The Vietnam Conflict: Women, the Unknown Soldiers
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Women, the Unknown Soldiers
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by M. Carlson&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
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Women, the Unknown Soldiers
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by M. Carlson&&&&&&
history of women and war has been largely forgotten in
favor of recording men's military achievements. Women
however, it was more than to
simply keep the &home fires burning.& Between
1962 and 1973, according to Department of Defense
statistics, approximately 7,500 women served on active
military duty in Vietnam. The Veteran's Administration
puts the numbers even higher, at around 11,000.
Independent surveys estimate that the number of women,
both civilian and non-civilian, working in Vietnam
during the war is between 33,000 and 55,000 (Marshall
these high numbers of women in the military, women have
had a long road to
equality. Women were treated as second class soldiers,
both in the military and after coming home. I say this
because, although women could find excitement and a
career in the military, the woman soldier role was
perceived as a helpmate and often times did not have
proper medical training and put in dangerous situations.&
the war, women were treated even worse than their male
compatriots were, although they were now Veterans. In
addition, the all too common sexual harassment that
women receive in society was also prevalent in the
military. For some women training as nurses, the promise
of a weekly paycheck meant they did not have to take out
loans or get a job to cover tuition. For others, the
lure of Vietnam was the excitement. They could abandon
their humdrum lives for what they saw as a chance to
travel to& Vietnam had luscious
forests before it was blown to pieces. Also, at the
beginning of the Vietnam War there was a sense of
patriotism. Women in the nursing profession were
especially excited to go to war and use their skills.
made up the most of the bulk of the women serving in
Vietnam. Before going to Vietnam, many women were given
mock set-ups of ba this was
supposed to prepare them for the real war and the real
casualties. The women also got field training, which
consisted of how to fire an M-16; ironically though, the
women were never allowed to fire these weapons. Marching
and finding their way out of a field using a compass was
another part of their pre-Vietnam training too. This was
very fun for many of the women who were young and newly
out on their own, away from their parents for the very
first time in their lives. &We were given compasses
and had to go out and find our way back: we never had so
much fun. We got lost twelve times-it didn't
matter& (Walker 95).
women nurses were not trained properly in the medical
field for the severe combat injuries that they were to
treat. It is interesting to note that the wounded
soldiers were not called patients but casualties. The
artillery used during the Vietnam War was specifically
designed to inflict massive, multiple injuries. As well
as the guns there was also napalm, white phosphorous and
&antipersonnel& bombs. Napalm and phosphorous
burned skin right down to the bone. Add to this the fact
that the country's small size, plus the use of
helicopters to airlift the wounded (who in earlier times
would have died en route) to a hospital, meant that the
wounds were more vicious than in previous wars and there
were more soldiers to treat.
Orientation
for the nurses usually consisted of being thrown into
bloody &hell.& According to Kohl, &The
surgeon threw a pair of scissors at me and said,
&Don't just stand there. He's going to lose that
arm anyway. Cut it off.& and so I did. And I
remember the sound of the arm hitting the pail. That was
the end of my orientation& (Walker 237). Even
nurses with surgical training in trauma units were
unprepared for the level of carnage. Often nurses had no
terms for the operations required saving lives or the
injuries. &We used to call them horriblectomies and
horridzomas&...& Horriblectomies were when
they'd had so much taken out or removed. Horridzoma
meant the initial grotesque injury but also the
repercussion of that injury-the tissues swelling and all
that& (Marshall 7). Not only were these nurses
treating wounds they had never before seen, or probably
contemplated, but there were diseases, too, that were
unfamiliar: typhoid, TB, malaria, dengue fever and
bubonic plague.
were also being treated for drug addiction and towards
the end of the war, America had begun setting up drug
wards to wean the soldiers off marijuana, opium,
amphetamine, cocaine and, most common of all, heroin.
Nurses who thought they were working in a war found out
that they were suddenly surrounded by a lot of
strung-out soldiers on drugs too. &Approximately 60
percent of the nurses who arrived in Vietnam had had
less than two years medical training and of this 60
percent, most had had less than six months&
(Marshall 6). There was very little training provided by
the Army or the Navy for the type of work they would be
popular perception of women doing war work is that the
men are in the danger zone and the women are safely
behind them. This has probably never been true and was
certainly not true in Vietnam. &I remember once in
Chu Chi they got us all up in the middle of the night
and were really not sure what to do with us because we
were being overrun...Chu Chi was full of tunnels: there
were Viet Cong underneath that whole city. They had
hospitals underneath the ground, firing bases...I've
never been so scared. They gathered all of us in the
kitchen of our hooch...I remember sitting around in the
kitchen in our flak- jackets and helmets, just
bullshitting all night long. There wasn't anything else
you could do. However, we just went to work the next
morning at 6:30& (Walker 13). This leads me to
believe that women were put in danger on the front lines
without any combat training.&
in the U.S. military are supposedly integrated into
combat support roles. No law prohibits women from
serving &in combat.& Laws do prohibit,
however, the permanent assignment of Navy, Marine Corps,
and Air Force women to ships and aircraft engaged in a
combat mission. There is no comparable statutory
prohibition for Army women, but policies adopted by the
Army and the other services further restrict women's
first woman to command troops in combat, Linda Bray, was
during the invasion of Panama. She directed the troops
in the capture of a dog kennel filled with guard dogs.
In other words, she was not on the combat field but
directing troops from afar. This is not to discount her
achievement or the danger involved in the operation.
