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A woman's place was not on the battlefield
By CAROL SMITH
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
 |
Born in 1893, she grew up on a small farm in East Taunton, Mass. Her father, George, grew vegetables that her mother made into pickles they sold in town.
My grandmother, the youngest of three daughters, was given the middle name "Georgina," for the son her parents didn't have, and she learned to work the land accordingly.
She went to a one-room school where boys and girls had separate entrances, but there was no such division of labor at home. "Give me girls every time," her father would tell her years later.
"My sister and I proved to him we could do our share working the farm," she said.
So it seemed natural to do her share when the call went out for volunteers to fight the war that had been raging across Europe since 1914. Her graduation from nursing school nearly coincided with the U.S. declaration of war on the Germans on April 6, 1917.
Her training hospital, working with the Red Cross, organized military Base 44. "Most of my class signed up for it," she wrote in her memoir. She was sworn in on Feb. 15, 1918, and sent to Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., for training.
She went to war for adventure. She had no idea how much her life was about to change.
When she signed up, women couldn't vote and men were deeply suspicious of those who were educated. According to scientists of the day, women's smaller brains were not equipped for higher education, and too much thinking was believed to impair their childbearing capacity.
Only five years earlier, the sinking of the Titanic and the cry of "women and children first" had inflamed arguments about female roles in society. To traditionalists, the Titanic proved that women belonged to a special class, one requiring protection by -- not equality with -- men.
That left no room for women on the battlefield. But some women saw it differently.
At the outset of the war, there were 403 Army nurses on active duty. By Armistice Day, more than 21,000 had enlisted and about 10,000 had seen duty overseas.
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