action then, the high-ranking nurse admits to all of it. That for months, she's helped English, French, and Belgian men slip past the German lines to join the fight against the Kaiser's forces. Over the next two months, the American minister in Brussels, Mr. Brand Whitlock, does his best to gain news of Edith's condition and intercede on her behalf, but the neutral diplomat can't stop what's coming.

On October 11th, the German court pronounces the nurse's sentence: death by firing squad at dawn. It's now the night of October 11th, 1915, ten weeks since Edith's arrest and her last night on earth. A lonely prospect, but thankfully, German chaplain Paula Sauer has managed to gain special permission for the Church of England's rector of Brussels, Reverend Sterling Gahn, to visit her.

The reverend enters Edith St. Gilles' prison cell, ready to comfort his friend in her final hours, yet is astonished to find this woman of faith well composed, at peace with dying for her country, ready to meet God. Edith tells him, I have no fear, nor shrinking. I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me. I thank God for this ten weeks quiet before the end.

Life has always been hurried and full of difficulty. This time of rest has been a great mercy. When the reverend later recalls this conversation, he'll note that Edith shows no malice toward the Germans. Instead, she explains: They have all been very kind to me here, but this I would say, standing as I do, in view of God and eternity, I realize patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.

They partake of the Holy Communion, then sit together for as long as they can. But eventually, it's time. As they say goodbyes, the faith-filled nurse confidently evokes the afterlife, telling the Reverend, We shall meet again. It's morning, October 12th, 1915. Under the watchful eyes of guards, the German Lutheran chaplain, Paula Suehr, accompanies Edith Kappel as she walks out of Saint-Gilles prison.

and climbs into a car. The chaplain has done all he can to make Edith comfortable these last few weeks and will stay by her side to the end. They wait quietly as a Catholic priest escorts yet another prisoner, one of Edith's soldier smuggling colleagues, to a second car. He's a Belgian national by the name of Monsieur Philippe Boeck. With each of the condemned seated in their separate cars and with their respective chaplains, the vehicles take off. They soon arrive at a curious building.

It has two towers, is covered with windows, and is incredibly elongated. This is a military site, Tierra Nacional, or the National Shooting Range. Everyone exits the cars, and the chaplains then walk Edith and Philippe toward their two separate groups of rifle-bearing soldiers. Soon, they reach the place of execution. Philippe tries to speak, but is cut off as the sentencing is read. Now comes their last moment to make peace with God.

Paul takes Edith's hand and addresses her in English. "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you forever. Amen." Edith presses gently back into his hand as she makes one last request: that this kind German chaplain have the Anglican Reverend relay a message to her family. "Ask Mr. Gann to tell my loved ones later on that my soul, as I believe, is safe, and that I am glad

To die for my country. Both of the condemned are blindfolded. Each is tied to a separate pole. Eight soldiers take aim at Philippe, eight aim at Edith. Then comes the order. Punctured, bleeding, including a bullet straight through her forehead. The nurse's body rides with reflex movements, then slumps. Blood soaks into her blindfold and otherwise streams down her corpse. Not yet cold, Edith's body is in the ground, dirt flying over her.

The Lutheran chaplain prays over her grave. He invokes the Lord's blessing on the Christian woman and heads home in his words, "Almost sick in my soul." Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. Edith Cavill's German chaplain isn't the only one sickened by her execution.

While the tale of one firing squad soldier being executed for refusing to pull the trigger is almost certainly untrue, the British and their allies are outraged. As are many citizens of the as of yet neutral United States. Not to overstate, but between Germany's other 1915 sins of introducing gas to the battlefield and sinking the RMS Lusitania, killing this British nurse is yet another reason nudging America to lean pro-allies and ultimately join the fight against Germany in 1917.

Edith is a hero, a martyr, and given her influence on the American mind, she's a fitting opening to today's story of women in the United States during World War I. We'll begin in early 1915 as American women enter the debate over pursuing peace or preparing for war. Turns out that years of fighting for progressive era reforms, particularly women's suffrage, has prepped them quite well.

We'll then see how the job market has been and is continuing to change for women, including the heartbreaking tale of the Radium Girls, learn about women volunteering stateside and in Europe, and meet a woman war correspondent. Once we've done all of this, we'll have to back up the timeline and start the war again so that we can meet the tens of thousands of women in uniform, from the Navy and Marines to the Army.

Some are clerking, others are nursing, while a select few bilingual switchboard operators, known as "hello girls," are proving indispensable to the Army's communication. Overall, we'll see significant changes in the lives of American women. But I hope you'll also notice just how much change was already happening. Perhaps World War I isn't initiating change for women as much as accelerating change the Progressive Era has already begun.

Oh, and one last note. I'll remind you that we've already heard the tale of the most significant change for American women in this era, that of women's suffrage, as its own standalone episode. That's episode 119. You'll be fine listening to this one today if you haven't heard it. And I'll still touch on women's suffrage, but I'll use our precious time to tell other stories given that previous coverage. And if you did skip it, you might want to go back for that one. These two episodes pair well. And with that, we're set.