However, if women are to be assigned jobs like this in
combat, it speaks to a military highly resistant to
really integrating women into high level positions.&
Furthermore,
with the military ignoring the fact that women are put
on front lines makes their situation even more
dangerous, because they would not get the proper combat
training. Women were also there to boost morale and play
the role of caregivers. In World War II the Supplemental
Recreational Activities Overseas (SRAO) Program had been
staffed by &donut dollies,& women who ran
clubs and canteens where the servicemen could relax.
These women also drove vans to the front lines equipped
to make coffee and distribute donuts to the troops.&
similar system existed in Vietnam (along with the better
known USO) although here the women were also given the
monikers &chopper chicks& and &Kool-Aid
kids.& As evidenced by these nicknames, feminism
was slow to reach the troops.&
women who went over in the seventies, however, began to
feel a distance from the older women officers. These
younger women were likely to be more outspoken, less
tolerant of discrimination and sexual harassment. Even
back home, however, in the burgeoning atmosphere of the
feminist revolution, the women who had returned from
serving in Vietnam felt cut off from those who had not.&
who had been flying in and out of LZs and fire bases
found it difficult to talk to the women who had stayed
home and got married. There was also the added strain of
returning home to a world that was largely antagonistic
towards the war and its participants. If the men who had
served felt alienated and angry by the civilian response
to their effort, the women had a right to feel that
also. Part of the problem, of course, is that women were
seen over there as helpmates and caregivers to the men.
Care giving is what most women had been brought up to do
and therefore, the women themselves did not protest as
loudly as they had every right to do. And as in World
War II, civilian life found women who had held
responsible, often dangerous, jobs during the war being
returned to a world that by and large still regarded
them as &donut dollies.&
tell stories of working in surgical wards in Vietnam
and, on their return, being shunted to the hemorrhoid
ward. They missed, as the men did, the sense of
camaraderie that developed during their time overseas
and missed, too, a chance to share their experiences
with someone who would understand. Part of the benefit
of the women's movement was, that it has given
voice to women whose experiences might otherwise have
been overlooked. It is interesting to note, however,
that of the few books, which deal entirely with women's
experiences in Vietnam, almost all are collections of
first person narratives.&
experiences, on the other hand, have been catalogued in
any number of excellent books, mostly written by male
journalists (Michael Herr, for example) and male
literary authors (Tim O'Brien). Moreover, there have
been numerous films and television programs about life
in combat. Some of these are, Born on The Fourth of
July, Platoon, The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, none
of which contained any female characters other than
girlfriend's back home or Vietnamese prostitutes.
veterans have also become the crazy people of&
choice in films requiring a psychotic villain. Apart
from a short-lived series centering on a nurses unit in
Vietnam, China Beach, women's contributions to the war
would seem to be of interest only to other women. Women
who had served in Vietnam exhibited the same symptoms of
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that men were
experiencing, feelings of isolation, intense anger, an
inability to get and keep jobs, prolonged bouts of
crying and depression. One women, a nurse, talks of
running outside her home in Hawaii every time a
helicopter passed by and standing in the street waiting
for the casualties to land. Another woman talks about
the strain it placed on relationships, &It was hard
at first. For a long time, it was hard. There were a
couple of broken engagements--one of them right before
the wedding--and months of sleep disturbances and
nightmares, when the horrors were coming back. Working
with vets, with guys, has helped me learn to live with
my own experiences. I will never forget, but at least I
can put the memories in perspective and get on with my
life& (Marshall, p. 135).
the men found it hard to get help for their trauma
disorders, the women's needs were not even acknowledged.
Most were cut off from traditional channels of help.
Women who had been with the military for awhile, quickly
learned that the Veteran's Administration had a history
of ignoring women. Those who tried to join established
veterans' organizations were often denied membership or
shunted off into the ladies' auxiliaries. Furthermore,
the force behind the organization of Vietnam veterans
was all-male, and combat was the central issue. Civilian
women, even those who had worked with military support
organizations, were legally ineligible for government
compensation or benefits&
and technically ineligible for counseling at Vietnam
Veterans' centers.
were other problems for women who were coming home from
The public did not really view women as veterans or
combat soldiers on the front line. Until fairly
recently, the military's aversion to sending women into
combat was seen to be shared by the general public.
Certainly, the popular conception is that women are
anti-war and anti-violence. Nevertheless, with more
women joining the armed services, and presumably joining
with the idea of engaging fully in the actions of their
branch of the service, it may be that public opinion is
changing.&
opinion polls show that Americans strongly support
women's participation in the military except when it
comes to direct& ground hand-to-hand combat.
Although, even that exception may be less widely held
than it used to be. In January 1990, in the aftermath of
the Panama invasion, a New York Times/CBS News Poll
showed that 72 percent of those surveyed thought
military women should be allowed to serve in combat
units if they wanted to. A McCall's magazine telephone
survey of 755 women, conducted in February 1990, found
even stronger approval: 79 percent of the respondents
agreed that women should be allowed to serve in combat
units if they wanted to& (McCall's).
military is a many-headed monster and has been slow to
change. Recent stories in the news have included the
hazing of female cadets at the previously all-male
military college, The Citadel. High-ranking officers
have been charged with multiple cases of sexual
harassment and sexual assault. Gay army personnel, both
male and female, have been seriously harassed and
dismissed. The military has had a hard time deciding on
who should be able to serve and in what capacity. In the
past, black men were segregated or barred from the
military. This leads me to believe that this is a good
example of a fallacy, an error in reasoning and
stereotyping. In spite of this, women in the military,
however, have continued to prove themselves equal to the
the Navy, there are three women rear admirals on active
duty. Five women are currently rated as Navy test
pilots, more than any other branch of the service. Two
women, from the Army and the Navy, have been appointed
to NASA as astronauts& (Becraft). Women could find
excitement and a career in the military. However, women
were treated as second class soldiers in the military.
