“Women served. They supported combat units. They managed communications and moved the mail. They saved lives. They fought the enemy. Their service mattered then; it still matters now.”
By Mari K. Eder
THE ROLE OF women during World War II was varied, significant and important.
In the United States, more than 19 million women were mobilized on the home front; another half a million served in uniform.
These women of the Greatest Generation had a lasting impact. They came from different backgrounds, but together they broke the rules, defied expectations and performed, blazing the trail for future generations.
Over time, many of their stories have faded, been dismissed or forgotten. Yet myths surrounding America’s women at war still persist. My book, The Girls Who Stepped out of Line: Untold Stories of the Women Who Changed the Course of World War II, sets out to shatter many of them. Here are some examples.
Myth: “Women weren’t fighters in the war. They only served in support roles.”
It’s true that women who served in America’s armed services, primarily the Army, Navy and Coast Guard, were in combat support and combat service support roles. But that didn’t necessarily mean they were far from danger. In fact, one woman is especially well known for her service with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA and to military special operations. Many have heard of Virginia Hall, the ‘spy.’ She was more than that.
Hall had initially wanted to join the diplomatic corps. Despite her language proficiency, her university degrees and nearly a decade of experience in junior administrative roles in several U.S. embassies abroad, she was barred from rising any higher in the foreign service. As a woman, the doors to advancement weren’t simply closed to her, they were locked tight.
With Europe now at war, the 36-year-old Baltimore native left her civil service job and volunteered to be an ambulance driver in the French army. After the fall of France in 1940, she fled to Spain. On her way to find work at the U.S. embassy in London, she had a chance encounter on a train with a British intelligence officer who recruited her for the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
After months of training, in August of 1941 Hall was sent undercover into occupied France. Using a variety of code names and moving from place to place, she helped establish a network of guerrilla fighters who opposed the Nazis at every turn.
Hall supplied and trained the Maquis fighters, helped downed Allied pilots evade capture, disrupted German supply lines, and more. After being discovered by the Nazis, she escaped on foot over the snow-covered Pyrenees mountains into Spain. With her cover blown, the SOE was reluctant to send her back into danger. She was after all a civilian and a woman with a disability – she’d lost a leg during a bird-hunting mishap in 1933 while serving in a U.S. consulate in Turkey. Worse still, she was wanted by the Gestapo.
Instead she joined the American OSS and on a still, moonless night in March of 1944, Virginia Hall found herself on a blacked-out torpedo boat, heading back across the channel into France. She had a new disguise: that of an elderly French woman. Gray hair, excess clothing to add weight and her distinctive limp completed the disguise. Once in place, Hall moved from farm to farm, tending sheep and making cheese by day, while directing operations at night. Her mission was simple: to disrupt and destroy the Nazi’s ability to reinforce their troops in northern France in advance of the upcoming Allied invasion of Normandy. By June of 1944, her team had managed to destroy four bridges, derail freight trains, cut rail lines, and down telephone lines across the region. They’d also killed over 150 German soldiers and captured at least 500 more.
Hall received the Distinguished Service Cross for her service in the war; the only American woman to receive this high award, second only to the Medal of Honor. The citation reads in part: “…continually at risk of capture, torture, and death…she directed Resistance Forces in extraordinary acts…against the enemy.”
Virginia Hall was an operator — at the tip of the spear.
Myth: “There were no Black women commanders in World War II.”
Charity Adams joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942 and graduated in the first class of commissioned officers. She served for two years at Fort Des Moines in Iowa, where she longed for greater challenges than that of standard home-front duty. She wanted to lead.
Finally, it happened. The army had scrambled to assemble Adams’ new unit, the 6888th Central Postal Battalion, to solve an unlikely crisis. By 1944, there was a two-year backlog of mail for soldiers, Red Cross personnel and civilians serving in Europe. There simply weren’t enough postal units. The all-Black WAC unit, known as the “Six Triple Eight,” was given a seemingly impossible mission: to streamline the shambolic army mail system. Letters from home were crucial to GI morale and the Six Triple Eight’s 855 women — the first and only all-Black WAC unit to be sent overseas — would have to deliver.