So let's head back to the beginning of the year and enter the great debate between America's peace and preparedness advocates. You know how we do that. Rewind. To be a pacifist or to prepare for war? That is the question haunting Americans as Europe's Great War enters early 1915. And the nation's women are prepared for this dialogue. Now years into the progressive era, women associated with various reform movements have learned to make their voices heard.

Of course, we know this already. We were there when, in episode 119, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, aka NASA, outshone Woodrow Wilson's 1913 presidential inauguration with a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. Well, in similar style, 1,500 women held a peace parade in New York City last year, on August 29, 1914. And now, in early 1915, they're forming the Women's Peace Party.

Its ranks include such well-known figures as women's suffragist leader and Nassau president Carrie Chapman Catt and the settlement movement reformer of Chicago whole house fame, Jane Addams. Jane is an ardent pacifist and believes all women should be. She calls war contrary to women's quote unquote nurturing instinct. Yet not all women agree with Jane. Others are for the preparedness movement, which believes that the United States participation in the great war is less a question of if and more a question of when.

As such, the nation should bolster its current modest military. Women in this camp reject Jane Addams' nurturing instinct comment. From their perspective, who is she to define womanhood? Besides, they argue that nurturing mothers should support preparation because a strong military will protect American families. In short, American women are proving they are not a political monolith. Just like men, their political opinions differ.

But fewer women persist in the pacifist path as Germany returns to unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917, a move that makes the United States' participation in the Great War appear all but a certainty. In fact, Carrie Chapman Catt proclaims that NASA will support the nation in the event of war. Is that because she now believes Germany is that evil? Or is Carrie embracing pragmatic politics to keep women's suffrage from being linked to the increasingly unpopular pacifist position?

Be it one of those reasons or both, that's her play. Not so women, like most American women, will do their part to shoulder the burdens of war. One of the ways women shoulder this burden is by taking new jobs. Not that a changing workforce is a new phenomenon. Like women's suffrage, women's role in the US economy began evolving long before the war.

Indeed, between 1890 and 1910, the second industrial revolution increased the percentage of adult women in the US workforce from 18.2% to 24.8%. But what are the actual jobs women hold? Minorities tend to be employed at food processing plants, in farming or domestic work. White women from poor families, including European immigrants, are more likely to work in factories, such as textiles, garments, or shoes. The working conditions in all of these are quite rough.

sometimes deadly. If you caught episode 119, you'd likely remember the deadly inferno that was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory just a few years before the war. Meanwhile, middle-class white women are seeing more change as they step into what future historians will dub pink-collar work, white-collar jobs now deemed acceptable for women. These are things like clerking, sales, nursing, teaching, and occasionally, a few are becoming lawyers and doctors.

Okay, so if all of this change was already happening, what does the Great War even do? Well, as European immigration grinds to a halt, and then in 1917, as millions of the nation's enlisted and drafted men disappear into the military, middle-class women have to fill several positions traditionally considered male. It's even framed as their patriotic duty. Advertisements reading, "'Women Wanted' are found in nearly every magazine."

Women are employed as streetcar operators, crane operators, with the railroads, and yes, in munition factories. Popular as World War II's Rosie the Riveter will later be, she's actually representing not a first but a second generation of badass wartime women cranking it out in factories. Fashions are changing too. As these grease-faced women don overalls, strapped garment is now being termed woman-alls. And the new gigs don't end there.

Sunshine Jordan becomes the first woman butcher in Atlanta, Georgia. Or rather, the city's first "butcheress," to quote a local newspaper, the Atlanta Constitution. She takes the job after seeing her father, the manager of Rogers Market on Broad Street, at a total loss when his regular butcher comes in wearing army khakis instead of an apron.

And if anyone doubts the ability of these women to step into these traditionally male professions, Mae Smith, who is Atlanta's first woman barber, sorry, barberess, to cite the Atlanta Constitution once more, knows exactly what to do. To quote her, "I tempt them into the chair with a smile, but when I lift my razor, well, they dare not disagree with what I say." Well played, Mae. Thanks for the shave.

But fun as the work appears in Atlanta, some of these well-paid, skilled labor jobs now accepting women are far more dangerous and deadly than these new employees realize. It's February 1st, 1917, and 14-year-old Catherine Schaub is beaming as she walks through the streets of Newark, New Jersey. The young, working-class girl is a go-getter, and today, she's starting a new job as an inspector at a watch factory. Sorry, not a factory, studio. A watch studio!

Reaching the studio's 3rd street location, Catherine knocks. A woman opens the door and as Catherine steps inside, she marvels at what she sees. Rows of seated girls and women, each wielding a slender, camel hair brush as she applies a shining, light green paint to the numbers on the watch face before her. Their precision is incredible. Their strokes are but one millimeter wide.

As for the paint, oh it's special. It contains a chemical recently discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie that makes these watch faces glow in the dark. It's called radium. Hence the name of the company behind this watch studio, the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation. Catherine thinks the liquid shine, as this radium-infused paint is called, looks so pretty.