The &soldier woman& was perceived as a
helpmate and often times put in dangerous situations in
combat zones without proper training. After the war,
women were treated even worse than their male
compatriots were, although they were now Veterans.&
roles have evolved over the years from being essential
but supplementary forces in the military during wars, to
being active participants. They are now regarded as an
integral part of the armed forces and if they have not
achieved total parity with the men, it can only be a
matter of time.&
Carolyn, WOMEN IN THE MILITARY, .
rm.umd.edu/EdRes/Topic/WomensStudies/GovernmentPolitics/Militaryfactsheet
/vnwomen.html/ ( February 20,
Lorraine, COMBAT BAN STOPS WOMEN'S PROGRESS, NOT
BULLETS, rm.umd.edu/EdRes/Topic/WomensStudies/GovernmentPolitics/Military/factsheet&
(March 3, 1999).
Donald, THE INNER WORLD OF TRAUMA, Routledge, New York,
Kathryn, IN THE COMBAT ZONE, Penguin Books, New York,
HOW THE AMERICAN PUBLIC VIEWS WOMEN IN THE MILITARY,
rm.umd.edu/EdRes/Topic/WomensStudies/GovernmentPolitics/Military/factsheet&
( March 12, 1999)
Winnie, AMERICAN DAUGHTER GONE TO WAR, William Morrow
And Company,&&
New York, 1992.
Keith, A PIECE OF MY HEART, Presidio, Novato, 1985
June, WOMEN VETERANS, America's Forgotten Heroines,
Continuum,&
New York, 1983.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&Women of the American Civil War Soldiers and Nurses
Hannah Ropes kept a diary for only one year during the time she served as a
nurse in the Civil War. She actually supervised Louisa Mae Alcott and was
responsible for many of the reforms in the hospital where she worked. She was a
well-spoken woman who was also not afraid to stand up to her male supervisors.
Video Download Available
More than 600 women disguised themselves as men to
fight in the American Civil War. This documentary tells their stories
through the women's own letters, diaries, and testimonials. 'The
Forgotten Grave' also follows the lives of other women who took part in
the Civil War, such as nurses, spies, and other brave heroines.
Describes the lives and wartime exploits of six women spies includes Sarah Emma Edmonds, Belle Boyd, Pauline Cushman, Rose O'Neal
Greenhow, Elizabeth Van Lew, and Belle Edmondson.
Many people know about Clara Barton, the nurse who did so much to save soldiers' lives. But few have heard of Sarah Emma Edmonds, Rosetta Wakeman, or Mary Galloway. They were among the hundreds of women who assumed male identities, put on uniforms, enlisted in the Union or Confederate Army, and went into battle alongside their male comrades
On April 25, 1861, Sarah Emma Edmonds alias Frank Thompson became a male nurse in Company F, of the 2nd Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment. This is 'his' story
Part cookbook, part culinary history, part family history, this book is an engaging and enlightening glimpse into the household of a well-to-do, mid-nineteenth-century Virginia family. Seeking to learn more about her ancestors' daily lives, Anne Zimmer, great-granddaughter of Robert E. and Mary Lee, turned to her great-grandmother's small, now shabby notebook. Packed with recipes, shopping lists, and other domestic jottings, the notebook opened an intimate window onto an earlier way of life.
It is an accepted convention that the Civil War was a man's fight. Images of women during that conflict center on self-sacrificing nurses, romantic spies, or brave ladies maintaining the home front in the absence of their men. The men, of course, marched off to war, lived in germ-ridden camps, engaged in heinous battle, languished in appalling prison camps, and died horribly, yet heroically. This conventional picture of gender roles during the Civil War does not tell the entire story. Men were not the only ones to fight that war. Women bore arms and charged into battle, too. Like the men, there were women who lived in camp, suffered in prisons, and died for their respective causes.
Both the Union and Confederate armies forbade the enlistment of women. Women soldiers of the Civil War therefore assumed
masculine names, disguised themselves as men, and hid the fact they were female. Because they passed as men, it is impossible to know with any certainty how many women soldiers served in the Civil War. Estimates place as many as 250 women in the ranks of the Confederate army. Writing in 1888, Mary Livermore of the U.S. Sanitary Commission remembered that:
Some one has stated the number of women soldiers known to the service as little less than four hundred. I cannot vouch for the correctness of this
estimate, but I am convinced that a larger number of women disguised themselves and enlisted in the service, for one cause or other, than was dreamed of. Entrenched in secrecy, and regarded as men, they were sometimes revealed as women, by accident or casualty. Some startling histories of these military women were current in the gossip of army life.
Livermore and the soldiers in the Union army were not the only ones who knew of soldier-women. Ordinary citizens heard of them, too. Mary Owens, discovered to be a woman after she was wounded in the arm, returned to her Pennsylvania home to a warm reception and press coverage. She had served for eighteen months under the alias John Evans.
