Position:Home>History> What was the role of women in world war one?

A great many women went overseas as nurses and as ambulance drivers, canteen workers, etc!. Many British women joined the newly formed auxilliary services, the Women's army, navy and airforce, and some went abroad to act as drivers etc!. Some women went out with theatrical companies to entertain the troops!.

A lot of American women crossed the sea to Europe before America entered the war to offer their services as nurses, canteen assistans, drivers and switchboard operators!. An estimated 25,000 women made the trip, often with no idea of what they would do when they got to the fighting!.

Relief and medical services in the early years of World War I were so uncoordinated that women who were daring and willing could easily assign themselves to duty!. Barnard College sent women overseas as canteen workers afdter a one-week course that allegedly included insturctions in French, cooking, history, customs of the European allies, games, and storytelling!. Other volunteers found themselves assisting doctors in French hospitals!. "I knew nothing about nursing and had to learn on my patients, a painful process for all concerned" said Juliet Goodrich, who had been a canteen worker until she was recruited to work in a Paris medical facility in 1918!. Although the imagie of the relief worker wa s a dewy young girl, some of the American women who volunteered weer middle-aged or older!. "I'm too old to fight but I'm sending my mother" said Florence Kendall's son when she set sail for Europe!.

An American nurse describes how she assisted a French doctor at an operation:

'Dr LeB's hands, encased in rubber gloves, were swift and sure!. He always worked with a cigarette hanging limply from the corner of his mouth!. It was part of my job to keep lighting fresh ones for him!. At first when the ash fell into an open wound over which he was working, I asked him frantically what I should do about it!. He went on calmly, muttering "N'importe ca!. C'est sterile!."

It did not matter, it was sterile!. I have since been amused at the thought of so many men journeying through life sublimely unconscious of the fact that some part or another of their anatomy had once served as Dr LeB's ash-tray!.'

A British nurse working in a tent hospital near the battlefield at Passchendaele wrote:

'We have a lot of Germans in - all abdominals!. Everything ahs been going at full pitch - with the 12 teams in the Theatre only breaking off for hasty meals - the DressingHut, the Preparation Ward and Resusciatation and the four huge Acute Wards, which fill up from the Theatre: the Officers; Ward the Moribund and the German Ward!. that and the Preparation and the Theatre are the worst places!. Soon after 10 o'clock this moring he began putting over high explosive!. He kept it up all the morning with vicious screams!. They burst on two sides of us, not 50 yards away - no direct hits on us but streams of shrapnel, whcih were quite hot when you picked them up!. No one was hurt, which was lucky, and they came everywhere, even through our Canvas Huts in our quarters!. Luckily we were so frantically busy that it was easier to pay less attention to it!. The patients who were well enought orealise that they were not still on the field called it 'a dirty trick'!.

It doesn't look as if we should ever sleep again!. Apparently gunners and soldiers never do, it is difficult to see who can in this area!. Our monster shells cutting through the air are the dizzy limit!. There was a moment this morning when the C!.O!. and I thought he meant to do us in, but they stopped about one o'clock!. And there was a moment about tea-time when I thought the work was going to heap up and get the better of us!. It is going to be a tight fit!. Of course, a good many die, but a great many seem to be going to live!. We get them one hour after injury, which is our raison d'etre for being here!.'

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Hi,
Search for "women in war", and it will tell you what women did
before WWI, during, and after WWI!.
Good luck, and hope you find what you need!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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