Even in dust form, prior to the paints mixing, the radium is mesmerizing, as are the girls and women covered in that luminous dust. But Catherine would feel differently if she understood that radium is radioactive. That every time one of these artists dabs her brush on her tongue to stiffen the bristles, she's ingesting traces of poison. None of them know this, nor the effect that years of inhaling, licking, and being covered in radium will have on them. Many doughboys will wear these watches,

They'll appreciate how the dial glows in dark trenches. But I have no doubt that they'd give up this small luxury if they knew how some of the young girls and women making their illuminating watches will suffer in the decades ahead. Catherine Shaw will see her first symptoms in 1923, toothaches caused by radium necrosis in her jawbone. But pain, joint deterioration, and cancer will soon spread throughout her body. She and other radium girls, as they're dubbed, will sue their employers and win, but their lives will already be forfeit.

Destroyed by cancer, they'll soon pick up another nickname: the living dead. After nearly a decade of physical anguish, radium poisoning will send Catherine to her grave in 1933, at the still young age of 31. I know, that's a somber tale to move on from, but we are only silent observers and must leave Catherine to her unknowingly deadly work as we hear about women contributing to the war effort in other ways, specifically through volunteerism. For some, this is as simple as cutting back on groceries.

Women are joining the quote-unquote kitchen army by signing food conservation cards and with advertisements reading, food will win the war, produce it. They do. Inspired women are planting their own so-called liberty gardens at home. Others are advocating. Like the four-minute men we met in episode 133 who speak at theaters and other public venues in favor of liberty loans, three-minute women are doing the same. And why they're called three as opposed to four, I guess they just don't blather on like men do.

Coordinating these efforts are state and national women's organizations that oversee everything from rolling bandages and knitting socks for the soldiers to creating child health care programs. Still other volunteer efforts are coordinated by the Women's Committee of the Council of National Defense.

Now, this is supposed to be an advisory body, but when Anna Howard Shaw, herself a former president of the National American Women's Suffrage Association, or again, NASA, is placed in charge of this committee, she's left coordinating between all sorts of volunteer women's organizations, some of which aren't exactly natural allies.

They include NASA and the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, as well as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the National Association of Colored Women. Whew, that takes some talent. But not all volunteer efforts are stateside. Some women are heading across the Atlantic.

Take, for instance, 30-year-old Dr. Goldie Eleonora Zimmerman, who fled her pediatric practice in Berlin, Germany, for the safety of Aberdeen, South Dakota, back in 1914, but returns to Europe in 1918 with the Red Cross as a volunteer civilian doctor to help French children. One grateful French mother spoke about her and the other Red Cross volunteers, saying, "...the babies of Corbeil do not die anymore since the American ladies came."

Coming from the small mining town of Eureka, Utah, Maud Fitch drives an ambulance in France for the women's motor unit of Le Bien-être du Blessé. She bribes soldiers with cigarettes to let her ambulance through the congested streets, sleeps in the back of the ambulance, and is no stranger to, as she puts it, the guns at the front hammering in our ears.

She receives a Croix de Guerre for rescuing wounded soldiers on the night of June 9th, 1918 under heavy fire, but plays it all down when she rides home. Maud's just a humble hero. Meanwhile, Salvation Army volunteers Helen Proviance and Margaret Sheldon have the great distinction of using their small pot-bellied stove to introduce the Western Front to the American donut. Biting into that fried goodness, Private Braxton Zuber shouts back to the women, "'Oh boy, if this is war, let it continue!'

Helen will eventually crank out as many as 8,000 donuts a day. Grateful soldiers will dub her and her colleagues donut lassies. Women are also overseas as journalists. Now, women journalists are nothing new. From Ida Tarbell to Ida B. Wells, we've met a number of women working in journalism in past episodes, muckraking their way to the truth. But men still dominate the role of war correspondent.

So, when a woman shows the grit and tenacity needed to make it to the front, she often brings a perspective her male counterparts don't. It's an unspecified day in late gray and damp September, 1918. Less than two months to the war's end. A 27-year-old war correspondent for Good Housekeeping magazine named Clara Savage is in an evacuation hospital near the front lines in France, visiting soldiers wounded in the recent American-led battle at Saint-Miel. Clara's path here hasn't been conventional.

She's made her way to the front by performing with a YMCA entertainment unit. But now, standing in this bare and unhomelike hospital, the veteran reporter smells far more than antiseptic. She smells a story. Clara starts interviewing the wounded men. Jesse James Callahan lights up when Clara approaches and gladly tells his tale. Just my luck to get knocked out the first thing. I got plugged with shrapnel, but what stopped me going was five machine gun bullets.

"This is great stuff, exactly what the folks back home want to read." She writes of Jesse, "His mouth was drawn with suffering, and his voice was the tired, husky voice of a person who was very sick. But he was every inch a brave man, every inch a hero without knowing it." As the conversation continues, Jesse makes a request, "Can Clara write a letter to his brother?" Gladly, she takes the doughboy's dictation. She then continues to make the rounds.

The next soldier is barely more than a boy. He misses his mother. Still another calls to Clara, a heavily bandaged man in the corner of the room. He asks if she'll write a letter for him too. Clara doesn't hesitate, only asking who it's for. The soldier answers, "'To my girl.'"