In the post - Civil War era, the topic of women soldiers continued to arise in both literature and the press. Frank Moore's Women of the War , published in 1866, devoted an entire chapter to the military heroines of the North. A year later, L. P. Brockett and Mary Vaughan mentioned ladies "who from whatever cause . . . donned the male attire and concealed their sex . . . [who] did not seek to be known as women, but preferred to pass for men." Loreta Velazquez published her memoirs in 1876. She served the Confederacy as Lt. Harry Buford, a self-financed soldier not officially attached to any regiment.
The existence of soldier-women was no secret during or after the Civil War. The reading public, at least, was well aware that these women rejected Victorian social constraints confining them to the domestic sphere. Their motives were open to speculation, perhaps, but not their actions, as numerous newspaper stories and obituaries of women soldiers testified.
Most of the articles provided few specific details about the individual woman's army career. For example, the obituary of Satronia Smith Hunt merely stated she enlisted in an Iowa regiment with her first husband. He died of battle wounds, but she apparently emerged from the war unscathed. An 1896 story about Mary Stevens Jenkins, who died in 1881, tells an equally brief tale. She enlisted in a Pennsylvania regiment when still a schoolgirl, remained in the army two years, received several wounds, and was discharged without anyone ever realizing she was female. The press seemed unconcerned about the women's actual military exploits. Rather, the fascination lay in the simple fact that they had been in the army.
The army itself, however, held no regard for women soldiers, Union or Confederate. Indeed, despite recorded evidence to the contrary, the U.S. Army tried to deny that women played a military role, however small, in the Civil War. On October 21, 1909, Ida Tarbell of The American Magazine wrote to Gen. F. C. Ainsworth, the adjutant general: "I am anxious to know whether your department has any record of the number of women who enlisted and served in the Civil War, or has it any record of any women who were in the service?" She received swift reply from the Records and Pension Office, a division of the Adjutant General's Office (AGO), under Ainsworth's signature. The response read in part:
I have the honor to inform you that no official record has been found in the War Department showing specifically that any woman was ever enlisted in the military service of the United States as a member of any organization of the Regular or Volunteer Army at any time during the period of the civil war. It is possible, however, that there may have been a few instances of women having served as soldiers for a short time without their sex having been detected, but no record of such cases is known to exist in the official files.
This response to Ms. Tarbell's request is untrue. One of the duties of the AGO was maintenance of the U.S. Army's archives, and the AGO took good care of the extant records created during that conflict. By 1909 the AGO had also created compiled military service records (CMSR) for the participants of the Civil War, both Union and Confederate, through
painstaking copying of names and remarks from official federal documents and captured Confederate records. Two such CMSRs prove the point that the army did have documentation of the service of women soldiers.
It is an accepted convention that the Civil War was a man's fight. Images of women during that conflict center on self-sacrificing nurses, romantic spies, or brave ladies maintaining the home front in the absence of their men. The men, of course, marched off to war, lived in germ-ridden camps, engaged in heinous battle, languished in appalling prison camps, and died horribly, yet heroically. This conventional picture of gender roles during the Civil War does not tell the entire story. Men were not the only ones to fight that war. Women bore arms and charged into battle, too. Like the men, there were women who lived in camp, suffered in prisons, and died for their respective causes.
Both the Union and Confederate armies forbade the enlistment of women. Women soldiers of the Civil War therefore assumed masculine names, disguised themselves as men, and hid the fact they were female. Because they passed as men, it is impossible to know with any certainty how many women soldiers served in the Civil War. Estimates place as many as 250 women in the ranks of the Confederate army. Writing in 1888, Mary Livermore of the
remembered that:
Some one has stated the number of women soldiers known to the service as little less than four hundred. I cannot vouch for the correctness of this estimate, but I am convinced that a larger number of women disguised themselves and enlisted in the service, for one cause or other, than was dreamed of. Entrenched in secrecy, and regarded as men, they were sometimes revealed as women, by accident or casualty. Some startling histories of these military women were current in the gossip of army life.
Livermore and the soldiers in the Union army were not the only ones who knew of soldier-women. Ordinary citizens heard of them, too. Mary Owens, discovered to be a woman after she was wounded in the arm, returned to her Pennsylvania home to a warm reception and press coverage. She had served for eighteen months under the alias John Evans.
In the post - Civil War era, the topic of women soldiers continued to arise in both literature and the press. Frank Moore's Women of the War , published in 1866, devoted an entire chapter to the military heroines of the North. A year later, L. P. Brockett and Mary Vaughan mentioned ladies "who from whatever cause . . . donned the male attire and concealed their sex . . . [who] did not seek to be known as women, but preferred to pass for men." Loreta Velazquez published her memoirs in 1876. She served the Confederacy as Lt. Harry Buford, a self-financed soldier not officially attached to any regiment.
The existence of soldier-women was no secret during or after the Civil War. The reading public, at least, was well aware that these women rejected Victorian social constraints confining them to the domestic sphere. Their motives were open to speculation, perhaps, but not their actions, as numerous newspaper stories and obituaries of women soldiers testified.
Most of the articles provided few specific details about the individual woman's army career. For example, the obituary of Satronia Smith Hunt merely stated she enlisted in an Iowa regiment with her first husband. He died of battle wounds, but she apparently emerged from the war unscathed. An 1896 story about Mary Stevens Jenkins, who died in 1881, tells an equally brief tale. She enlisted in a Pennsylvania regiment when still a schoolgirl, remained in the army two years, received several wounds, and was discharged without anyone ever realizing she was female. The press seemed unconcerned about the women's actual military exploits. Rather, the fascination lay in the simple fact that they had been in the army.