When the first contingent arrived, Adams, who’d been sent on ahead, was there to meet their ship. Many had been seasick on the trip over. After running the gauntlet of enemy U-boats during the Atlantic crossing, most were glad to be on land. But the excitement of disembarking was short-lived. A German V-1 “buzz bomb” came screaming in just as the women were heading down the ramp. The women of the Six Triple Eight ran for cover as the rocket struck the dock close to where they were disembarking. No one was injured, but it was a definite reminder that they had arrived in a war zone.
Adams and her soldiers soon got to work getting the mountains of mail moving. The Six Triple Eight was a “self-contained” unit. That meant they had everything necessary to be self-sustaining—Adams commanded the postal operations, but she was also responsible for a motor pool, a supply room, a chapel, a military police detachment and even a battalion newsletter, Special Delivery. As the unit routed more than 17 million pieces of mail, the Six Triple Eight managed to make a home for themselves in England, even hosting sports teams and sponsoring dances.
Adams soon received a new set of orders: The Six Triple Eight had been so successful in England they were ordered to undertake the same mission in France. In Europe, Adams’ orders were to fix a two-year backup of mail in six months. Again, the Six Triple Eight did it in three.
By the end of the war 26-year-old Charity Adams was promoted to lieutenant colonel and offered a new assignment: a staff position at the Pentagon. She declined leaving active duty service with her well-deserved silver oak leaf. At that time, the Director of the Women’s Army Corps was a full colonel, just one rank above her.
Charity Adams and her soldiers exemplified what women of color could do when given the opportunity and the right leadership.
Myth: “Nurses had it easy. They were behind the front lines.”
Kate Flynn was 21, just out of college, and excited to join the Army Nurse Corps and sign up to be a flight nurse. But by the time she arrived at Florida’s Fort MacDill, the program was full. Instead, Kate found herself assigned to the 53rd Combat Hospital, a unit tasked with treating heavy casualties. She had no idea what that meant.
Months of training, preparation and practice with set up and tear down of triage tents, surgeries and even entire field hospitals. Deployed to England, Flynn, like millions of other GIs, spent months waiting for what would come next: the invasion of Normandy.
In July, 1944, Kate found herself up to her neck in the water, off the coast of Normandy, wading ashore as the waves washed over her head and the heavy pack was pulling her under. It was a month after D-Day when Kate’s unit arrived on the beachhead and she, along with her fellow nurses, had no idea what lay ahead of them.
Attached to Patton’s Third Army, trailing behind various infantry and armor units fighting their way across France towards Germany, Kate and her comrades would not only witness the bloody aftermath of battle, they’d experience war firsthand. She earned five battle stars before VE Day. Her unit moved forward at least once every ten days.
The 53rd Combat Hospital wasn’t supposed to be on the front lines, but they often found themselves less than a mile behind the fiercest fighting. They had to be close to the action to receive the wounded, treat them and then move them further to the rear.
Perhaps the toughest times came during the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944. Kate recalled the cold, at times as low as -40F, and the howling wind. The pot-bellied stoves in the canvas tents were little comfort and when the shelling began, the medics and nurses often rolled their patients out onto the frozen ground and lay on top of them until the guns fell silent again.
Kate didn’t carry a rifle. But she knew war.
It wasn’t until years later, that Kate realized the impact she had. While at a Battle of the Bulge reunion, one former GI spotted her in the crowd and rushed over to give her a bear hug. He recognized Kate all those years later, freckles and all. She had saved the man’s life.
Without Kate Flynn and 59,000 other nurses who served during the war, fewer of the hundreds of thousands of casualties would have made it home.
Women served. They supported combat units. They managed communications and moved the mail. They saved lives. They fought the enemy. Their service mattered then; it still matters now. The myths may still be out there but the achievements of the women who stepped out of line endure, impact, and inspire today.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Major General Mari K. Eder served in the U.S. Army for 36 years. Her book, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line: Untold Stories of the Women Who Changed the Course of World War II is available where books are sold.