Bring your chair up close so the other fellows won't hear a thing I say. Oh, you can guess what it says. He thinks of her always, wants to be brave for her, longs to hold her in his arms, and of course, that he loves her. But in the midst of telling Clara about the home they'll have together, he stops and asks, Would you tell her? Clara interrogates. What? I can work for her, but I've lost my right eye and my face is badly disfigured.

It must be pretty hard for a girl to have a man come home mutilated the way I am. Do you think it will make a difference to her? Do you think a girl can love a man with a face that has been all smashed to pieces and a glass eye? Clara is silent for a moment, but then she lets her gift for words guide her. If she loves you, she won't care what your face looks like. She loves you because she found you fine and good and worth loving. And she will love you more now because you are so brave.

Feeling reassured, the soldier answers with increased confidence. "Then I'll tell her." "I'm sorry, I can't tell you if these lovers stay together." But Clara ends her article by writing, "If she is the kind of girl that boy thinks she is, she will be brave and will love him even more now because he so much needs her love." That's how you sell a magazine.

Well, from barbers to fundraisers to life-sacrificing radium girls and journalists, American women are making no small contribution to the nation's war effort. But we still need to meet some of the tens of thousands of women in uniform. So let's return to the days when America was just entering World War I and do just that, starting with the first branch to welcome women, the U.S. Navy. Here we go. Rewind. This message is sponsored by Greenlight.

I've been telling you about summer vacationing with my family and how we've been using Greenlight with the kids to establish their own spending money on these trips. But now, summer is winding down while the school year is quickly approaching. That means new school supplies and clothes. And once again, Greenlight provides another great opportunity for our kids to learn about managing their personal finances.

Greenlight is a debit card and money app made for families. Parents can send money to their kids and keep an eye on their kids' spending and saving. We really like the chores feature of Greenlight. Parents set up one-time or recurring chores and reward their children with allowance for a job well done. Millions of parents and kids are learning about money on Greenlight. It's the easy, convenient way for parents to raise financially smart kids and families to navigate summer vacation and new school year together.

Sign up for Greenlight today and get your first month free when you go to greenlight.com slash htds. That's greenlight.com slash htds to try Greenlight for free. greenlight.com slash htds.

Get started with Greenlight today and get your first month free at greenlight.com slash Spotify.

Going into World War I, we should note that American women have long helped to fight their nation's battles. They always have. From the Revolution's legendary Molly Pitcher and Deborah Sampson, to the Civil War's Mary Galloway and more, we've encountered some of these soldiers in previous episodes. Likewise, we can never forget those intrepid women who risked everything in service positions. Like Civil War nurse Clara Barton. Flying many balls be damned, nothing could stop her from saving lives.

But as America enters the Great War, we come to a significant first for the nation's women. Paths beyond nursing are opening, and they no longer have to pretend to be a man to put on a military uniform. Let's start with the Navy. The nation's sailors warmed to the idea of women serving as early as 1908. That's when the Navy established the Naval Nurse Corps, which now, in early 1917, counts 460 women in its ranks. But these nurses are still not in the club.

They serve the Navy, but are not serving in the Navy. However, as tensions with secretive submarine-attacking Germany rise, and U.S. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels considers how the Navy can best handle its manpower shortage, he asks his counsel a simple question. Is there any regulation which specifies that a Navy yeoman be a man?

The Naval Reserve Act of 1916 only states that candidates for this clerical administrative position must, quote, be capable of performing special useful service for coastal defense, close quote. Hmm. Do you hear the word man anywhere in there?

Neither does Josephus, and so, trusting women to handle the Navy's clerical side so that more of his men are available to fight on the seas, the Navy Secretary gives this order: "Enroll women in the naval service as yeomen, and we will have the best clerical assistance the country can provide." Thus, as of March 21, 1917, the word is out. Women may now officially enroll in the U.S. Navy. The women are quickly dubbed "Yeomenettes." Josephus Daniels isn't having it, though.

He responds by saying, I never liked this et business. I always thought if a woman does a job, she ought to have the name of the job. Thus, the official designation for these women will be yeoman F. Now, as yeoman, these women still aren't in combat. But even this change is enough to upset some officers. One Navy lawyer is so upset at the idea of a yeoman F serving under him, he declares, petticoats in the Navy?

Damned outrage, hell of a mess. Back to the sea for me. Well, these women are here to free up more men to go to sea. So in a way mission accomplished, I guess. Joking aside, this order comes straight from the top. So despite some pushback, it's happening.

In March of 1917, a month before the U.S. will even declare war, the Navy Reserve Force permits women to enlist in such non-combat roles as radio electricians, pharmacists, chemists, draftsmen, accountants, and telephone operators. Within a month, 200 eager women are ready to sign on.

But even with Secretary Josephus Daniels' forward-looking leadership and brave women stepping up to be the first ever in the Navy's ranks, such a sizable change is going to have its uncomfortable moments. These women experience that firsthand as they go through the recruitment process. It's an unspecified summer day, 1918. Estelle Kemper is just walking up to a line of other women at the new three-story Maine Navy building on 18th Street in Washington, D.C.,

This recent graduate of the University of Richmond came to the Capitol planning to take a civilian position with the Army's Military Intelligence Division, but changed her mind when a young ensign informed her that the Navy accepts women. Estelle immediately thought to herself, why not join the Navy? And quickly concluded that, if the Navy needed me, I was hers. That's how Estelle ended up in this line, where she is now patiently awaiting her turn. And finally, her time has come.