The army itself, however, held no regard for women soldiers, Union or Confederate. Indeed, despite recorded evidence to the contrary, the U.S. Army tried to deny that women played a military role, however small, in the Civil War. On October 21, 1909, Ida Tarbell of The American Magazine wrote to Gen. F. C. Ainsworth, the adjutant general: "I am anxious to know whether your department has any record of the number of women who enlisted and served in the Civil War, or has it any record of any women who were in the service?" She received swift reply from the Records and Pension Office, a division of the Adjutant General's Office (AGO), under Ainsworth's signature. The response read in part:
I have the honor to inform you that no official record has been found in the War Department showing specifically that any woman was ever enlisted in the military service of the United States as a member of any organization of the Regular or Volunteer Army at any time during the period of the civil war. It is possible, however, that there may have been a few instances of women having served as soldiers for a short time without their sex having been detected, but no record of such cases is known to exist in the official files.
This response to Ms. Tarbell's request is untrue. One of the duties of the AGO was maintenance of the U.S. Army's archives, and the AGO took good care of the extant records created during that conflict. By 1909 the AGO had also created compiled military service records (CMSR) for the participants of the Civil War, both Union and Confederate, through painstaking copying of names and remarks from official federal documents and captured Confederate records. Two such CMSRs prove the point that the army did have documentation of the service of women soldiers.
This eloquently told story of Clara Barton digs deep into who exactly Clara Barton was and the many areas in which Clara was an agent for change in society
The Union CMSR for John Williams of the Seventeenth Missouri Infantry, Company H, shows that the nineteen-year-old soldier enlisted as a private on October 3, 1861, in St. Louis and was mustered into the regiment on the seventh. Later that month, Williams was discharged on the grounds: "proved to be a woman." The Confederate CMSR for Mrs. S. M. Blaylock, Twenty-sixth North Carolina Infantry, Company F, states:
This lady dressed in men's clothes, Volunteered [sic], received bounty and for two weeks did all the duties of a soldier before she was found out, but her husband being discharged, she disclosed the fact, returned the bounty, and was immediately discharged April 20, 1862.
Another woman documented in the records held by the AGO was Mary Scaberry, alias Charles Freeman, Fifty-second Ohio Infantry. Scaberry enlisted as a private in the summer of 1862 at the age of seventeen. On November 7 she was admitted to the General Hospital in Lebanon, Kentucky, suffering from a serious fever. She was transferred to a hospital in Louisville, and on the tenth, hospital personnel discovered "sexual incompatibility [sic]." In other words, the feverish soldier was female. Like John Williams, Scaberry was discharged from Union service.
Not all of the women soldiers of the Civil War were discharged so quickly. Some women served for years, like Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye, and others served the entire war, like Albert D. J. Cashier. These two women are the best known and most fully documented of all the women combatants.
Records from the AGO show that Sarah Edmonds, a Canadian by birth, assumed the alias of Franklin Thompson and enlisted as a private in the Second Michigan Infantry in Detroit on May 25, 1861. Her duties while in the Union army included regimental nurse and mail and despatch carrier. Her regiment
participated in the Peninsula campaign and the battles of First Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Antietam. On April 19, 1863, Edmonds deserted because she acquired malaria, and she feared that hospitalization would reveal her gender. In 1867 she married L. H. Seelye, a Canadian mechanic. They raised three children. In 1886 she received a government pension based upon her military service. A letter from the secretary of war, dated June 30 of that year, acknowledged her as "a female soldier who . . . served as a private . . . rendering faithful service in the ranks." Sarah Edmonds Seelye died September 5, 1898, in Texas.
AGO records also reveal that on August 3, 1862, a nineteen-year-old Irish immigrant named Albert D. J. Cashier, described as having a light complexion, blue eyes, and auburn hair, enlisted in the Ninety-fifth Illinois Infantry. Cashier served steadily until August 17, 1865, when the regiment was mustered out of the Federal army. Cashier participated in approximately forty battles and skirmishes in those long, hard four years.
After the war, Cashier worked as a laborer, eventually drew a pension, and finally went to live in the Quincy, Illinois, Soldiers' Home. In 1913 a surgeon at the home discovered that Albert D. J. Cashier was a woman. A public disclosure of the finding touched off a storm of sensational newspaper stories, for Cashier had lived her entire adult life as a man. None of Cashier's former comrades-in-arms ever suspected that he was a she. Apparently, neither did the commandant at the Soldiers' Home. She died October 11, 1914, in an insane asylum. [A deposition from a fellow soldier taken in 1915 revealed that her deception was quite complete.]
On April 25, 1861, Sarah Emma Edmonds alias Frank Thompson became a male nurse in Company F, of the 2nd Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment. This is 'his' story
An excellent treatment of a rather specialized subject
Despite the fact that the U.S. Army did not acknowledge or advertise their existence, it is surprising that the women soldiers of the Civil War are not better known today. After all, their existence was known at the time and through the rest of the nineteenth century. Even though some modern writers have considered Seelye and Cashier, the majority of historians who have written about the common soldiers of the war have either ignored women in the ranks or trivialized their experience. While references, usually in passing, are sometimes found, the assumption by many respected Civil War historians is that soldier-women were eccentric and their presence isolated. Textbooks hardly ever mention these women.
