Did you know that more than 350,000 women across the United States have served in the military? Or that more than 7,000 of those women were from North Carolina?
There’s an abundance of media featuring stories about men who served in the military as far back as the Revolutionary War, but why aren’t there more media about the women who served?
Women served as nurses, cooks and laundresses during wartime, and during World War I, there was a group of women known as the Hello Girls who served as telephone operators. Most of these women were from urban areas across the United States and Canada. These women were single, educated, independent, and could speak at least two languages.
It wasn’t until World War I that women serving in the military were no longer seen as simply civilians and could serve in the U.S. Navy. These women were known as Yeomanettes, an enlisted rate for women.
In May 1942, during World War II, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was established to give women auxiliary but not military status. The auxiliary status meant women received different pay, legal protections, and benefits than men. Still, when the WAAC disbanded, and the Women’s Army Corps was established in July 1943, women were finally given military status.
After this, the other military branches quickly followed the Army’s lead. The U.S. Navy established the Women’s Reserve, also known as Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, or WAVES. The U.S. Coast Guard created the Women’s Reserve, known as SPARS, or “Semper Paratus-Always Ready.” The Marine Corps established the Women’s Reserve.
The Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, was established in August 1943, but its members were not given military status. Despite ferrying and flight-testing military planes, towing targets for male pilots to shoot at, and transporting passengers and cargo for decades, WASP veterans weren’t awarded official military status until 1977.
Although the common theme on recruitment posters for women was “Free a man to fight,” it’s fair to say women filled a number of vital roles during wartime, including as bakers, clerks, control tower operators, cooks, cryptographers, dental technicians, drivers, instructors, lab technicians, mechanics, nurses, parachute riggers, pharmacists, photographers, radiomen, spies, storekeepers, X-ray technicians.
There were many women from North Carolina who served in different branches of the military throughout our nation’s history, especially during World War II. They include Dorothy Austell, an undercover agent who served with the WAC; Daphine Doster Mastroianni, a surgical nurse in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps; Virginia Russell Reavis, a nurse in the Army Air Force who became an air evacuation nurse, flying with wounded soldiers and German prisoners-of-war; Davetter Butler Shepard, a Black woman who served with both the WAAC and WAC; Millie Louise Dunn Veasey, who served as a company and supply clerk in segregated African-American units in the WAAC and WAC; and Anna Jean Coomes Woods, who worked in classified communications and personnel as a member of the WAVES.
One woman from Hyde County, Almyra M. Watson, had a career with the Army Nurse Corps that spanned a quarter of a century. She was one of the first Army nurses to work in military field conditions.
Women who wanted to serve their country in the U.S. military faced many challenges, including being told they shouldn’t serve because it would mean they couldn’t be good mothers. They were often treated as school-age girls rather than the mature women they were. African-American women who served faced not only gender discrimination but racial discrimination as well. But even in the face of this adversity, women stepped up, inspiring many more women to step even higher today.
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