The chief clerk, a kind gentleman, begins by asking the southern woman her typing speed. Well, Estelle hunted and pecked at her father's old Blickensderfer typewriter back in college and was fairly proficient at that. So she answers, speculating, "Oh, I'd guess around 200 words a minute." The chief clerk is nice enough not to test her on that guess. Instead, he takes her papers and sends her off to the Navy hospital.

Estelle shivers as she stands, like all the women in this medical exam line, with nothing more than a bath towel wrapped around her. Everyone's embarrassed. While men have little concern about this process, these women were raised with Victorian values. So this is incredibly uncomfortable. It feels immoral. Some women are crying. But, fancying herself a modern-day Joan of Arc, as she'll later write, Estelle puts on a brave face. For her and everyone else here, a tearful woman notices...

She turns to Estelle and chokes out. "You act like you don't mind having no clothes on." Playing it cool, Estelle reassures the woman, and really herself, as she answers nonchalantly, "Oh, after the first couple of times you get used to this sort of thing." Oh, does that create a misunderstanding? The mortified woman says nothing more, mistaking this false bravado for impropriety. Estelle will later write of how this woman completely avoids her during their four years of service.

But finally, it's Estelle's turn. She steps into the exam room where a man whom she describes as a weary, over-aged MD greets her. Estelle relaxes, convinced this man has no interest in anything beyond finishing his work and getting home to supper. Weight, measurements, heartbeat, everything's good. The exhausted doctor sends Estelle along to be sworn in, thus starting her career with the United States Navy.

Estelle and her fellow yeoman F go to night school to acquire necessary office skills. Combat duty is still out of the question, but this is the Navy, so their education includes 30 minutes of military drilling. Wearing white blouses, dark blue overcoats that bear the yeoman insignia of two crossed quills, and matching skirts with a hem eight inches off the ground, these women shoulder rifles and march with precision.

As for pay, Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels ensures that these new yeoman F receive the same as their male counterparts: $28.75 per month. They are expected to hold to the same discipline as the men, though they aren't thrown in the brig, instead losing pay for infractions.

So, whether drawn by patriotism, a sense of adventure, or just for the money, women from Alaska to Puerto Rico enlist, working from dawn to dusk, six days a week, in barren, drafty buildings, churning through the mountains of paperwork necessary to move all of America's men and supplies across the ocean. So that's the Navy. What about the Marines?

Well, as we know from episodes 134 through 136, the summer of 1918 costs the newly dubbed Devil Dogs heavy casualties at Belleau Wood and Soissons

This causes a shortage of men that spurs the commandant of the Marine Corps, Major General George Barnett, to look to the Navy's example and ask Secretary Josephus Daniels for authority to do so. To, quote, enroll women in the Marine Corps reserve for clerical duty to replace men who may be qualified for active field service, close quote. Well, Josephus is nothing if not proud of what his women have accomplished for the Navy over the past year and a half.

He's happy to approve, and Marine Corps office worker Opha Mae Johnson jumps on the opportunity to claim the title of Leatherneck. She becomes the first woman Marine on August 13th, 1918. The Marines love their nicknames, so it's no surprise that the women in their ranks have several. Lady Hellcats, Skirt Marines, and the least popular, Marinette. Officially Marine Reservists, F, their duties are very similar to their Navy sisters.

But of course, this is the Marines. The expectations are even higher. Elizabeth Shoemaker will later recall that, quote, you had to be 100% perfect mentally and physically, close quote. She works as a speed stenographer in New York City and yet still fails the typing test. But unwilling to give up, Elizabeth comes back the next day, hoping she can give it another go.

The colonel recognizes her, but rather than dismiss the New Yorker, he stands, shakes her hand and says, "That's the spirit that will lick the Germans. I'll allow you to take the test again." This time, she passes. Women in the Corps dress every bit as sharp as their Navy counterparts. The main part of the uniform is a matching overcoat and skirt, typically green wool but khaki in the summer.

It also includes a regulation necktie, a cap bearing the Marine Corps' eagle, globe, and anchor insignia, as well as high-topped brown boots for the winter and oxfords for spring and summer. The Lady Hellcats drill and march just like the men, but ultimately, their duty is clerical, just like the women in the Navy. Another similarity between the two branches. As in the Navy, women in the Marines receive the same pay as their male counterparts. Don't let all this clerical talk kill your spirits, though. Private Leela Libran doesn't.

She says that, quote, "There's romance in the work," close quote. For Leela, that work is directing and editing the Marines' first training film. For Minnie Arthur, that's dropping pamphlets about liberty bonds from a plane over Indianapolis. Violet Van Wagener and her associates have perhaps the toughest job, though. They write letters to the families and next of kin of fallen Marines. Reflecting on this work, she'll later say, "We tried to share with the loved ones their grief, and also the pride of sacrifices made for our country."