The writings of Bell Wiley and Mary Massey are good examples. Wiley wrote at some length of "the gentler sex who disguised themselves and swapped brooms for muskets [who] were able to sustain the deception for amazingly long periods of time." But he later refers to them, indirectly, as "freaks and distinct types." Massey erroneously asserted that "probably most of the women soldiers were prostitutes or concubines." For the most part, modern researchers looking for evidence of soldier-women must rely heavily upon Civil War diaries and late nineteenth-century memoirs.
It is true that the military service of women did not affect the outcome of campaigns or battles. Their service did not alter the course of the war. Compared with the number of men who fought, the women are statistically irrelevant. But the women are significant because they were there and they were not supposed to be. The late nineteenth-century newspaper writers grasped this point. The actions of Civil War soldier-women flew in the face of mid-nineteenth-century society's characterization of women as frail, subordinate, passive, and not interested in the public realm.
Simply because the woman soldier does not fit the traditional female image, she should not be excluded from, or misinterpreted in, current and future historical writings. While this essay cannot discuss all the soldier-women, their lives and military records, recent chroniclers of the Civil War and women's history have begun to note the gallantry of women in the ranks during the war. Most important, recent works refrain from stereotyping the women soldiers as prostitutes, mentally ill, homosexual, social misfits, or anything other than what they were: soldiers fighting for their respective governments of their own volition.
It is perhaps hard to imagine how the women soldiers maintained their necessary deception or even how they successfully managed to enlist. It was probably very easy. In assuming the male disguise, women soldiers picked male names. Army recruiters, both Northern and Southern, did not ask for proof of identity. Soldier-women bound their breasts when necessary, padded the waists of their trousers, and cut their hair short. Loreta Velazquez wore a false mustache, developed a masculine gait, learned to smoke cigars, and padded her uniform coat to make herself look more muscular.
While recruits on both sides of the conflict were theoretically subject to physical examinations, those exams were usually farcical. Most recruiters only looked for visible handicaps, such as deafness, poor eyesight, or lameness. Neither army standardized the medical exams, and those charged with performing them hardly ever ordered recruits to strip. That roughly 750 women enlisted attests to the lax and perfunctory nature of recruitment physical checks.
Once in the ranks, successful soldier-women probably learned to act and talk like men. With their uniforms loose and ill-fitting and with so many underage boys in the ranks, women, especially due to their lack of facial hair, could pass as young men. Also, Victorian men, by and large, were modest by today's standards. Soldiers slept in their clothes, bathed in their underwear, and went as long as six weeks without changing their underclothes. Many refused to use the odorous and disgusting long, open-trenched latrines of camp. Thus, a woman soldier would not call undue attention to herself if she acted modestly, trekked to the woods to answer the call of nature and attend to other personal matters, or left camp before dawn to privately bathe in a nearby stream.
Militarily, the women soldiers faced few disadvantages. The vast majority of the common soldiers during the Civil War were former civilians who volunteered for service. These amateur citizen soldiers enlisted ignorant of army life. Many privates had never fired a gun before entering the army. The women soldiers learned to be warriors just like the men.
The women soldiers easily concealed their gender in order to fulfill their desire to fight. An unknown number of them, like Cashier, Jenkins, and Hunt, were never revealed as women during their army stint. Of those who were, very few were discovered for acting unsoldierly or stereotypically feminine. Though Sarah Collins of Wisconsin was suspected of being female by the way she put on her shoes, she was atypical.
Also unusual were the Union women under Gen. Philip Sheridan's command, one a teamster and the other a private in a cavalry regiment, who got drunk and fell into a river. The soldiers who rescued the pair made the gender discoveries in the process of resuscitating them. Sheridan personally interviewed the two and later described the woman teamster as coarse and the "she-dragoon" as rather prepossessing, even with her unfeminine suntan. He did not state their real names, aliases, or regiments.
For the most part, women were recognized after they had received serious wounds or died. Mary Galloway was wounded in the chest during the Battle of Antietam. Clara Barton, attending to the wound, discovered the gender of the soft-faced "boy" and coaxed her into revealing her true identity and going home after recuperation. One anonymous woman wearing
the uniform of a Confederate private was found dead on the Gettysburg battlefield on July 17, 1863, by a burial detail from the Union II Corps. Based on the location of the body, it is likely the Southern woman died participating in Pickett's charge. In 1934, a gravesight found on the outskirts of Shiloh National Military Park revealed the bones of nine Union soldiers. Further investigation indicated that one of the skeletons, with a minieball by the remains, was female. The identities of these two dead women are lost to posterity.
Some soldiers were revealed as women after getting captured. Frances Hook is a good example. She and her brother, orphans, enlisted together early in the war. She was twenty-two years old, of medium build, with hazel eyes and dark brown hair. Even though her brother was killed in action at Pittsburgh Landing, Hook continued service, probably in an Illinois infantry regiment, under the alias Frank Miller. In early 1864, Confederates captured her near Florence, A she was shot in the thigh during a battle and left behind with other wounded, who were also captured. While imprisoned in Atlanta, her captors realized her gender. After her exchange at Graysville, Georgia, on February 17, 1864, she was cared for in Union hospitals in Tennessee, then discharged and sent North in June. Having no one to return to, she may have reenlisted in another guise and served the rest of the war. Frances Hook later married, and on March 17, 1908, her daughter wrote the AGO seeking confirmation of her mother's military service. AGO clerks searched pertinent records and located documentation.
