Kathryn J. Atwood - Women Heroes of World War I. 16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics

Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a World War II Special Agent Pearl Witherington Cornioly, edited by Kathryn J. Atwood

Double Victory: How African American Women Broke Race and Gender Barriers to Help Win World War II Cheryl Mullenbach

Reporting Under Fire: 16 Daring Women War Correspondents and Photojournalists Kerrie L. Hollihan

Women Aviators: 26 Stories of Pioneer Flights, Daring Missions, and Record-Setting Journeys Karen Bush Gibson

Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue Kathryn J. Atwood

Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions, and Gravity-Breaking Adventures Karen Bush Gibson

Women of Steel and Stone: 22 Inspirational Architects, Engineers, and Landscape Designers Anna M. Lewis

Women of the Frontier: 16 Tales of Trailblazing Homesteaders, Entrepreneurs, and Rabble-Rousers Brandon Marie Miller

A World of Her Own: 24 Amazing Women Explorers and Adventurers Michael Elsohn Ross

2014 by Kathryn J. Atwood

All rights reserved

Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-61374-686-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Atwood, Kathryn J.

Women heroes of World War I : 16 remarkable resisters, soldiers, spies, and medics / Kathryn J. Atwood.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61374-686-8 (cloth)

1. World War, 1914-1918Participation, Female-Europe 2. World War, 1914-1918Women-EuropeBiography. 3. World War, 1914-1918Participation, FemaleUnited States. 4. World War, 1914-1918WomenUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

D639.W7A88 2014

940.3082dc23

2013047408

Interior design: Sarah Olson

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

To the men and women who lost their lives in the Great War.

In valour, devotion to duty, and courage in the face of the enemy they were rated as soldiers by the soldiers themselves.

British Major Thomas Coulson on female Allied agents

I do not feel that I did anything exceptional. Any well girl can do the same.

Arno Dosch-Fleurot, member of the Russian Womens Battalion of Death

Index

W hen considering World War I, the images that generally come to the minds of most 21st-century people are few: soldiers wearing gas masks standing in sandbagged trenches or the smiling Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife just before they were assassinated. The connection between these images is generally unclear and most of the wars other details seem to belong in old, dusty history bookscomplex, remote, and dulland not nearly as interesting as those regarding the world conflict that followed a few decades later.

But the fact is that World War Ior the Great War, as it was called at the timewas the most significant event in human history up to that point. It was one generations great adventure-turned-nightmare that became the most cataclysmic event of the century, a war that destroyed the ideals of the 19th century and thrust the world violently into the 20th.

Yet when it began in August 1914, the First World War was greeted with enthusiasm on a scale that is nearly impossible for modern readers to fully comprehend.

To-day has been far too exciting to enable me to feel at all like sleepin fact it is one of the most thrilling I have ever lived through, though without doubt there are many more to come. That which has been so long anticipated by some & scoffed at by others has come to pass at lastArmageddon [epic battle] in Europe!

Vera Brittain, a young British woman,
diary entry for August 3, 1914

Why this excitement? An intense nationalism had been on the rise in Europe for several decades, and many saw the war as an opportunity to prove the greatness and preeminence of their particular countries. Most young people in the combatant nations had been instilled with the principles of honor, duty, and courage as well as a sense that those ideals were directly connected to a defense of their homelands and cultures. They were also taught very clearly who they should look upon as their countrys particular enemy: for the French it was the Germans; for the Germans it was the Russians and the French; for the Russians it was the Germans and the Japanese. For the British it was anyone who would dare to challenge their global dominance.

Years before the war, many countries had encouraged semi-militaristic training for young men in order to make very clear the connection between nationalistic ideals and military service. And when the Olympic Games were revived on an international level in 1896including 14 participating nations, 11 of them from Europeit reinforced a strong connection between athleticism and nationalism. Pierre de Coubertin, the French man most responsible for the 1896 Olympics, had in the years prior promoted athletic training of French schoolchildren with the idea that athletes would be better soldiers.