But if the Navy and the Marines have some overlap in what their enlisted women do, our third and final branch gets a little grittier. Let's get to know the women braving bombed out villages and bloody hospitals in the Army Nurse Corps. The Army Nurse Corps goes back to February 2nd, 1901. But like the U.S. Army itself, its numbers were quite small when the U.S. first entered the Great War. They had a total of 403 active duty nurses and 170 reserve nurses.

Contrast that to the 8,000 volunteer nurses who had already been in Europe since 1915 with our much-beloved Civil War nurse Clara Barton's institutional child, the American Red Cross. But like General Black Jack Pershing's American Expeditionary Force, the U.S. Army Nurse Corps grows rapidly. 20,000 women will join before the war is through.

Initially, the Army Nurse Corps only accepts women who are U.S. citizens, unmarried, between 25 and 35, white, and graduates of training schools. These rules will change, but the color line will give very little. Of the 1,800 black women certified by the American Red Cross for this work, only 18 are permitted into the Army Nurse Corps. And unlike the Navy's Yeoman F or the Marines' Lady Hellcats, these Army nurses aren't completely in the fold.

They are not enlisted, commissioned, nor do they train as soldiers. Instead, they're appointed by the Surgeon General with approval from the Secretary of War. Now, appointed nurses aren't intended to be near the battlefield. But as the first shells hit, so does reality. First aid happens at the front. And these women are ready to risk it all to save lives. It's almost 7.30 in the morning, July 15, 1918. The first morning of the Second Battle of the Marne.

We're near the front in the French town of Bussy-le-Chateau where Jane Rignell has her hands more than full as she navigates the overcrowded wooden sheds that make up Mobile Hospital #2. The 33-year-old dark-haired bespectacled chief nurse runs from one shrapnel hit or shot up soldier to the next, trying to help her 75 patients. That's quite the task. Mobile 2's shock ward has been full since 3:00 a.m., with eight operating teams working nonstop since this artillery barrage began around midnight.

Meanwhile, stretchers continue to arrive, bringing still more men with pale faces, broken bones, and mangled flesh. Things get worse still as the German artillery barrage inches closer. Ambulances have already struggled to get through, but now some of the mobile unit's thin wooden sheds are getting blown to bits. That's enough for the commander of this medical unit, Captain Fortis St. John. He gives the order. Evacuate the wards and remove all patients to the underground dugout. Jane receives the order.

But these men need medical attention now. Jane can't wait to move them to the dugout if she's going to save them. She continues cutting, wrapping and stitching until soldiers forcibly seize the chief nurse and drag her away. Just 40 seconds later, an artillery shell strikes the very shed in which Jane was working. The frail building is gone along with anyone still inside. Those soldiers saved her life. She takes a breath and collects herself, but only for a second.

There's too much work and no time for grief. Jane evacuates to the dugout with her surviving patients and gets back to work. Jane Rignel is well-recognized for her bravery today. She receives the British Royal Red Cross, the French Croix de Guerre, and somehow without her ever knowing it, the U.S. Army Citation Star. But it's not about the medals for Jane or the thousands of other Army nurses saving Allied soldiers, enemy combatants, and civilians alike. They rise to every occasion.

While a nurse ideally manages only 10 beds, at one hospital, 70 nurses attend to 5,000 patients. It's common for these women to work 14 to 18-hour shifts. One especially trying task for these nurses is handling the enormous number of soldiers falling victim to what's being called the Spanish flu.

Across 1918, this particularly deadly strain of influenza spreads globally, and by September and October, 316,089 American soldiers have it. All the nurses can do is manage symptoms as 43,000 of these doughboys go to their graves. That's almost half of all American deaths in the Great War. To put that another way, the Spanish flu kills nearly as many Americans as the German army.

And just to round out the Spanish flu's deadly work, back in the States it sends 675,000 to their graves, while worldwide, oh, no one can say for sure, but estimates go as high as 50 million dead. But the nurses braving bullets, shells, and the Spanish flu aren't the only women serving the U.S. Army over there. Others are making crucial communication happen, flipping fluently from French to English over telephone lines.

These are the women of the Signal Corps, better known as the Hello Girls. And to get their story, we need to head back to the start of the war one more time. Let's do it. Rewind. Arriving in France on May 28th, 1917, American Expeditionary Force Commander General Black Jack Pershing quickly grows disappointed in France's telephone situation.

Not only is it significantly inferior to what's in place back in the States, but his English-speaking doughboys aren't having the best of luck with French switchboard operators. Yeah, it's a nightmare. But you know, the U.S. Army has already bent the rules to allow civilian women to operate the telephone lines domestically. So why not do it in France too?

Actually, let's take one more step back and use a term we learned in this very episode by noting that switchboard operator is already a pink-collar job. By the turn of the century, 80% of America's operators were women. While men dominate the Morse code world of telegraph offices, early telephone companies found that, in general, women brought more of the interpersonal and multitasking skills needed to keep those jackplugs moving amid incoming calls.

No offense, gentlemen, but to quote the U.S. Census Bureau's 1902 findings, it has been demonstrated beyond all doubt that the work of operating is better handled by women than by men or boys. Close quote. So with that background, we can see why Captain Robert Owens and Colonel Parker Hitt advised General Black Jack Pershing to address this disastrous communications situation by bringing American women to France. And the mustachioed commander agrees.