Other prisoners of war included Madame Collier and Florina Budwin. Collier was a federal soldier from East Tennessee who enjoyed army life until her capture and subsequent imprisonment at Belle Isle, Virginia. She decided to make the most of the difficult situation and continued concealing her gender, hoping for exchange. Another prisoner learned her secret and reported it to Confederate authorities, who sent her North under a flag of truce. Before leaving, Collier indicated that another woman remained incarcerated on the island.
Florina Budwin and her husband enlisted together, served side by side in battle, were captured at the same time by Confederates, and both sent to the infamous Andersonville prison. (The date of their incarceration has not been determined.) Mr. Budwin died there in the stockade, but Mrs. Budwin survived until after her transfer with other prisoners in late 1864 to a prison in Florence, South Carolina. There she was stricken by an unspecified epidemic, and a Southern doctor discovered her identity. Despite immediately receiving better treatment, she died January 25, 1865.
The women soldiers of the Civil War engaged in combat, were wounded and taken prisoner, and were killed in action. They went to war strictly by choice, knowing the risks involved. Their reasons for doing so varied greatly. Some, like Budwin and Hook, wished to be by the sides of their loved ones. Perhaps others viewed war as excitement and travel. Working class and poor women were probably enticed by the bounties and the promise of a regular paycheck. And of course, patriotism was a primary motive. Sarah Edmonds wrote in 1865, "I could only thank God that I was free and could go forward and work, and I was not obliged to stay at home and weep." Obviously, other soldier-women did not wish to stay at home weeping, either.
Herein lies the importance of the women combatants of the Civil War: it is not their individual exploits but the fact that they fought. While their service could not significantly alter the course of the war, women soldiers deserve remembrance because their actions display them as uncommon and revolutionary, with a valor at odds with Victorian views of women's proper role. Quite simply, the women in the ranks, both Union and Confederate, refused to stay in their socially mandated place, even if it meant resorting to subterfuge to achieve their goal of being soldiers. They faced not only the guns of the adversary but also the sexual prejudices of their society.
The women soldiers of the Civil War merit recognition in modern American society because they were trailblazers. Women's service in the military is socially accepted today, yet modern women soldiers are still officially barred from direct combat. Since the Persian Gulf war, debate has raged over whether women are fit for combat, and the issue is still unresolved. The women soldiers of the Civil War were capable fighters. From a historical viewpoint, the women combatants of 1861 to 1865 were not just they were ahead of our time.
By DeAnne Blanton
1. Lauren Burgess, "'Typical' Soldier May Have Been Red-Blooded American Woman," The Washington Times , Oct. 5, 1991.
2. Mary A. Livermore,
(1888), pp. 119-120.
3. "Women Soldiering as Men," New York Sun , Feb. 10, 1901.
4. L. P. Brockett and Mary Vaughan,
(1867), p. 770.
5. Obituary of Satronia Smith Hunt, unidentified newspaper clipping, envelope re women soldiers, Old Records Division reference file, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC (hereinafter cited as RG 94, NA).
6. "Served by her Lover's Side," The Evening Star (Washington, DC), July 7, 1896.
7. Documents numbered 158003, Records and Pension Office file 184934, RG 94, NA.
8. Compiled military service record (CMSR) of John Williams, Seventeenth Missouri Infantry, RG 94, NA.
9. CMSR for Mrs. S.M. Blaylock, Twenty-sixth North Carolina Infantry, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, RG 109, NA.
10. Carded medical records for Charles Freeman, 52d Ohio Infantry, Mexican and Civil Wars, RG 94, NA.
11. CMSR for Franklin Thompson, Second Michigan I and Enlisted Branch file 3132 C 1884, both in RG 94, NA.
12. CMSR for Albert D.J. Cashier, Ninety-fifth Illinois Infantry, RG 94, NA; and pension application case file C 2573248, Records of the Veterans Administration, RG 15, NA.
13. Bell Irvin Wiley,
(1951), pp. 337, 339.
14. Mary Elizabeth Massey,
(1966), p. 84.
15. In the last ten years, articles about Civil War women soldiers have appeared in such diverse publications as Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military, Southern Studies , and The Civil War Book Exchange and Collector . For a discussion of a Revolutionary War woman soldier, see Julia Ward Stickley,
Prologue 4 (1972): 233—241.
16. George Worthington Adams,
(1952), pp. 12—13; Wendy A. King, (1992), pp. 18, 20; and Loreta Janeta Velazquez,
17. Massey,
18. Philip Henry Sheridan,
19. Elizabeth Brown Pryor,
20. U.S. War Department,
- Series I Volume XLV Part II
21. Stewart Sifakis,
& (1988), p. 14.
22. Document file record card 1502399, RG 94, NA; and "Women Soldiering as Men."
23. John L. Ransom,
& Life Inside the Civil War's Most Infamous Prison
24. Sifakis,
25. S. Emma E. Edmonds,
& (1865), pp. 20-21.
Part of the American Stories Collection.
This is one woman's personal history, she is the grand-daughter of a white Confederate General who openly acknowledged his mixed-race offspring but who also lived
in the violent segregated world of the deep South
The Diary of Eliza Rhea Anderson Fain
Travel with Tubman along the treacherous route of the Underground Railroad. Hear of her friendships with Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and other abolitionists.
