Americas Women

Discussion in 'World War 1' started by liverpool annie, Oct 14, 2009.

  1. liverpool annie

    liverpool annie New Member

    In 'America's Women' Gail Collins writes

    'World War I began in Europe in 1914, and long before America entered the fray in 1917, American women were crossing the ocean and volunteering to serve as nurses, canteen hostesses, ambulance drivers and switchboard operators. An estimated 25,000 women made the trip, often with no idea what they would do when they got there.

    Relief and medical services in the early years of World War I were so uncoordinated that women who were daring and willing could easily assing themsleves to duty. Some volunteers found themselves assisting doctors in the 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 image of the relief worker was a dewy young girl, some of the American women who volunteered were middle-aged or older, like the sixty-year-old writer Margaret Deland, who did relief work in France. "I'm too old to fight, but I'm sending my mother" said Florence Kendall's son when she set sail for Europe. Edith Wharton, the American novelist, was fifty-two years old and living in Europe when the war broke out. She started a sewing workroom to employ displaced women, and established clinics, free clothing centres, a cooperative where refugees could buy cheap groceries, a day nursery, an employment agency, vocational training classes, and a tuberculosis clinic. She did it all without fanfare and told a friend she had discovered that "it takes a great deal more time to do good than to have fun."

    Sympathy for the overrun Belgians and imperiled French was high in America, and millions of women back home organized committes to roll bandages, raise relief funds, or even send aid to suffering French animals. But the volunteers who crossed the ocean were also in search of adventure. "To be in the front ranks in this most dramatic event that was ever staged, and to bve in the first group of women ever called out for duty with the United States Army....is all too much good fortune for any one person." enthused Julia Stimson, a nurse. Their derring-do was unflappable. "It isn't exactly an alluring prospect to be exiled in the backwoods of Russia for a couple of months with only two Engish-speaking people to run an infectious hospital, but it will be rather fun." insisted Ruth Holden.'
     

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