On November 8th, 1917, he sends out the following cable. On account of the great difficulty of obtaining properly qualified men, request organization and dispatch to France a force of women telephone operators, all speaking French and English equally well. Secretary of War Newton Baker is a bit jittery about women serving so close to army men, but he caves.

Soon, an elite group of a few hundred French-speaking American women, be they of French-Canadian descent, Louisiana Creoles, or French majors in college, will head to France as a part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Like their nursing counterparts, these switchboard operators, or hello girls as they're known for their signature greeting of hello, hold no rank but still take an oath and get a uniform.

That's enough for 25-year-old chestnut-haired Jersey girl Grace Banker, who sees a notice in the New York Globe asking for recruits for telephone service in France on December 5th, 1917. Currently employed at AT&T headquarters, she writes to the chief signal officer, quote, I understand both French and English and have a thorough knowledge of telephony, close quote.

She might be stretching the definition of understand when it comes to French. She has to apply twice, but the signal court invites her for an interview, and Grace soon finds herself in the pioneer group that will test out this idea. In her regulation-breaking diary, Grace writes about seeing the Statue of Liberty disappear into the distance as she and other women leave for France. For the first time, suddenly, I realized what a responsibility I have on my young shoulders. The first Hello Girls arrive in France in March 1918.

two months before the as-of-yet small American forces will fight its first major battle at Cantigny. The AEF is busily stringing new telephone wires across France, but the women get right to work in this war-torn nation. Her first day on the job, Berthe Hunt sees trenches, air raid shelters, German POWs, and troop trains packed with infantry. It's not a week later that enemy artillery is shaking the windows of their headquarters so much that, as she'll later recall, the phones were almost impossible to use at times.

As for our New Jersey friend, Grace Banker, she collapses into bed at the end of every workday, utterly exhausted from managing over 4,000 calls.

More than that, she does so while following her handbook's instructions to maintain a distinct, clear, and cheerful tone of voice. And of course, to answer politely with, "Number please," and otherwise never fail to maintain composure. And even then, many women don't call it a day, instead spending their evenings visiting wounded Allied soldiers. The Hello Girls aren't just connecting lines though. They're communicating privileged information, and as such, everything is on a need-to-know basis.

As Grace puts it, "We are told to keep our mouths shut, ask no questions, and never discuss anything." The women speak in codes to disguise troop movements and geographical locations. Now, like all of the other women we've met in the service today, the Hello Girls aren't seeing combat. While they're well acquainted with rattling windows and face the risks of getting bombed out, they can work and do work in relative safety behind the lines.

But as the German spring offensive of 1918 that we learned about in episodes 133 through 36 progresses, shifting from an apparent German victory to an allied counterattack, Grace excitedly begins to wonder if she might have the chance to get closer to the front. There are whispers of taking a few of the most capable Hello Girls toward the action in the upcoming offensive. An officer asks Grace if she's heard anything about a future attack. The Jersey girl answers that she has no idea what he's talking about.

Smart. As Grace puts it, "I have learned when to know nothing in the Army." It appears this was a test, and Grace passed. She's told to pack her bags. In the morning, Grace and five other Hello Girls will join General Black Jack Pershing's fully organized First American Army at the Battle of Saint-Miel.

It's 2:15 in the still black morning, September 12th, 1918, and Chief Operator Grace Banker is just getting out of her bunk at the Signal Corps barracks in Ligny-en-Berroir, France. She was sent to bed at midnight, but between the artillery barrage that began at 1:00 a.m. and now her alarm, she's barely caught a wink. This is a new experience for Grace.

Men usually work the night shift on the switchboard, but Colonel Parker Hitt has specified that he wants the Hello Girls around the clock as this battle begins because men, quote, would not be able to handle the rush of business, close quote. Time to get to it then. Grace wakes Bert Hunt, Suzanne Prevost, and Tootsie Fresnel. They dress, eat, and are off. The G3 switchboard brought in specifically for this battle blinks furiously. The four women answer in kind.

Their nimble hands fly from one jack to the next. Their tongues twist as they go back and forth speaking English and French, never missing a beat as they ensure clear communication in this American-led but French-supported coordinated attack. The Hello Girls will rotate, but Grace will only get two hours of sleep over the next two days and develop a serious eye infection. Still, by the end of the battle, Grace reports to her diary, never spent more time at the office and never enjoyed anything more.

It's now about a week later, a few days after victory, September 17th, 1918. This afternoon, General Black Jack Pershing and his chief signal officer, Colonel Parker Hitt, are walking through the streets of Lignon-Berrois. The duo notice a group of Hello Girls across the way and greet them. Black Jack calls out, Are you happy that you're so near the front?

The women turn to each other, taking in the fact that the commander of the American Expeditionary Force, the one and only General Black Jack Pershing, is talking to them. One of them collects herself and answers, "We only want to be near." Black Jack wasn't quite expecting that. But looking at these women who have met every challenge that's come their way, he turns to his trusted chief signal officer and says, "Take them where they want to go." These women have won Black Jack's respect.