Fearless spy for the Confederacy, glittering Washington hostess, legendary beauty and lover, Rose Greenhow risked everything for the cause she valued more than life itself
Chronicles life, love, and daily struggles with Abraham in their 26 years together. In frank, haunting journal entries, Mary describes the pain she felt when Abraham left her at the altar, when her sons died, and when Abraham's political career seemed to be at an end
Eliza Andrews' diary is more cogent than any novel about the Civil War. General Sherman laid a track, and ELiza had to follow his footsteps through Georgia. Her insights into war and the havoc it wrought in the South are accompanied by her own editorial comments forty-four years later
A Confederate girl in Virginia, in 1864, Emma Simpson writes about the hardships of growing up during a turbulent time
First published in 1895. An engrossing eyewitness account of antebellum plantation life as it really was
The author tells of her many travels across the war-torn South, capture behind enemy lines, encounter with Belle Boyd, friendship with General J. E. B. Stuart, and the devastation suffered by the citizens of Richmond in the last days of the Confederacy.
Harriet escaped North, by the secret route called the Underground Railroad. Harriet didn't forget her people. Again and again she risked her life to lead them on the same secret, dangerous journey.
From childhood, Susan Gray and her cousin Louisa May Alcott have shared a safe, insular world of outdoor adventures and grand amateur theater -- a world that begins to evaporate with the outbreak of the Civil War. Frustrated with sewing uniforms and wrapping bandages, the two women journey to Washington, D.C.'s Union Hospital to volunteer as nurses.
Young Clara Barton is shy and lonely in her early days at boarding school. She is snubbed by the other girls because she doesn't know how to talk to them. But when she gets an opportunity to assist the local doctor, her shyness disappears, and Clara begins to discover her true calling as a nurse.
Many important details of the time period help to make the reader understand what life was like then. It also includes photos of the actual letters written between Grace and Mr. Lincoln
Ready To Read - Level Three
Clara Barton was very shy and sensitive, and not always sure of herself. But her fighting spirit and desire to help others drove her to become one of the world's most famous humanitarians. Learn all about the life of the woman who formed the American Red Cross.
Through flashbacks and flash-forwards, and shifting first-person points of view, readers will travel with Emma and others through time and place, and come to understand that every decision has its consequences, and final judgment is passed down not by man, but by his maker.
Introduces young readers to the harrowing true story of the American Civil War
and its immediate aftermath. A surprisingly detailed battle-by-battle account of
America's deadliest conflict ensues, culminating in the restoration of the Union
followed by the tragic assassination of President Lincoln
Tale of a girl and her family from Boston living in Charleston, SC during the months leading up to the beginning of the Civil War by the attack on Fort Sumter. The reader senses the inhumanity of slavery through Sylvia's experiences.
During the closing days of the Civil War, plucky 12-year-old Hannalee Reed, sent north to work in a Yankee mill, struggles to return to the family she left behind in war-torn Georgia. "A fast-moving novel based upon an actual historical incident with a spunky heroine and fine historical detail."--School Library Journal.
Virginia Dickens is angry. Her father and brother Jed have left her behind while they go off to Uncle Jack's farm to help him hide his horses from Confederate raiders. It's the summer of 1863 and Pa and Jed believe 9-year-old Virginia will be out of harm's way in the sleepy little town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Not only is 12-year-old Patsy a slave, but she's also one of the least important slaves, since she stutters and walks with a limp. So when the war ends and she's given her freedom, Patsy is naturally curious and afraid of what her future will hold.
The Civil War is at an end, but for thirteen-year-old Eulinda, it is no time to rejoice. Her younger brother Zeke was sold away, her older brother Neddy joined the Northern war effort,. With the help of Clara Barton, the eventual founder of the Red Cross, Eulinda must find a way to let go of the skeletons from her past.
18 in. x 24 in.
Mothers of Invention : Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War
In the ante-bellum South, women from elite slaveholding families were raised to consider themselves not so much as "women" but as "ladies," models of dependent femininity. But that ideal was to prove impossible to maintain during the social upheaval of the Civil War, when they found themselves suddenly assuming unaccustomed roles as workers, protectors, and providers. Through the use of hundreds of moving and eloquent letters, memoirs, and diary excerpts, Drew Gilpin Faust, one of the foremost historians of the American South, illuminates the lives of a wide array of Confederate women: from Lizzie Neblett, a housewife facing a life of physical labor for the first time, to Sallie Tompkins, a Virginia aristocrat turned military nurse, to Belle Boyd, a ruthless teenaged spy.
The Confederate Cookbook: Family Favorites from the Sons of Confederate Veterans
This book contains over 340 of Dixie's finest recipes courtesy of contemporary
Confederate kitchens from Florida to Alaska. Here you'll find the delicious,
traditional dishes that evoke the flavour of the Old South, as well as savoury
regional favourites from all over the country. Fascinating historic anecdotes
and previously unpublished, nostalgic sepia-toned images of identified
Confederate soldiers are here for maximum visual appeal, along with easy-to-use
instructions for making so memorable dishes ever to grace your sideboard. The
Sons of Confederate Veterans is a patriotic and hereditary organisation
dedicated to preserving and celebrating the history and principles of the
Confederate States of America.
To 'Joy My Freedom is a fascinating look at the long-neglected story of black women in postwar southern culture. Hunter examines the strategies these women (98 percent of whom worked as domestic servants) used to cope with low wages and poor working conditions and their efforts to master the tools of advancement, including literacy. Hunter explores not only the political, but the cultural, too, offering an in-depth look at the distinctive music, dance, and theater that grew out of the black experience in the South.
National Archives