He only wishes he had more of these tough and courageous Hello Girls. And why not? The general cables the War Department, asking for another 130 female operators immediately, with plans to bring 40 more every six weeks through 1919. Grace and her fellow Hello Girls will head to the front in the upcoming Meuse-Argonne offensive. But that deadly closure to the Great War is a story for another day.

Right now, let's reflect on the women we've met, the roles they're in, and what this does or doesn't mean for the future. Back in episode 119, we encountered the idea of the new woman. It means different things to different people in the era, but broadly, we're referring to well-educated women seeking greater independence, equal opportunities and rights, like the vote, and otherwise casting off Victorian gender roles.

After the Great War's guns fall silent on November 11, 1918, some will be quick to credit the war for the full emergence of the new woman, even crediting the conflict for the greatest of changes and successes that will come to American women in 1920, the guarantee of women's suffrage as a constitutional right through the 19th Amendment. But perhaps that's an overly clean narrative. After all, the multi-generational fight for women's suffrage was well underway before the war.

Women had the vote in nearly a dozen states by the time World War I broke out in 1914, while Montana's Jeanette Rankin became the first U.S. Congresswoman before the United States declared war. Bravely, she even voted against it. That said, the war brought women's suffrage new opportunities. As we saw in episode 119, women demanding suffrage became the first to picket in front of the White House. They did so with signs that denounced President Woodrow Wilson's willingness to fight for democracy abroad while women were without it at home.

But also, as we've seen in this episode, as new wartime challenges and thinking allowed women into the military, these uniformed women proved their full commitment to citizenship. All that to say, women's suffrage was clearly moving forward, but perhaps the war gave it a strong push, serving as an accelerant, as it likely did with the already evolving workforce. After all, World War I did land Atlanta a talented barberess, one with whom I'm not about to argue.

But beyond the debate of how much change in the lives of American women we ought to credit to the Great War, we might also ask how much change really stuck around. Some did, of course, the 19th Amendment being the low-hanging fruit that proves that. But other changes roll back as peace comes. Consider the brave women we met in uniform. Surely, many are happy to return home, but the military does phase them out once the armistice is signed. The Navy will discharge its last yeoman F from service in 1921.

The Marines wrap up earlier, moving all Marine Reservists F to inactive status in 1919. Both groups receive full veteran benefits for their service in the war. But the women of the Army Nurse Corps and the Hello Girls aren't so lucky. Having worn uniforms, but never being officially enlisted or commissioned, they are not considered veterans and will not receive any benefits for decades. Not until 1947 for the Army Nurse Corps and 1977 for the Hello Girls.

Little good that will do chief operator Grace Banker. She'll go to the grave 17 years earlier in 1960. Ultimately, these women affect massive changes and prove their value in a thousand places and in a thousand ways, but many are left feeling their contributions are quickly forgotten. As one reformer puts it after the war, quote, "During the war, they called us heroines, but they throw us on the scrap heap now," close quote.

Whether they do or don't feel gratitude from the nation though, many women will look back on their service during the war with pride. With a greater sense of worth, that's how Elizabeth Shoemaker feels as her days as an active Marine come to a close, accompanied by a little unintended humor. It's a pleasant summer afternoon, Thursday, July 31st, 1919.

The Marine Corps band plays jazz as Corporal Elizabeth Shoemaker marches with her fellow khaki-clad Marine Corps women, as well as her Navy sisters, the Yeoman F, across the large, green, oval lawn known as the Ellipse just south of the White House. This is their final review. They parade sharply as they line up before Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels and other military dignitaries. Josephus is immensely proud of these women.

They've worked hard, done well, and proved he was right to ask why women couldn't serve back in 1917. Turning to his 30-something and handsome Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he nods and says, Very good. FDR agrees. Returning the nod, he answers, Awfully good. Josephus addresses the uniformed women. He reminds them that their work was essential, that they worked hard and efficiently, and

He says, Standing near the secretary, Elizabeth is listening intently as he compliments their work. Everyone here is reflective, filled with thoughts of the sacrifices made.

And in that spirit, Josephus ends his speech with what he intends as a serious, heartfelt sentiment. "We will not forget you. As we embraced you in uniform yesterday, we will embrace you without uniforms tomorrow." It's silent as Josephus turns and sits down. Then someone snickers. Another chuckles. Finally, all that military discipline breaks down as laughter spreads among the gathered women and men contagiously.

Josephus is confused for a second, but then it clicks. Ah, he didn't mean they'd embrace these women without uniforms like that. He, oh, well. Josephus just smiles as everyone enjoys a good laugh. And hey, maybe that's not the worst way to send these women back to civilian life.

But to end our tale, perhaps a bit closer to the serious note that Josephus Daniels was going for, I'll quote the Marine Corps' commandant, Major General George Barnett, the man who first asked for women to become devil dogs. Quote, "...the service rendered by the reservists, female, has been uniformly excellent. It has, in fact, been exactly what the intelligence and goodness of our countrywomen would lead one to expect."

Those women who enrolled were of the elect of their sex. And I do not know how the business of the department, of the Navy yards and stations and of the districts could have carried on without them.